标签： Oceania

A 10-day bilateral ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel officially entered into force at midnight local time Friday, creating a fragile window for diplomatic progress even as the Lebanese military immediately reported multiple breaches of the truce by Israeli forces. The agreement, which comes more than two months after full-scale fighting erupted between the two sides, has drawn thousands of displaced Lebanese residents to rush back toward their southern homes despite official warnings to delay their return.

The truce, which took effect at 2100 GMT, triggered an immediate exodus of civilians who had fled southern Lebanon after Israel issued mass evacuation orders earlier in the conflict. While the Lebanese Armed Forces urged residents to hold off on heading back, citing ongoing Israeli aggressive acts in the border zone, visual evidence from Agence France-Presse shows convoys of packed cars traveling south along Lebanon’s coastal highway before dawn, with some crossing the damaged remains of a bridge that was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes during the fighting. By sunrise, traffic stretched for kilometers at the only crossing connecting the coastal region south of the Litani River to the rest of the country, with residents waiting hours for their chance to return to properties they were forced to abandon.

Alaa Damash, one of the thousands of displaced residents, told reporters that despite official calls to wait out the initial days of the truce, attachment to one’s homeland and home overrides fears of ongoing risk. “The people’s love for their lands and houses, and their attachment to them, pushed them to go back there despite the fire threats,” she explained. In Beirut, unconfirmed reports and footage show celebratory gunfire in the southern suburbs, the Hezbollah stronghold, as residents marked the announcement of the truce. Sixty-one-year-old Beirut housewife Jamal Shehab echoed that widespread sentiment, saying, “We are very happy that a ceasefire has been reached in Lebanon because we are tired of war and we want safety and peace.”

The ceasefire marks a critical milestone in U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to broker a broader peace deal between Washington and Tehran, with Iran having long insisted that any bilateral agreement must include a halt to hostilities between Israel and Lebanon-based Hezbollah. Pakistan has led international mediation efforts to restart face-to-face negotiations between the United States and Iran, with former U.S. President Donald Trump noting he is willing to travel to Pakistan to sign a final deal, adding that the two sides are “very close” to reaching a comprehensive agreement.

Fighting first erupted in Lebanon on March 2, when Iran-backed Hezbollah launched rocket attacks against Israel just days after the start of the broader regional Middle East war, in retaliation for the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the opening wave of U.S.-Israeli strikes. Ahead of the ceasefire taking effect, lethal violence continued: Lebanon’s health ministry confirmed at least seven civilians were killed and more than 30 wounded in an Israeli airstrike on the southern town of Ghazieh on Thursday, while an Israeli hospital spokesperson reported three Israelis were injured in cross-border attacks the same day.

Following the truce’s entry into force, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed it had struck more than 380 Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon in the lead-up to the ceasefire, and said it remains on high alert to resume offensive operations if the truce is broken. Trump confirmed he spoke to both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun ahead of the deal’s announcement, saying both leaders agreed to the truce “in order to achieve PEACE between their Countries.” The U.S. president also said he expects both leaders to visit the White House within the next four to five days to discuss next steps, a development that would mark a watershed moment for regional diplomacy if it proceeds.

Netanyahu framed the truce as an opportunity to reach a “historic peace agreement” with Beirut, but reaffirmed that any long-term deal requires the full disarmament of Hezbollah, the Iran-aligned militant group that holds significant political and military power in Lebanon. While Trump confirmed Hezbollah is bound by the ceasefire, the U.S. State Department says the truce requires the Lebanese government itself to fully dismantle the militant organization. Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam welcomed the ceasefire, calling it a “key Lebanese demand that we have pursued since the very first day of the war.” However, an anonymous official source confirmed Lebanese President Aoun has rejected Trump’s request for a direct call with Netanyahu, creating an early point of tension in post-ceasefire diplomacy.

A senior Hezbollah lawmaker told AFP the group would “cautiously adhere” to the truce as long as Israel halts all offensive operations. Ibrahim al-Moussawi thanked Iran for its diplomatic and political pressure on Lebanon’s behalf, noting that “the ceasefire would not have happened without Iran considering the ceasefire as equal to closing the Strait of Hormuz,” a reference to Iranian leverage over global oil shipping lanes. Netanyahu confirmed Israel will maintain a 10-kilometer security zone along the entire Lebanon-Israel border for the duration of the truce, a measure already criticized by Lebanese officials as a violation of its territorial sovereignty.

On a high-stakes 11-day tour of Africa that has already captured global attention, Pope Leo XIV is set to hold a massive open-air mass Friday in Douala, Cameroon’s bustling economic capital and one of Central Africa’s busiest deep-water ports. The event is expected to draw more than one million worshippers, marking the largest gathering of the pontiff’s trip, which has been defined by bold calls for global peace and an unprecedented public clash with former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Six months prior to the visit, Douala was the site of a brutal government crackdown on protests following the disputed re-election of 93-year-old incumbent President Paul Biya, the world’s oldest sitting head of state who has held authoritarian control over Cameroon since 1982. Witnesses confirm security forces opened fire on unarmed demonstrators, with authorities admitting dozens of deaths amid widespread unrest, though an exact casualty count has never been released. By Thursday evening, thousands of devoted Catholic pilgrims were already streaming into the city to claim viewing spots on the esplanade outside the 50,000-seat Japoma Stadium, where the mass will take place. After the service, the Pope is scheduled to visit Saint Paul’s Catholic Hospital in the city.

This landmark African tour has marked a clear shift for Pope Leo, who has set aside prior diplomatic restraint to deliver impassioned, unflinching remarks on conflict, inequality, and political corruption. The high-profile dispute with Trump erupted after the Pope called for an immediate end to the ongoing war in the Middle East, drawing a sharp rebuke from the former American president. During a solemn address Thursday at Saint Joseph’s Cathedral in Bamenda, the heart of a nearly 10-year separatist insurgency that has killed thousands of Cameroonians, Pope Leo declared, “The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants.”

Trump responded hours later, stating the Pope was free to share his views but needed to grasp the realities of what he called a “nasty world.” Despite the transatlantic political drama, the pontiff has been met with jubilant, singing crowds across every stop of his Cameroon itinerary, with locals turning out in massive numbers to welcome the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

Even ahead of the visit, the trip sparked quiet controversy among some Cameroonian Catholics, who raised concerns that a high-profile papal visit could inadvertently help Biya rebrand his authoritarian rule on the global stage. Pope Leo has not shied away from sharp critique, however, avoiding direct naming of Biya or Trump but delivering pointed remarks that hit at both domestic and global issues. He pushed back against calls from U.S. Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, to limit his public remarks to purely moral issues, instead using his platform to condemn exploitation and corruption.

“Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” the Pope told crowds in Bamenda. During a Thursday mass, he also targeted foreign and elite exploitation of the continent, saying: “those who, in the name of profit, continue to lay their hands on the African continent to exploit and plunder it.” Cameroon boasts abundant natural resources, including oil, timber, cocoa, coffee, and rare minerals, which have drawn foreign investment and been exploited by local and global elites for decades.

Shortly after arriving in Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé Wednesday, the Pope delivered his critique directly to Biya and other top government officials, urging leaders to root out systemic corruption and human rights abuses committed in the name of national security. “Security is a priority, but it must always be exercised with respect for human rights,” he said, speaking within earshot of the long-ruling president.

Samuel Kleda, Archbishop of Douala and one of the most prominent clerical critics of Biya’s government, shared cautious optimism ahead of the mass, saying he hopes the papal visit will catalyze progress toward resolving the country’s multiple ongoing crises. “Our country has gone through many crises; some crises are still ongoing. The fruit we must draw from this visit is to commit ourselves as architects of peace,” Kleda said. Catholicism holds a major social and cultural role in Cameroon, where more than one-third of the country’s 30 million residents identify as Catholic.

The African tour began in Algeria, a majority-Muslim nation, where the visit was marred by two deadly suicide bombings. After leaving Cameroon Saturday, Pope Leo will travel to Angola, before concluding the 18,000-kilometer tour in Equatorial Guinea.

Four days into their first private visit to Australia since stepping back as working British royals in 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, made a meaningful stop at Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach to connect with those impacted by the December 2024 antisemitic shooting that left 15 people dead and dozens more injured.

The couple’s first official engagement on Friday morning brought them to the Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club, where they held private conversations with two survivors of the attack: Jessica Chapnik Khan and Elon Zizer, both of whom credited quick thinking and community support for saving their children’s lives during the mass shooting at an on-beach Hanukkah gathering.

They also sat down with the club’s volunteer lifeguards, a group that has been widely celebrated as national heroes for their quick, brave actions to shield beachgoers and move civilians to safety during the chaotic attack. Representatives from the Sydney Jewish Museum, which is currently preparing a special commemorative exhibition honoring the victims and first responders of the tragedy, also joined the meeting. A spokesperson for the museum described the royal couple’s gesture of solidarity as “really special” for a community still processing the attack.

After the heartfelt meeting at Bondi, the Duke and Duchess moved on to their next engagement, where they were greeted by crowds of cheering fans lining the steps of the Sydney Opera House. The couple boarded a private vessel for a sailing event hosted by Invictus Australia, the national affiliate of the Invictus Games — an international adaptive sporting competition Prince Harry founded in 2014 for wounded, injured, and sick military veterans and service personnel. It was during Harry and Meghan’s 2018 official royal tour that the pair first announced Australia would host a future iteration of the Invictus Games.

This visit marks the couple’s first time back on Australian soil since that 2018 official tour, and they are undertaking the entire trip in a private, non-working capacity, separate from the formal duties of the British Royal Family. The stop at Bondi Beach, however, has drawn widespread praise from Australian community leaders for centering the needs of the affected community rather than formal ceremonial obligations.

In a high-profile development that has rocked Australia’s national security and military establishment, a once-revered former Australian special forces soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, has been granted bail by a Sydney court more than a decade after his alleged unlawful killings of unarmed detainees in Afghanistan. Once one of Australia’s most decorated war heroes, Roberts-Smith has now gone from being celebrated as a national icon to standing as a defendant in one of the most consequential war crimes cases in the nation’s history.

Roberts-Smith first became a household name across Australia in 2011, when he was awarded the Victoria Cross – the country’s highest honor for wartime gallantry, reserved only for acts of extraordinary courage in combat. In the years that followed, his fame extended far beyond military circles: he met Queen Elizabeth II, his portrait was hung in the Australian War Memorial, and he was even named Australia’s “Father of the Year” in 2013.

But cracks in his public reputation began to emerge in 2018, when two major Australian publications, *The Age* and *The Sydney Morning Herald*, published a series of investigative reports linking Roberts-Smith to systemic war crimes in Afghanistan. The outlets alleged that between 2009 and 2012, during Australia’s deployment to the country as part of the US- and NATO-led counter-terrorism mission, Roberts-Smith participated in multiple unlawful killings of unarmed captives. The most shocking claims included that he kicked an unarmed Afghan civilian off a cliff before ordering his subordinates to shoot the man, and that he and other soldiers used the prosthetic leg of a man killed by machine gun fire as a drinking trophy.

Roberts-Smith has consistently denied all allegations against him from the moment they were first made public. In response to the 2018 reports, he launched a multi-million dollar defamation suit against the two newspapers, seeking to clear his name. However, the legal backfired dramatically: in 2023, a judge ruled that the core claims made by the journalists were “substantially true”, in a civil ruling that severely undermined his public defense. That civil proceeding carried a lower standard of proof than the criminal charges Roberts-Smith now faces.

The broader context for these charges stretches back to 2020, when a landmark independent public inquiry into Australian military conduct in Afghanistan – the Brereton Report – exposed a pattern of systemic abuse among elite special forces units deployed to the country. The report detailed grave accusations of torture, extrajudicial summary executions, and even “body count” competitions, where competing units sought to kill more unarmed detainees than one another. Over two decades of deployment, Australia sent 39,000 troops to Afghanistan to fight against the Taliban and other militant insurgent groups.

Earlier this month, Australian prosecutors formally charged Roberts-Smith with five counts of war crime murder, alleging he was complicit in a string of unlawful killings between 2009 and 2012. After spending 10 days in pre-trial detention, the former soldier was granted bail on Friday, in a ruling delivered by Judge Greg Grogin. Grogin noted that the complex nature of the case means Roberts-Smith would face “years and years” of pre-trial detention before the case ever goes to a jury trial, a factor that weighed heavily in the court’s bail decision.

Roberts-Smith appeared before the court via video link, dressed in a green prison tracksuit, and showed no visible reaction to the bail ruling. His defense lawyer, Slade Howell, had argued that detaining his client for years while the case wound through the overloaded court system was fundamentally unjust. “It will take many, many years and will have many twists and turns,” Howell told the court.

Prosecutors had pushed back against the bail application, arguing that the extreme gravity of the alleged crimes required strict conditions for release. Prosecution lawyer Simon Buchen told the court: “The applicant is accused of either killing or directing his subordinates to kill unarmed detainees in the custody of Australian armed forces.”

If he is ultimately convicted on all charges, Roberts-Smith faces the possibility of a life sentence in prison. The case has already forced a long-overdue national reckoning over Australia’s military conduct in Afghanistan, and the final criminal trial is expected to draw international attention as it unfolds over the coming years.