On the day Bashar al-Assad's regime fell, Abu Ibrahim and his family went to sleep wondering what sort of future awaited them in the morning. They woke in a panic, to the sound of gunfire and tanks. The bullets announced the arrival of the Israeli military into the remote southern Syrian province of Quneitra on 9 December 2024. In the place of Assad militias who used to patrol the roads,
The military blew up a boat, killing nine people and leaving two alive. The alleged drug boat was apparently split in two. The two survivors were clinging to the top of a capsized piece of a boat trying to right it. The admiral in charge of the mission decided that the two survivors might radio for help, collect some floating bales of cocaine, and continue their effort to smuggle drugs.
A Russian drone attack killed two men, aged 52 and 67, in the Ukrainian city of Izyum as they were unloading firewood from a truck, according to local officials. Russian forces also killed a 12-year-old boy in an attack on the Vasylkivska community in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, and wounded more than a dozen Ukrainians in attacks on the Kherson, Donetsk and Sumy regions, local officials said.
Now that he's seen as playing a role in actual killings, not merely defending others accused of murder on the battlefield, President Donald Trump must decide whether he shares Hegseth's insouciance. If he doesn't share his cavalier views on the subject, Trump needs to fire him. If he doesn't fire him, Trump in effect tells the world-including the 2 million service members of the U.S. armed forces-that he too is indifferent to the laws of war,
Israeli soldiers have shot and killed two Palestinian men during a raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin as the pair attempted to surrender to the military, according to video footage and witness accounts from the scene. Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh said journalists in Jenin reported on Thursday that the two men had pulled their shirts up, showing that they were unarmed before the military ordered them to go back into a building that they had been holed up in.
On Yablonska Street in Bucha, nothing remains to remind us that the Russian army committed its worst crimes during the war in Ukraine here. In March 2022, at the start of the invasion, more than 450 civilians were killed in this municipality north of Kyiv. Yablonska was one of the places where the largest number of bodies were recovered. The only building on the street that provides evidence the war continues today is the local military recruitment office.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), backed by the US and Israel to oversee the distribution of aid in Gaza, has announced it is ending its controversial mission and is closing aid distribution sites following a US-brokered ceasefire agreement. Under increasing international pressure to allow aid into the besieged Gaza Strip earlier this year, Israel and the US backed the GHF as an independent agency to administer aid.
At least 127 civilians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since a ceasefire was declared nearly a year ago, the UN has said as it called for an impartial investigation into the strikes. We continue to witness increasing attacks by the Israeli military, resulting in the killing of civilians and destruction of civilian objects in Lebanon, coupled with alarming threats of a wider, intensified offensive, said Thameen Al-Kheetan, a spokesperson for the UN human rights office, at a Geneva press briefing.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said late Monday that "the list of necessary steps to end the war can become doable" after progress was made in Sunday's talks between U.S. and Ukrainian delegates in Geneva. He said he planned to discuss "sensitive" outstanding issues with President Donald Trump. Rustem Umerov, a senior adviser to Zelensky, wrote on social platform X on Tuesday that the Ukrainian leader hoped to finalize a deal with Trump "at the earliest suitable date in November."
For the last two months, US forces have amassed outside Venezuela and carried out a series of lethal strikes on civilian boats. The Trump White House has ordered these actions in the name of fighting narco-terrorists a label apparently applicable to anyone suspected of participating in drug trafficking near Latin American coastlines. More than 80 people have already been killed in these pre-emptive strikes, and war hawks are calling for expanded military action to depose the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro.
A devastating Russian aerial assault on Ternopil in western Ukraine has killed at least 26 people and wounded dozens more, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko has confirmed. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday that 22 people were still missing at the site of Wednesday's Russian attack on Ternopil. Russia unleashed 476 drones and 48 missiles across Ukraine, striking vital energy and transportation infrastructure and forcing emergency power cut-offs during freezing weather. In Ternopil, the attack obliterated the upper floors of a residential building. Smoke billowed from the structure as firefighters battled the blaze while distraught residents gathered below, anxiously awaiting word about missing loved ones.