Deadliest

Each time we travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), we first go to listen.

In Bunia, we have met dozens of community representatives: survivors, women, young people, local organisations, health workers and leaders from affected areas. Their message is direct: involve us. We know our communities. We know where families seek care, how information moves and why trust is breaking down. Give us the means to help drive the response. They are right.

Ebola spreads through communities and communities hold the knowledge required to stop it. They can identify illness early, alert health teams, help identify and trace contacts, challenge dangerous rumours and support families through access to treatment and safe, dignified burials. The response always moves faster when communities lead alongside national authorities and health workers.

One hundred days ago, the government of the DRC declared the country’s 17th Ebola outbreak, following confirmation of the Bundibugyo virus. WHO subsequently declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, followed by Africa CDC’s declaration of a Public Health Emergency of Continental Security.

The scale of the emergency is immense. As of August 21, the DRC has reported 5,290 confirmed cases and 2,516 deaths across 56 health zones. This is now the second-largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded and it is moving faster than any previous one. It is being fuelled by insecurity caused by decades of armed conflict that have undermined law, order and social services, and displaced more than a million people.

At the centre of the response are the people who show up every day. Health workers care for patients. Laboratory teams identify the virus. Contact tracers follow its path. Community health workers build trust where fear and misinformation have taken hold. Burial teams help families honour their loved ones safely and with dignity.

They are working under extraordinary pressure, often in insecure and hard-to-reach areas. Some have contracted Ebola in the line of duty.

Their service must be met with action: safety, protective equipment, training, sufficient medical supplies, timely payment, psychosocial support and access to rapid diagnosis and high-quality supportive care if they fall ill. The safety of frontline workers is central to stopping transmission.

The response has made progress. Under the leadership of national authorities, Congolese responders, WHO, Africa CDC and partners have expanded surveillance, deployed laboratories, supported treatment centres, reinforced infection prevention and delivered essential supplies.

Neighbouring Uganda has interrupted locally acquired transmission of the virus. Several health zones in northern Ituri and South Kivu provinces in the DRC have also interrupted transmission. These experiences prove that the outbreak can be stopped more quickly when rapid detection, decisive national leadership and close cooperation with communities break the chains of transmission.

But the continued emergency in the rest of Ituri province and five other provinces demands urgently scaled-up action.

To turn the corner, surveillance teams are being expanded and equipped to detect cases early and rapidly identify contacts. Safe clinical care and infection prevention measures are being increased wherever people seek treatment.

More risk communication and community engagement teams are being deployed to reach out to communities to empower them to participate in the response and address barriers to care. More safe and dignified burial teams are working to prevent transmission associated with deaths. Special efforts are being made to reach vulnerable populations and communities in insecure and hard-to-reach areas.

But despite all these efforts, more is needed. We need to scale our response by two to three times current capacities, across all the response pillars.

Health facilities also require urgent protection from infection. As of August 20, 158 health workers have been infected and 45 have died. Every facility in an affected or high-risk area needs trained staff, protective equipment, clean water, sanitation and functioning infection-prevention systems.

National and local teams need predictable funding for surveillance, laboratories, treatment, logistics, infection prevention and community engagement. Frontline workers must be paid on time. Local organisations need direct support to work consistently with communities. Supplies must arrive before stocks run out.

Delayed financing costs lives. Fragmented financing leaves gaps. Ebola exploits both. On the ground, we at WHO and Africa CDC have established tight integration among health and relief organisations working with the government. Donors therefore need to support and enhance that integration, rather than back siloed and disconnected efforts.

Cross-border coordination also must remain strong. People move within and between countries to trade, work, study, seek care and support their families. Borders must serve as bridges for coordinated public health action. This does not require closing borders or imposing blanket travel and trade restrictions. Such measures can disrupt response operations and livelihoods without stopping transmission. The priority is coordinated surveillance, rapid information-sharing and prepared health services along movement routes.

The first 100 days have made the priorities clear.

Find every case. Follow every contact. Break every chain of transmission, protect every health and frontline worker, save lives and ensure that no community is left behind. Bring testing and treatment closer to every affected community. Bolster cross-border coordination. Scale up international support. Turn every pledge into action.

WHO and Africa CDC will continue working with the DRC, neighbouring countries, communities and partners to deliver on these priorities. Our responsibility is to bring the full strength of international and continental cooperation behind the nationally-led response.

Uganda and areas in DRC have shown how the course of the outbreak can be turned, through rapid detection, decisive action and close cooperation with communities. But these measures must be delivered at scale. Success depends on sustained national leadership, continental solidarity and international support. We must rise to this challenge, together.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Netflix documentary Freefall: A Reckoning of Boeing chronicles the deepening corporate crisis, alleged safety failures and tragic death of whistleblower John Barnett

An explosive new Netflix documentary threatens to blow the lid on alleged systemic safety failures at Boeing as well as the tragic death of whistleblower John Barnett.

Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing is a sequel to the 2022 documentary film Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, which examined the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max jets in 2018 and 2019 that claimed 346 lives.

This new offering, from director Rory Kennedy, takes a closer look at Barnett’s battle against Boeing and his later suicide, as well as investigating the testimony of other whistleblowers, who claim managers told them on occasion to overlook safety problems.

Following Boeing’s 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas, the company was accused of being governed by Wall Street executives obsessed with profit, rather than an engineer-led organisation.

The company faced allegations of prioritising cost-cutting and outsourcing vital engineering work, and has continued to face production crises, including improperly installed wiring and unsealed door plugs that blew out mid-flight on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in January 2024.

Ahead of the documentary’s release on August 19 , we take a closer look at some of the biggest disasters in Boeing’s history.

Tenerife Airport Disaster (1977) — 583 Fatalities

On March 27, 1977, two Boeing 747 passenger jets (KLM Flight 4805 and Pan Am Flight 1736) collided on a foggy runway at Los Rodeos Airport (now Tenerife North Airport) in the Canary Islands, Spain, resulting in 583 fatalities. Known as the ‘Tenerife Airport Disaster’, it remains the deadliest aviation accident in history.

A series of events led to the collision. Neither planes were supposed to be there; earlier that day, a bombing at Gran Canaria Airport forced planes, including the KLM flight and the Pan Am flight, to divert to the smaller airport in Tenerife.

That diversion overwhelmed the small airport, forcing pilots to taxi up and down the active runway because taxiways were blocked.

Then the thick fog came rolling in, impacting visibility. And finally, there was a fatal misunderstanding.

The Pan Am jet was taxiing on the runway but missed its intended exit. At the same time, the KLM pilots mistakenly believed they were cleared for takeoff and accelerated, crashing straight into the hidden Pan Am plane.

The impact and the resulting fire killed all 248 people on board the KLM plane and 335 of the 396 people on board the Pan Am plane, with all 61 survivors being in the front section of the aircraft.

Japan Airlines Flight 123 (1985) — 520 Fatalities

Japan Airlines Flight 123 was a domestic flight travelling from Tokyo to Osaka on the evening of 12 August 1985. But just 12 minutes after takeoff, the Boeing 747 suffered a severe structural failure and explosive decompression. After flying under minimal control for 32 minutes, the plane crashed in the area of Mount Takamagahara.

The aircraft had 524 people on board, and the initial crash killed all 15 crew members along with between 460-490 of the 509 passengers on board. An estimated 20 to 50 passengers survived the initial crash but died from their injuries while awaiting rescue, leaving only four survivors.

The crash, which claimed the lives of 520 people in total, is the deadliest single-aircraft accident in aviation history and remains the deadliest aviation incident in Japan.

Japan’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission – assisted by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board – concluded that the structural failure was caused by a faulty repair by Boeing technicians following a tailstrike seven years earlier. A tailstrike occurs when the rear part of an aircraft’s fuselage hits the runway or ground, and usually happens during takeoff if the nose is lifted too aggressively, or during landing if the pilot raises the nose too high while trying to touch down.

When the faulty repair eventually failed, it resulted in a rapid decompression that ripped off a large portion of the tail and caused the loss of function of all hydraulic systems and flight controls.

Charkhi Dadri Mid-Air Collision (1996) — 349 Fatalities

The catastrophic Charkhi Dadri collision occurred mid-air when Saudia Flight 763 (a Boeing 747) and Kazakhstan Airlines Flight 1907 (an Ilyushin Il-76) collided over Haryana, India.

The crash, which took place on 12 November 1996, killed all 349 people aboard both aircraft, making it the deadliest mid-air collision in aviation history.

It was found to have been caused by the flight crew of Kazakhstan Airlines Flight 1907 failing to maintain their assigned altitude. The Kazakh Ilyushin Il-76 descended past its cleared altitude of 15,000 feet right into the path of the ascending Saudi Arabian Airlines Flight 763 at 14,000 feet.

This stemmed from three key factors. The Kazakh flight crew’s English was poor and inside the cockpit, only the flight engineer – not the pilots – spoke English, forcing them to rely on a radio operator for continuous Russian translation of Air Traffic Control (ATC) instructions.

The Kazakh crew also exhibited confusion and poor communication during their descent, struggling to interpret the ATC’s directions as the two planes converged on intersecting flight paths.

There were also equipment limitations to contend with the Air Traffic Control radar at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport was a primary surveillance radar which meant controllers could see the planes’ distance and bearing but could not independently verify their altitudes.

Furthemore, neither aircraft was equipped with a Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS), which would have alerted the pilots to the impending collision.

The accident led the International Civil Aviation Organization to make it mandatory for commercial aircraft to be equipped with TCAS, establish English as the universal language for aviation communication, and mandate that arrival and departure routes at busy international hubs be separated.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (2014) — 298 Fatalities

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down over eastern Ukraine by a surface-to-air missile on 17 July 2014. All 283 passengers and 15 crew members were killed.

All contact with the aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, was lost when it was about 50 kilometres from the Ukraine–Russia border, and wreckage from the aircraft landed near Hrabove in Ukraine, 40 km from the border.

It was said to have been shot down by Russian-backed forces. The Russian government denied involvement in the shooting down of the aircraft, but on 17 November 2022, following a trial in absentia in the Netherlands, two Russians and a Ukrainian separatist were found guilty of murdering all 298 people on board the flight. The Dutch court also ruled that Russia was in control of the separatist forces fighting in eastern Ukraine at the time.

MH17 was Malaysia Airlines’ second aircraft loss during 2014, after the disappearance of Flight 370 four months prior on 8 March. It is also the deadliest aircraft shoot-down incident to date

China Airlines Flight 611 (2002) – 225 Fatalities

China Airlines Flight 611 was travelling from Taiwan to Hong Kong International Airport when it disintegrated midair and crashed into the Taiwan Strait, just 20 minutes after takeoff. It killed all 225 people on board.

The in-flight breakup was caused by metal fatigue cracks from a tail strike at Kai Tak Airport on 7 of February 1980. The aircraft had not been properly repaired according to Boeing policies and manuals. Metal fatigue from over 22 years of service and repeated pressurization cycles caused tiny cracks that led to the aircraft’s breakup.

The crash remains the deadliest in Taiwan, and the second-deadliest accident in China Airlines history, behind China Airlines Flight 140 with 264 fatalities.

Lion Air Flight 610 (2018) – 189 Fatalities

Lion Air Flight 610 was travelling from Soekarno–Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, to Depati Amir Airport in Indonesia on 29 October 2018, when it crashed into the sea 13 minutes after take off.

All 189 passengers – 181 passengers and eight crew – onboard the Boeing 737 MAX 8 were killed.

The Indonesian government’s search and rescue found debris and human remains soon after from a 280-kilometre-wide (150-nautical-mile) area, and the flight data recorder (FDR) was found on 1 November and recovered for analysis.

A subsequent investigation, led by the National Transportation Safety Committee, revealed that a new software function in the flight control system caused the aircraft to nose down.

That function, called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), had been intentionally omitted from aircraft documentation for aircrews by Boeing, so the pilots did not know about it, and did not know what it could do.

Investigators concluded that an external device on the aircraft, the angle-of-attack (AoA) sensor, was miscalibrated due to improper maintenance which sent erroneous data to MCAS. In turn, MCAS responded by pushing the nose of the plane down.

The problem had occurred on the same aircraft during its immediately preceding flight, and the pilots had recovered using a standard checklist. But during the fatal flight, the pilots did not properly follow the checklist, with the result that MCAS remained active and repeatedly put the aircraft into an unsafe nose-down position until it crashed into the water.

The United States Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing issued warnings and training advisories to all operators of the Boeing 737 MAX series. But similar issues caused the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on 10 March 2019, leading to a worldwide grounding of all 737 MAX aircraft.

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 (2019) – 157 Fatalities

Just five months after the Lion Air Flight crash, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed near the town of Bishoftu on 10 March 2019. The plane went down just six minutes after takeoff, and all 149 passengers and 8 crew members on board died.

The crash was again caused by a fault in the plane’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), the flight stabilizing system developed by Boeing for the MAX 8. Due to a failure in the sensor, the aircraft’s nose was repeatedly pitched down against the pilots’ inputs, eventually leading the plane to crash.

It was the second accident involving a MAX 8, and prompted a two-year worldwide grounding of the jet and an investigation into how the aircraft was approved for passenger service.

The documentary film Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing will be released globally on Netflix on August 19, 2026

For the Islamic State (IS) and its West Africa Province (ISWAP), the third week of May 2026 began with a compound disaster and ended with a theology lesson. The group faced one of its most shocking moments, at least in West Africa or, more specifically, Nigeria. 

With its headquarters in Nigeria, ISWAP has been the most active wing of the Islamic State globally, claiming more attacks than any other IS province since its central operations in Iraq and Syria were largely overpowered. Following the call for its members to migrate to Africa, ISWAP has, in the past two years, temporarily overran Nigerian military installations, including at least one super camp. The group was enjoying relative success when a turning point came: one of its most important first-generation commanders was killed. 

The operation that killed Abu Bilal Al-Minuki between midnight and 4 a.m. on May 16 was described by the Nigerian military as “meticulously planned and highly complex”. It not only left the terrorist dead, but it also caused a crisis of morale that ISWAP’s propaganda machine would spend the following days trying to contain through a theological message. 

Ahmad Salkida, a leading conflict analyst who has been observing the situation since it emerged, described the killing of Al-Minuki as a “serious disruption” to the activities of ISWAP in the Lake Chad region.

Airstrikes and special forces raids followed. More people were killed, and confusion reportedly descended. The operations, according to some reports, may also have killed the likely successor to Al-Minuki, another terrorist commonly known as Ba Shuwa, opening a new and, perhaps, unplanned chapter in the insurgency.

By May 19, Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters reported that 175 ISWAP and Boko Haram militants had been killed since the joint offensive began. According to the report, at least 20 died in a single engagement. By the time Nigerian authorities stopped counting, the joint operation had become the most lethal week the group had faced in years.

The theology of a bloody week

Within that catastrophic week, the Islamic State released its Al-Naba newsletter with a pointed editorial. Although it did not mention Al-Minuki or the numerous fighters killed, the editorial retold a story of a battle that happened 14 centuries ago to boost the morale of a group in disarray.

Reports suggest there was internal suspicion, even before the death of Al-Minuki, that some fighters may have leaked information leading to his death, driven by internal discontent over the unequal treatment between foreign fighters who migrated to the ISWAP and the local fighters in Nigeria. However, the editorial tried to shift away from that and present the losses as a normal sacrifice. 

Everything in the editorial is deliberate. The piece opens on Talha ibn Ubaydullah, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad, at the Battle of Uhud. The selection is pointed in ways that any reader with a classical Islamic education would immediately recognise. 

Uhud was a near-disaster for early Muslims because of an internal division. It was a battle in which archers abandoned their positions, turning a momentary advantage into a rout that left dozens of companions dead and the Prophet himself wounded. 

What Islamic tradition preserved, and what the Al-Naba propaganda wanted to convey from that valley, however, was not only the memory of tactical failure but of individual men who placed their bodies between the Prophet and death – an important sacrifice for the existence of Islam. 

The editorial tells ISWAP fighters who have fallen into fear, confusion, or doubt after the loss of Al-Minuki and other fighters that a similar situation occurred during the Battle of Uhud. However, because the Prophet’s companions believed they were fighting for Islam, they did not see it as a problem.

In essence, the message is that they may ultimately be killed, suffer injuries, or even think they have already achieved victory and begin collecting spoils of war, only for circumstances to turn against them. Yet, regardless of whatever hardships or setbacks they face, they should not regard themselves as having lost, because they are fighting for their religion.

“Your role, O my mujahid brother, is to make your chest a sanctuary for the religion of Islam and guard it with your body,” the editorial reads. 

This is a recognisable pattern in IS editorial strategy. After senior commanders are killed, Al-Naba invokes early Islamic battles such as Badr, Uhud, and Khandaq as mirrors, casting present losses as the preconditions for eventual triumph. The rhetorical architecture is consistent and has appeared after every major command-level strike against the organisation. What changes each time is only the particular story pulled from the tradition.

In 2019, when Abubakar Al-Baghdadi, the former leader of Islamic State, died, Al-Naba compared the situation with that of early Muslims after the death of Prophet Muhammad, in which many of his companions fell into disbelief until they were calmed by the first caliph Abu Bakr As-Siddiq. Al-Naba issue 207 argued that if Islam could survive the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the Islamic State could also survive the death of Al-Baghdadi. 

The choice of Talha in the recent issue of Al-Naba, specifically after the death of Al-Minuki, adds a layer to the editorial. Talha survived Uhud and fought many more campaigns. The editorial addresses not only those who died but also those who lived through the week. The message to fighters still alive in the Lake Chad Basin, still holding ground, is legible between every sentence. 

“It is the duty of my mujahid brother to walk those same paths in defence of the religion of Islam, its honour, and its sovereignty,” the editorial says. 

The crisis of succession 

The theology in the Al-Naba editorial could steady nerves or explain deaths. It could also transform defeat into sacrifice. However, it could not answer the practical question now hanging over the movement: who would lead after Al-Minuki?

For years, ISWAP’s resilience has rested on its ability to survive leadership decapitation. Commanders and factional leaders have died, been assassinated, or removed. Yet the organisation endured because a pool of experienced first-generation figures remained available to absorb the shock. However, this time may be different.

A HumAngle analysis observed that Al-Minuki’s most likely successor was Ba Shuwa. However, he too may have been killed in the subsequent strikes; if confirmed, the movement would lose not only its most influential commander but also the man widely expected to replace him.

Al-Minuki belonged to a shrinking class of terrorists who entered the movement before the 2009 uprising transformed Boko Haram from a fringe extremist religious organisation into a regional insurgency. He embodied institutional memory, battlefield experience, and personal relationships that spanned multiple generations of fighters. 

Ba Shuwa, although younger in status within the movement, still belonged to that older ecosystem. Their simultaneous deaths would accelerate a transition that many inside ISWAP had anticipated but few expected to happen so suddenly. The names now circulating inside insurgent circles to replace Al-Minuki and Ba Shuwa show the scale of that transition.

Among the strongest contenders, as HumAngle gathered, is Abu Salem, a commander who grew up entirely within the insurgency’s wartime environment.  He reportedly combines military authority with religious credentials, a combination that carries considerable weight inside ISWAP’s hierarchy.

Another frequently mentioned figure is Bana Chingori, long regarded as a close associate of Ba Shuwa and an influential commander in his own right.

However, beneath the movement’s ideological claims lies a complex web of battalion loyalties, personal networks, ethnic affiliations, and historical rivalries. Fighters speak the language of the caliphate, but leadership legitimacy is often negotiated through social structures that long predate the insurgency itself. The question is not merely who is capable of leading, but who can command obedience across the various factions that make up the movement.

This is where the editorial in Al-Naba becomes more interesting. The Islamic State understands that leaders can be replaced. What is more difficult to replace is cohesion.

The editorial’s invocation of Uhud was not simply a sermon about perseverance. It was also an attempt to create continuity at a moment when continuity is under threat. By reminding fighters that early Muslims endured confusion after battlefield losses yet remained united, the editorial implicitly addresses the danger of fragmentation.

For nearly a decade, ISWAP distinguished itself from rival jihadist factions partly through its ability to maintain organisational discipline. While Boko Haram under Abubakar Shekau frequently splintered under pressure, ISWAP developed bureaucratic structures capable of surviving individual losses. The current transition will test those structures more severely than any succession crisis since the death of Abu Musab al-Barnawi and the removal of other senior figures from the Muhammad Yusuf generation. 

The paused migration 

Beyond the succession question lies another bigger development. ISWAP has announced that the flow of fighters migrating from Iraq and Syria to Nigeria has been effectively paused.

For years, the Islamic State’s call for migration to Africa was one of ISWAP’s most reliable sources of experienced foreign fighters. Foreign fighters who had trained and fought in the central theatre arrived in Lake Chad with tactical knowledge, ideological authority, and direct personal connections to IS central command. 

Al-Minuki himself was a product of that ecosystem. The suspension reflects the bigger issue that ISWAP is facing, in which local ISWAP members feel foreigners are given more priority in the insurgency, and they’re being relegated. This, according to some sources, was one of the reasons that opened a loophole that led to the intelligence leading to the killing of Al-Minuki. 

Al-Naba issue 550 addressed the question of migration indirectly. The editorial, titled “Africa Between Yesterday and Today”, spoke in the past tense about those who had already made the journey. “Those who came before you from Iraq walked this path,” the editorial told terrorists currently in Africa, “and they carried the weight of this religion on their shoulders.”

The joint US-Nigeria strike that killed Al-Minuki demonstrated a targeting capability that ISWAP had not previously faced at this intensity in the Lake Chad theatre. The use of American intelligence assets alongside Nigerian special forces created a surveillance environment that makes the movement of senior figures, especially those arriving from abroad,  significantly more dangerous than before. 

For IS central, sending experienced insurgents into a degraded environment risks losing irreplaceable assets to an adversary that has now demonstrated it can find and kill the most protected figures in the organisation. The pause in migration is both a strategic retreat and a rational response to changed targeting conditions.

The commanders now being discussed as replacements for Al-Minuki are men who grew up entirely inside the Nigerian insurgency. Whatever their capabilities, they appear to lack the cross-theatre experience and IS central relationships that figures as Al-Minuki carried. The migration pause has narrowed the field of who can credibly lead it.