Human Rights

New Delhi, India – An investigation by human rights group Amnesty International has confirmed that Indian government forces used lethal weapons, including pellet-firing shotguns, grenades, batons and electric shock devices against demonstrators in Gen Z protests that rocked the national capital last month.

On July 20, thousands of protesters had all but shut down New Delhi, blocking off Parliament Street, demanding the resignation of then-Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan following a string of examination scandals involving the leaking of national exam papers and other irregularities.

More than 100 students were injured in the crackdown by police and paramilitary forces that day. Indian newspapers obtained hospital records that showed that doctors had treated pellet wounds in several cases.

India’s opposition, led by Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi, has since called on Home Minister Amit Shah, seen as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s confidant, to answer questions about the alleged police brutality and has joined protesters in calling for his resignation.

But despite mounting evidence and growing political criticism, the Modi government repeatedly insisted that security forces had been measured in their response to the protests and denied using excessive force.

Now, an Amnesty investigation has found the use of tactics that Indian law enforcement rulebooks themselves warn against using in all but exceptional circumstances.

What happened on July 20 in New Delhi?

In July, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a satirical, youth-led movement which gathered momentum in response to the national examinations scandal, called on its supporters to march on the Indian Parliament after a monthlong sit-in failed to oust the education minister.

Two days before the march, the police forcibly removed renowned activist Sonam Wangchuk, who had been taking part in a hunger strike. That move galvanised public anger, bringing out more protesters in New Delhi.

On the morning of the march day, the police used tear gas as protesters swelled, then attacked them with electric shock batons, as well as shooting at them with pellet guns, Amnesty International’s Evidence Lab has verified from video and photographic evidence alongside witness testimony.

Amnesty also found that government forces had put up barricades and enforced a communications blackout.

“The weapons were deployed in a manner that breached international law and standards and domestic policing guidelines,” Amnesty said in a statement on Monday.

The rights group’s report also noted that the Delhi Police had publicly denied any disproportionate use of force, specifically pellet guns. The police also repeated this before India’s top court during a hearing about the alleged use of excessive force.

Amnesty says the evidence it has gathered “directly contradicts [the police’s] account”.

Four days after the July 20 march, as protests spread across the country, police in Bihar state’s Siwan town opened fire on protesters, injuring at least three youths.

Did government forces fire pellets at protesters?

Following the July 20 protest, several videos and photos emerged of protesters with injuries consistent with pellet wounds, which were reflected in their medical records as well.

The Evidence Lab verified two videos showing a paramilitary Rapid Action Force officer firing a shotgun into the crowd at the intersection of Connaught Place and Parliament Street in New Delhi, where protesters had gathered.

At least two protesters had wounds consistent with those caused by birdshot, a hunting round that fires a large number of small metal pellets, the group noted.

“The doctors confirmed that they were pellet injuries. Thankfully, my bones have been saved, but my body has been scarred badly,” one protester told Amnesty.

Amnesty said birdshot ammunition has not been developed for law enforcement purposes due to the widespread dispersion of the metal pellets, which “is inherently inaccurate and presents a high risk of serious injuries to the targeted person and even bystanders”.

Amnesty also said the police did not issue a public warning before firing pellet guns, as recommended by the Indian government’s Bureau for Police Research and Development.

Police and security forces have used metal pellets for more than a decade in Indian-administered Kashmir, leading to the first mass blinding during a 2016 civilian uprising.

Posting on X, Delhi Police called the reports of pellet injuries during the latest protests “fake news”, “completely false and misleading” and warned that “appropriate legal action” would be taken against anyone “spreading rumours”.

A subsequent internal inquiry by India’s paramilitary forces, however, reportedly found that personnel had fired at least seven rounds of ammunition containing metal pellets.

“Instead of facilitating the right to protest, Indian authorities suppressed it first with a communication blackout, barricades and transport disruption. They then attempted to crush it with unnecessary or excessive use of force against peaceful protesters, including children,” said Aakar Patel, chair of the board, Amnesty International India.

“This heavy-handed response was state-sanctioned violence masked as crowd control. The continued impunity after a month is a testament to that,” Patel said.

Did police use tear gas grenades and batons?

Government forces did use tear gas grenades to disperse the crowd at several places in New Delhi, as seen by Al Jazeera and verified by Amnesty, not just on July 20 to prevent CHP supporters’ march to Parliament.

“Tear gas grenades releasing an excessive amount of explosive energy are extremely dangerous and should be prohibited for use in public assemblies,” Amnesty said, referring to videos of tear gas shells exploding near students.

The group also noted that witnesses observed that “tear gas grenades were launched directly at protesters instead of at an angled trajectory above the head of protesters, at odds with UN Guidance on the use of Less-Lethal Weapons in Law Enforcement”.

Amnesty has also verified claims that the police used lathis, the Indian version of batons, to beat protesters.

The UN special rapporteur on torture considers lathis to be inherently cruel, inhuman or degrading as “they deliver a greater level [of] kinetic force than conventional batons, causing excessive pain and increasing the risk of serious injury” and has called for them to be prohibited, a position that Amnesty supports.

The group also found men in civilian clothing beating protesters “while uniformed officers, who escorted them toward the crowd, stand beside them and make no attempt to intervene”, as visible in videos seen by Al Jazeera. Several officials were not wearing their name tags or badge numbers, as required.

What has been the reaction to the use of excessive force?

A day after the crackdown in New Delhi, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke told the crowd, “Every police person who attacked you would be identified and dragged to the courts”.

The group also launched a platform for protesters to upload videos and photos from the crackdown.

The opposition, led by the Congress’s Gandhi, pushed the home minister for a discussion on the issue in Parliament, an issue that plagued the monsoon session with Shah missing.

Gandhi argued that either Shah ordered the usage of lethal weapons, in which case “he is guilty”, or he was unaware of the situation, which makes him “incompetent” for the job.

Sahil Lochab, a 19-year-old who lost vision in one eye due to pellet injuries, said the police had been refusing to register his complaint. In response, Gandhi staged a seven-hour sit-in outside the office of the Delhi Police chief, insisting that a case be registered over the use of pellet guns on protesters, alongside Lochab.

After Gandhi’s pressure, the police relented. A student at the University of Delhi, Lochab received multiple pellet injuries on his chest, back, arms and face. Several pellets could not be taken out, he said in his complaint.

“My medical documents show that there are over 200 pellets in my body. Doctors have told me that the possibility of my eyesight coming back is less than 1 percent,” Lochab wrote in his complaint.

US Southern Command says that Sunday’s strike targeted a vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific.

The United States military said it struck a suspected drug-trafficking boat in the Pacific Ocean, killing two people.

In a Monday post on X, US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said Sunday’s strike targeted a vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific.

“Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking,” SOUTHCOM added.

“This operation is a clear and decisive reminder that SOUTHCOM is taking the fight directly to the cartels.”

Grainy, black-and-white video accompanying the post appeared to show a boat moving through the water immediately before a large explosion.

The post stated that under the direction of SOUTHCOM Commander General Francis L. Donovan, the Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere executed a lethal kinetic strike on the low-profile vessel.

“We are committed to imposing total systemic friction on narco-terrorists — disrupting their operations, dismantling their leadership and eliminating cartel terror across the region,” Donovan was quoted as saying.

“Let me be clear, we will not permit narco-terrorists to operate with impunity in the Western Hemisphere, nor will we allow their deadly poison to reach American communities. This operation is a powerful demonstration of our lethal precision, overwhelming capability, and absolute resolve to protect the U.S. homeland.”

The US military launched Operation Southern Spear in early September, with President Donald Trump arguing that Washington is effectively at war with Latin American drug cartels.

Since then, more than 200 people have been killed in strikes across the Eastern Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, according to a tally by the AFP news agency.

However, the Trump administration has not provided definitive evidence that the targeted vessels were involved in drug trafficking.

Legal experts and rights groups warn that the attacks could amount to extrajudicial killings.

The Pentagon’s inspector general said in May that it would review whether the military followed standard targeting procedures, though the evaluation will not examine the legal authority behind the strikes.

The two men, detained in the western city of Herat on August 9, were released on Thursday morning and appear to be in good health, says the UN.

Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities have released two United Nations staff members who were detained more than a week ago, though the reason for their detention remains unclear, the UN said.

The two men were detained in the western city of Herat on August 9. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said they were released on Thursday morning and appeared to be in good health.

“UNAMA has not been formally notified of the reasons for their arrest and detention and continues to follow up with the de facto authorities,” the UN said in a statement, adding it understood that charges against the two had been dropped.

It said the organisation was also following up “to ensure respect for the privileges and immunities of the United Nations, as well as the safety, security and freedom of movement of United Nations and associated personnel throughout the country”.

The arrests were the latest in a series of detentions by Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities. Last week, Human Rights Watch said six staff members of a local organisation working on women’s and children’s rights had been “forcibly disappeared” for more than a month.

“For us, we’re just delighted that [the two staff members] have been released, they’re in good health, and they face apparently no more judicial legal issues,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters at the organisation’s headquarters in New York.

Afghan authorities did not immediately comment on the release.

Multiple UN agencies operate across Afghanistan in a range of areas, including health and humanitarian response. The country has been hit hard by international aid cuts and faces numerous challenges, including the return of millions of its citizens from Iran and Pakistan in recent years.

The UN mission’s mandate from the UN Security Council includes promoting and supporting humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people, as well as promoting human rights, equality for women and girls, inclusive governance and economic stability.

The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, as the United States and NATO forces withdrew from the country after two decades of war.

Shortly after, they barred girls from education beyond primary school and banned women from nearly all employment, effectively excluding women and girls from public life. They have also removed minimum-age protections for girls’ marriage and made domestic violence punishable only in cases in which a woman has suffered visible injuries or broken bones.

The United States has sent about 2,300 Mexican nationals to Guatemala, despite objections from the Mexican government, as President Donald Trump steps up deportations.

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo confirmed on Wednesday that his country has received about 2,284 Mexican nationals deported from the US this year.

“They are arriving on planes carrying Guatemalan returnees,” Arevalo said in a news conference.

“In coordination with the Mexican government, what we have done is bring them through in transit so that we can return them to Mexican territory within 24 hours of their arrival in the country.”

The removals are part of a growing trend of third-country deportations under Trump, who has sent migrants and asylum seekers from the US to countries they may have no connection to.

Largely, the Trump administration has justified such deportations by saying that the immigrants in question are unable to return to their home countries.

But that is not the case with Mexico, which has consistently accepted deportations from the US.

Critics have blasted the third-country removals as a form of punishment, effectively stranding migrants and asylum seekers far from home.

Speaking about the Mexican nationals sent to Guatemala, Arevalo has said that the deportees are quickly repatriated to their country, with the costs covered by either the Mexican or US government.

But Mexican officials voiced concern about the US sending its citizens to third-party countries.

“The Mexican government has expressed its opposition to this practice to US authorities and has reiterated that every Mexican citizen has the right to enter the country,” Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Thursday.

Following a meeting with Guatemalan officials on Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry also said that the two countries are united by shared values including shared security and “human mobility with dignity”.

Guatemala is not the only country to receive Mexican nationals from the US in recent months. Reports have also emerged that some Mexicans have been transported to Honduras as well.

“They didn’t tell us anything, just to get on the flight,” Arturo Trejo, a Mexican man who was deported to Honduras, told the TV channel Telemundo.

Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) told The Associated Press news agency that the US had justified the practice as a form of deterrence.

“The reason is that the United States wants to prevent them from crossing back into its territory,” the INM said.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), meanwhile, responded to inquiries about the practice by saying that it was “utilising all lawful options to carry out the largest deportation operation in history, just as President Trump promised”.

But many human rights experts view the third-country deportations of Mexicans as an intimidation tactic.

“What we are seeing seems part of [a] broader trend towards a very severe US migration policy where they seek to instill terror and fear in migrants at all costs,” Ana Maria Mendez, the Central America director at migrants rights group WOLA, told the news service Reuters.

As neighbours, the US and Mexico have long had a close relationship. The two countries remain top trading partners for one another, with a cross-border exchange of roughly $964.1bn in 2025 alone.

But since Trump returned to the presidency last year, the Mexican government has had to strike a delicate balance.

It has sought to cooperate with the Trump administration on immigration enforcement, while defending the rights of its citizens against alleged abuse.

Critics have accused immigration agents of using excessive violence during raids, and experts have noted a rising number of deaths while in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Since Trump returned to office, at least 15 Mexican nationals have died in ICE custody, and another three died during enforcement operations.

In response, the Mexican government has filed complaints with state prosecutors in the US. It has also denounced conditions in ICE detention centres as “incompatible with human rights standards” and urged regular visits from Mexican consular officials.

A first group of deportees, out of an expected total of 1,200, has landed at the Roberts International Airport in Monrovia, Liberia, from the United States.

Thursday’s flight is part of an expanding trend of third-country deportations under the administration of US President Donald Trump, whereby foreign nationals are sent to countries that are not their own.

The inaugural flight carried 20 people, largely from Latin American countries like Venezuela and Cuba.

After landing, the group boarded a bus and was taken away by Liberian authorities without being allowed to speak to reporters.

The flight follows an agreement, announced on Tuesday, between the US and Liberia that will bring up to 1,200 deportees to the African country over the coming year.

Liberia is part of a growing list of countries striking agreements with the Trump administration.

Since taking office for a second term as US president in 2025, Trump has inked deals with at least 35 countries to accept third-country deportees, according to the nonprofit Human Rights First.

In exchange, some of those countries have received financial aid and trade deals. Senate Democrats in February estimated that at least $40m had been spent on such deals in the first year of Trump’s second term.

The US, for example, awarded Liberia $5m this year for “migration management activities”.

But in announcing the transfer deal earlier this week, Liberia’s Ministry of Information denied any reports that it agreed to the deportations for financial motives.

“The transfer of persons to Liberia is not a transaction with a quid pro quo,” the ministry said in a statement. “Liberia has not demanded or received any compensation or promise of reward in exchange for its consent to participate in the program.”

Liberia’s Information Minister Jerolinmek Piah also told the news agency Reuters that the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations refugee agency would help provide services for the deportees.

Those brought to Liberia will be allowed to apply for asylum and are “free to depart the country when they so desire”, according to Tuesday’s statement.

Liberia has said that the deportees are not “criminals and are not being prosecuted in any manner”.

“Liberia, the first black African independent nation on the African continent, has a long history of accepting people seeking refuge from political and other crises,” the ministry’s statement said.

“As a matter of fact, Liberia itself was founded as a refuge for freed slaves from the United States of America and other parts of the world.”

But critics have questioned whether smaller countries in Africa and elsewhere are being used as a “dumping ground” for US deportees, and whether the immigrants forcibly sent abroad will have adequate access to the resources they need.

Some have characterised such third-country deportations as excessively punitive, stranding migrants and asylum seekers in places where they sometimes cannot even speak the language.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has framed the third-party deportations as necessary for immigrants whose home countries will not accept them. It has also framed the removals as a form of deterrence.

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo on Thursday estimated that, this year alone, roughly 2,300 Mexican citizens have been deported from the US to his country, as opposed to being sent directly to Mexico.

Media outlets, including CBS News, have reported that the manouevre is part of an effort to disincentivize Mexican nationals from returning to the US without legal immigration status.

Arevalo explained, however, that such deportees are swiftly sent back to Mexico. “They are arriving in planes of Guatemalan returnees, and what we have done is process them as in transit, ‌in coordination with the Mexican immigration authorities,” he said.

Authorities were warned about dangers of hitting Mohammad Ghamira, who suffered from the rare medical condition haemophilia.

A Syrian police officer has been arrested and may be criminally prosecuted after an investigation found that he hit a detainee with a medical condition who died shortly after being released from custody.

Syria’s Interior Ministry said on Thursday that Mohammad Ghamira, 29, died after being slapped by police investigator Ahmad Jawad, who has since been detained and referred to the public prosecutor.

Ghamira, who died on Sunday, suffered from haemophilia, a rare condition that prevents blood from clotting properly, making sufferers bleed more easily and for longer periods.

The father of two was a member of the White Helmets, the civil defence organisation made up of volunteers that operated in rebel-held areas in Syria. They went on search and rescue operations and provided medical care following government attacks.

The investigation found that Ghamira had told internal security personnel about his condition, while his wife twice informed authorities about the potential danger.

Ahmad Latouf, head of the investigation committee and assistant interior minister for police affairs, confirmed that Ghamira died after suffering a brain haemorrhage believed to have been caused by the slap.

Two other police officers are also being investigated but are not currently due to be prosecuted.

Ghamira’s death has provoked widespread anger among Syrians, reminding many of the gross human rights abuses that were systematic under former President Bashar al-Assad, who was overthrown by rebels in December 2024.

New leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has promised to usher in a new era, prioritising human rights and overseeing an inclusive government. However, human rights organisations have documented widespread abuses by government forces, particularly against minority groups.

Commenting on Ghamira’s death on Thursday, the Interior Ministry accused Jawad of violating ministerial instructions and the code of conduct, which strictly prohibit any form of humiliating or abusive treatment of detainees.

Syrian Interior Minister Anas Khattab said in a statement that the investigation results showed the ministry’s “commitment to reaching the truth and holding accountable those proven to have overstepped”.

“We rose up against the former tyrant’s regime in rejection of injustice and impunity, and therefore, building a state of law begins with our ability to hold the wrongdoer accountable, to give restitution to the victim, and not to do injustice to anyone who has not been proven responsible” for wrongdoing, he said.

Reporting from Syria’s northwestern port city of Latakia, Al Jazeera’s Heidi Pett said the Syrian government has vowed to take further action.

“There will be surveillance put into police stations and better training provided to officers but they say all of this will take time,” Pett said.

“Part of the reason it has resonated so widely is because of who Mohammad was. He was a young man, 29 years old, and he had two children and was a volunteer with the White Helmets. They were basically seen as heroes. His father joined the revolution and so he’s a figure who many people here in his community and nationally respected,” she added.

“That’s part of why there’s been so much sadness and anger and it’s also [because of] the fact that Mohammad is not the first to be mistreated in detention by the new authorities. Syrian rights organisations have documented other cases of deaths in detention.”

Ghamira was arrested last week accused of theft. He was later released and died at a hospital in Latakia on Sunday.

During a forensic examination, medical experts found no visible signs of violence or severe force, as well as no skull fractures or traumatic wounds.

Since Myanmar’s civil war escalated following a coup in 2021 more than 150,000 Rohingya have been purged from their homes and forced to seek asylum across Asia.

Most flee to neighbouring Bangladesh, where a million other members of this persecuted minority barely survive in some of the largest resettlement camps on Earth, following a brutal military crackdown in 2017.

Caught in the crossfire between the ruling military government and rebel fighters in Myanmar, some Rohingya refugees claim members of their families have been forcibly conscripted, subjected to targeted attacks and even massacred.

These atrocities are occurring in their homeland, Rakhine State, a secretive, inaccessible corner of the country largely controlled by a local armed group called the Arakan Army.

Rohingya witnesses allege that the violence and oppression they face now from the Arakan Army, Myanmar’s most powerful rebel group, is just as brutal as ethnic cleansing by the military in 2017 that first drew global attention to their plight.

Both the military and Arakan Army deny the allegations and blame each other

Working with human rights investigators from Myanmar Witness and Rohingya citizen journalists, Al Jazeera examines what has happened to this Muslim minority during the Arakan Army’s takeover of Rakhine.

This documentary also exposes how the rebel group is connected to the human trafficking of Rohingya refugees out of Myanmar, including young children and women who are subjected to sexual violence and brutality.

The Arakan Army declined to address the allegations raised in this film.  However, its leaders have previously denied accusations of targeted attacks on civilians, including two mass killings of Rohingya villagers in Rakhine. In a written statement to Al Jazeera, Myanmar’s military alleges that the Arakan Army is inciting hatred against Rohingya Muslims and has “reportedly committed acts of genocide” against them since taking control of much of the state.

With growing violence and a transnational crisis on their doorstep, Bangladesh wants to send all the refugees back to the war-torn country through a repatriation scheme.

But increased activity by Rohingya armed groups aligned with the military government is making that harder. Rohingya rebels active in the conflict reject those allegations.  When questioned about their conduct by Al Jazeera, one armed group called Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) denied burning civilian homes, participating in activities that cause harm to Rohingya villagers and encouraging refugees to fight against the Arakan Army.

Using leaked documents, covertly filmed footage and exclusive interviews, Al Jazeera investigates the driving forces behind this largely forgotten humanitarian emergency.

This story is part of Myanmar Exposed, a series of reports by Al Jazeera Investigates which uncover the hidden truths of an ongoing crisis caused by the 2021 coup and civil conflict.

The transfer is the first from Lebanon involving a Syrian military officer who fled after al-Assad’s government was toppled in 2024.

Lebanon has handed over a former senior Syrian army officer to Damascus to face charges related to murder and torture, the first such transfer since former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was toppled in 2024.

The transfer involved Major-General Adel Issa, a former commander of the Syrian army’s 17th Division who later led ground forces in the eastern province of Deir ez-Zur.

Syria’s Ministry of Interior confirmed his delivery into Syrian custody in a statement on Wednesday.

“Today, Syrian authorities received from the Lebanese authorities the former officer in the defunct regime army, Major-General Adel Issa,” the ministry said.

It added that a Syrian arrest warrant had accused Issa of charges including intentional homicide, facilitating a felony, killing more than two people, torture leading to death, and crimes aimed at inciting civil war and sectarian strife.

A Damascus referral judge will hear his case, which could then be sent to a criminal court for trial, the ministry added.

Issa, 67, has denied the accusations, the Reuters news agency reported, citing two people familiar with his arrest and extradition.

He was detained on August 8 after going to the Syrian embassy in Beirut to complete paperwork.

Embassy officials alerted the prosecutor’s office in Lebanon that he was wanted in Syria, and Lebanese investigators took him into custody, Reuters reported.

His transfer follows months of pressure by Damascus for Lebanon to act against former government officers, as well as security and military officials, who sought refuge in Lebanon after the Assad regime collapsed in December 2024.

President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former rebel leader, has led the country since.

In January, Syrian authorities gave Lebanese security officials a list of more than 200 former senior officers wanted by Damascus.

Earlier this month, a Damascus court sentenced al-Assad to death in absentia on charges including murder, arbitrary detention and torture. Al-Assad lives in exile in Moscow.

Israeli air strikes on Gaza kill 10 Palestinians, targeting police headquarters and a refugee camp in separate attacks.

Israeli strikes have killed at least 10 Palestinians in two separate attacks targeting a Gaza City police post and Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, condemned what it called “a new war crime”.

On Wednesday, medical sources at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said they received nine Palestinian bodies following an attack on the municipal police headquarters in the centre of Gaza City. Another 15 people were wounded.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said the bombardment occurred at a busy time near a park crowded with civilians, including children.

Victims of the Gaza City strike included a newly-appointed Gaza City police chief, the director of a women’s police force, and several officers.

Earlier in the day, a strike on Nuseirat refugee camp killed one Palestinian, medics said, increasing Wednesday’s death toll to at least 10.

The Israeli army claimed its air force struck two Hamas commanders in Nuseirat, and that it later struck a Hamas commander in the Tuffah area of Gaza City, without providing evidence of their affiliation.

In a statement, Hamas rejected Israel’s justification that the strike targeted “resistance leaders”, calling the claim “baseless and false allegations used to justify its aggression and cover up its deliberate targeting of civilian police and unarmed civilians”.

Hamas accused the Israeli government of “deliberately undermining these efforts and dangerously pushing towards reigniting the war of extermination against our people in the Gaza Strip”.

On Tuesday, Israeli strikes killed seven people – including a child – and wounded 14 others at a crowded cafe on Gaza City’s harbour. The city’s port has been turned into a displacement camp, according to Wafa news agency.

The Israeli military again claimed, without providing evidence, that it had targeted Hamas commanders in the enclave.

Diplomatic deadlock

Wednesday’s attacks occurred two days after US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East envoy Jared Kushner visited the region to push for a Trump-backed deal to end to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Kushner’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to break a diplomatic deadlock after Netanyahu rejected an agreement for Israel to withdraw from the Strip in exchange for Hamas disarming.

Following the meeting, Kushner reiterated “Israel’s right to defend itself”. He threatened that Hamas must disarm or the US would support Israel to “finish the job in the appropriate way”.

New Delhi, India – In a crowded ward of New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), India’s premier public hospital, a mother sits quietly beside her 29-year-old son, Piyush Singh*.

Diagnosed with stomach cancer a year ago, Singh has already undergone five rounds of chemotherapy. He now lies in the hospital’s palliative care unit, where the goal is no longer to cure the disease but to relieve pain and preserve his dignity.

“The world comes to AIIMS when they are not well. But where shall we go?” asks his mother. “My son has already received five doses of chemotherapy, but his condition has not improved. The doctors are not telling us anything. I don’t know what to do next.”

Piyush’s family is not asking for his life to end. They simply don’t know what comes when treatment fails.

A few floors away, Aryan* has come to AIIMS from Auraiya, a small town in Uttar Pradesh state, to accompany his 40-year-old brother Amit (name changed), who has been battling mouth cancer for four years. Two surgeries, radiation and two rounds of chemotherapy later, doctors say there is little hope of him surviving. The final checkup has been done. There is nothing more left to try.

“There is no duvidha [dilemma in Hindi],” says Aryan. “The doctors have said no. So it is clear now.”

He plans to take Amit to his rented flat in Gurgaon and give him whatever painkillers he has been prescribed. Beyond that, he has no plan, because no one has given him one.

“I don’t know about palliative care. I don’t know how to ease his pain. I have nothing apart from the medicines I got today,” he said.

Piyush and Amit are no exceptions. They represent a reality that many Indians are coming to terms with – with little institutional help.

India recorded an estimated 1.56 million new cancer cases in 2024, according to an Indian Council of Medical Research study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. But cancer patients are not alone. Families of patients with traumatic brain injuries and degenerative neurological conditions also hit the same wall.

According to a 2025 analysis by ecancermedicalscience, an open-access medical journal, an estimated seven to 10 million people require palliative care in India, but only about 4 percent receive it.

Such families find themselves with little or no awareness or preparedness for what comes next. Many have never heard of palliative care, or that the law gives them the right to document their treatment preferences before a crisis arrives.

The problem is also rooted in how many Indians confront death – a phenomenon that is one of the least-discussed subjects within families or societies. In many households, conversations about dying are considered inauspicious.

In such a worldview, to think of interventions in how or when someone dies carries a moral weight that goes beyond medicine or law. Families often avoid discussing medical wishes until a loved one is critically ill, leaving relatives to make deeply personal decisions during moments of grief and uncertainty.

From caregiving to court

The answers are increasingly being shaped not just by medicine, but also by the law.

In 2018, India’s Supreme Court recognised that the “right to die with dignity” was part of the fundamental right to life, enshrined in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution.

The court also allowed such patients to record their wishes about life-sustaining treatment if they lose the capacity to decide in an advanced stage of their ailment.

The top court’s ruling was in response to a petition filed by Common Cause, an NGO, which called for legal procedures allowing terminally ill individuals to execute Advance Medical Directives, commonly known as “living wills”, to refuse life-prolonging medical treatment.

A living will is a legal document that highlights an individual’s preferences for medical treatment when they cannot voice their choices. The provision allows them to nominate a loved one to decide for them.

“It [judgement] broadens the scope of Article 21. It now affirms, kind of completely, that the right to life includes the right to die with dignity. That is the bottom line for us,” Vipul Mudgal, director of Common Cause, the organisation behind the 2005 petition, told Al Jazeera.

Yet, for most Indians, that right largely existed on paper – until six years later.

In 2024, a family in Ghaziabad, an industrial district on the outskirts of New Delhi, filed a petition in the Delhi High Court and later in the Supreme Court, asking for a decision on the fate of a 32-year-old patient who was in a vegetative state for nearly 13 years.

Harish Rana’s case was a first in India where passive euthanasia, or withdrawal of life support, was permitted by the top court. On March 11, the Supreme Court directed the withdrawal of his life support at AIIMS, New Delhi. He passed away two weeks later.

But the journey from caregiving to courtroom was not easy.

Rana’s family managed his feeding tube, tracheostomy and urine bag every day for 13 years, and it had drained them.

“A family reaches such a decision when it sees no scope for improvement. Harish Rana could not speak, we were his voice,” Rana’s father Ashok told Al Jazeera. “He was not in that state for 13 days or 13 months, but for 13 years.”

All those years, said Ashok, he watched his son breathe but not recover, with only one question on his mind: “I am around 63 years old, and my wife is 58 years old. If something happens to either of us, who would take care of him?”

That is when they decided to approach the court.

While the Rana case is a landmark, experts say it is unlikely to set an immediate precedent in a country where death is an uncomfortable topic. That is why, despite being legalised in 2018, living wills remain uncommon and largely unheard of.

As a result, terminally ill patients do not discuss their wishes while they still can, and families end up making decisions for them without preparation or guidance.

A 2019 survey across seven cities, including New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, by Healthcare at Home (HCAH), a health advocacy group, found that 73 percent of urban Indians were unaware of their right to a living will. Even among people aware of their right, only 6 percent had actually drafted such a will.

“The Harish Rana case was made more complex because there was no living will,” said Manish Jain, the lawyer who represented the family in court. “Living will clinics are absent across India.”

There are only two such clinics in India. The first opened in Mumbai last year, followed by one in New Delhi – both operated by private hospitals, which are beyond the reach of most Indians.

Fears of misuse of living wills

Concerned over a likely misuse of living wills, the Supreme Court made its guidelines complex. However, in the process, the court ended up making it difficult to navigate for most people.

To make a living will legally valid, an individual would sign it before two witnesses and get it countersigned by a magistrate. If the patient later became terminally ill, the treating doctor would be required to form a board of specialists with at least 20 years of experience each, whose findings then had to go to a district magistrate, who would form a second medical board. Only after both boards agreed could the process move forward, and any disagreement meant the matter went to the regional High Court.

In 2019, the Indian Society for Critical Care Medicine, a nonprofit group of physicians, approached the Supreme Court, arguing its guidelines were unworkable. In 2023, a five-judge top court bench simplified the process, removing the requirement of a magistrate’s countersignature, reducing the minimum medical experience requirement for review boards from 20 years to five, and allowing multiple nominees instead of one.

“Decisions are being made every day, sometimes by the family members, sometimes by the doctors, sometimes because of paucity of money,” said Mudgal.

He said if the families, doctors and courts can make end-of-life decisions for an individual, why cannot the individuals make those decisions for themselves? This recognition, while respecting individual autonomy, also relieves family members from the guilt of deciding for their loved one, he added.

“If there is no meaning left in life, somebody is kept alive artificially, just beating the heart with some mechanical device, that life has no meaning,” he said.

Yet, such questions remain unanswered by law. Living wills and the right to die exist entirely through judicial interpretation. There is no parliamentary law governing the same.

“There is no framework [of parliamentary law] passed by the parliament,” Jain said. “The Supreme Court of India itself requested the government to pass legislation regarding this issue,” he added, first in 2018 and again in 2023.

But lack of a law is only one part of the challenge.

For families, the absence of palliative care means little or no guidance on what comes after treatment options run out. Even families like Piyush’s, who have access to palliative care, don’t know what comes next.

“There are many patients like this who don’t have legal awareness of passive euthanasia. Not only patients, but their doctors also do not have full awareness about palliative care,” Dr Saipriya Tewari, principal consultant and unit head of pain management and palliative care at Max Super Speciality Hospital in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera.

She said families often look confused when told there is no treatment left, and that they should take the patient home.

“What will they do after taking the patient home? Nobody tells them. It is only discussed if the palliative care doctor is involved in the treatment,” Tewari said. “And even if the end is coming, then how do we maintain dignity in time? That is the question.”

Piyush’s mother has a different question.

“If he is sick, then we have to get treatment. We have to do something to keep him alive. What should we do? We are not able to think of a way out of this. Nobody is giving us any suggestions about where to go.”

*Names changed to protect the identity of the patients and their families.

Palestinian politicians and analysts have warned against what they describe as an Israeli plan to illegally annex the occupied West Bank by implementing a series of decisions and actions under different pretexts.

Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz, on Friday, ordered the military to prepare a plan for transferring civilian law enforcement in the occupied West Bank to the Israeli police.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the decision follows criticism over the army’s handling of Israeli settlers who besieged a Palestinian home in the village of Qusra.

Katz justified the shift, saying, “The army’s role is to combat Palestinian terrorism … and not chase hilltop youth.”

The Defence Ministry indicated the police would establish a dedicated force to handle these civilian matters.

However, Palestinian officials and a wide array of political experts warn this structural shift represents a dangerous acceleration of illegal annexation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.

Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, told Al Jazeera that the settlers are the “spearhead in the process of annexation and Judaisation”.

He drew direct historical parallels to the mass displacement of Palestinians, stating, “They repeat what the Zionist terror gangs did in 1948, like the Haganah and the Stern Gang.”

Barghouti warned that placing security in the hands of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and illegal Israeli settlements under Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich amounts to “handing over the West Bank to the settlers”.

He stressed that this is an open war on the population, adding, “The actual ruler in the West Bank is the known fascist terrorist Smotrich.”

De facto annexation

Analysts argue that replacing military occupation law with domestic civilian law fundamentally alters the legal reality of the territory. Mohanad Mustafa, an academic and researcher in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that the decision legally erases the borders.

“The government is dealing with the West Bank not as an occupied territory,” Mustafa said. He explained that by transferring power to a civilian police force, “this means that the government has annexed the West Bank”.

He noted this move absolves the military of its obligations under international law, placing enforcement under Ben-Gvir.

Mustafa warned that Ben-Gvir, who previously oversaw the demolition of thousands of Arab homes in Israel, will now command the police to “support the settlers more and more and push them more and more towards deepening their repression and terrorism against the Palestinians”.

Palestinian leadership strongly condemned the mandate. Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, described the move as a blatant violation of international agreements and an attempt to “impose Israeli law and sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to entrench the illegal annexation of Palestinian land”.

The Palestinian group Hamas echoed this sentiment, releasing a statement calling the order a “dangerous step on the path to imposing de facto annexation” that provides “cover and more protection for the escalating attacks and crimes of the settlers”.

Fascist militias

The Palestinian Authority has accused the Israeli government and its military of sponsoring settlers’ violence. Even Israeli members of parliament have accused the army of being complicit.

Analysts stress that relieving the military of its duties essentially deputises settler violence, turning them into an armed extension of the state.

Nihad Abu Ghosh, an expert in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that there is no contradiction between the army and the settlers. He noted that the settlers have evolved into “fascist militia formations” that perform the state’s dirty work.

“These are fascist militia formations, and there are similar precedents in many countries that were ruled by fascism, whether in Spain, Italy, Germany, or even Chile,” Abu Ghosh said.

He added that these militias carry out roles that “require evading any discipline, rules, or laws” to achieve a “creeping, gradual annexation to make it a reality”.

Apartheid and displacement

The dual legal framework resulting from this shift has drawn sharp international and local criticism. Shadi al-Shurafa, a researcher in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that the situation is a textbook definition of segregation.

“We are facing an application of an overt racist apartheid system in the West Bank,” al-Shurafa said, noting it involves one regime operating with two entirely different laws based on ethnicity.

He added that the ultimate goal of the current government is carrying out complete ethnic cleansing and trapping Palestinians in “isolated cantons and isolated Bantustans”.

Other experts argue that the move completely alters the international legal status of the territory, pushing the crisis into a new, more dangerous phase.

“The subject has bypassed the issue of annexation to a post-annexation phase and creating a reality where the Palestinian finds himself forced to think about migration,” said Adel Shadid, expert in Israeli affairs.

International complicity

Analysts also pointed to the role of the international community, particularly the United States, in enabling this systemic shift.

Shadid dismissed recent US condemnations of settler violence as mere theatre to “mislead global public opinion”.

He argued that the underlying project has full US backing, noting that “all that is happening now is an American-Israeli plan and there is harmony between the two right-wing administrations in Washington and here in Israel”.

Andrew Whitley, a former United Nations official and director of the Balfour Project, stressed that the planned transfer is “completely illegal” and urged immediate global intervention.

He told Al Jazeera that the “Palestinian state is disappearing before our eyes”, demanding that the international community move beyond rhetoric.

“We have to do much more than just wring our hands and complain that governments are not doing anything about this,” Whitley said, calling for concrete sanctions to halt the rapid erasure of the Palestinian presence.

According to a new report, the United States federal government has taken a massive step back from its role in protecting civil rights across the country.

On Thursday, the nonprofit Human Rights Watch issued a 112-page analysis of the government’s civil rights activities from January 2025 through the start of 2026, a period that captures the opening months of President Donald Trump’s second term.

The report concludes that the federal agencies responsible for stopping discrimination have largely been gutted of their staff.

Additionally, top-down directives by Trump have de-emphasised the federal government’s role in protecting civil rights across the country, according to the group.

“While claiming to protect all Americans, the administration is rolling back systems that communities have long turned to for relief,” Trey Walk, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

Which agencies did the report analyse?

The report examines four key agencies within the federal government dedicated to civil rights.

They include the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, the Office of Civil Rights at the Education Department, the Fair Housing Office at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Human Rights Watch spoke with current and former federal workers, lawyers, complainants and community groups who had been involved in cases alleging discrimination.

It also reviewed court filings and federal agency directives that illustrated the pivot in priorities under the second Trump administration.

What is the history of civil rights enforcement in the federal government?

The federal government’s role in civil rights protections goes back centuries, starting with the US Constitution.

In 1791, Congress ratified an addition to the country’s founding document that established civil protections like the freedom of religion. Those first 10 amendments became known as the Bill of Rights.

Over the decades, more amendments were added, most notably after the US Civil War, to guarantee rights like equal protection under the law.

While the Constitution contains explicit language about religion and race, critics point out that there is no language that confers equal protection based on sex or gender.

The history of the Department of Justice is closely entwined with the need to enforce civil rights law after the Civil War.

Created in 1870, the department addressed several needs, including a push to professionalise and centralise the country’s federal law enforcement. But it also helped prosecute violent white supremacist groups at a time when local authorities, particularly in southern states, sometimes refused to.

The US Civil Rights Movement, starting in the 1950s, also spurred a surge in federal infrastructure. It was the Civil Rights Act of 1957, for instance, that established a dedicated civil rights division within the Justice Department.

How did federal policy change under Trump?

Trump’s second term ushered in a backlash towards policies broadly considered to be part of the “diversity, equity and inclusion” movement, or DEI.

That movement gained popularity in the early 2020s, particularly after the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, sparked a public reckoning over racial inequality.

Trump, however, has called DEI “racially discriminatory”. During his campaign for a second term, he argued that there was a “definite anti-white feeling in this country”.

Since starting his second term, Trump has sought to undo policies that his administration argues give unfair advantages to demographics like women and minorities.

In addition, federal agencies like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division suspended certain cases they were pursuing, including some involving sexual harassment and transgender rights.

New investigations were opened instead, including against the footwear giant Nike, which was accused this year of discrimination against white employees.

In May 2025, the Department of Justice also announced it would halt investigations and reform agreements involving police departments accused of racial discrimination.

Such measures had been taken in places like Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, after public outcry over the police killings of unarmed Black people, including Floyd.

What did the Human Rights Watch report find?

The report chronicled an overall weakening in the federal bodies designed to protect civil rights.

Job cuts and resignations were part of that trend. The Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, for instance, boasted about 365 lawyers in January 2025, when Trump took office.

By the end of that year, three-quarters of those lawyers had left the agency, an exodus driven by what Human Rights Watch called a “coordinated effort to undermine career staff”.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department told Al Jazeera its Civil Rights Division “remains dedicated to protecting the rights of all Americans”.

The department also said it had added 100 personnel since the 2025 departures.

According to the spokesperson, the Civil Rights Division is currently focused on “protecting religious liberty, Second Amendment rights, and women’s and girls’ spaces, standing against illegal race-based policymaking and DEI, and defending parents’ fundamental right to direct their children’s upbringing and education”.

What other offices were affected?

Other agencies in the Human Rights Watch report likewise saw a decrease in their ranks as well as a reduction in their civil rights work.

The Office of Fair Housing went from 31 staffers to 11 by mid-2025. Some 115 complaints prepared by the office and referred to the Justice Department for possible legal action were quashed, according to the report.

At the Department of Education, the Office for Civil Rights initially had 568 workers across 12 offices when Trump took office in 2025. Within a few months, seven of those offices were shuttered, and half of the civil rights-related workers were gone.

Between May and September 2025, the office dismissed about 90 percent of the nearly 10,000 complaints it received, a higher rate than it would have in the past, the report said.

What has been the impact of these changes?

Human Rights Watch found that many victims and communities grappling with discrimination no longer had the benefit of a federal agency to help them in their cases.

One community housing group told Human Rights Watch that the Department of Housing and Urban Development no longer responds in a timely fashion to reported instances of anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

Some federal agencies also appear to have walked away from their role in monitoring discrimination and overseeing reforms around the country, according to the report.

The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has a long history of investigating discrimination claims and working with school districts to enact change.

But Human Rights Watch observed that the office has largely stopped dealing with complaints under Trump.

While the Office of Civil Rights required policy changes or monitoring in response to 336 cases in the first half of 2024, only 59 cases received such a remedy over a similar period in 2025.

In Springfield, Massachusetts, for instance, parents complained after white students held a mock “slave auction” on the social media platform Snapchat, where they bid for the sale of their fellow Black students. That case is no longer being pursued by the Office of Civil Rights as of last year.

The decisions mark both a victory and a setback for President Emmanuel Macron, who had championed both policies.

France’s Constitutional Council has upheld a law passed by parliament to legalise assisted dying in specific circumstances, while striking down a separate bill that sought to ban under-15s from using social media.

The council, France’s highest constitutional authority, issued its rulings on Friday. The decisions mark both a victory and a setback for President Emmanuel Macron, who had championed both policies.

France is set to join several European countries that have already legalised assisted dying, including Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg, among others.

“This decision marks the culmination of a long democratic and parliamentary effort, conducted with listening, respect, and rigour,” Elisabeth Borne, MP and former French prime minister, said in a post on X about the assisted-dying decision.

“I welcome this definitive validation of a text that guarantees everyone the freedom to choose, within a strict and protective framework.”

The council upheld the law in its entirety while clarifying three provisions, including the so-called conscience clause, under which pharmacists may refuse to assist a patient in ending their life.

Private treatment centres can also refuse to participate in the procedure if it goes against their mission, and other centres can serve local needs. Lastly, in the case of protected patients, the opinion of the person responsible for their welfare must be taken into account.

French citizens and legal residents can request medical support in ending their lives under strict conditions. The legislation stipulates that the patient must be “suffering from an incurable, life-threatening illness in an advanced or terminal phase”, and that the illness must cause “constant physical or psychological suffering that is untreatable or unbearable”. Lastly, the patient must exercise free and informed consent.

The French National Assembly passed the bill last month by a majority of 50, with 291 voting in favour and 241 against.

Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court struck down legislation banning under-15s from social media, citing freedom of expression.

“By prohibiting minors under the age of fifteen from accessing certain online services, the law inherently requires every person, even an adult, to prove their age before accessing them,” the court said in its decision.

“However, by failing to specify the conditions and limits under which such proof must be provided, the legislature has not established the legal safeguards necessary to ensure compliance with these requirements,” it added. The court also said that the law fails to safeguard people’s privacy.

The bill was one of Macron’s flagship policies and was passed by parliament last month.

It stipulated that everyone in France would have to verify their age to access social media sites, and it was supposed to come into effect in January 2027. Macron was eager for the bill to be passed before the presidential election next year.

After Friday’s ruling, Macron asked Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu to work on a new “legally robust draft” of the legislation.

Last month, Amnesty International responded to the French parliament’s decision to impose the social media ban on teens, urging lawmakers to focus their efforts on forcing companies to redesign their apps, including what it described as “addictive features”.

“There is no doubt that regulating platforms to protect children is an imperative of our time. We commend states for taking social media harms seriously but rather than pursuing blanket bans, efforts should be on forcing platforms to abandon their reckless pursuit of profit to the detriment of human rights,” Secretary General Agnes Callamard said.

“Building safe platforms requires a robust response. To ensure platforms are spaces where children can access community, connection and knowledge in a healthy and safe way, governments should first focus on banning the features that drive harm, including engagement-based algorithms that Amnesty International’s research has shown can draw children into rabbit holes of depressive and suicidal content.”

The United Nations human rights agency and the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates have condemned a days-long Israeli settler siege of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank village of Qusra.

The two statements were issued on Thursday, as dozens of Israeli settlers continue to besiege three Palestinian families in the Ras al-Ain area in western Qusra for a fifth night.

“These criminal actions by the settlers, supported or acquiesced to by Israel, the Occupying Power, are making life unbearable for these Palestinian families and are clearly aimed at forcing them to leave their homes and their land,” the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

The three families – comprising 15 people, including two children – have been confined to their homes with their water and power cut off since Sunday, the agency said.

“Time is running out for these three families before they are forcibly displaced,” it warned.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry issued a statement condemning the settlers for carrying out “systematic assaults that can only be described as terroristic”.

It also accused Israel of using the settlers as an “unchecked tool to implement its criminal policies” of forced displacement and annexation of the occupied West Bank.

Earlier on Thursday, US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee also referred to the settlers’ actions as acts of “terror”.

‘This is all a charade’

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from the scene of the siege on Thursday, said Israeli soldiers initially tried to move the trapped families out of their homes while settlers remained camped outside.

The families refused, not trusting that the Israeli soldiers would allow them back into their homes, and were eventually grouped together in one home. Residents have watched settlers push families out and then take over their properties in the past, she reported.

Qusra has faced settler attacks for decades, Ibrahim explained, and residents tie the rise in violence to the spread of illegal settlements and the lack of accountability for attackers.

On Thursday, the Israeli military said its troops dismantled “two illegal outposts” in Qusra and a nearby village, and detained one Israeli. It said more soldiers were sent to “carry out defensive missions and patrols”.

However, Ibrahim said most Palestinians believe the Israeli army is staging its response to the settler siege for the cameras, and they expect the settlers will eventually return.

Abdel Azim Wadi, the mayor of Qusra, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli army has been protecting and helping the settlers. “We saw them praying together, barbecuing together and dancing together,” he said. “They are not very interested in helping the besieged families.”

Qusra resident Abdul Kareem Hassan told Al Jazeera that he had been sleeping in his car for seven months in order to protect his home.

“This is all a charade,” he said. “If they [the Israeli army] were serious, the whole operation would not take them one hour. We’re talking about 20 settlers. If they would treat them the same way they treat Palestinians, they could finish in less than an hour.”

Another day without respite

Elsewhere in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, Israeli settlers and soldiers continued their elevated campaign of violence against Palestinians, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Israeli forces issued demolition notices for homes in Kafr Sur, the Jalazone camp and farmers’ shelters in al-Jiftlik.

In Qalqilya, soldiers detained seven relatives of a Palestinian fighter killed in a 2024 strike. Soldiers also detained three Palestinians amid a settler incursion in Burqa, east of Ramallah.

Settler attacks took place across several towns and villages, including an incident in which three Palestinians, including a child, were pepper-sprayed in their car.

Settlers also re-established a settlement near Jenin and erected a new outpost on land belonging to a town near Tulkarem.

A series of Houthi attacks in recent weeks, which are among the deadliest in years, is raising fears that Yemen could be sliding back towards all-out war as conflict spreads across the Middle East.

A 2022 truce led to the end of heavy fighting between the pro-Iranian Houthis and Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces, which had been ongoing since September 2014.

But a series of clashes over the last month between the two sides – intensifying in the last two weeks – has led to civilian and military casualties and threatened to reignite the war.

Here is what we know.

What are the latest attacks?

The Houthis have killed a number of civilians in a series of attacks on the government-controlled west coast port of al-Makha, also known as Mocha.

There was also an attack on a commercial vessel in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait on Tuesday, which Yemen’s coastguard said killed six people and injured 10 others. The Houthis said the vessel was carrying weapons.

It followed the Houthis targeting Yemeni government military sites in eastern Yemen with drones and rockets, killing at least 30 government soldiers and causing further clashes. The Houthis have also attacked Saudi Aramco’s Jazan oil refinery.

In response, Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), said the internationally -recognised government would not accept “a new truce that reproduces previous experiences”.

“No action by the Houthi militias will go unanswered or unchecked,” al-Alimi said, according to Yemen’s Saba news agency.

But he also appeared to leave space for a political way back, saying the Houthis could still “lay down their arms, engage in political life and compete through the ballot box on an equal footing with all other Yemenis”.

What is behind the latest tensions?

The Houthis seized the capital Sanaa in 2014 and have since fought a war with the government for control of the country.

Although the intensity of the war declined significantly after the 2022 truce, no comprehensive peace settlement followed.

The fragile status quo came under increasing pressure after the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran on February 28 .

On July 13 , Yemeni government forces – which are backed by Saudi Arabia – attacked Sanaa airport, reportedly to prevent an Iranian aircraft carrying a Houthi delegation from landing. The government accuses Iran of arming the Houthis.

The rebel movement responded by launching missiles towards Saudi Arabia. Then, on July 20 , the Houthis announced a maritime blockade against Saudi Arabia, threatening oil shipments diverted towards the Red Sea and attacking Saudi Aramco facilities in Jizan and Yanbu.

Is Saudi Arabia changing its approach?

As the attacks have intensified, Saudi Arabia has begun to take a more proactive approach to its security – both in Yemen and across the region, according to experts.

Some analysts believe the prospect of the Houthis ultimately blocking Bab al-Mandeb – the narrow strait connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean – may have helped push the Saudis to change their strategy.

Saudi Arabia was somewhat insulated from Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz because it could use its East-West Pipeline to transport oil from fields in the east to the Red Sea, bypassing the strait.

If the Houthis were to severely restrict shipping through Bab al-Mandeb, that would threaten the Red Sea route for one of the world’s largest oil exporters.

Last month, Riyadh announced a new international alliance intended to protect shipping in the Red Sea from Houthi attacks. Dozens of countries were invited, with the kingdom saying 13 had agreed to participate.

It is also deepening its security relationships with Pakistan and Turkiye through a new joint defence agreement, while Saudi coordination with Washington also appears to be strengthening.

The Saudi Defence Minister, Khalid bin Salman, recently met US Vice President JD Vance amid reports that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had secured US support for potential military action against the Houthis.

But in Yemen, the shift in the Saudi position may have been more visible when the Saudis intervened against the United Arab Emirates-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) at the end of last year. That allowed Yemen’s fractious anti-Houthi coalition to coalesce around the Yemeni government and present a more united front against the rebels.

Simon Mabon, professor of international relations at Lancaster University in the UK, said Saudi policy on the issue has changed significantly.

“After years of attempting to de-escalate and work towards an accommodation with the Houthis, Riyadh appears to have concluded that approach is no longer viable,” Mabon told Al Jazeera.

“Saudi Arabia’s concern has become particularly acute because conflict around the Strait of Hormuz has increased the importance of alternative oil and shipping routes through the Red Sea.”

But rather than trying to totally defeat the Houthis and retake the capital Sanaa, Mabon said Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni government now appear to be focused on pushing Houthi forces away from the coast.

“That’s a marked shift from what we had been seeing previously,” he said.

Could Pakistan and Turkiye be drawn into the war?

The Saudi-Pakistan-Turkiye agreement potentially raises the stakes of any further Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia.

Al Jazeera’s Yousef Mawry, reporting from Sanaa, said the latest attacks were being interpreted by some experts as a direct defiance of the new defence pact.

Pakistan has been directly affected by the recent escalation. Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said three Pakistanis were killed and another person injured in a Houthi attack on a vessel in the Red Sea.

“Pakistan strongly condemns the Houthi attack on a non-combatant commercial vessel,” Dar said, adding that the government was in contact with Saudi and Yemeni authorities.

But experts say the defence pact does not mean that Pakistani or Turkish troops will join the war in Yemen on behalf of their ally.

Wolfgang Pusztai, a security policy and defence analyst, told Al Jazeera that the agreement so -far is “just ink on paper”.

What role is Iran playing?

Iran has long cultivated a so-called “axis of resistance” of governments and groups opposed to Israel and the United States, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, armed groups in Iraq and Syria and the Houthis in Yemen.

The Houthis supported Iran towards the end of March by launching attacks towards northern Israel and have since threatened to expand their operations in the Red Sea.

Last month, Iran reportedly asked the Houthis to prepare to close the Red Sea oil route if the US attacked Iranian power infrastructure.

A source close to the Houthis told Reuters that missiles and drones had been positioned near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait in Yemen’s highlands overlooking Hodeidah and the Gulf of Aden.

Mohammed Albasha, a Yemeni American analyst and former spokesperson for Yemen’s embassy in Washington, said the Houthis’ attacks on Saudi Arabia should therefore also be understood within the broader US-Iran confrontation.

“By threatening Saudi shipping there, the Houthis can increase pressure on both Riyadh and Washington, while supporting Iran in its wider confrontation with the United States,” Albasha said.

Is another all-out war imminent?

Analysts say the crucial question is whether the latest attacks are intended to pressure the Saudi and Yemeni governments, or whether the Houthis believe they are simply taking the initiative in a new potential ground war.

The Houthis also say Saudi Arabia is using the port of al-Makah to reinforce and resupply government forces and believe Riyadh and its Yemeni allies are preparing an offensive against Houthi-held territory.

Nadwa Al-Dawsari, Associate Fellow at the Middle East Institute, said those fears may be fuelling the current escalation.

“Since January, there has been significant progress towards bringing Yemen’s different government forces under a more unified command,” Al-Dawsari told Al Jazeera.

“Government forces have also demonstrated growing air capabilities, carrying out air and drone strikes against Houthi missile and drone launchers and other military sites.”

“The Houthis’ objective in this recent escalation is to disrupt these preparations before government forces are ready, degrade their capabilities and force them onto the defensive.”

Ultimately, she said, the Houthis are trying to shape the rules of any coming confrontation so that “if escalation takes place, it happens on their own terms”.

While a Saudi-led ground offensive is not inevitable, the Houthis have also shown over the past decade that they cannot be defeated by air power alone, Mabon said.

“Yemen’s mountainous terrain makes a ground campaign exceptionally difficult, while Riyadh has little appetite to become trapped again in a prolonged war,” he said.

A Saudi-backed offensive led by Yemeni government forces is still more plausible than a large Saudi ground deployment, he added.

The consequences of major fighting on the ground between the two sides will inevitably mean that civilians will suffer most.

“Amidst all of this, the tragedy is that people in Yemen are paying the price,” Mabon said.

“It wasn’t long ago that Yemen was facing one of the worst humanitarian crises since the Second World War. People are struggling, and continued fighting will make it far worse.”

Israeli settlers have besieged three Palestinian families inside their homes in the occupied West Bank, cutting off water and electricity in a campaign residents described as an attempt to steal their land.

Security camera footage from the village of Qusra, south of Nablus, on Wednesday shows Israeli settlers surrounding one of the houses.

Trapped residents said Israeli soldiers had failed to disperse the settlers despite intervening earlier in the day.

Aisha Abu Rida, one of the residents under siege, told Al Jazeera that the siege began on Sunday, with settlers blocking all entrances to her home.

“We are surrounded by settlers, but we are steadfast, God willing. We will not leave our home, no matter what happens. Despite the water and electricity being cut off, we will remain steadfast,” she said.

“Despite their repeated attacks, which are aimed at displacing us, God willing, we will remain steadfast and stay in our homes, even if we are martyred,” she added.

‘Living in fear’

Loai Ridi, an American-Palestinian who owns a house in the village, said his brother Qusai Abu Rida and 18-year-old nephew, Ahmed, were among those trapped.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Toledo, in the United States, he said the family was relying on a temporary solar power system and leftover well water from the winter after supply lines were cut.

“He [Qusai Abu Rida] does not want to leave the home. Because if he leaves the home, the settlers will take over immediately,” Ridi said. “It’s really very, very difficult. He just told me, ‘I only have supplies for two to three days left. And if no one is able to provide us with food, I am not sure what else I can do’.”

Ridi said Israeli forces had done little to intervene when his brother had called for help on Sunday, and alleged the soldiers had knelt to pray alongside the settlers at the scene, in footage that has since circulated on social media.

“They basically did nothing,” he said.

Earlier on Wednesday, more Israeli forces arrived on the scene, dismantled the settlers’ tent and clashed with about 50 to 60 of the group before withdrawing. “They were unable to evacuate the settlers because they were not firm with them,” Ridi said. “They should have picked them up in vans and taken them away.”

The Israeli military said later on Wednesday that it would deploy an additional infantry battalion to the area, with its chief of general staff ordering continued efforts “to strengthen order and operational control” and prevent further incidents.

A day earlier, the Israeli military had said it received reports of settlers entering and seizing Palestinian homes and land in the area, describing the activity as “illegal, reprehensible and unacceptable” and disruptive to residents’ daily lives. It added that disciplinary action would be taken against security personnel filmed at the site in preceding days.

Ridi said his family was “living in fear”.

“They are being harassed and attacked by the settlers,” he said. “I cannot do anything about it.”

‘Ethnic cleansing’

Qusra sits in Area B of the occupied West Bank, nominally under Palestinian civil administration. The village has faced a string of recent attacks, including the burning of a newly built mosque last month.

In the neighbouring village of Jalud, a similar two-week siege in July forced two Palestinian families off their land before settlers took over the property.

Violence and land seizures in the occupied West Bank have intensified over the past months, with Jewish settlers emboldened by the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which has overseen a rapid expansion of settlement construction in the territory.

More than 500,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank in settlements that are considered illegal under international law, alongside roughly three million Palestinians. Israel has occupied the territory since 1967.

According to the Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now, there are 146 illegal settlements in the West Bank and a further 390 smaller outposts.

Breaking the Silence, an Israeli rights group, said on X that while settlers commit “daily terror against Palestinian men, women, and children … neither this terror nor ethnic cleansing would be possible without the [Israeli] army’s support”.

The United Nations has also warned that the situation in the occupied West Bank has reached a “breaking point”.

According to UN figures, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 76 Palestinians, including 18 children, in the occupied territory so far this year. About 3,800 Palestinians, nearly half of them children, have also been displaced by settler violence, demolitions and evictions.

UN’s Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Ramiz Alakbarov said on Tuesday that the UN has documented more than 1,430 settler attacks resulting in casualties or property damage across roughly 260 Palestinian communities in 2026, with many carried out in the presence of Israeli forces.

He also noted that Israeli authorities have also advanced or approved roughly 12,360 settlement housing units across the West Bank this year, including 5,160 in occupied East Jerusalem.

“These are interconnected steps, not isolated developments,” Alakbarov said, warning that they were reshaping the occupied West Bank, weakening Palestinian governance and advancing “de facto annexation”.

Baka’s confirmation is the latest repudiation of Viktor Orban’s legacy by Hungary’s new leaders

Hungary’s parliament has confirmed Andras Baka, a former Supreme Court chief and critic of former Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as the country’s next president.

The National Assembly voted in a secret ballot on Tuesday to confirm him as president with 140 votes in favour, six opposing and no abstentions.

He had been nominated on Saturday by the Tisza party, which holds a constitutional majority of more than two-thirds of parliament. During the nomination, Tisza lawmakers said Baka’s experience would represent “a significant asset” as the party lays “the foundations for Hungary’s new constitutional order”.

Opposition party Fidesz – which dominated Hungary’s politics until a landslide electoral defeat in April – boycotted the vote. They accuse Tisza of using authoritarian tactics to reshape the country’s political system, a charge the party denies.

Baka, 73, served two terms as a judge on the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg before being elected head of Hungary’s Supreme Court in 2009. He was removed two years later after publicly criticising Orban’s government reforms, which he said threatened judicial independence. He will assume office on August 19.

Baka replaces ex-President Tamas Sulyok, an Orban appointee who weeks ago was ousted from the role by constitutional amendment, part of Tisza’s wide-reaching campaign to dismantle the political power structures built by Orban during his 16 years in power.

Tisza has also used its majority to reform the media, establish an anticorruption task force and impose an eight-year term limit on prime ministership, effectively barring Orban’s return to the office.

While Hungary’s presidency carries mostly ceremonial powers, with limited authority to veto or refer legislation, Baka’s is appointment is seen by many as the latest repudiation of Orban’s legacy.