West

‘Cycle of terror’ spikes as Higher Planning Council set to advance plans to build 1,985 new settlement units in occupied West Bank.

Israeli forces and settlers have carried out 2,350 attacks across the occupied West Bank last month in an “ongoing cycle of terror”, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CRRC).

CRRC head Mu’ayyad Sha’ban said on Wednesday that Israeli forces carried out 1,584 attacks – including direct physical attacks, the demolition of homes and the uprooting of olive trees – with most of the violence focused on the governorates of Ramallah (542), Nablus (412) and Hebron (401).

The research, compiled in a CRRC monthly report titled Occupation Violations and Colonial Expansion Measures, also noted 766 attacks by settlers. The commission said they are expanding settlements, which are illegal under international law, as part of what it called an “organised strategy that aims to displace the land’s indigenous people and enforce a fully racist colonial regime”.

The report said settler attacks reached a new peak with most targeting the Ramallah governorate (195), Nablus (179) and Hebron (126). Olive pickers received the brunt of attacks, according to the report, which said they were the victims of “state terror” that had been “orchestrated in the dark backrooms of the occupation government”.

It described instances of Israeli “vandalism and theft” carried out in cahoots with Israeli soldiers that have seen the “uprooting, destruction and poisoning” of 1,200 olive trees in Hebron, Ramallah, Tubas, Qalqilya, Nablus and Bethlehem. During the violence, settlers have tried to establish seven new outposts on Palestinian land since October in the governorates of Hebron and Nablus.

For decades, the Israeli military has uprooted olive trees, an important Palestinian cultural symbol, across the West Bank as part of efforts by successive Israeli governments to seize Palestinian land and forcibly displace residents.

The spike in Israeli violence comes amid expectations that Israel’s Higher Planning Council (HPC), part of the Israeli army’s Civil Administration overseeing the occupied West Bank, will meet to discuss the construction of 1,985 new settlement units in the West Bank on Wednesday.

The left-wing Israeli movement Peace Now said 1,288 of the units would be rolled out in two isolated settlements in the northern West Bank, namely Avnei Hefetz and Einav Plan.

It said the HPC had been holding weekly meetings since November last year to advance housing projects in the settlements, thus normalising and accelerating construction on land taken from Palestinians.

Since the beginning of 2025, the HPC has pushed forward a record 28,195 housing units, Peace Now said.

In August, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich drew international condemnation after saying plans to build thousands of homes as part of the proposed E1 settlement scheme in the West Bank “buries the idea of a Palestinian state”.

The E1 project, shelved for years amid opposition from the United States and European allies, would connect occupied East Jerusalem with the existing illegal Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim.

The Israeli far right’s push to annex the West Bank would essentially end the possibility of implementing a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as outlined in numerous United Nations resolutions.

United States President Donald Trump’s administration has been adamant that it won’t allow Israel to annex the occupied territory.  US Vice President JD Vance, while visiting Israel recently, said Trump would oppose Israeli annexation of the West Bank and it would not happen. Vance said as he left Israel, “If it was a political stunt, it is a very stupid one, and I personally take some insult to it.”

But the US has done nothing to rein in Israel’s assaults and crackdowns on Palestinians in the West Bank as it trumpets its Gaza ceasefire efforts.

Israel is holding a record 360 Palestinian children from the occupied West Bank in its prisons, many without charge or trial, in what rights groups call a system of control and abuse. Families say the detentions, marked by torture and neglect, are meant to crush Palestinians.

THE UK must be home to hundreds, if not thousands, of Christmas markets – but having explored many across the UK, the South West is home to the best.

Devon comes alive in the winter months – the moors become snowy, small villages have pubs with glowing fires and towns become decked out with huge light installations.

Having lived in London for five years now, I have been to a fair few in the capital and even further afield, such as Newcastle.

But each time I visit a new Christmas market I am reminded of the ones in Devon – and honestly none compare.

Totnes Christmas Market

Totnes is the Devon Christmas Market that takes the top spot in my heart – nothing really compares to it.

Set all along the medieval town’s high street, it really does feel like stepping into the middle ages.

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And what makes it even more fun, is it takes place solely in the late afternoon to evening.

This year the market will take place on December 2, 9 and 16 from 3pm to 9pm.

Despite Totnes only being a small town, the market features over 70 stalls.

And thanks to being located on the high street (the road is closed for the event), all the shops stay open late as well with lots of festive activities inside too.

I often think Totnes is the best town in the UK for independent shops, so it is usually the Christmas market where I find the most gifts (including some for myself).

The market then also has two food court areas, one in the Civic Hall carpark and one at The Mansion.

If you head there on the final date, you will get to see the beautiful Totnes Carnival Lantern Parade as well.

Starting at 4:30pm, the parade works its way through the town.

Carols are performed in St Mary’s Church as well, and Totnes Elizabethan Museum will be open too.

Listen to your favourite carols with performances from local schools and community choirs outside St Mary’s Church.

Exeter Christmas Market

Based around the city’s historic cathedral, Exeter Cathedral Christmas Market will take place from November 20 to December 19.

This market really feels magical because as you peruse around, you’ll be in the shadow of the breathtaking cathedral.

It is Devon’s biggest Christmas market with over a hundred festive chalets, but isn’t so large that it makes it overwhelming – so it’s perfect to get comfortably into the Christmas spirit.

There are a number of stalls selling seasonal gifts and food, as well as mulled wine.

The market is full of local traders which makes it really special, including South Devon Chilli Farm – well-known for its chilli chocolate.

Devon is also a top spot for cider producers, and at this year’s market there will be Ventons Devon Cyder, made with vintage cyder apples.

Christmas Shopping Fayre

If you are panicking about what to get people or have a lot of people to buy for, then head to the Christmas Shopping Fayre at Westpoint in Exeter.

Across December 5, 6 and 7, visitors can head to this giant Christmas market – which is inside!

There are lots of stalls selling a range of items, and there is even a free Santa’s grotto.

It costs £5 per adult to enter and children under 16-years-old are free.

Michaelmas Fair

‍The Michaelmas Fair is another one located in an amazing setting – but this time it is at a castle.

Found at Powderham Castle in Exeter, The Michaelmas Fair will take place on November 6, between 10am and 3pm.

There are a number of stalls selling crafted items and gifts you can’t find on the high street and of course, food and drink is available as well.

The setting is also a big draw to this market as it is located in the courtyard of the castle.

Unusually, if you have an antique or collectible, bring it along and you can have it valued for free.

It costs £3.50 per person, if you book in advance, or £5 per person on the door.

Newton Abbot Christmas Fayre

Located at Newton Abbot Racecourse on November 29, you will find the Christmas Fayre.

The event will take place between 10am and 4pm and there will be a number of family activities to enjoy.

The best thing about Newton Abbot Racecourse is that it is super accessible via public transport, thanks to being close to Newton Abbot town centre.

In addition to 70 local stallholders with handmade jewellery and decorations, there will also be a Christmas Village with 60 stables featuring craftsmen.

There’s a cafe as well, with mulled wine, hot drinks and lunch options available.

This event though, is definitely a top spot for kids as there is a face painter, Dartmoor ponies and even a snow globe that you can step inside.

Families can also take part in a pottery painting workshop or adults can opt to make a wreath.

Tickets cost £3 per adult and children are free.

Christmas Artisan Market and ‘Dino-roars’ Christmas storytelling

Last but not least is a Christmas market in a hidden spot.

The small village of Cockington is just set back from the Torbay seafront, but feels like a completely different world from the surrounding area.

Think thatched cottages and little streams.

Taking place on December 14 between 10:30am and 4pm, Cockington Court will host an artisan market with handmade products from local businesses and artists, such as glassblowers, jewellers and florists.

Entry is free.

The Seven Dials cafe will be open for hot drinks, lunch options, cream teas and sweet treats.

For kids, there will also be ‘Dino-roars’ Christmas storytelling, where families can listen to Christmas tales including ‘The Christmasaurus and the night before Christmas’ by Tom Fletcher and ‘The Dinosaur Who Pooped a Reindeer’ by Tom Fletcher and Dougie.

Kids can even meet some of the dino characters and make dinosaur Christmas trees.

The storytelling sessions cost £4.50 per person.

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In other Christmas market news, one of the UK’s most popular holiday parks to get £2million winter wonderland.

Plus, the UK Christmas market that attracts nearly two million visitors is getting three new attractions.

For the first time in seven years, Lily Allen is back with a new album. It’s intimate, raw and autofictional.

Last week, the “Smile” singer shared a 14-track breakup record, “West End Girl.” Amid her split with “Stranger Things” actor David Harbour, Allen provides an in-depth look into a broken relationship where the line between being open and being unfaithful is thin, where dating apps are on the table and where heartbreak seems inevitable.

The album, which was written in 10 days last December, begins with Allen’s move to New York. The singer relocated to the East Coast in 2020 with her two daughters and then-husband, following the couple’s whirlwind wedding in Las Vegas. When Allen started dating Harbour in 2019, she had just finalized her divorce from Sam Cooper, with whom she shares her children.

On “West End Girl’s” opening track, she sings about receiving an offer to be in a West End production in London. In 2021, Allen made her debut in the supernatural play “2:22 — A Ghost Story.” From that moment on, tensions and distance only continued to build between the pair. Toward the end of the title track, Allen includes her end of a call where her partner is seemingly asking to open up the marriage.

As the pop melodies continue to ebb and flow, Allen reveals accusations of infidelity, the complications of being in an open marriage and mentions a pseudonym for a mistress on a track named “Madeline.” She doesn’t stray away from details, especially when it comes to finding boxes of sex toys, love letters from other women and calling her partner a “sex addict” on “P— Palace.”

By the end of the record, she makes it clear that the relationship is irreparable. The pair announced their separation last February after four years of marriage. Since the project’s release last Friday, critics have been quick to fawn over Allen’s return to music and Allen has been sure to let the press know the album is not fully based in fact.

In an interview with The Times, the U.K.’s oldest national daily newspaper, she says, “I don’t think I could say it’s all true — I have artistic license. … But yes, there are definitely things I experienced within my relationship that have ended up on this album.”

She similarly told Perfect Magazine that the work can be considered “autofiction” and that an “alter ego” is singing. When sitting down with British Vogue, she clarified that the album is inspired by what went on in the relationship between, but “that’s not to say that it’s all gospel,”

Harbour has yet to directly speak out about their relationship and has strayed away from the public eye, disabling comments on his Instagram page.

In an interview with GQ in April, he said, “There’s no use in that form of engaging [with tabloid news] because it’s all based on hysterical hyperbole.”

The highly anticipated final season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” where Harbour plays the role of police chief Jim Hopper, will be released Nov. 27.

CONAKRY, Guinea — It was the middle of the day when Omar Diaw, known by his artist name “Chimere” — French for chimera — approached a blank wall off the main thoroughfare in Guinea’s capital and started spray-painting.

“They know who I am,” he said confidently. Though it wasn’t clear who ”they” were, civilians and police didn’t bat an eye as Diaw’s fellow artists unloaded dozens of paint cans onto the roadside in Conakry.

Graffiti has thrived for years in Diaw’s native Senegal, where the modern urban street art first took off in West Africa. But when he moved to Guinea in 2018 to explore a new place, he said such art was nearly nonexistent.

“It was thought that graffiti was vandalism,” he said.

To win over the public, Diaw took a gentle approach, using graffiti for public awareness campaigns. One of his first was to raise awareness about COVID-19 preventive measures.

“We had to seduce the population,” he said.

The port city of Conakry faces rapid urbanization. Diaw’s graffiti has become an undeniable part of its crowded, concrete-heavy landscape.

His larger-than-life images of famous Guinean musicians and African independence leaders now dwarf the overloaded trucks that drive by. Drying laundry hung over the portrait of the West African resistance fighter Samory Toure.

The tag of Diaw’s graffiti collective, Guinea Ghetto Graff, is on murals all over the city.

Graffiti as it’s known today began in the 1960s and ’70s in the United States. It arrived in West Africa via Dakar, Senegal, in 1988, when the region’s first graffiti artist, Amadou Lamine Ngom, started painting on the city’s walls.

Known by his artist name, “Docta,” Ngom and a group of fellow artists were commissioned the following year to paint murals for an awareness campaign aimed at cleaning up Dakar’s streets.

Ngom, 51, said that at the beginning, aside from such campaigns, he did graffiti mostly at night. He later changed his approach.

“I decided to do it in broad daylight,” he said. “So as not to copy what’s happening in the United States, Europe or elsewhere. To create graffiti that resembles the African reality, taking into account our reality, our values.”

Ngom, who later mentored the teenage Diaw, said communities grew to respect the public artwork since it reflected their lives and experiences.

With the public’s backing, “the authorities didn’t have a choice,” Ngom said.

These days, graffiti has grown more assertive in Senegal, becoming part of the political messaging around antigovernment protests. In Guinea, Diaw’s graffiti has addressed issues such as migration.

Diaw said Conakry’s governor supports much of his work and has given him carte blanche to do it wherever he wants.

As his latest work beside the thoroughfare took shape, passersby began to stop and admire the portrait of Guinea’s military leader, Gen. Mamadi Doumbouya, who took power in a 2021 coup.

A 22-year-old driver, Ousmane Sylla, said he was familiar with Diaw’s gigantic paintings near Conakry’s airport.

“It reminds us of old Guinean musicians. It reminds us of history,” he said. “Graffiti is good for Africa, it’s good for this country, it’s good for everyone. I like it, and it changed the face of our city.”

The next step might be bringing in a wider range of artists.

“I would really like to see more women become a part of this, because they say that [graffiti] is for men,” said Mama Aissata Camara, a rare female artist on Guinea’s graffiti scene.

Risemberg writes for the Associated Press.

While the world talks of a Palestinian state, Israel is quietly playing a different game to surround, slice up and claim the West Bank.

Piece by piece, Israel is playing out strategies first perfected in the ancient Chinese game of Go.

West Ham’s miserable Premier League campaign continued with a defeat at Leeds on Friday which ensured their worst start to a season for 52 years.

The result was their third consecuitve defeat under new manager Nuno Espirito Santo, who remains winless since replacing Graham Potter in September.

The Hammers, who sit 19th in the table, have recorded just one win this season and ironically it arrived against Nottingham Forest, when Nuno was in charge at the City Ground.

A dismal return of just four points in total represents West Ham’s joint-worst at this stage of a league campaign, with the club replicating that tally in the second tier in 1932-33 and 1973-74, when they finished bottom.

Having been appointed with the task of making sure West Ham don’t suffer a relegation that would leave them outside the top flight for the first time since 2011-12, Nuno, who took a point in his first match against Everton, is struggling to find answers.

“There is many problems in our club unfortunately. It is not up to us to hide ourselves behind the problems. Everyone has to be alive and to do much more and be in the right position,” said the Portuguese.

“We were not dealing with our defensive situations and I felt like we needed a striker to hold the ball, so maybe that’s not the greatest from me.

“These kind of mistakes are unacceptable in the Premier League.”

Nuno, also the first West Ham boss to fail to record a win from any of his first four Premier League games since Manuel Pellegrini in September 2018, added: “There is quality there, there is time, but nothing will happen if we don’t change.

“We must change our attitude, we must change the way we approach things, we must commit ourselves better, prepare better, work harder.

“All the things – that is the reality. We don’t expect things to change by themselves. Realising we have time can be a mistake if we don’t change things around quickly.”

The Israeli parliament has voted to annex the occupied West Bank – a move unlikely to become law but described as an “insult” by United States Vice President JD Vance.

President Donald Trump insists annexation won’t happen, but Israeli settler violence is escalating.

So are US-Israeli relations in upheaval?

Presenter: Adrian Finighan

Guests:

Alon Pinkas – Former Israeli ambassador and Consul General in New York

Mark Pfeifle – Republican strategist and president of Off the Record Strategies

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A Palestinian child has died of wounds sustained during an Israeli military raid in the Askar camp in Nablus, in the latest violence against civilians in the occupied West Bank, as a fragile ceasefire in Gaza brings little respite to Palestinians in the destroyed enclave.

Israeli forces on Friday also stormed the town of Aqaba, north of Tubas in the West Bank, and made a number of arrests earlier today in Hebron and Tal.

The Israeli army said they arrested 44 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank over the past week. A military statement says operations were carried out in various parts of the territory and all people detained were wanted by Israel. It added that troops also confiscated weapons and conducted interrogations during the operations.

Last week, 10-year-old Mohammad al-Hallaq was shot dead by Israeli forces while playing football in ar-Rihiya, Hebron.

According to the United Nations, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army and settlers since October 7, 2023, in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.

A fifth of the victims are children, including 206 boys and seven girls, the UN said. The number also includes 20 women and at least seven people with disabilities. This does not include Palestinians who died in Israeli detention during the same period, the UN added.

A United States-brokered Gaza ceasefire deal has seen nearly 2,000 Palestinian detainees released from Israeli jails, many bearing visible signs of abuse.

Dozens of Palestinian bodies returned have been badly mutilated and show signs of torture and execution.

Meanwhile, in tandem with the military’s sustained crackdown in the occupied territory, Israeli settlers have rampaged near Ramallah, destroying Palestinian property at an alarming rate daily with impunity, protected by the military.

Settlers set fire to several Palestinian vehicles in the hill area in Deir Dibwan, east of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, at dawn this morning, the Wafa news agency reported.

On Sunday, an Israeli settler brutally assaulted a Palestinian woman while she was harvesting olives in the West Bank town of Turmus Aya.

Afaf Abu Alia, 53, suffered a brain haemorrhage due to the attack.

“The attack started with around 10 settlers, but more kept joining,” one Palestinian witness told Al Jazeera. “I think by the end, there were 40, protected by the army. We were outnumbered; we couldn’t defend ourselves.”

According to data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), settlers have attacked Palestinians nearly 3,000 times in the occupied West Bank over the past two years.

UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said on Friday that since October 7, 2023, “the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has also witnessed a sharp escalation in violence”.

“The increasing annexation of the West Bank is happening steadily in a gross violation of international law,” UNRWA said, referring to the expansion and recognition of illegal Israeli settlements.

US lays down law to Israel on annexation

After a vote in the Israeli parliament on Wednesday advancing a bill that would formalise the annexation of the occupied West Bank, senior US officials have been adamant it won’t happen under their watch.

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday, “Israel is not going to do anything with the West Bank” amid growing condemnation of an Israeli parliamentary motion that seeks to formally annex the occupied Palestinian territory.

Earlier in the day, in an interview with Time Magazine, Trump said that the US is firmly against Israeli annexation. “It won’t happen. It won’t happen. It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries. And you can’t do that now,” Trump told Time.

US Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, while in Israel, also said that Trump’s policy remains that the occupied West Bank won’t be annexed by Israel, calling the parliamentary vote in favour of annexation a “very stupid political stunt” that he “personally” took some insult from.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in Israel to shore up the Gaza ceasefire and second-phase plans, has also lined up in the Trump’s administration’s firm opposition to Israeli annexation.

JERUSALEM — Vice President JD Vance criticized on Thursday a vote in Israel’s parliament the previous day about the annexation of the occupied West Bank, saying it amounted to an “insult” and went against the Trump administration policies.

Hard-liners in the Israeli parliament had narrowly passed a symbolic preliminary vote in support of annexing the West Bank — an apparent attempt to embarrass Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while Vance was still in the country.

The bill, which required only a simple majority of lawmakers present in the house on Wednesday, passed with a 25-24 vote. But it was unlikely to pass multiple rounds of voting to become law or win a majority in the 120-seat parliament. Netanyahu, who is opposed to it, also has tools to delay or defeat it.

On the tarmac of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport before departing Israel, Vance said that if the Knesset’s vote was a “political stunt, then it is a very stupid political stunt.”

“I personally take some insult to it,” Vance said. “The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel.”

Netanyahu is struggling to stave off early elections as cracks between factions in the right-wing parties, some of whom were upset over the ceasefire and the security sacrifices it required of Israel, grow more apparent.

While many members of Netanyahu’s coalition, including the Likud, support annexation, they have backed off those calls since U.S. President Trump said last month that he opposes such a move. The United Arab Emirates, a key U.S. and Israeli ally in the push to peace in Gaza, has said any annexation by Israel would be a “red line.”

The Palestinians seek the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, for a future independent state. Israeli annexation of the West Bank would all but bury hopes for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians — the outcome supported by most of the world.

Gaza’s reconstruction and Palestinians’ return

Vance also unveiled new details about U.S. plans for Gaza, saying he expected reconstruction to begin soon in some “Hamas-free” areas of the territory but warning that rebuilding territory after a devastating two-year war could take years.

“The hope is to rebuild Rafah over the next two to three years and theoretically you could have half a million people live (there),” he said.

The war caused widespread destruction across the coastal Palestinian enclave. The United Nations in July estimated that the war generated some 61 million tons of debris in Gaza. The World Bank, the U.N. and the European Union estimated earlier this year that it would cost about $53 billion to rebuild.

The Israel-Hamas war has killed at least 68,280 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. Israel has disputed them without providing its own toll.

Intense U.S. push toward peace

Earlier this week, Vance announced the opening of a civilian military coordination center in southern Israel where some 200 U.S. troops are working alongside the Israeli military and delegations from other countries planning the stabilization and reconstruction of Gaza.

The U.S. is seeking support from other allies, especially Gulf Arab nations, to create an international stabilization force to be deployed to Gaza and train a Palestinian force.

“We’d like to see Palestinian police forces in Gaza that are not Hamas and that are going to do a good job, but those still have to be trained and equipped,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said ahead of his trip to Israel.

Rubio, who is to meet with Netanyahu later on Thursday, also criticized Israeli far-right lawmakers’ effort to push for the annexation of the West Bank.

Israeli media referred to the nonstop parade of American officials visiting to ensure Israel holds up its side of the fragile ceasefire as “Bibi-sitting.” The term, utilizing Netanyahu’s nickname of Bibi, refers to an old campaign ad when Netanyahu positioned himself as the “Bibi-sitter” whom voters could trust with their kids.

In Gaza, a dire need for medical care

In the first medical evacuation since the ceasefire began on Oct. 10, the head of the World Health Organization said Thursday the group has evacuated 41 critical patients and 145 companions out of the Gaza Strip.

In a statement posted to X, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on nations to show solidarity and help some 15,000 patients who are still waiting for approval to receive medical care outside Gaza.

His calls were echoed by an official with the U.N. Population Fund who on Wednesday described the “sheer devastation” that he witnessed on his most recent travel to Gaza, saying that there is no such thing as a “normal birth in Gaza now.”

Andrew Saberton, an executive director at UNFPA, told reporters how difficult the agency’s work has become due to the lack of functioning or even standing health care facilities.

“The sheer extent of the devastation looked like the set of a dystopian film. Unfortunately, it is not fiction,” he said.

Court hearing on journalists’ access to Gaza

Separately on Thursday, Israel’s Supreme Court held a hearing into whether to open the Gaza Strip to the international media and gave the state 30 days to present a new position in light of the new situation under the ceasefire.

Israel has blocked reporters from entering Gaza since the war erupted with the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023.

The Foreign Press Association, which represents dozens of international news organizations including The Associated Press, had asked the court to order the government to open the border.

In a statement after Thursday’s decision, the FPA expressed its “disappointment” and called the Israeli government’s position to deny journalists access “unacceptable.”

The court rejected a request from the FPA early in the war, due to objections by the government on security grounds. The group filed a second request for access in September 2024. The government has repeatedly delayed the case.

Palestinian journalists have covered the two-year war for international media. But like all Palestinians, they have been subject to tough restrictions on movement and shortages of food, repeatedly displaced and operated under great danger. Some 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli fire, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

“It is time for Israel to lift the closure and let us do our work alongside our Palestinian colleagues,” said Tania Kraemer, chairperson of the FPA.

Brito and Lee write for the Associated Press. Lee reported from Washington. AP writers Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut and Farnoush Amiri in New York contributed to this report.

Oct. 22 (UPI) — Israel’s Knesset on Wednesday, in a preliminary vote, approved sovereignty in the West Bank for Israel, described as a political ploy by the right-wing opposition during U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s visit to the nation.

President Donald Trump said last month that he will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank.

The bill, which is called “Application of Israeli Sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, 2025,” passed 25-24 by the parliament, and was transferred to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. It must still pass three additional votes in the plenum session.

The legislation says that “the laws, judicial system, administration, and sovereignty of the State of Israel shall apply to all areas of settlement in Judea and Samaria.”

A more limited annexation bill passed 32-9, also in a preliminary reading. The bill applies sovereignty to the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim near Jerusalem.

Militant Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and not the West Bank, said in a statement that the recent bill “reflects the ugly face of the colonial occupation.”

As a “flagrant violation of all relevant international laws and resolution,” Hamas said Israel “insists on continuing its attempts to ‘legitimize’ settlements and impose Zionist ‘sovereignty’ over the occupied Palestinian territories.”

In 2007, the Palestinian territories were split into two separate administrations.

Israel maintains military control of the 2,263 square miles of the West Bank, while the Palestinian Authority, led by the Fatah party, has jurisdiction over civil and security authority in specific zones, based on the 1995 Oslo Accords.

The West Bank has been divided into three zones.

Area C, which makes up about 60% the West Bank, is under full Israeli military and civilian control. Area C includes agricultural land, water springs, quarries and land for future infrastructure for Israelis.

In August, Israel approved final plans for a settlement project in E1 of Area C between East Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement. This arrangement would sever the West Bank for a contiguous Palestinian State, which Israel opposes as a two-state solution.

More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank out of the total population of 4 million.

Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 and applies its civil law there, though the international community does not recognize this annexation. About 500,000 Israelis live there.

“By applying sovereignty to Judea and Samaria, we are correcting a historical wrong that is long overdue,” Avi Maoz, head of the far-right Noam party, said. “Since the government has hesitated, it is our duty as members of Knesset to act.”

All but one Likud minister boycotted the vote, with Yuli Edelstein breaking ranks to cast a decisive vote. Likud then removed Edelstein from his seat on the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, a spokesperson for the lawmaker confirmed to The Times of Israel.

Maoz denied a request by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to delay the vote.

Netanyahu’s Likud party said the vote was an attempt to embarrass the government while U.S. Vice President JD Vance visited the country.

“We strengthen settlements every day with actions, budgets, construction, industry, and not with words,” the Times of Israel reported by Likud. “True sovereignty will be achieved not with a show-off law for the protocol, but by working properly on the ground and creating the political conditions appropriate for the recognition of our sovereignty, as was done in the Golan Heights and in Jerusalem.”

The United Arab Emirates said in September that annexation of the West Bank would severely undermine the spirit of the Abraham Accords.

The West Bank was captured during the Six-Day War in 1967, except for East Jerusalem, as a “temporary belligerent occupation.”

The historic city of Bethlehem is in the West Bank and is under Israeli occupation. It has historic ties to the Jewish religion, as well as to Christianity and Islam.

In 2024, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an advisory opinion that Israel’s presence in the West Bank was unlawful under international law because it is no longer temporary.

Reuters

‘We never please everyone’

Israel Police

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THE UK’S capital isn’t exactly short of train lines – but a completely new service is taking a step closer to getting approval.

Transport for London (TfL) is hoping that its proposed West London Orbital (WLO) line will get the green light next month.

Plans for the WLO launched back in 2017 and propose to create new connections to north and west London.

This would include the line travelling through Hounslow to Hendon and West Hampstead via Old Oak Common – the new rail hub created for HS2.

The proposed rail line promises to cut the journey time considerably between Harlesden and Brent Cross to just a few minutes.

Currently, travellers heading on this route need to make several changes.

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If the plans are approved, then the WLO will be built on an old freight line that hasn’t had passengers on it since 1902.

A new station would also be built on Lionel Road, near Gunnersbury Park.

Services could run from Kew Bridge as well.

In total, the project is expected to cost around £700million.

TfL is hoping that they will receive backing from the government in its autumn budget and if the project is approved, then the line will become the seventh branch of the London Overground network.

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said that the WLO could “transform the future of transport in the capital”.

He added: “As the West London Orbital route would be integrated into the London Overground network, it would be given its own line name, consistent with the principles of the individual line names I launched in 2024.

“The local communities along the line, the local heritage, history, and interchanges with other lines would all be taken into consideration to find a suitable name that showcases London’s rich diversity and makes sense for wayfinding and navigation.”

A number of other rail projects are proposed for the capital including the DLR extension and Bakerloo extension.

The Bakerloo Line extension would extend the tube line from its current terminus at Elephant & Castle, to Lewisham.

The project would involve adding a number of new stations along the route, including on Old Kent Road and New Cross Gate.

And an extension will also be carried out on the DLR to Thamesmead, veering off the current line at Gallions Reach.

This involves adding a new station at Beckton Riverside too.

Commenting on the ongoing projects in July, Sadiq Khan said: “Subject to successful funding discussions, as well as further project development, planning and public consultation, I am confident that the DLR extension could be delivered by 2032, with the Bakerloo line extension and West London Orbital following later in the 2030s.”

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These are troubling times for West Ham off the pitch too.

There were a large number of empty seats at London Stadium on Monday as some fans staged a boycott, staying away in protest against the running of the club.

While this was the first boycott, supporters have previously called for chairman David Sullivan and vice-chair Karren Brady, who have been at West Ham since 2010, to step down.

Thousands of fans demonstrated before last month’s defeat by Crystal Palace and in response the club issued a lengthy statement,, external saying they were continuing “to listen to fan feedback”, have made “significant investment into the football operation” and “continue to do everything we can to improve the matchday experience”.

Payne was one of the fans who stayed away from the game for what he said was the first and the last time he will do so.

“There was a boycott but fans are not the problem, we are the solution waiting to be heard,” he said.

“It was a deliberate boycott to send a message to the owners that something has got to change.”

Payne said fan protests are solely aimed at the club’s owners, rather than the manager or players.

But Nuno’s decision to start with inverted full-backs against Brentford did raise some eyebrows.

“It’s unfair on Nuno and it’s unfair on the players as well,” Payne added.

“Nuno is a fantastic bloke, but I think he got his selections a bit skew-whiff last night by playing a young left-back – who has never played anywhere else – as right-back. Ollie Scarles, I felt sorry for him really.”

There were empty seats before West Ham took on Brentford in their London derby. And plenty during the game. And even more so as the game drew to a close.

The fans who were left booed their team off after a truly miserable 2-0 defeat that could easily have been 5-0.

These are toxic times at London Stadium, with some fans staying away in a protest against the running of the club.

New Hammers boss Nuno Espirito Santo – yet to win after three games – admits the players have to work hard to get the fans back onside.

There was no sugar-coating this performance by the head coach with his after-match verdict.

“Not good enough. Poor,” said the Portuguese, who was managing his first West Ham home game since replacing Graham Potter, after two away trips.

“Fairly Brentford won the game, they were the better team.

“I think we are all concerned. You can see our own fans are concerned. Concern becomes anxiety, becomes silence. That anxiety passes to the players. We have a problem.

“It’s understandable. It’s up to us to change. The fans need to see something that pleases them and they can support us and give us energy.

“I understand it, I understand it totally, and I respect it. It’s up to us, it’s up to us to change it. We are the people who have to pull the fans back together.”

West Ham remain 19th, with just four points from their opening eight games. They are in action in the next Premier League game too, visiting Leeds on Friday.

Nuno told BBC Sport: “It’s a challenge for all of us. It’s up to us to change the momentum and bring our fans back to support us. In four days’ time we need a big improvement.”

It has been a week since the ceasefire was announced in Gaza. When we heard the news in the occupied West Bank, we celebrated. We felt relief and hope that the genocide is finally over. But we also realised that there is no ceasefire for us.

The daily violence we have been subjected to for decades is showing no signs of abating. Since October 7, 2023, the brutality of our occupier has only intensified. Today, life in the West Bank has become almost impossible.

Violence, dispossession and paralysis

After the ceasefire deal was announced, a friend’s little daughter cheered; she then asked to go with her grandparents to pick olives. He told her that it would be difficult to do, to which she responded, “Why? Isn’t the war over?”

How do you explain to a child that the war ending in Gaza does not mean Palestinian families in the West Bank still can access their land to harvest olives? People still cannot reach their groves because of barriers set up by the Israeli military or they fear attacks by Israeli soldiers and settlers, or both.

There are daily violent assaults on Palestinian farmers and their land. Since October 7, 2023, there have been 7,154 attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestian people and property – some of them deadly.

Almost 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army and settler mobs, including 212 children; more than 10,000 Palestinians have been displaced. Settlers and soldiers have destroyed 37,237 olive trees since October 7, 2023.

Even life in urban areas has become unbearable.

As a resident of Rawabi, a city north of Ramallah, I, too, feel the suffocation of the occupation every day.

If I need to travel outside my city to run errands, shop, obtain official paperwork, or anything else, I could get stuck at a checkpoint for hours and never make it to my destination. There are four iron gates, a military tower, and a barrier between Rawabi and Ramallah; they can make the 10-minute trip between Rawabi and Ramallah last an eternity.

Throughout the West Bank, there are 916 Israeli barriers, barriers and iron gates, 243 of which were constructed after October 7, 2023. These open and close at the Israeli army’s whim, meaning a Palestinian can get stuck at one barrier for hours. This disrupts every aspect of life – from family visits to urgent medical care to school attendance and transportation of goods.

We have also been denied access to Jerusalem and thus our freedom of worship at Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Few Palestinians are given the special permits needed to enter the city. We last had access to Jerusalem more than 20 years ago. This means an entire generation of young people know nothing about the city except from the pictures and stories told by their parents and grandparents.

Even at night, the Palestinians are not left alone by the occupation. Any Palestinian home may be subject to a raid by the Israeli army, with soldiers breaking the front door, terrorising the family inside and detaining without charge some of its members. Neighbours would, too, be terrorised with Israeli soldiers firing tear gas canisters for no reason, just to cause more suffering.

The right to a normal life—to worship, to spend quality time with friends and family, to move freely, to access regular medical care and education —are all denied to the Palestinians in the West Bank.

The spectre of annexation

Over the decades since the occupation of 1967, Israel has managed to control almost half of the land of the West Bank. It has done so by constructing settlements and confiscating land from its Palestinian owners by declaring it either “state land” or “military zone”. The theft of Palestinian land accelerated after October 7; at least 12,300 acres (4,9787 hectares) were seized in two years.

In many cases, confiscated land is used to establish new settlement outposts or to expand existing settlements.

Settlement construction in the West Bank is not random. Rather, land is selected in a way that encircles Palestinian villages and towns, creating a settlement belt around them that prevents any form of geographical continuity between Palestinian territories, thus thwarting the dream of a future state.

To maintain these illegal settlements, Israel has also laid its hands on the West Bank’s natural resources. It has seized almost all water resources. This has ensured a massive water reservoir in the West Bank to serve the settlement expansion.

For the Palestinians, this has been disastrous. They are now almost completely dependent on Israeli water company “Mekorot”, which gives very small quotas of water to densely populated Palestinian areas, while settlers receive several times the Palestinian share per capita.

Every summer, when drought settles in, Palestinians are forced to buy extra water at exorbitant prices from Mekorot. Meanwhile, Palestinian wells and rain water tanks are often attacked and destroyed.

Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli government has accelerated its efforts to carry out annexation. We feel that the seizure of Area C – an area established by the Oslo Accords where Israel has full civilian and security control – is imminent. This would mean razing Palestinian villages and communities and expelling people towards Area A, which constitutes just 18 percent of the West Bank. Area B will follow. The process of forced expulsion has already started with Bedouin communities in the two areas.

This is our reality here in the West Bank. While peace conferences and meetings were held and peace in the Middle East is declared, we know nothing of it. Every day, every hour, every minute, we are harassed, intimidated, dispossessed and killed.

For decades, Israel has rejected political solutions and pursued a policy of controlling land, people, and resources. It has continued to wage war on us even when its bombardment has stopped. The only way to achieve true peace is to acknowledge the occupation and end it.

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

WASHINGTON — The very first thing you notice about the senior senator from West Virginia is that voice.

There is no doubt about it: Robert C. Byrd has the best voice in Washington.

It’s a deep yet tremulous 74-year-old voice that seems to descend upon the listener from on high, as if Byrd is somewhere above you, uttering eternal truths that are immediately being hammered into granite.

As he talks, Byrd dances through the octaves, carefully playing with his articulation of each vowel and consonant, surrounding his audience in the sweet darkness of sound.

Long, crafted pauses break his sentences, and during those silent moments time seems suspended; Byrd is then like nothing so much as a Shakespearean actor warming to the task.

The thought occurs that America is a safer place because Robert Byrd went into politics rather than into door-to-door sales.

Or is it?

“My voice, a political tool? I have never used my voice as a political tool,” insists Byrd in the sliding baritone that he has so often utilized as a political tool.

As he speaks, Byrd’s ornate Victorian-Era office in the Capitol Building is transformed into a personal stage. Beneath murals glorifying the Republic, Byrd paces the room, moves toward a shaft of sunlight and strikes a heroic pose beside a tall window.

He is a short, compact man, but his size belies the power of his presence. With his carefully coiffed silver hair, his high forehead and piercing eyes, and impeccably dressed in a vested dark suit, Byrd has the look of an important person not to be messed with, a fundamentalist preacher or a hanging judge.

Slowly, Byrd gets down to business. He moves to his desk, opens a drawer and pulls out a large black book. It is the Bible. Byrd turns to a coffee table in front of his audience, lifts the Bible and with sudden force slams the book down.

He slaps his hand onto the Bible. “Has Robert Byrd ever twisted arms to get the CIA to move jobs to West Virginia?”

His question to himself thunders through the room.

“Has Robert Byrd twisted arms at the FBI to move jobs to West Virginia?

“I swear on the Holy Bible that I have not!”

It is a bravura performance by the Senate’s premier dramatist.

Byrd, a Democrat, is here for some serious damage control. The former Senate majority leader and current chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee is under attack as Congress returns later this month, and he wants to get his side told.

The charge that Byrd is answering: that he has used his sway over the appropriations process, the flow of money, in the Senate to move–no, his real foes would say steal–thousands upon thousands of government jobs and take them to his depressed Mountain State.

Byrd’s pork-barrel deals have prompted the kind of shock and outrage from his colleagues that has rarely been seen here since Jimmy Stewart filibustered Claude Rains’ crooked dam project in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

“Everyone in this body knows what’s going on,” Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) warned darkly in a recent emotional rebuke to Byrd on the floor of the House. “We all know what’s taken place. I believe that actions like this . . . are disgraceful.”

Byrd’s efforts to move FBI and CIA facilities and thousands of jobs to West Virginia–immediately transforming rural hamlets there into international centers of law enforcement and intelligence gathering–have drawn special fire.

The attacks have come from such diverse sources as right-wing House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich (“It makes no sense at all except as a pure abuse of power,” Gingrich blasted) to Tom Clancy, best-selling novelist and friend of the CIA (“The Duke of West Virginia,” Clancy wrote in The Washington Post, “. . . is taking serfs from one fiefdom and moving them to another–his–in return for which he will deign to grant favors to those willing to support his legislative kidnaping”).

To be sure, pork has never gone out of style in Washington. There is a good reason, after all, why Congress seems so reluctant to cut the bloated defense budget, even after the collapse of the Soviet Evil Empire; it’s because the Pentagon and the nation’s military contractors have been so efficient at spreading their largess (factories and jobs) throughout almost every congressional district in the country.

So when others in Congress say they are shocked–shocked!–to find pork-barrel politics going on, their protestations may be just a wee bit disingenuous.

Still, Byrd has been catching flak because he seems to have gone beyond the pale, the accepted norms of pork. At least by the standards of modern Washington, that is, where special interests usually bring home the bacon through less showy practices–and without leaving so many tracks.

Indeed, perhaps Byrd’s biggest mistake was that he failed to follow convention and work through a bunch of shadowy lobbyists; he has instead done pork the old-fashioned way–by dint of his brute power over the legislative process.

Byrd denies that he has abused his power or exerted undue pressure to persuade federal agencies to locate jobs and facilities in West Virginia, yet he remains quite open in his desire to do more for his state.

He has, in fact, publicly devoted himself and the remainder of his Senate career to the cause of stimulating the moribund West Virginia economy through a massive injection of government money and jobs. He even set a goal: to bring $1 billion home with him in the space of five years.

He has already exceeded that objective in just three years, and the way he has gone about it is a lesson in congressional power.

In 1989, Byrd surprised official Washington by stepping down as Senate majority leader to become chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. To most political pundits, it was a puzzling move; after all, as majority leader Byrd was a national figure. He was trading in the status of statesman for the grubby world of an obscure committee post, and few outside the Senate saw the logic in it.

Yet Byrd, a senator since 1959 (and a congressman even before that, dating to 1953) understood where real power lay in Congress.

At least the kind of power that was useful to West Virginia.

A master of parliamentary procedure and a self-taught expert on the history of the Senate, Byrd knew that while the highly visible majority leader could control the scheduling and the legislative pace in the Senate, the real substance of the Senate’s business was conducted at the committee level. Arguably the most powerful committee of all was Appropriations; while other panels could create new programs, Appropriations controlled all the money to run those programs.

“I had been in the leadership for 22 years, and that’s a long time,” Byrd says. “I had been spending all my time on the floor and on matters affecting the nation. I felt it was time to move on. I’m glad I walked away from it.”

And so, after a career in the Senate leadership, what better way to help West Virginia than to take the helm of Appropriations, where Byrd would be in a position to pick and choose which government spending programs to ship back home?

Today, Byrd doesn’t deny the obvious benefits his committee post offers West Virginia. What is good for West Virginia, Byrd explains, is good for America.

“Naturally, my state is part of this union. A highway in West Virginia versus another state . . . one shouldn’t look at it as if it is a highway in Mexico. All of these states are part of the same country.” Byrd adds that others shouldn’t begrudge West Virginia. Quoting Daniel Webster, he notes: “We don’t put lines of latitude on what public works do or don’t benefit us.”

The result: By last fall, more than $500 million in proposed federal spending for West Virginia for fiscal 1992 alone was moving through the Appropriations process in the Senate, according to Congressional Quarterly, a Washington journal that tracks Congress. A list of Byrd’s West Virginia-bound pork, compiled by Congressional Quarterly in the middle of the fall’s congressional session, was impressive; it ranged from $165 million in highway improvements to $600,000 in research grants for the study of a replacement for lime fertilizer.

More visible projects included the transfer of a 90-worker data processing division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; an Internal Revenue Service center employing 300, and a 700-worker office of the Bureau of Public Debt.

But his greatest coup was the FBI’s national fingerprinting laboratory, bringing as many as 2,600 workers to Clarksburg, W.Va.

Byrd didn’t win so much for his depressed home state by relying on friendships with his fellow senators; on the contrary, he has been successful almost exclusively because of the power of his position and his unrivaled grasp of the legislative process in the Senate–and in spite of the fact that many of his colleagues view him as cold and aloof.

“I don’t have close friends in the Senate,” Byrd quietly acknowledges. He adds, with a measure of pride: “I don’t socialize with anybody. I haven’t played a round of golf in my life.”

But with few allies to rely on, Byrd’s West Virginia-first campaign finally ran aground late in 1991 in the face of mounting congressional opposition. Thus, when Byrd tried to take the CIA, or at least a big chunk of it, to West Virginia, the rest of Congress put its foot down.

The CIA and Byrd had earlier agreed to transfer 3,000 workers to a new CIA office center to be built in West Virginia, consolidating a series of smaller offices scattered throughout the Washington area.

But this time, Byrd’s critics had seen enough.

Quickly, the House Intelligence Committee labeled the plan a “covert action.” Condemnation spilled out of Congress: “If this wasn’t so pathetic, it would be funny,” complained Rep. David O’B. Martin (R-N.Y.).

Wolf, a Republican from the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington whose district includes CIA headquarters, noted that Byrd’s actions would mean the agency would have to change its name to the “Decentralized Intelligence Agency.”

Eventually, the full House defied Byrd and has at least temporarily blocked the move.

In the face of so much criticism, Byrd repeatedly has insisted that the CIA followed a legitimate site selection process in choosing West Virginia; he also stresses that he believes his honor was impugned in the House debate over the CIA project.

How has he responded to such personal attacks?

He insists–dramatically, of course–that he remains above the fray.

“Those are innuendoes, willful misrepresentations of the facts,” Byrd says.

The lawyerly words flow slowly but steadily, as if he is pulling warm licorice from his mouth.

“I have turned my cheek to all of the innuendoes,” Byrd says.

He says again, more emphatically: “I have turned my cheek.”

After terrorists chased her from her home in Lungu village of Sokoto State, Saratu now sits in Jabo town, devastated after losing three of her own and two orphaned grandchildren who never made it out. The terrorists stormed their village in Sabon Birni, North West Nigeria. She ran barefoot to the bush, clutching a small wrapper, and never returned. For Saratu and countless others across the region, the statistics of killings, kidnappings, and cattle rustling are not just numbers. They are ruptured families, stolen futures, and a daily struggle to live with dignity in the reported violence.

Amidst shattered livelihoods and decades-long insecurity, people in Katsina, Zamfara, Kebbi, and Sokoto states have continued to push back with resilience that helps them survive, facing the violence that pushes them out of their houses and farmlands. 

HumAngle interviewed locals across the states, documenting what drives the violence, how the communities struggle to cope, and what a credible path to peace might look like. Those interviewed included traditional rulers, religious leaders, women’s associations, vigilante groups, civil society activists, and members of both herding and farming communities who shared experiences, human costs, and grassroots resilience.

For about one and a half decades, these people have been engulfed in a violence that ravaged many parts of the northwestern region. What began as disputes between farmers and herders has mutated into cattle rustling, mass killing and the scourge of kidnapping for ransom. These conflicts have seeped into every facet of their lives, displacing families, crippling agriculture, eroding trust, and gnawing at the very fabric of society.

Taxed by fear

Sokoto’s geographical misfortune is evident on a map. Nestled against the volatile Zamfara State and sharing a porous frontier with the Niger Republic, the state’s rural local government areas (LGAs) have become easy targets for well-armed groups. 

Sabon Birni and Isa LGAs, the worst affected, live under the shadow of Bello Turji, a notorious non-state armed group leader imposing “taxes” on villages, a perverse form of governance enforced through violence.

In Tangaza, Gudu, Binji, and Silami, locals now face an even deadlier menace. Their ungoverned frontiers with the Niger Republic have opened the door to the Lakurawa, a transnational terror group turning the borderland into its strongest foothold. Exploiting weak state security and the grinding poverty that traps many young men, the Lakurawa has embedded itself in local communities, luring recruits with promises of power, protection, or survival. 

What began as a shadowy infiltration has evolved into a full-blown insurgency. Today, the group wages a campaign of killings, livestock raids, and mass intimidation on both sides of the border, leaving residents of Sokoto and neighbouring Nigerien villages in constant fear.

The human toll is staggering. Farming, the lifeline of most families, has been disrupted. Thousands of cattle have been stolen. In Sabon Birni alone, an estimated 600,000 cattle and five million small ruminants were rustled between 2019 and 2024, while vast tracts of farmland remain in accessible. For those farmers who manage to reach their fields, access often comes at a heavy price.

Kidnappings have become routine. In the same Sabon Birni, reports suggest that more than ₦160 billion was paid in ransoms and so-called protection levies over the same five-year period.

According to Shu’aibu Gwanda Gobir, a community leader, about 528 villages were once under the control of armed groups. A day after the brutal killing of the Sarkin Gobir of Gatawa District, Isa Bawa, in August 2024, gunmen kidnapped 192 people in the Sabon Birnin area. At the time, over 600 people were already being held captive.

Children have been driven out of classrooms; many are now in displacement camps, while countless others roam the streets, begging in the city of Sokoto. 

Women recount harrowing tales of sexual violence, their trauma lingering long after the attacks, and hunger and malnutrition stalk villages already stripped of livelihoods, leaving communities in a state of protracted vulnerability.

For farming and herding families, the cost is measured not only in stolen cattle and abandoned fields but also in fractured trust, deepening poverty, and a sense of being abandoned by the state.

Beneath this devastation, communities are not merely passive victims; they also fight back for survival. According to Magajin Balle, the village head of Balle in Gudu LGA, “in some areas, youths patrol their own streets with locally purchased weapons. Vigilante networks such as the Vigilante Group of Nigeria and ‘Yansakai’ militias provide a semblance of security. Communities pool money to support local defenders.”

Elsewhere, however, resilience takes different forms. In rural parts of Isa LGA, attempts are made to negotiate fragile truces (Sulhu) with gang leaders. In rural areas of Balle, where Lakurawa terrorists have entrenched a stronghold, residents have been forced to submit to the directives of the group.

Armed groups continue to unleash relentless violence across Sokoto State, defying local resilience efforts. In recent weeks, waves of attacks have swept through Shagari, Isa, Sabon Birni, and Raba LGAs, with outlying villages in Dange-Shuni now also under siege. Entire communities have been uprooted, with women and children bearing the brunt. 

Many families are forced into a cycle of displacement, seeking safety in nearby towns before returning to their homes by day, while others have fled entirely. Thousands are now sheltering in Jabo, Dange-Shuni, and Rara, or across the border in Guidan Roumdji of the Niger Republic, highlighting the deepening humanitarian crisis.

Tension has also heightened in Shagari LGA’s rural areas after a series of attacks in Aske Dodo, Tungar Barke, Jandutse, Lungu, and Ayeri by armed groups, leaving several dead, scores abducted, and hundreds displaced to Jabo, Kajiji, and Shagari in search of refuge. According to a BBC report, this led to women seeking shelter in Shagari town to stage a protest against the government.

In Raba LGA, over 500 people were forced to flee from their homes across six communities on August 26. Most of them are women and children, now crowded into a school and market square in Rara village, where they seek safety and shelter.

In Sabon Birni and Isa LGAs, communities remain trapped between violence and hunger. This September, armed groups unleashed deadly assaults like never before, while floods destroyed roads, bridges and crops, cutting residents off from aid. With no safe passage and livelihoods washed away, many fled across the border into Niger in search of refuge. “People are being squeezed from both sides by the gunmen and by the floods,” says Sa’idu Bargaja, a lawmaker representing the Isa-Sabon Birni constituency. It is, he says, a crisis that leaves no room for escape.

In Shagari LGA, the anguish of displacement is written into women’s lives like Saratu Sode of the Lungu community. Now taking refuge in Jabo, she describes how violence has torn apart her family and her village.

“We fled when word spread that gunmen were coming. Those who could not escape that night were caught. Two of our neighbours were attacked; one was hacked with a machete and is in hospital, and the other was shot dead. Three of my relatives were seized before they could run, and they are still in captivity,” she recounts.

“Three of my children and two of my orphaned grandchildren, whose father was killed during an earlier attack, are not with me. I don’t know where they are. They might have been killed, or they may be in the hands of armed groups.”

Her neighbour, Hadiza from the Aske Dodo community, shares a similar story. Forced from her home three times, she now shelters in an abandoned building in Jabo. “On the last occasion, we woke in the night to the news that someone nearby had been slaughtered. At dawn, we fled. Our children no longer go to school. Our husbands have abandoned their farms, fleeing to save their lives. I do not sleep at night,” she says.

Their voices echo a broader crisis in Sokoto’s rural communities, where waves of armed violence have left families fractured, livelihoods destroyed, and children robbed of education. Beyond the numbers of the dead and displaced, the stories of women like Saratu and Hadiza lay bare the daily reality: survival in a landscape where the state is absent, safety is fragile, and tomorrow is uncertain.

Magajin Tsamaye, a village head in Sabon Birni, told HumAngle that peace deals and levies payments are not the best strategies. He urges the government to reform the social justice system and tackle root causes like illiteracy and youth unemployment. “People should be less fearful of death,” Magaji bluntly added, “so they can boldly repel attacks.”

Fighting without surrender

Kebbi’s experience mirrors Sokoto’s in many ways, but with one critical difference: communities here largely reject paying taxes to armed groups. While the LGAs of Fakai, Danko Wasagu, Zuru, Augie, and Yauri, which border the dens of armed groups in Sokoto, Zamfara, and Niger, face sporadic raids and kidnappings, an ethos of resistance endures.

In Augie, Arewa, and, to a lesser extent, Dandi, Bunza, Bagudo, Maiyama, Koko, and Fakai, the shadow of the Lakurawa looms large. Their presence causes sudden waves of violence that leave communities unsettled, never knowing when the next strike might come.

These unpredictable and ruthless raids have turned daily life into a gamble of survival. Farmers abandon fields, traders fear the open road, and entire villages, especially in Arewa and Augie, live with the gnawing uncertainty that their relative calm could be shattered at any moment. This unpredictability, the incessant rhythm of violence, cements Lakurawa’s grip.

In this year’s rainy season, vast tracts of land in Kebbi State have not been tilted because the Lakurawa declared them no-go zones. In the remote areas of Augie and Arewa LGAs, the group has marked out areas as “buffer zones,” warning through local agents that any farmer seen nearby would be punished. 

“In the remote villages of Garu, Kunchin Baba, Gumki, and Gumundai, farmers now live under these restrictions,” said a man known as Bello Manager, the Commandant of the Vigilante Group of Niger in the Arewa LGA.

“Farmers are forbidden not only from cultivating their land but also from adapting to change. The militants have blocked the sale of farming bulls for power tillers; machines many had hoped would ease labour shortages, and in some cases seized and destroyed the tillers outright,” the Bello added.

A resident of Goru, speaking to BBC Hausa on condition of anonymity, said: “The majority of communities where the Lakurawa have established a stronghold are living in fear and uncertainty. These include Goru, Malam Yauro, Goru Babba, Goru Karama, Gorun Bagiga, Gumki and Faske. In these places, the Lakurawa force herders to pay ₦10,000 per cow; they have banned women from farming, and traditional rulers are forbidden from wearing turbans. Across all these areas, there is no visible sign of state presence.”

This ban is devastating for communities already struggling with the steady depletion of oxen used for ploughing and harrowing. What should have been a season of renewal is turning instead into a season of fear and enforced stagnation.

In Bunza LGA, the Lakurawa have tightened their grip, launching repeated assaults and livestock raids that have crippled livelihoods and deepened fear. In just the past seven months, more than 1,000 head of cattle have been rustled beyond several cattle they extort as so-called zakat.

“The scale of the theft underscores the vulnerability of even the most prominent figures. Victims include retired Deputy Inspector General of Police Abubakar Tilli, who lost 110 cattle; Bello Mamuda, former chairman of Bunza, who lost 67; and a former member of the House of Assembly representing Bunza, whose herd of 49 was stolen. Altogether, over 1,000 cattle have been stolen by the Lakurawa in Bunza over the past seven months,” Yau Gumundai, a local in the area, told HumAngle.

But the damage goes beyond statistics. Markets have emptied, families have scattered, and fear has become part of daily life. “Recently, there has been an intensification of Lakurawa assaults in Bunza and neighbouring Dandi,” Gumundai explains.

“Their last attack in Bunza was on Friday, Sept. 19, when they opened fire at a security checkpoint. People fled the market in panic, leaving behind their belongings. Many were injured. They keep us in constant fear.”

The attacks illustrate a grim pattern: armed groups now challenge not only ordinary citizens but also security forces and political elites. As livestock raiding evolves from economic plunder into a tool of terror, communities in not only Bunza but also many other LGAs of Kebbi State are left with dwindling livelihoods, deepening insecurity, and a gnawing uncertainty about whether the state can protect them.

Local security has become a sophisticated patchwork of formal and informal alliances. Security outfits work hand-in-hand with trade unions; from motor transport workers to petroleum marketers to monitor public spaces, track suspicious movements, and alert communities. In every LGA, from ward level upwards, volunteer patrols are organised. Wealthy residents and the poor pool resources to fund the patrols in shifts from dawn to dusk.

While the rural communities of Tangaza and Gudu in Sokoto State have succumbed and remain defenceless, an investigation by HumAngle found that, in the face of Lakurawa incursions and raids, the people of Augie in Kebbi refuse to stand idle.

Until recently, as Lakurawa incursions continue, particularly in Arewa, Augie, and Bunza LGAs, locals argued that collaborative vigilance in Kebbi was what prevented the violence of armed groups from reaching the scale seen in Zamfara, Sokoto, and Katsina. But it is also draining; financially, psychologically, and militarily, particularly now that communities face mobile insurgents armed with military-grade weapons, including PKTs, RPGs, GPMGs, AAs, and AK-49s. 

Living and negotiating with the enemy

While Sokoto is taxed by fear, some of the most striking community-led peace deals have emerged in Zamfara. 

In Kaura Namoda, Maru, Bungudu, and elsewhere, communities have brokered localised truces with armed groups. The terms vary; in some cases, farmers pay “levies” to cultivate land; in others, both sides settle for a “peace” that often turns cold. When such agreements hold, people return to their fields, markets reopen, and a fragile semblance of regular life returns.

But peace is never absolute. A deal with one gang does not protect against another, and breaches, whether through real provocations or whispered rumours, collapse months of careful dialogue. The Yansakai’s actions, sometimes indiscriminate and retaliatory, also undermine trust.

A resident of Nasarawa Burkulu and a member of Miyetti Allah, speaking to HumAngle on condition of anonymity, paints a chilling picture of life under sustained attack in Bukkuyum LGA. He says that from the first assault in 2019 through to September 2025, thousands have been kidnapped, tens of thousands of ruminants rustled, and hundreds killed, while whole villages have at times fallen under the control of armed groups.

“Between 2019 and today, over 3,000 people have been taken, 30,000 livestock stolen, and more than 1,000 people brutally killed in Bukkuyum LGA,” the local told HumAngle. “Several settlements towards the Anka-Bukkuyum boundary: Ruwan Rani, Yashi, Zauna, Bardi, Kwali, Bunkasau, Kamaru, Gasa Hula, and Rafin Maiki are flooded with armed men, some of whom appear to be recent arrivals. Many villages are effectively under siege.”

The human consequences are stark. “In these communities, most men have fled their homes,” the source added. “Women and children run into the bush when armed men arrive at night.” The testimony underlines how insecurity has hollowed out normal life: farms lie untended, markets are disrupted, and entire families live in constant fear.

Another local source described the trauma of abduction, detailing how unarmed citizens were held captive for more than four months. Also a victim of abduction, the source was released only after her parents paid ₦430,000 in ransom.

“In captivity we were dehumanised,” she recalled. “I watched people being murdered in front of me. Returning home brought stigma; I often wished for death because I felt my life was worthless.”

These accounts expose a sustained campaign that is not merely criminal theft and occasional violence but a strategy that displaces communities, destroys livelihoods and inflicts deep psychological wounds. They also raise urgent questions about the state’s capacity to protect civilians in areas where armed groups can operate with impunity.

Armed groups continue to ravage communities, where killings and kidnappings for ransom have become routine. The crisis, analysts and statesmen say, has worsened under the so-called Sulhu dialogue strategy in Kaduna’s Birnin Gwari and Katsina, pushing armed groups into Zamfara in unprecedented numbers.

“Dialogue in Birnin Gwari has led to the intensification of violence in Sokoto, Zamfara, and Kebbi, as many members of armed groups move into areas not under the Sulhu regime,” says Murtala Rufa’i, a professor of peace and conflict studies at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto.

“The truces struck with armed groups in Kaduna displaced hundreds of armed groups’ members into rural Zamfara and adjacent Sokoto, leaving villages under relentless assault while towns such as Gummi, Bukkuyum, and Garin Gaura in Zamfara, and Kebbe and Shagari in Sokoto, are overwhelmed by displaced families,” says Hon. Suleman Muhammad Abubakar, lawmaker representing the Gummi-Bukkuyum constituency.

The human toll is devastating. “Recently, a canoe carrying people fleeing Gummi and nearby villages capsized, killing 15,” Abubakar recounts. “They were escaping the siege of armed groups who had poured into Gummi and Bukkuyum after leaving Birnin Gwari, a direct consequence of the dialogue policy.”    

Despite this, there is an undercurrent of hope, as locals express the readiness of many communities to reintegrate repentant members of armed groups, provided the process is genuine and inclusive. Traditional authorities still hold moral sway, and even some armed groups’ leaders enforce discipline within their ranks to preserve deals.

Locals recommend empowering these traditional and religious actors, strengthening rural education, and ensuring government services reach neglected areas. “Peace is possible,” says village head of Birnin Magaji, “but only if we all talk honestly, and to everyone who holds a gun.”

Conflict on the city’s edge

Katsina’s pain is sharpened by geography. Not only does it border Zamfara and Sokoto, but its northern frontier touches the Niger Republic, a corridor for illicit arms. Some of the region’s most feared warlords, such as Dogo Gide and Ado Aleru, frequent the state, and in specific communities, non-state armed groups effectively govern in place of the state.

Rural violence’s evolution in Katsina follows a now-familiar pattern: resource conflict between herders and farmers, worsened by climate change and land encroachment, spiralling into cattle rustling, then into the kidnapping economy. Today, it is a fully fledged industry, drawing in disenfranchised youth as foot soldiers.

In Kankara District, Ibro Gwani and Rabi Usman Mani of Dannakwabo account for an unending ordeal of violence in Katsina State.

From 2011 to 2025, the district was scarred by killings, abductions and violent attacks that have left families shattered and entire communities traumatised.

Since the devastating blow of Dec. 11, 2020, which left over 300 boys kidnapped, waves of killings, abductions, and displacements have continued.

Ibro Gwani, for instance, was kidnapped three times for which he paid a ransom of ₦10 million. “I know that one of our community leaders, Mai Unguwa Babangida Lauwal, was kidnapped and had to pay ₦4 million,” Gwani adds.

Rabi Usman Dannakwabo was also abducted alongside her husband, Usman Mani Dannakwabo, who is a police officer. 

“Residents have been murdered in their homes, on their farms, on village roads and even on playgrounds. I know of dozens of men, women and children who have been shot dead,” she says. “Some of our relatives had also been gunned down, hacked with machetes, and some, including myself and my husband, have been dragged into captivity, many of us never return.”

The state government’s measures, from negotiations to fuel sales bans to military offensives, have had mixed results. While initial gains were sometimes significant, armed groups adapted swiftly, exploiting sophisticated communications technology and local networks and even controlling the sale of scarce commodities in some areas.

Communities often choose confrontation over negotiation. Informal militias are armed and funded by locals, and private gun ownership for self-defence is widespread. But there are costs: accusations of abuses by community militias against innocent Fulani have driven some into the arms of the very armed groups they once feared.

Past state-led dialogues faltered, partly due to the exclusion of affected communities from the process. A local tells HumAngle that effective dialogue should emphasise the need for inclusive engagement, economic empowerment, better governance, and border control to stem the flow of weapons.

Despite earlier peace deals, armed groups shatter the calm with fresh and increasingly brutal assaults. One of the most recent was on August 19, when gunmen stormed Unguwan Mantau in Malumfashi LGA. At dawn, they attacked a village mosque filled with worshippers. Young and old men were bowed in prayer when the shooting began, leaving many dead and others injured and rushed to the hospital.