Palestinian journalists protest targeting of colleagues in Gaza
NewsFeed Palestinian journalists rallied in front of Nasser Hospital in Gaza’s Khan Younis to protest the targeting of their colleagues Mohammad Mansour and Al Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat, killed in Israeli strikes two days ago. Published On 26 Mar 202526 Mar 2025 Adblock test (Why?)
Sudan’s army says it’s taken control of Khartoum as RSF retreat
[unable to retrieve full-text content] Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has arrived in Khartoum and announced that the city “is free”.
NATO chief says four US soldiers dead in Lithuania in training
Lithuania’s military said four US soldiers and a tracked vehicle had gone missing on Tuesday afternoon. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has announced that four missing United States Army soldiers have died in Lithuania during training. Rutte, who told reporters of the deaths of the four on Wednesday, said they were killed in an “incident”, adding that he did not know further details. “This is still early news, so we do not know the details. This is really terrible news and our thoughts are with the families and loved ones,” Rutte said in the Polish capital, Warsaw. Lithuania’s military had said earlier that a search was under way for the four US soldiers and a tracked vehicle which had gone missing on Tuesday afternoon. According to a statement by the US Army, the soldiers had been training near Pabrade in eastern Lithuania near the border with Belarus. “The soldiers, all from 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, were conducting scheduled tactical training at the time of the incident,” the statement read. Adblock test (Why?)
No rest for Gaza’s dead
[unable to retrieve full-text content] Al Jazeera’s investigation unit uncovers unprecedented destruction to cemeteries across Gaza.
Brazil’s Supreme Court announces it will try Bolsonaro for coup attempt
The former president has been accused of five crimes including attempting a coup d’etat. Brazil’s Supreme Court has ordered former President Jair Bolsonaro to stand trial on charges of attempting a coup d’etat after failing to win the re-election in 2022. Bolsonaro, a far-right former army captain who served as Brazil’s president from 2019 to 2022, is accused of five crimes, including an alleged attempt to violently abolish the democratic rule of law. He has denounced the accusations against him as “grave and unfounded”. On Wednesday, a five-judge panel decided unanimously to put Bolsonaro on trial. If found guilty in the court proceedings, expected later this year, Bolsonaro could face a long prison sentence, further isolating him. He has not named a political heir. In his opening remarks, Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the case, screened dramatic footage of Bolsonaro’s supporters storming government buildings in violent scenes that unfolded just a week after the inauguration of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in January 2023. Moraes added that Bolsonaro led “a systematic effort to cast doubt on the electronic voting machines” used in Brazil, part of his efforts to undermine the election he lost. Advertisement Reporting from Buenos Aires, Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo recalled the chaotic and violent scenes in January 2023, when Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed the capital Brasilia, refusing to accept the new president’s inauguration. “A week after Lula was sworn in, we saw thousands of supporters of President Bolsonaro storming buildings in Brazil .. there were scenes of chaos in the capital … around 1,500 people were detained,” she said. The Supreme Court began reviewing charges against Bolsonaro and seven of his closest allies on Tuesday in a session that Bolsonaro voluntarily attended, sitting silently in the first row in an echo of his ally, US President Donald Trump’s trial last year. In the run-up to the landmark court hearing, Bolsonaro called a beachfront rally in Rio de Janeiro, hoping to seize on Lula’s waning popularity and pressure Congress to pass an amnesty bill favouring him and his jailed supporters. The demonstration, which some allies suggested could draw more than a million backers, was widely considered a washout after two independent polling firms found that only between 20,000 and 30,000 people showed up. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro has continued to insist that he will run for president again next year, despite a ruling by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court that barred him from running for public office until 2030 for his efforts to discredit the country’s voting system. Bolsonaro’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis while president has also drawn intensive legal scrutiny. Advertisement Adblock test (Why?)
Istanbul elects Aslan interim mayor amid ongoing protests over Imamoglu
The city council has chosen a temporary mayor to take over from Ekrem Imamoglu, who was jailed last week. Istanbul’s municipal government has elected Nuri Aslan as interim mayor to replace Ekrem Imamoglu, who has been imprisoned on corruption charges. Local broadcaster NTV and Turkish news outlet Anadolu reported on Wednesday that Aslan, from Imamoglu’s Republican People’s Party (CHP), was chosen to run the city for the remainder of Imamoglu’s term, as he awaits trial. In the first round of voting, Aslan won 173 votes, while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party) candidate, Zeynel Abidin Okul, won 123. In the second round of the election, Aslan received 177 votes, while Okul received 125. As both candidates were unable to win the two-thirds majority required to win the vote, a third round of voting began. In that vote, where candidates would need a simple majority to win, Aslan received 177 votes, Okul received 125 votes, securing Aslan’s election. Speaking at the Istanbul Municipality building in Sarachane, CHP chairman Ozgur Ozel said the interim mayoral election had blocked Erdogan’s push to appoint a trustee at the municipality. Advertisement “The struggle will expand to all of Turkiye from now on, but one leg will always be in Istanbul and one hand will always be on Sarachane,” Ozel said, adding that resistance from the public had thwarted what the opposition calls a “coup attempt” against it. Aslan, speaking alongside Ozel, reiterated his new position was temporary. “Our mayor, elected with the votes of Istanbul, will come back as soon as possible. We, along with our chairman, will take care of what he entrusted us with and give it back to him,” he said. This comes as demonstrations have been held daily across the country after Imamoglu was detained a week ago. His supporters say they will continue protesting despite authorities cracking down on gatherings and arresting hundreds of people, including journalists. By Tuesday afternoon, police had detained 1,418 people, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said. Among them were 11 Turkish journalists covering the protests, seven of whom were remanded in custody. ‘Street terror’ Erdogan said on Wednesday that his government would not get worked up over what he described as “provocations” by the main opposition. Erdogan has remained defiant a week into the protests, denouncing the rallies as “street terror”. “Those who spread terror in the streets and want to set fire to this country have nowhere to go. The path they have taken is a dead end,” he has said. Government officials have rejected accusations that the legal action against the opposition figure is politically motivated and insisted that Turkiye’s courts operate independently. Advertisement Protests erupted on March 19 after Imamoglu’s arrest in a graft and “terrorism” probe which his supporters have denounced as a “coup”. The “terrorism” charge has been dismissed by the court for the time being. Vast crowds have participated in street demonstrations since then, defying protest bans in Istanbul, the capital Ankara and Izmir with the unrest spreading across the country. In a possible shift in tactics, the main opposition Republican People’s (CHP) party said it was not calling for another nightly protest on Wednesday outside the Istanbul mayor’s office. Most nights, some of the protests have turned into running battles with riot police, whose tough crackdown has alarmed rights groups. Adblock test (Why?)
How the discovery of a mass grave sparked uproar over the missing in Mexico
Since the March 5 revelation, Mexican media have published a wave of testimonies from those who claim to have survived or escaped Rancho Izaguirre. Many of those who came forward chose to remain anonymous. They identified as impoverished youths from Guadalajara and explained they were lured to the ranch by false promises of work in online advertisements — or simply kidnapped. One young man said the ranch was described as “hitman school”. Those who complained, questioned the cartel leader’s orders or failed to pass the brutal tests were executed. Indira Navarro, the head of the Warrior Searchers of Jalisco, said in a radio interview that one survivor dubbed it “a little school of terror”. A protester lights a candle next to shoes representing Mexico’s missing on March 15 [Jared Olson/Al Jazeera] Other documents have emerged suggesting that local authorities may have known about the site but failed to act. On March 12, the advocacy group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity published a report showing that National Guard members discovered burned bodies in the same area in August 2019. It also found that a local police commissioner sent the National Guard a message in March 2020, disclosing an act of attempted bribery. According to the internal document, an anonymous female caller said that National Guard personnel “would be given a sum of money” in exchange “for reducing the intensity of the operations” in the area. Jalisco has the highest official rate of forced disappearances in Mexico. Since the government began collecting statistics on disappearances in the 1950s, more than 15,000 people have been reported missing in the state alone. In the wake of the recent uproar, the state attorney general, Salvador Gonzalez de los Santos, said heavy machinery had been deployed to the Teuchitlán site but that the area was too big to search in its entirety. That has led the federal government to point the finger at local authorities for not investigating thoroughly enough. “They failed to track down the evidence or identify anything found abandoned at that location,” Mexico Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero said at a March 19 news conference. “A full examination of the site was not conducted, nor were fingerprints taken.” A protester in Mexico City holds up a sign denouncing ‘mass graves, extermination centres and slavery’ [Jared Olson/Al Jazeera] A day later, on March 20, federal and state authorities organised a tour of the site for journalists, officials and members of the search brigades. More than 12 buses arrived, some carrying social media influencers. But the visit was widely criticised, not least for letting the public access an ongoing crime scene. Family members of the disappeared also questioned why the influencers were reportedly allowed to access the ranch before they were. Some of the influencers later published accounts online denying the existence of crematoriums on the site. President Sheinbaum, meanwhile, has assigned federal prosecutors — led by Gertz Manero — to take up the case. “The first thing we need to do is investigate, because the images are painful, and the first thing we need to know is what happened there, before anything else,” she said. Some critics, however, fear the federal authorities cannot be trusted to helm the investigation. The National Guard, after all, was created in 2019 under former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum’s mentor. Still, on Monday, federal authorities announced progress in their investigation. They confirmed that they had detained a recruiter for the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación in a low-income neighbourhood in Mexico City, where he allegedly sought out youths to be brought to the “extermination site”. Two former police officers from a village near Teuchitlán were also arrested in relation to the ranch. But academics and investigative journalists have suggested that the ranch in Teuchitlán is part of a vast archipelago of training centres in the hills to the west of Guadalajara. Nor is the problem limited to one state: On March 12, a separate search brigade said it had discovered another “extermination site”, this time in Reynosa, Tamaulipas. Police stand guard around the National Palace in Mexico City, as protests unfold on March 15 [Jared Olson/Al Jazeera] At the recent protest at the Zócalo, tensions started to boil over as evening fell. Some demonstrators broke through barricades and brawled with the police holding riot shields in front of the National Palace. “Mercenaries! Killers!” they shouted towards the palace, the official residence of Mexico’s president. Sebastián Arenas, a journalism student from the National Autonomous University of México, explained that many of his fellow protesters saw Teuchitlán as indicative of a federal security strategy that has allowed mass murder. “In the press, it’s said that things have changed in Mexico, that there aren’t disappearances, or that they’re going down, that the judicial reform is going to bring justice,” he told Al Jazeera. “But here are the results: a clandestine grave, an extermination camp that looks like Auschwitz.” Adblock test (Why?)
Ukraine, Russia trade accusations in wake US-brokered deal
Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of not being serious about peace talks as both sides traded blame for attacks on infrastructure. The renewed accusations on Wednesday came a day after the United States said Ukraine and Russia had agreed to halt military strikes on vessels in the Black Sea following separate negotiations in Saudi Arabia. The Ukrainian air force said 117 drones were launched from Russia during an overnight attack. At least 56 of the drones were downed, 48 were lost due to electronic warfare and no damage was caused, it added. However, the mayor of Mykolaiv said there were power outages due to the drones. In the city of Kryvyi Rih, a Russian attack caused fires and damaged buildings, but no casualties were reported. Buildings were also reportedly damaged in the border region of Sumy, which has come under heavy attack in recent days. The head of the military administration in Kryvyi Rih, Oleksandr Vilkul, described the drone attack as the most significant on the city, adding, “Apparently, this is how the occupiers ‘want peace’”. Advertisement Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the overnight barrage of attacks and said it was a “clear signal to the whole world that Moscow is not going to pursue real peace”. “Since March 11, there has been a US proposal for a total ceasefire, a complete halt to strikes. And literally every night, through its attacks, Russia keeps saying ‘no’ to our partners’ peace proposal,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. Zelenskyy will meet French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Wednesday before a gathering of world leaders on Thursday that has been billed as a “coalition of the willing”, which plans to set out security guarantees for Ukraine in any peace deal. Last night, there were another 117 proofs in our skies of how Russia continues to drag out this war – 117 strike drones, most of them Shaheds. A significant number were shot down by our air defenders. Dnipro, Sumy, Cherkasy, and other regions came under Russian attack. There… pic.twitter.com/q4WTj87IHG — Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 26, 2025 For its part, the Russian Ministry of Defence said Ukraine carried out a drone attack on a gas storage facility on the Crimean Peninsula and a power installation in the Bryansk region, which sits on the border with Ukraine and its Sumy region. “The Kyiv regime, while continuing to damage Russia’s civilian energy infrastructure, is actually doing everything it can to disrupt the Russian-American agreements,” it wrote. Ukraine denied that it had targeted Russian energy infrastructure in the two regions. Advertisement Reporting from Moscow, Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari said further negotiations will be “difficult” as both sides continue to trade allegations. “Accusations back and forth illustrate how difficult and fragile the situation is between both sides in this conflict and how difficult the task the American officials have ahead of them,” Jabbari explained. In the meantime, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte warned in Warsaw on Wednesday that the Western defence alliance would respond with a “devastating” blow to any attack by Russia on Poland or another ally. On Tuesday, the US reached separate truce agreements with Ukraine and Russia in talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. US negotiators met separately with the Ukrainian and Russian delegations, both of which agreed to cease their attacks at sea. The two sides also agreed “to develop measures” for implementing an agreement to ban strikes against energy facilities, the White House said. The US also agreed to push for lifting some Western sanctions on Russian food, fertiliser and shipping in the Black Sea. The Kremlin said “a number of conditions” must be met before the Black Sea deal can be implemented, including restoring links between some Russian banks and the international financial system. However, a spokesperson for the European Union said on Wednesday that one of the main conditions to lift or amend Russian sanctions would be “the end of the Russian unprovoked and unjustified aggression in Ukraine and unconditional withdrawal of all Russian military forces”. Advertisement Separately on Wednesday, a court in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don convicted 23 Ukrainians on “terrorism” charges in a trial that Kyiv denounced as a sham and a violation of international law. The defendants include 12 captured members of Ukraine’s elite Azov Brigade, which led the defence of the city of Mariupol in the early months of Russia’s war. Adblock test (Why?)
Netanyahu accuses Israel’s opposition of fuelling ‘anarchy’
Thousands of Israelis have taken part in antigovernment protests after Netanyahu resumed strikes in Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused the opposition of fuelling “anarchy” in Israel, after mass antigovernment protests in recent days, while the opposition leader Yair Lapid has called for a “revolt” if the government refuses to accept verdicts issued by the country’s Supreme Court. Addressing the opposition during a speech in parliament on Wednesday, Netanyahu said, “You recycle the same worn-out and ridiculous slogans about ‘the end of democracy’. Well, once and for all: Democracy is not in danger, it is the power of the bureaucrats that is in danger.” “Perhaps you could stop putting spanners in the works of the government in the middle of a war? Perhaps you could stop fuelling the sedition, hatred and anarchy in the streets?” he added. Thousands of Israelis have taken part in several days of antigovernment protests, accusing Netanyahu of undermining democracy by removing Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet internal security agency and resuming strikes in Gaza without any regard for captives held in the besieged enclave. Advertisement Netanyahu is locked in a battle with the Shin Bet chief, who is running a bribery investigation into the prime minister’s office, citing a lack of “trust”. The two men have been at loggerheads, fuelled by bitter recriminations over the failure to prevent the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel. The demonstrations, which erupted last week, have been organised by a broad coalition of anti-Netanyahu groups who say the Israeli leader is trying to stay in power at any cost. The Supreme Court froze Bar’s dismissal after several appeals were filed, including by opposition leader Yair Lapid’s centre-right Yesh Atid party. The opposition’s appeal highlighted what critics see as the two main reasons Netanyahu moved against Bar. The first was his criticism of the government over the security failure that allowed Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the deadliest day in the country’s history. The second was what the opposition appeal said was a Shin Bet investigation into Netanyahu’s close associates on suspicion of receiving money linked to Qatar. Netanyahu’s office has dismissed the accusations as “fake news”. Calling for a ‘revolt’ Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid called for a “revolt” against the government of Netanyahu if it refused to accept verdicts issued by the country’s Supreme Court. “A government that doesn’t obey the court is a criminal government that should not be obeyed,” Lapid told local radio 103FM. “If the government does not comply with the Supreme Court, we must shut down the country, and that would be the end of everything.” Advertisement Israel’s cabinet also passed a vote of no confidence on Sunday against the country’s attorney general, Baharav-Miara, the first step in a process to dismiss her. Netanyahu’s office pointed to “significant and prolonged differences between the government and the government’s legal adviser,” a key part of the attorney general’s job. Following the Supreme Court’s initial ruling in the Bar case, Baharav-Miara said Netanyahu could not name a new internal security chief and was “prohibited to take any action that harms” his position. Adblock test (Why?)
Russian cargo plane crash lands in Siberia
[unable to retrieve full-text content] A Russian cargo plane crash landed at an airstrip in Novy Urengoy, Siberia on Wednesday due to a landing gear failure.