Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,044
Here are the key developments on the 1,044th day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Here is the situation on Friday, January 3: Fighting The Ukrainian military said it carried out a high-precision strike on a Russian command post in Maryino, in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces hold chunks of territory after a major cross-border incursion. Russia’s military said air defence units had downed four Ukrainian missiles in the Kursk region, and Kursk’s regional governor said strikes had damaged a high-rise apartment and other buildings. Ukraine’s military released a video on social media of what it said was damage to a Russian base in Ivanovskoye, next to Maryino, in the Kursk region. Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its air defences had downed a series of drones late on Thursday targeting regions near the Ukrainian border, including two in the Belgorod region, two in the Bryansk region and one in the Kursk region. The governor of Russia’s Oryol region said four drones had been downed in the area. Moscow also said that Russian troops had downed a Ukrainian Su-27 fighter jet, 97 drones and six United States-supplied HIMARS rocket launchers. Ukraine said its forces shot down 47 of 72 Russian drones targeting the country overnight, and another 24 drones were lost – due to electronic jamming. Ukraine has opened a criminal probe into desertion and “abuse of power” after hundreds of soldiers were reported to have fled an army unit partly trained by France. The 155th Mechanised Brigade, dubbed “Anne of Kyiv”, was one of several military groupings formed last year as Ukraine sought to boost preparations for possible new Russian offensives. A Ukrainian court has sentenced a man to 15 years in prison for passing information to Moscow that could have helped it target missile strikes. Advertisement Politics Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that US President-elect Donald Trump could be decisive in the outcome of the war with Russia. “He can be decisive in this war. He is capable of stopping [Russian President Vladimir] Putin or, to put it more fairly, help us stop Putin. He is able to do this,” Zelenskyy said in an interview. Economy Gas supplies in Europe remain stable, with the exception of Moldova, the European Union said after Russian gas transit via Ukraine stopped. The cut-off of Russian gas supplies to Moldova’s breakaway Transdniestria region has forced the closure of all industrial companies except food producers, Sergei Obolonik, first deputy prime minister of the region, told a local news channel. A Russian tanker accident in the Black Sea last month resulted in 2,400 tonnes of oil being spilled and not 3,000 tonnes as initially assumed, authorities in Moscow said. The accident happened in mid-December when two Russian tankers crashed in a storm in the Kerch Strait. Ukraine intends to increase exports as the country enters its fourth year of war with Russia in 2025, Zelenskyy said. The country had already succeeded in boosting exports by 15 percent in 2024, he said. Regional tension Angered by Ukraine’s stoppage of Russian gas, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said he would consider the possibility of reducing support for Ukrainians in Slovakia and repeated the threat of stopping electricity deliveries to its larger neighbour. The Lithuanian government said that the recent failure of the Estlink 2 undersea cable, which has been blamed on a Russian vessel, does not affect the planned synchronisation of the Baltic states’ electricity grid with Western Europe. Finland’s national power grid operator said it had asked a Helsinki court to seize the Eagle S oil tanker in a bid to secure the company’s claim for damages related to the severing of the undersea Estlink 2 electricity interconnector. The cable between Finland and Estonia was damaged on December 25 along with four telecoms lines. Advertisement Adblock test (Why?)
Syria’s ‘Princesses of Freedom’
Khijou comes back into the living room with her laptop. “Here he is,” she says. The picture of her son, Samir, is grim. In it, he’s still alive but his limbs are skeletal. He is starving from al-Assad’s siege over Moadhamiyet al-Sham in 2013. Samir’s ribs jut out from his skin, his bony elbow bent painfully. Three days later, Syrian officers allegedly kidnapped him after Khijou sent him for medical evacuation with a United Nations convoy. He never came back. “They took him to the Air Force Intelligence branch, that’s what we were told at the time,” she recalls. Samir would be 32 years old today, Khijou says – if, by some slim chance, he managed to survive all those years of prison. Other than that, “we don’t know anything”, she says. Perhaps he went to some other prison, she figures, maybe Sednaya. She is calm and composed at this possibility, a civilian journalist simply pointing out another injustice around her, the years of heartbreak seemingly calcified into the fact of Samir’s likely death. The chance that he’s still among the survivors becomes slimmer by the day. Today, Khijou shares his picture and name on social media in the hopes that someone, somewhere, might have information. Khijou al-Khateeb’s son Samir, then 21, who she photographed in 2013, just three days before his disappearance during the siege of Moadhamiyet al-Sham [Raghed Waked/Al Jazeera] Khijou’s other son, Muhammad, who shares a name with his 22-year-old cousin, is also gone. He fled to Germany a year ago through Europe’s forests, the thought of al-Assad’s fall a distant dream. Khijou supported him in taking the journey, fearing he, too, might get arrested at a regime checkpoint someday and never return. He’s now stuck in a refugee camp, unable to work or study. In Khijou’s profile picture on WhatsApp, pictures of the two young men are copy-pasted together side by side, looking so similar – Samir’s clean-shaven portrait from before 2013 next to Muhammad’s more up-to-date beard and moustache, posing in front of a wintry skyline in Germany. It’s not clear yet what justice might look like for families like the al-Khateebs. Legal justice for Syrian prison survivors has been limited. In 2022, a German court in Koblenz convicted Anwar Raslan, former head of investigations at the notorious General Intelligence Directorate’s Branch 251 in Damascus, of crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to life in prison. That case was successful because Germany has implemented “universal jurisdiction”, meaning the country’s legal system can prosecute crimes against humanity and other serious cases no matter where the crimes happened. “So that is still an option, of course, if any perpetrators are found in a country that implements universal jurisdiction,” explains international criminal lawyer Nadine Kheshen. Inside Syria, things might be different. As of now, it’s been less than a month since the fall of the al-Assad regime, so it isn’t yet clear how the justice system could play out for prison victims and their families. “It’s still not clear how the judicial and legal system will look, at least in the transitional period,” says Obai Kurd Ali, a Syrian lawyer and specialist in international human rights law at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. “People are still trying to understand the new system.” Most important, for survivors like the al-Khateeb sisters and others, is documenting what happened to them in the hopes of future accountability, Kurd Ali says. The sisters say they are willing to speak to lawyers and hope to someday “file a lawsuit” over what happened to them in prison. Khijou says she simply isn’t ready to forgive the people who imprisoned her and her family. “As female detainees, as mothers of detainees, as wives of detainees, we have no forgiveness,” she says, matter-of-factly. Behind her is the laptop with images of her son Samir’s starved, skeletal body. His absence still stings. Khijou’s husband, named Muhammad, now suffers severe depression. “It’s been two years now that he hasn’t been able to leave the house. He sits with us at home, but quiet. Silent. He doesn’t speak,” Khijou says. The elder Muhammad is with us, apparently, in the house, as we drink our sweet tea. But he remains hidden somewhere in the freezing apartment, beyond a series of closed doors, past Mayyasa’s ring light for her makeup videos, and Khijou’s industrial sewing machine. For now, the family have their quiet anger. Adblock test (Why?)
Syria FM in Saudi Arabia on first foreign visit for new government
NewsFeed Syria’s top diplomat arrived in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday in the first foreign visit for Syria’s new government, less than a month after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Published On 2 Jan 20252 Jan 2025 Adblock test (Why?)
Musk calls for jailed UK far-right activist Tommy Robinson to be released
US technology billionaire says Tommy Robinson, who is serving in 18-month prison sentence, ‘should be freed’. Elon Musk has called for the jailed British far-right activist Tommy Robinson to be released and criticised UK Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer for his response to grooming scandals when he served as the country’s chief prosecutor more than a decade ago. In a flurry of posts on social media on Thursday, the US technology billionaire said that Robinson, who founded the far-right English Defence League and whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, “should be freed”. “Why is Tommy Robinson in a solitary confinement prison for telling the truth?” Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he owns, on Thursday. “He should be freed and those who covered up this travesty should take his place in that cell,” he wrote. Robinson, a one-time football hooligan with a string of UK criminal convictions, is serving an 18-month jail term after he admitted contempt of court in a long-running libel case involving a Syrian refugee. Musk also posted several messages about the grooming scandals which took place over decades in a number of English towns and cities including Rochdale, Rotherham and Oldham until they were uncovered more than a decade ago. Advertisement Musk shared various other accounts’ claims around the scandals and criticised Starmer’s response to the scandal. “In the UK, serious crimes such as rape require the Crown Prosecution Service’s approval for the police to charge suspects. Who was the head of the CPS when rape gangs were allowed to exploit young girls without facing justice? Keir Starmer, 2008-2013,” he posted, criticising the current British prime minister. Starmer was the head of the CPS in that period and he began a prosecution of a grooming gang in Rochdale during his final year in the role, shortly after the scandal emerged. None of the probes into the scandals singled Starmer out for blame or found that he tried to block prosecutions. In 2012, Starmer blamed the justice system’s flawed approach to sexual exploitation and ordered a comprehensive restructuring of the CPS’s responses to it. Musk’s tweets on Robinson have garnered support from far-right figures, including Dutch politician Geert Wilders, as well as some right-wing YouTube channels who also called for his release. The US tech billionaire’s latest intervention in UK politics comes after his recent declaration of support for Germany’s far-right AfD party, where he claimed that AfD is the only party which can “save” Germany as the country heads towards snap elections next month. The German government has accused him of interfering in the vote. Musk has also openly backed other far-right figures in Europe including Nigel Farage of the UK’s Reform party and Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Advertisement Musk was also a prominent funder and supporter of US President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign. Last month, Trump refuted claims that he had “ceded the presidency” to Musk. Adblock test (Why?)
‘Crime against journalism’: Gaza Journalists decry PA’s Al Jazeera ban
Deir el-Balah, Gaza – Journalists gathered at Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital expressed outrage and confusion about the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) decision to shut down Al Jazeera’s office in the occupied West Bank. “Shutting down a major outlet like Al Jazeera is a crime against journalism,” said freelance journalist Ikhlas al-Qarnawi. “Al Jazeera coverage has documented Israeli crimes against Palestinians, especially during the ongoing genocide,” the 28-year-old journalist told Al Jazeera at the hospital, the most reliable internet connection in the Strip to file stories from. On Wednesday, the PA temporarily suspended Al Jazeera in the occupied West Bank for what they described as broadcasting “inciting material and reports that were deceiving and stirring strife” in the country. The decision came after Fatah, the Palestinian faction which dominates the PA, banned Al Jazeera from reporting from the governorates of Jenin, Tubas and Qalqilya in the occupied West Bank, citing its coverage of clashes between the Palestinian security forces and Palestinian armed groups in the area. Advertisement Al Jazeera criticised the PA ban, saying the move is “in line with the [Israeli] occupation’s actions against its staff”. ‘Obscuring the truth’ Since the beginning of the war, about 150 journalists have been working from the journalists’ tents at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, for 20 local, international and Arab media outlets. Journalists, including those from Al Jazeera, have been forced to work from hospitals after their headquarters and media offices were destroyed. Wafa Hajjaj believes the PA’s move against Al Jazeera ‘worsens the situation’ [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera] Al-Aqsa TV correspondent Mohammed Issa said from the hospital that the PA’s ban contradicts international laws that guarantee journalistic freedom and could further endanger journalists. “The PA’s decision obscures the truth and undermines the Palestinian narrative, especially a leading network like Al Jazeera,” Issa said, adding that the ban reinforces Israel’s narrative that “justifies the targeting of Palestinian journalists”. “All media workers in Gaza reject this decision that silences the largest Arab and global outlet during critical times in years.” Wafaa Hajjaj, an independent journalist working with TRT and Sahat, said the ban made her both “sad” and “disappointed”. “At a time when Israel is deliberately targeting and killing … journalists in Gaza, with our Jazeera colleagues at the forefront, with no international or institutional protection, the PA’s move in the West Bank comes to worsen the situation,” Hajjaj said as she and her team walked into the hospital to interview the wounded. Advertisement Israel has killed at least 217 journalists and media workers in Gaza since the beginning of its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023. Four of them were Al Jazeera journalists: Samer Abudaqa, Hamza al-Dahdouh, Ismail al-Ghoul and Ahmed al-Louh. ‘Trust Al Jazeera will persist’ Although frustrated, Hajjaj told Al Jazeera that she is hopeful the PA will drop its ban “as soon as possible”. “I trust Al Jazeera will persist despite all sanctions, as it has for years.” Yousef Hassouna, a photojournalist with 22 years of experience, also criticised the shutting of Al Jazeera along with “any other media outlet” targeted by such bans. “This is a violation against all of us Palestinian journalists,” he said, adding that Al Jazeera is “an essential platform” covering Israel’s war on Gaza. “Now more than ever, we Palestinian journalists need international support and protection, not limitations or restrictions,” Hassouna said. Freelance journalist said the closure of Al Jazeera is a ‘crime against journalism’ Ikhlas al-Qirnawi [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera] ‘Critical mistakes’ Ismail al-Thawabtah, spokesperson for the government media bureau in Gaza, said the Palestinian Authority had committed two serious mistakes over the past few weeks. “The first: the attack on Jenin and the resulting military confrontation with our honourable Palestinian people and the resistance forces, and the second: the closure of the Al Jazeera office,” he said, adding that the move represents “serious violations of freedom of the press”. Advertisement Al-Thawabtah said both incidents required the PA to conduct a comprehensive review of policies and positions in line with supreme national interests and respect for the rights of our Palestinian people and their basic freedoms. As for the journalists gathered at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, they were united in their call to end the ban. “We as journalists are completely against it. I hope that action will be taken to stop this decision immediately.” said the freelance journalist al-Qarnawi, adding that the ban hurts more than just journalists. “Our Palestinian people are the biggest losers.” Adblock test (Why?)
South Korean police raid airport, Jeju Air offices after deadly crash
Police searches come as aviation authorities are probing the cause of the deadliest air disaster on South Korean soil. Police in South Korea have raided Muan international airport, the offices of Jeju Air and a regional aviation body amid investigations into the deadliest-ever air disaster on South Korean soil. The Jeonnam Provincial Police Agency carried out the “search and seizure operation” at the three locations on Thursday morning, officials said. The raids come as aviation authorities, including officials from the United States, are probing the cause of the deadly crash of Jeju Air Flight 2216 on Sunday, which killed 179 of 181 people on board. South Korean authorities said on Wednesday that they extracted the initial data from one of the Boeing 737-800’s two black boxes, with the other to be sent to the US for analysis due to damage it suffered in the crash. South Korean officials have launched an inspection of all Boeing 737-800 aircraft in operation as well as a wider probe of the country’s entire airline operations. South Korean acting president, Choi Sang-mok, said on Thursday that immediate action must be taken if the inspections revealed any problems with the aircraft model. Advertisement “As there’s great public concern about the same aircraft model involved in the accident, the transport ministry and relevant organisations must conduct a thorough inspection of operation maintenance, education, and training,” Choi said. Aviation experts have raised a series of possible causes and contributing factors in the disaster, including a collision with birds, mechanical failure, and the presence of a hardened embankment less than 300 metres (328 yards) from the end of the runway. The Boeing 737-800 belly-landed on the runway, without its landing gear deployed, shortly after the pilot reported a bird strike to air traffic control, before skidding into a concrete embankment and exploding into flames. The crash was the deadliest accident involving a South Korean airline since a Korean Air Boeing 747 crashed into a Guam hillside in 1997, killing 228 people. Adblock test (Why?)
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,043
Here are the key developments on the 1,043rd day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Here is the situation on Thursday, January 2: Fighting Russia launched an early morning New Year’s Day drone strike on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv that killed two people, wounded at least six others and damaged buildings in two districts. Two floors of a residential building in central Kyiv were partially destroyed in the strike, according to the State Emergency Service. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that as the New Year started, all Moscow could think about was hurting Ukraine: “Even on New Year’s Eve, Russia was only concerned about how to hurt Ukraine.” The Ukrainian military said it shot down 63 out of 111 drones launched by Russia overnight on Wednesday, while 46 had been downed by electronic jamming. According to local authorities, several residential buildings in Ukraine’s southern city of Zaporizhzhia caught fire overnight following attacks and one woman was rescued. Ukraine’s Commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii visited Ukrainian forces in the Russian border region of Kursk and said that the Russian army had lost more than 34,000 soldiers, either dead or wounded, in their attempts to drive Ukrainian soldiers out of Russian territory. Over the previous five months, approximately 700 Russian prisoners of war have been captured, which Ukraine could exchange for its own people held in Russian captivity, Syrskii said. Advertisement Economy The transit of Russian gas through Ukraine to Europe has been suspended, Russian and Ukrainian authorities said. Russia’s Gazprom said it had no legal or technical means to pump gas through Ukraine after Kyiv allowed a contract for gas transit to expire. President Zelenskyy said the decision to halt the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine was “one of Moscow’s biggest defeats”. Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko called the halt to the transit a “historic event” and was a decision taken “in the interest of national security”. Poland also hailed the end of Russian gas transit via Ukraine with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski saying the cutoff marked “a new victory after NATO enlargement to Finland and Sweden”. Putin spent billions building Nordstream to circumvent Ukraine and blackmail Eastern Europe with the threat of cutting off gas supplies. Today Ukraine cut off his ability to export gas direct to the EU.Another victory after the enlargement of NATO by Finland and Sweden. — Radek Sikorski (@radeksikorski) January 1, 2025 Russia’s Gazprom has suspended gas supplies to Slovakia following the end of a transit deal to carry gas through Ukraine. Slovak gas importer SPP said it had prepared for such a situation and would supply all its customers through alternative routes, mainly by pipelines from Germany and Hungary, but it would face additional costs in transit fees. The Slovak government castigated Ukraine’s decision, with the country’s pro-Russian Prime Minister Robert Fico threatening in turn to stop electricity supplies from Slovakia to Ukraine. The severing of the gas flow was felt immediately in the breakaway Moldovan region of Transdniestria, which was forced to cut heating and hot water supplies to households. The mainly Russian-speaking territory of about 450,000 people split from Moldova in the early 1990s as the Soviet Union collapsed and still has about 1,500 troops stationed there. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his government and the country’s biggest bank, Sberbank, to build cooperation with China in artificial intelligence. Putin’s instructions were published on the Kremlin’s website, three weeks after he announced that Russia would team up with BRICS partners and other countries to develop AI. Advertisement Adblock test (Why?)
Israel attacks Gaza ‘humanitarian zone’, killing at least 11, wounding 15
Women, children among dead as Israel’s military again attacks civilians sheltering in so-called humanitarian safe zone. At least 11 Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed in an Israeli air strike on makeshift tents housing displaced people in a designated humanitarian safe zone in southern Gaza, local medics and news organisations report. The predawn attack on Thursday in the al-Mawasi area – which Israel’s military declared a “safe zone” early on in its war on Gaza – is reported to have resulted in the killing of three children and two women among the 11 who died. A video clip from the aftermath of the attack showed people searching for survivors among burning tents, scattered debris, and washing lines where residents of the camp for displaced people had hung clothes to dry. The Reuters news agency reports that 15 people were also wounded in the attack, though there were no details on their condition. Israel’s military did not comment on its latest attack on the humanitarian area, which has been targeted relentlessly by Israeli warplanes, drones and artillery, including the most recent attack on December 22, which killed eight people, including two children. Advertisement Days earlier, Israeli tanks advanced on al-Mawasi from the southern city of Rafah, forcing dozens of families to flee northward fearing imminent attack. At least 20 people were killed and others wounded in an Israeli missile strike on tents in al-Mawasi on December 3, in what Israel’s military said was the targeting of a Hamas official. On New Year’s Day, Israeli attacks across Gaza killed at least 26 people with four children and a woman reported to be among those slain. Ten people were also missing among the rubble of buildings destroyed in the attack. Fifteen people, all reported to be civilians, were killed in one strike on a home where displaced people had taken shelter in Jabalia in northern Gaza, a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza said. Israeli forces gave no warning for the attack on al-Mawasi early on Thursday morning but had earlier issued orders for all residents in northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp to flee three areas that it said were designated for an attack. The warning for residents to flee from Jabalia to Gaza City was described as a “pre- anaesthesia before the attack” by the Israeli military’s Arabic language spokesman, Avichay Adraee. “Once again, terrorist organisations are launching rockets from your area, which has been warned many times in the past,” he said in a post on social media.</p >< p>Despite large parts of northern Gaza, including Jabalia, suffering almost three months of siege by Israeli forces, two United States-based defence think tanks said this week that Palestinian fighters had launched a coordinated, “multi-wave attack” on Israeli forces in Jabalia – one that was larger than most other Palestinian military operations across Gaza in recent months. Advertisement The death toll from the first two days of 2025 adds to the 45,553 Palestinians, at least, who have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since launching a punishing war on the territory in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on southern Israel. Adblock test (Why?)
‘We are waging an existential war’: M23’s Bertrand Bisimwa on DRC conflict
For three years, the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been embroiled in an armed conflict between the army and the M23 rebel group that has killed hundreds of people and displaced nearly two million. M23 was first formed after a mutiny within the Congolese national army (FARDC) in 2012. Though the initial rebellion was crushed, the group took up arms against the army and allied “Wazalendo” self-defence groups again in 2022, and has since seized swaths of territory in North Kivu province. M23 says it is defending the interests of minority Congolese Tutsis, many of whom say they suffer discrimination and exclusion in DRC for their ethnic links to Rwanda’s Tutsi community. Kinshasa sees M23 as the greatest security threat it currently faces, with regional tensions escalating as bodies including the United Nations accuse Rwanda of supporting M23 with troops and weapons, fuelling the rebellion – something Rwanda denies. Despite attempts at ceasefires and negotiations – including the 2022 Nairobi peace process and recent mediation efforts by Angola – fighting has continued. In Lubero, M23 advanced several dozen kilometres in just a few days in December. Advertisement Bertrand Bisimwa, the head of the political wing of M23, maintains that the group is fighting a “defensive” war. He spoke to Bojana Coulibaly, a researcher specialising in peace and security in Africa’s Great Lakes region, about the war in eastern DRC and hopes that dialogue will prevail. Bisimwa speaking to Bojana Coulibaly [Teddy Mazina/Al Jazeera] Bojana Coulibaly: Can you tell us what M23’s demands are? Bertrand Bisimwa: Our demands boil down to a struggle for survival. We are waging an existential war because the Congolese government is subjecting part of its population to death. And this didn’t start today. It has been going on for decades, where people are forced to seek refuge, fearing death, avoiding being killed. There is hate speech and there is also a kind of radicalisation that is taking shape. A part of the citizens, namely the Tutsi, serve as scapegoats for the Congolese government to distract the people from its governance failures. So, we told ourselves that we must not sit idly by and watch our citizens being killed in this way. This is why we are currently waging a defensive war to protect these citizens. So that they do not continue to be put to death. They are not second-class citizens. The state must take care of them and not consider them as stateless, or who are not Congolese. They are full-fledged Congolese citizens, like all other Congolese. Coulibaly: Recently, there’s been intense fighting between government forces and M23 in Great North Kivu, in the Lubero territory. Could you explain what happened? Bisimwa: In March, the mediator in the crisis between Rwanda and the DRC, Angola’s President [Joao] Lourenco, had invited us to Luanda to convey the message from the African Union which was to sign a ceasefire. We signed the ceasefire, but Kinshasa refused to sign it. Later, Kinshasa simply continued the war against us, and we started again – we continued to defend ourselves. On December 15, a meeting was scheduled between the Congolese government and the Rwandan government, which also had just signed their ceasefire, although the Rwandan government or the Rwandan military are not on Congolese soil and are not fighting. Advertisement The Congolese government wanted to have a victory on the ground before the 15th. They put pressure on us, with the aim of obtaining a victory that would put them in a comfortable position in order to put Rwanda in front of a fait accompli – that either they sign what Kinshasa wanted, or they would practically derail the Luanda meeting. That was the government’s objective. This is how they put pressure on us: they gathered more than 22,000 men assembled around 15 regiments, supported by the FDLR [Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, an armed rebel group] – the former genocidaires of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda – supported by the Wazalendo and they use them against us. We understood the manoeuvres, so we prepared sufficiently to defend ourselves. This is what led to this escalation of violence, because for us, it was essential to thwart this military offensive on their part, and we succeeded in doing so. We learned that they continue to prepare to reignite the war, and if they do reignite it, we will continue to defend ourselves to prevent them from continuing down that path, because we believe that for peace, it is necessary to thwart the path of war. An M23 soldier on patrol in the Democratic Republic of the Congo [Teddy Mazina/Al Jazeera] Coulibaly: The United Nations says M23’s advance towards the Great North Kivu as well as the increase in control of areas are a desire for expansion and conquest of territory. How do you respond? Bisimwa: Since we started our war, we are reacting to the offensive from the government that attacks us every day. And each time, we say it: if they continue to attack us, we will silence the weapons everywhere they shoot at us. Advertisement The logic of war dictates that when you have supremacy over the other, you take the space from which they were shooting at you. And we fight for that. When we fight against the government, those who attack us, we are obliged to silence the weapons from the space where they shoot. And that is what allows us to stop the war. So, we cannot be shot at and just defend ourselves without taking the weapons from the opponent. That would be illogical, it would mean continuing to submit ourselves to death and to submit to death the people that are in our area. You will see that every time we gain the upper hand over the opponent and take the space from which they were shooting at us, we stop there, and we wait. If they launch the same offensive again, at that moment
Truck ramming attack kills at least 10 people in New Orleans
NewsFeed An armed man in a truck has ploughed through a crowd in the US city of New Orleans, killing at least 10 people. The driver then got out of his vehicle and opened fire, according to city officials. Published On 1 Jan 20251 Jan 2025 Adblock test (Why?)