Category: English

PARIS — Fifty-four journalists were killed worldwide while carrying out their work or because of their profession in 2024, a third of them by the Israeli army, according to an annual report by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published Thursday.

According to the press freedom NGO, Israeli armed forces were responsible for the deaths of 18 journalists this year — 16 in Gaza and two in Lebanon.

“Palestine is the most dangerous country for journalists, recording a higher death toll than any other country over the past five years,” RSF said in its annual report, which covers data up to December 1.

The organization has filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “war crimes committed against journalists by the Israeli army.”

It said that in total “more than 145” journalists had been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza since the start of the war there in October 2023, with 35 of them working at the time of their deaths, RSF said.

It described the number of killings as “an unprecedented bloodbath.”

In a separate report published Tuesday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) reported that 104 journalists were killed worldwide in 2024, with more than half of them in Gaza.

The figures differ between the IFJ and RSF due to two different methodologies used in calculating the toll.

RSF only includes journalists whose deaths have been “proven to be directly related to their professional activity.”

Israel denies that it intentionally harms journalists but admits that some have been killed in air strikes on military targets.

“We don’t accept these figures. We don’t believe they are correct,” Israeli government spokesman David Mercer told a press conference on Wednesday.

After Gaza, the deadliest places for journalists in 2024 were Pakistan with seven deaths, followed by Bangladesh and Mexico with five each.

In 2023, the number of journalists killed worldwide stood at 45 in the same January-December period.

As of December 1, there were 550 journalists imprisoned worldwide, compared to 513 last year, according to RSF figures.

The three countries with the highest numbers of detained journalists are China (124, including 11 in Hong Kong), Myanmar (61), and Israel (41).

Furthermore, 55 journalists are currently being held hostage, including two abducted in 2024.

Nearly half — 25 in total — are in the hands of the Daesh group.

In addition, 95 journalists are reported missing, including four new cases reported in 2024.

AN-AFP

MEXICO CITY — A judge was shot dead Wednesday in Mexico’s once-thriving beach city of Acapulco, local media and the state prosecutor’s office said.

Local press identified the slain judge as Edmundo Roman Pinzon, president of the Superior Court of Justice in Guerrero state, saying he was shot at least four times in his car outside an Acapulco courthouse.

The southern state of Guerrero is one the areas hardest hit in Mexico by violence linked to organized crime, and has seen a string of deadly attacks this year.

In October, the mayor of the state capital Chilpancingo was killed and decapitated just days after taking office.

Weeks later, armed clashes between alleged gang members and security forces left 19 people dead in the state. Last month, a dozen dismembered bodies were discovered in vehicles in Chilpancingo.

Acapulco, the state’s most populous city, was once a playground for the rich and famous, but has lost its luster over the last decade as foreign tourists have been spooked by bloodshed that has made it one of the world’s most violent cities.

On Wednesday, the Guerrero state prosecutor’s office said in a statement that it was “investigating the crime of aggravated homicide against Edmundo N,” in line with the usual practice of not giving full names.

The killing comes just over a week after President Claudia Sheinbaum led a meeting of the National Public Security Council in Acapulco, with state governors in attendance.

Spiraling violence, much of it linked to drug trafficking, has seen more than 450,000 people murdered in Mexico since 2006, when the government launched an offensive against organized crime.

Sheinbaum, who took office in October as Mexico’s first woman president, has ruled out launching a new “war on drugs,” as the controversial program was known.

She has pledged instead to stick to her predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” strategy of using social policy to address the causes of crime.

Last year, 1,890 murders were recorded in Guerrero.

AN-AFP

CAIRO — At least eight Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a group of Palestinians tasked with securing aid trucks into the Gaza Strip on Thursday, medics said.

Medics said at least 30 people were wounded and with several in critical condition, they feared the death toll may rise. The strike took place in western area of Rafah City, in the south of the enclave, medics and residents said.

Armed gangs have repeatedly hijacked aid trucks shortly after they roll into the enclave, prompting the Islamist Hamas group to form a task-force to confront them. The Hamas-led forces have killed over two dozen members of the gangs in recent months, according to Hamas sources and medics.

Hamas said Israeli military strikes have killed at least 700 police tasked with securing aid trucks into Gaza since the war began on Oct. 7, 2023.

AN-REUTERS

DAMASCUS — The leader of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham confirmed on Wednesday that the militants did not receive any international support to confront former President Bashar Assad’s government.

HTS’ leader Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, now using his real name Ahmed Al-Sharaa, said that the weapons they fought the Assad government with were manufactured locally, according to Al Arabiya news channel.

He added: “The Syrian people are exhausted from years of conflict, and the country will not witness another war.”

Those responsible for killing Syrians, and security and army officers in the former administration involved in torturing will be held accountable by the Military Operations Department, said Al-Sharaa.

He said in a statement: “We will pursue the war criminals and demand them from the countries to which they fled so that they may receive their just punishment.”

The leader confirmed that “a list containing the names of the most senior people involved will be announced.”

He added that “rewards will also be offered to anyone who provides information about senior army and security officers involved in war crimes.”

Al-Sharaa said that the military leadership is “committed to tolerance for those whose hands are not stained with the blood of the Syrian people,” adding that it granted amnesty to those in compulsory service.

AN

KATHMANDU — A local government and other stakeholders in the Mount Qomolangma region of Nepal have decided to forbid commercial flights of helicopters in the region starting from Jan. 1 next year, a local government official said on Wednesday.

The decision was made a day earlier on the grounds that such flights affect local economic activities and disturb wildlife, said Mingma Chhiri Sherpa, chairperson of Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality.

“We’re sending letters regarding the decision to the helicopter operators, trekking and travel agencies and tourism enterprises,” he told Xinhua.

He explained that due to a rising number of helicopter flights, tourists have stayed less time in recent years.

Trekking routes in the region are world famous and thousands of foreigners visit there for trekking every year.

“Noises caused by helicopter flights have also disturbed wildlife at the Sagarmatha National Park,” Sherpa said, noting that helicopters mobilized for rescue efforts would not be affected by the latest decision.

“But such a rescue operation will be allowed only after a local hospital makes a recommendation,” he added.

XINHUA

TEHRAN — Syria’s Baath party has announced that it is suspending work indefinitely, days after the fall of the government of President Bshar al-Assad and the takeover of the country by armed opposition groups.

According to IRNA, citing the Russian Sputnik news agency, the Baath Party of former Syrian presidents, which has been active for more than 60 years in the Arab country.

It also announced that it has handed over its weapons to the Ministry of Interior of the new and transitional government.

The party’s central leadership has decided to “suspend party work and activity in all its forms … until further notice,” said a statement published on the party’s newspaper website.

The Baath Party, which ruled Syria since 1963, promoted a personality cult around the Assad family since 1969.

IRNA

KABUL — Afghanistan’s Acting Minister for Refugees and Repatriation Khalil Rahman Haqqani was killed in a blast inside the ministry’s headquarter, an official at the Ministry of Interior confirmed to Xinhua on Wednesday.

XINHUA

DAMASCUS — Fighters have gained full control of the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zour following the reported withdrawal of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to areas east of the Euphrates River, according to statements from a local commander and a war monitor.

Hassan Abdel Ghani, a commander of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), said that their fighters now hold all of Deir al-Zour city and continue to advance in rural areas.

“Our combatants are pressing forward in the suburbs, having secured the city center along with both western and eastern countrysides,” the commander said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday the SDF had pulled out of Deir al-Zour and the nearby city of Al-Bukamal, returning to areas east of the Euphrates River.

The SDF had taken control of Deir al-Zour earlier following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government.

The Kurdish forces, previously seen as a dominant force in parts of northeastern Syria, appear to have ceded ground as militant groups, led by the HTS, stake their claims on strategic territories and key population centers.

XINHUA

CAIRO — Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip killed at least 26 people overnight and into Wednesday, including one that hit a home where displaced people were sheltering in the isolated north, killing 19, according to Palestinian medical officials.

That strike occurred in the northern town of Beit Lahiya near the border with Israel, according to the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, which received the bodies. Hospital records show that a family of eight were among those killed, including four children, their parents and two grandparents.

Another strike in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed at least seven people, according to the Awda Hospital. Records show the dead included two children, their parents and three relatives.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Israel has been waging a renewed offensive against Hamas militants in northern Gaza since early October. The military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and accuses militants of hiding among them, putting their lives in danger.

The army said militants in central Gaza fired four projectiles into Israel on Wednesday, two of which were intercepted. The other two fell in open areas, and there were no reports of casualties.

AN-AP

The death toll from a Russian missile strike that destroyed a clinic in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Tuesday has risen to six, while four more people remain under the rubble, the regional governor and emergency services said on Wednesday.

An additional 22 people were injured, governor Ivan Fedorov said on his Telegram messaging channel.

“All emergency services of the city are working at the scene,” he said.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service of Ukraine said its rescuers were able to pull out two women overnight from underneath the ruins of the building.

Photos posted on the emergency’s Telegram messaging channel showed rescuers and machinery working in piles of rubble from a collapsed building at night.

Russia regularly carries out airstrikes on Zaporizhzhia and the surrounding region. Last Friday, an attack on the city killed 10 people and wounded more than 20.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in their attacks, saying the aim of the strikes is to undermine infrastructure key to each other’s war efforts.

President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Ukraine’s allies on Tuesday to provide 10-12 more Patriot air defense systems that he said would fully protect the country’s skies.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has consistently asked its allies to supply more advanced air-defense systems.

AN-REUTERS