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      Jury in El Salvador Convicts 3 Ex-Officers in 1982 Killings of Dutch Journalists

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      A jury convicted the former military officers for the murder of four Dutch television journalists who were covering the Salvadoran civil war.A jury in El Salvador convicted three former senior military officers of murder in the 1982 killings of four Dutch journalists on Tuesday, according to the Comunicándonos Foundation, a nonprofit group that has long pursued justice in the case.The three officers — Gen. José Guillermo García, 91, a former defense minister; Col. Francisco Morán, 93, a former police director; and Col. Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, 85 — each received 15-year prison sentences after a trial that took about 10 hours.The jury also condemned the government of El Salvador for delaying a resolution of the case for more than four decades. General García and Colonel Morán are in detention in El Salvador after being arrested in 2022, and Colonel Reyes Mena is in Virginia awaiting extradition, according to the Dutch government.The four young Dutch journalists — Koos Koster, Jan Kuiper, Joop Willemsen and Hans ter Laag — were working for a now-defunct Dutch broadcaster, covering a brutal civil war that killed tens of thousands of people.In Chalatenango, El Salvador, on March 17, 1982, they were traveling behind rebel lines with three guerrilla fighters. Soldiers from the Salvadoran army were waiting to ambush them and shot and killed the men, according to the Dutch government.The Dutch ambassador to Costa Rica and El Salvador, Arjen van den Berg, center, at the Judicial Center in Chalatenango, El Salvador, after the sentencing of three former military commanders on Tuesday.Marvin Recinos/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAt the time, the Salvadoran army told the news media that the four journalists had died when guerrillas accompanying them opened fire on an army patrol. But a 1993 report by the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador concluded that the army had set up the ambush. The report also found that the killings were ordered by Colonel Reyes Mena, who had since moved to the United States.“Reporters who went to the scene in Chalatenango Province north of the capital found bloody clothing and 30 spent M16 shells near the spot where associates of the four men said they had been dropped off at 5 p.m.,” The New York Times reported in 1982, adding that residents of nearby villages had said they heard 20 minutes of gunfire.The Dutch journalists had been shot repeatedly at short range, the Times report said.The killings were a major story in the Netherlands, fueling widespread outrage. In the decades since, the Dutch government and organizations in El Salvador have continued to push for justice in the case.In a blog post before the trial on a Dutch government website, Arjen van den Berg, the country’s ambassador to Costa Rica and El Salvador, said he remembered the atmosphere in the Netherlands at the time. People were angry, he said, “partly because these men were just doing their jobs, but partly also because it was unimaginable for Dutch people that a government would kill journalists in cold blood.”Dutch officials expressed relief and gratitude for the sentence. “This is an important moment in the fight against impunity and in the pursuit of justice for the four Dutch journalists and their next of kin,” Caspar Veldkamp, the outgoing Dutch minister of foreign affairs, wrote on social media. More

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      Ukraine Hid Attack Drones in Russia. These Videos Show What Happened Next.

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      <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–>Strategic bombers in at least two airfields, Belaya and Olenya, were destroyed. In total, Ukraine targeted bases in five regions, according to Russia’s Ministry of Defense, which said attacks on three other locations had been repelled. The Times was not able to verify those claims, […] More

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      Ukraine Says Russian Strike on Military Base Killed 12 Soldiers

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      The commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi, submitted his resignation after the attack, saying that he felt a “personal sense of responsibility for the tragedy.”A Russian missile attack on a Ukrainian military training base killed at least 12 soldiers and wounded more than 60 others on Sunday, the Ukrainian military said, in a rare statement acknowledging casualties within its ranks.The commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi, submitted his resignation after the attack on the base, in the Dnipro region, saying in a statement that he felt a “personal sense of responsibility for the tragedy.”Ukraine’s military said it was investigating the circumstances, but emphasized that there was not a mass gathering at the time of the attack — an apparent attempt to demonstrate lessons learned from previous incidents.“At the time the air raid alert was announced, all personnel were in shelters, except for those who may not have had time to reach it,” Vitalii Sarantsev, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Ground Forces, said in an interview with Ukrainian news media.Ukraine’s military does not typically disclose official casualty figures, which are treated as a state secret and are a highly sensitive topic in the country. Past attacks with large numbers of military casualties — like when a Russian missile killed soldiers gathered for an awards ceremony in southern Ukraine in late 2023 — have raised questions about security protocols.The strike on the training base came on the eve of another round of peace talks in Istanbul, proposed by Moscow. While Kyiv had insisted it see a promised memorandum outlining Russia’s cease-fire terms before sending any officials to the talks, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine announced on Sunday that Kyiv would in fact send a delegation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Muhammad Sinwar, a Top Military Leader of Hamas, Is Dead, Israel Says

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      He was the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar, the former Hamas leader killed by Israel last year. Hamas did not immediately respond to the claim of his death.The Israeli military announced on Saturday night that it had killed Muhammad Sinwar, one of Hamas’s top military commanders in Gaza, during airstrikes this month that targeted the vicinity of a hospital in southern Gaza.Hamas did not immediately respond to the claim of Mr. Sinwar’s death. During the war in Gaza, the Palestinian armed group has largely not confirmed the killing of its commanders in the moment, only announcing their demise weeks or even months later, if at all.Mr. Sinwar’s death would leave the hierarchy of Hamas’s leadership in Gaza unclear. Another senior Hamas militant, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, is believed to command the group’s remaining fighters in northern Gaza. Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, threatened Mr. Haddad on Saturday night as well as Khalil al-Hayya, one of Hamas’s leaders in exile, saying they would share a similar fate to Mr. Sinwar.“You are next in line,” Mr. Katz said in a statement, addressing the two militant leaders by name.But Mr. Sinwar’s death may not immediately change Hamas’s strategy or operations, analysts said. Since the war began more than a year and a half ago, Israel has targeted and killed a number of Hamas’s top leaders, only to see the group continue its guerrilla war against Israel in Gaza.This month, Israeli aircraft struck an underground compound near the European Hospital, close to the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, where Mr. Sinwar had recently been present, according to the Israeli military. At the time, Israeli officials said privately that they had been targeting Mr. Sinwar, but they did not mention him in their announcement of the strikes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Islamic State Says It Targeted Syrian Forces in Bomb Attacks

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      The extremist group claimed responsibility for two attacks, its first against the new government since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, a war monitoring group said.The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for two bomb explosions, the first time the extremist group has directly targeted the new government since it took over in December, a war monitoring group said.In two statements posted online on Thursday and reported by the SITE Intelligence Group, ISIS claimed that bombs laid by its members had killed and wounded government soldiers and allied militia members.The Syrian government did not report any attacks by ISIS in the area, but announced that it had conducted two raids against Islamic State operatives in the Damascus area in the past week.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, reported that one person was killed and three members of the Syrian Army’s 70th Division were wounded when a patrol was hit by a remote-controlled land mine in the east of Sweida Province on Wednesday. The man killed was accompanying the government forces, it said.The two attacks claimed by ISIS took place in the southern province of Sweida, where the group has not been active for the best part of a decade. But the government has struggled to establish security in the province, which is effectively controlled by the Druse minority. Sectarian clashes between local militants and pro-government forces in the province killed more than 100 in late April and early May.The Islamic State, which controlled large parts of Iraq and Syria a decade ago until U.S. and allied Syrian forces largely defeated it, has continued a low-level insurgency in eastern Syria since 2019. But it has shown a renewed vigor since the fall of the dictator Bashar al-Assad in December, plotting attacks even in the capital, Damascus, and claiming responsibility for a car bombing among other attacks in eastern Syria.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israeli Airstrike Kills Doctor’s Children, Gaza Officials Say

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      Two more children were missing, while her husband and one other child were injured in the strike on Friday, the officials said. Israel said it was checking if it had harmed “uninvolved civilians.”It began on Friday afternoon with a massive boom that residents say reverberated throughout the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.Alaa al-Najjar, a pediatric physician, was at work at the city’s Nasser Hospital when she heard her neighborhood south of the city had been hit in an Israeli airstrike. By the time she arrived, emergency workers were pulling out the corpses of her children, said Ali al-Najjar, her brother-in-law, who had also rushed to the scene.“We had pulled out three charred bodies and were pulling out the fourth,” said Mr. al-Najjar. “She recognized them immediately.”At least seven out of the Najjar family’s 10 children were killed, according to Gaza health officials and the family. Two remain missing, presumed dead under the rubble of their home, according to Ali al-Najjar and Mohammad al-Najjar, the nephew of Dr. Najjar’s husband.The building next door had been storing car tires, said Ali al-Najjar, and they went up in flames in the blast. The fire quickly spread to the Najjars’ home, he said.They were the latest casualties in a renewed round of fighting between Israel and Hamas after more than a year and a half of full-blown war. The Israeli military has escalated its airstrikes across the enclave in recent weeks and threatened a massive ground assault.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Amid Cease-Fire Talks, Israel Expands Ground Operations in Gaza

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      This new stage of the war is aimed at pressuring Hamas into releasing hostages and ultimately destroying the group or forcing it to surrender.The Israeli military announced on Sunday that its forces had begun “extensive ground operations” throughout the northern and southern Gaza Strip, advancing its plan to move farther into the enclave and seize more land in an intensified campaign likely to displace more civilians there.This new stage in the 19-month war is aimed at pressuring Hamas into releasing the hostages it is still holding and ultimately destroying the group or forcing it to surrender, according to the Israeli government and military officials.Israeli warplanes have been pounding Gaza in recent days to prepare the way for the expansion of ground operations, the military said, adding that the wave of strikes had hit what it described as more than 670 “Hamas terror targets.”So far, the military said, it has killed “dozens” of Hamas operatives and has destroyed military infrastructure used by the group both above and below ground. But many civilians, including children, have been killed, according to Palestinian officials and residents of Gaza.The expansion of military operations comes even as Israel and Hamas are engaged in indirect talks for a cease-fire in Doha, the capital of Qatar.More than 53,000 Gazans have been killed so far in the war, according to health officials in the enclave, whose death tolls do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. The health ministry in Gaza said on Sunday that the preliminary number of those killed since dawn stood at more than 90.Suzanne Abu Daqqa, who lives in Abasan, near the southern city of Khan Younis, said residents had been living through near-constant bombardment over the past few days, rattling her home with terrifying blasts.But she was even more afraid that a renewed ground invasion could again force her to flee her house — where her family still had some electricity from solar panels, as well as a modest stockpile of rice and flour — for sweltering tent camps near the coast.“So many have died for nothing,” Ms. Abu Daqqa said. “People want the war to end by all means.”International efforts have so far failed to broker an end to the war that began with the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. That attack killed about 1,200 people, and the Palestinian assailants took about 250 hostages back to Gaza.Aaron Boxerman More

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      In Yemen, $7 Billion in Useless Bombing

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      The Signal scandal drew howls of outrage for the way Trump administration officials insecurely exchanged texts about military strikes on Yemen. But dig a little deeper, and there’s an even larger scandal.This is a scandal about a failed policy that empowers an enemy of the United States, weakens our security and will cost thousands of lives. It’s one that also tarnishes President Joe Biden but reaches its apotheosis under President Trump.It all goes back to the brutal Hamas terrorist attack on Israel in October 2023, and Israel’s savage response leveling entire neighborhoods of Gaza. The repressive Houthi regime of Yemen sought to win regional support by attacking supposedly pro-Israeli ships passing nearby in the Red Sea. (In fact, it struck all kinds of ships.)There are more problems than solutions in international relations, and this was a classic example: An extremist regime in Yemen was impeding international trade, and there wasn’t an easy fix. Biden responded with a year of airstrikes on Yemen against the Houthis that consumed billions of dollars but didn’t accomplish anything obvious.After taking office, Trump ramped up pressure on Yemen. He slashed humanitarian aid worldwide, with Yemen particularly hard hit. I last visited Yemen in 2018, when some children were already starving to death, and now it’s worse: Half of Yemen’s children under 5 are malnourished — “a statistic that is almost unparalleled across the world,” UNICEF says — yet aid cuts recently forced more than 2,000 nutrition programs to close down, according to Tom Fletcher, the U.N. humanitarian chief. The United States canceled an order for lifesaving peanut paste that was meant to keep 500,000 Yemeni children alive.Girls will be particularly likely to die, because Yemeni culture favors boys. I once interviewed a girl, Nujood Ali, who was married against her will at age 10. Aid programs to empower Yemeni girls and reduce child marriage are now being cut off as well.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More