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      U.N. Sees ‘Human Rights Abyss’ in Myanmar as Military Kills Civilians

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      Three years after the military staged a coup, intensifying a civil war, civilians continue to pay the price, according to a coming United Nations report.Thousands of civilians in Myanmar have been “killed at the hands of the military,” the United Nations said on Tuesday, including hundreds who have died from torture and neglect in the junta’s prisons.“Myanmar is plumbing the depths of a human rights abyss,” James Rodehaver, the head of the U.N. human rights team monitoring the crisis, told journalists. He described a vacuum in the rule of law that was being filled by summary killings, torture and sexual violence.The casualties attest to a chaotic civil war that escalated sharply after the military staged a coup in February 2021. Now, three years later, pro-democracy forces and ethnic militias are battling the junta’s soldiers in a conflict that has displaced more than three million people and left close to 19 million in need of humanitarian aid, according to the U.N.But the military’s ferocious tactics, including an ongoing campaign of airstrikes and mass arrests, also reflect its shrinking hold. The military now controls less than 40 percent of the country and is constantly losing ground to armed opposition groups, Mr. Rodehaver said.The military killed at least 2,414 civilians just between April 2023 and the end of this June, including 334 children, according to a report by the U.N. team monitoring Myanmar that it will present to the Human Rights Council next week. About half of those deaths occurred in military airstrikes or in artillery bombardments.Another 759 people died in the junta’s custody in that same time period, the U.N. report will say. And they are only a portion of those who have died in detention since the coup, according to the report. Military authorities have arrested around 27,400 people since February 2021, including some 9,000 people in the 15 months that the U.N. report covered.What’s Happening in Myanmar’s Civil War?Questions you may have about the ongoing war in Myanmar, explained with graphics.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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      Sweeping Iraq Raid Killed 4 ISIS Leaders

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      The U.S. military said those killed in a joint assault by U.S. and Iraqi forces last month included the group’s top commander in Iraq and its leading bomb maker.One of the largest counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State in Iraq in recent years killed four top insurgent leaders last month, the U.S. military said on Friday, dealing the group a major blow at a time when its attacks in Iraq and Syria are on the rise.The raid by American and Iraqi commandos against several Islamic State hide-outs in western Iraq on Aug. 29 killed at least 14 insurgents and devastated the group’s top leadership in the country, according to a statement from the Pentagon’s Central Command and U.S. counterterrorism officials.Among the dead the military identified was Ahmad Hamid al-Ithawi, the top ISIS commander in Iraq and one of the group’s most well-established veterans. Two senior commanders for ISIS operations in western Iraq were also killed, the military’s statement said.Another main target killed was Abu Ali al-Tunisi, a Tunisian national who was the subject of a $5 million reward from the U.S. government, the military revealed on Friday. Mr. al-Tunisi has been ISIS’s most significant designer, manufacturer and teacher in explosives — including improvised devices, suicide vests and car bombs, counterterrorism officials said.“The raid appears to have effectively killed off ISIS’s entire command in Anbar,” Charles Lister, the director of the Middle East Institute’s Syria and counterterrorism programs, wrote in a Substack newsletter, “Syria Weekly,” on Friday. Anbar is a vast province in western Iraq that has been a locus for violent Sunni extremists for years.Central Command and the Iraqi military offered scant details when they announced the raid on Aug. 30, even though it was one of the most sweeping counterterrorism missions in the country in years.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 Raids Become a Near-Daily Reality for Many Palestinians

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      Five Palestinians were killed by an Israeli airstrike on their vehicles early Thursday, Palestinian news media said, as one of the longest and most destructive recent Israeli military raids in the occupied West Bank stretched into a ninth day across several cities.Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, reported the deaths, in the town of Far’a. They added to the toll of an already devastating military offensive, with at least 39 people killed in the raids and 145 others injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.The Israeli military said the strike in Far’a targeted armed fighters who hurled explosives and shot at security forces. It has described the raids as an effort to crack down on Palestinian armed groups and combat rising attacks against Israelis.Such raids have become a near-daily reality for the nearly three million Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. More than 600 Palestinians have been killed there since the Hamas-led attack on Israel last October, both in military strikes and at the hands of extremist Jewish settlers, according to the United Nations.Palestinian armed groups have claimed some of those killed in the ongoing Israeli raids as members. None claimed those killed in Far’a as members, and in a statement Hamas referred to them as “residents.”The nine days of military raids have taken an exceptional toll on Palestinians in several towns and cities, especially Jenin and Tulkarm, where many residents have trapped in their homes for days, saying that Israeli forces are operating outside their doors with armored vehicles. Bulldozers have ripped up entire streets — in what the Israeli military calls an effort to unearth improvised explosives planted by armed groups — and snipers have taken up positions on rooftops and inside homes, residents have said. More

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      Russia’s Attack on Poltava Comes After a Week of Strikes in Ukraine

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      The Russian missile strike that killed more than 40 people in the eastern city of Poltava on Tuesday comes after a difficult few days for Ukraine, in which Moscow appears to have stepped up the tempo of its attacks, resulting in a wave of death and destruction.At dawn on Aug. 26, residents of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and many other cities woke to the sound of a Russian aerial assault. Moscow had launched more than 200 missiles and drones that hit targets in 15 regions of Ukraine. At least seven people were killed.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that it was one of the largest attacks since Russia’s full-scale invasion began 30 months ago. The strikes knocked out power in some cities, including the capital, continuing a pattern of attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure.Early the next morning, Russia launched another barrage, and one missile hit a hotel in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, killing four people. There was also a smaller round of strikes on Wednesday.Moscow, which has been conducting aerial assaults on Ukraine every few weeks, gave no reason for the timing of the strikes, but it came weeks after Ukraine launched a surprise incursion into the southern Russian region of Kursk. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had vowed a decisive response.Russia continued to pound urban areas close to the front lines throughout the week. On Wednesday, a Russian attack killed four members of a family in the tiny community of Izmailivka in the Donetsk region, the state prosecutor said. The settlement is a few miles west of Russian lines and close to the city of Pokrovsk, which Moscow is trying to capture.Most of the missiles and drones were shot down by Ukraine’s air defense systems, the Air Force said. F-16 fighter jets, recently delivered by the country’s allies in NATO, were deployed in that effort, intercepting and shooting down three cruise missiles and a drone.But on Thursday, the head of Ukraine’s air force, Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk, announced that one of the jets had crashed in combat during the operation on Monday and its pilot had been killed. He said that the crash, which came as a shock to many Ukrainians so soon after the deployment of the coveted fighter jets, was being investigated.The following day, Mr. Zelensky announced that Lt. Gen. Oleshchuk had been fired.Russian fire was also directed at Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, which is situated within range of Russian artillery and has been repeatedly assaulted since the start of the full scale war.On Friday, a Russian glide bomb hit a children’s park and a mid-rise apartment block in the city, killing seven people and wounding nearly 60 others, according to the head of the regional military administration, Oleh Syniehubov.Two days later, Russian forces bombarded residential areas of the city, wounding more than 40 civilians, Ukrainian officials said. At least 10 explosions had rocked the city. More

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      Biden Says Netanyahu Is Not Doing Enough to Free Israeli Hostages

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      President Biden issued a one-word rebuke on Monday of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s commitment to reaching a cease-fire and hostage release deal, in the latest iteration of the White House’s monthslong effort to cajole and censure the Israeli leader.As he exited Marine One on the White House lawn, Mr. Biden was asked a series of questions by waiting reporters about whether Mr. Netanyahu was doing enough to achieve a deal to get the hostages back. The president responded simply: “No.”He then turned away from the reporters and headed for a meeting in the Situation Room. He told reporters he would have more to say after the meeting, which was expected to include his top national security advisers and Vice President Kamala Harris. Later, he and Ms. Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, were scheduled to appear at a campaign event together in Pennsylvania.Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu have clashed often in the past 10 months or so, but with particular intensity since the spring. White House officials thought they were near a hostage deal in mid-July, one of several moments in which they believed — and Mr. Biden publicly declared — that the negotiations mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt would result in a temporary cease-fire, with hopes of a longer-lasting one.But Mr. Biden’s hopes have been continually dashed. The latest disagreement with Mr. Netanyahu has arisen over his insistence that Israel maintain a military presence in Gaza along the Egyptian border after a cease-fire agreement comes into effect, a demand that Hamas and Egypt both oppose.Other obstacles to a deal have come from Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, who has been engaged in the negotiations remotely as he hides out, presumably underground in Gaza. More

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      Who Is Farhan al-Qadi, the Hostage Israel Rescued?

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      The Israeli military on Tuesday celebrated the rescue of Farhan al-Qadi, who was taken hostage during Hamas’s attacks on Oct. 7. The 52-year-old was hospitalized in stable medical condition.Mr. al-Qadi, a member of Israel’s Bedouin Arab minority, is from Rahat, a city in southern Israel. He was working in a small Israeli kibbutz, called Magen, near the Gaza border, when he was abducted, according to a post on X from President Isaac Herzog of Israel.His brother, Khatem al-Qadi, told Israeli television that the family planned a huge party to celebrate his return. Calling for a cease-fire deal, he wished the same for other hostages still in captivity: “They are still waiting to see their loved ones back today,” he said. “We are wishing for all of the hostages to be released and for there to be a deal now.’’For some, Mr. al-Qadi’s rescue was a reminder of the toll the attacks took on Israel’s impoverished Bedouin community. At least 17 Bedouins died in the Oct. 7 attacks. Many more who had worked on Jewish farms in southern Israel lost their livelihoods after the farms were ransacked.Even before the attacks, the Bedouins were suffering. Few have access to bomb shelters and health clinics because they live in villages that the Israeli government does not recognize. Even though Hamas does not specifically target them, Bedouins are not always able to seek shelter when the group fires rockets into southern Israel.Gabby Sobelman More

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      China to Hold Live-Fire Drills Near War-Torn Myanmar’s

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      Beijing likely wants to signal to Myanmar’s junta leaders that they should return to peace talks and de-escalate the conflict, analysts said.China will hold live-fire military drills near its border with Myanmar starting on Tuesday, fortifying its boundaries with a southern neighbor that has been engulfed in a civil war for more than three years.China’s People’s Liberation Army’s Southern Theater Command said on Monday that it would conduct both land and air exercises in the southwestern province of Yunnan to test the “joint strike capabilities of theater troops and maintain security and stability in the border areas.” China conducted two similar drills in April.The patrols, which will last until Thursday, come less than two weeks after China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, visited Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital, and reaffirmed Beijing’s support for the ruling military junta, which seized power in a coup in 2021. Analysts say that despite Mr. Wang’s pledge of support, Beijing is using the drills to send a signal to the junta that it would like the military to return to Chinese-led peace talks with rebels and refrain from intensifying the conflict.Myanmar, a country of about 55 million long fractured by ethnic divisions, has been thrown into fresh chaos as the military resumed control. Thousands have been killed and tens of thousands detained by the junta, which has been accused of committing atrocities and killing civilians by bombarding the country with airstrikes.The junta’s violence has led to the emergence of a resistance movement made up of both civilians from Myanmar’s urban areas who had become rebels and battle-hardened insurgents in the border regions who have been fighting for autonomy for decades. Together, they control about two-thirds of the country, mostly along its frontiers, while the military government holds the major cities located in the central lowlands of the Irrawaddy Valley.Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, reaffirmed Beijing’s support for the ruling military junta in Myanmar earlier this month.Tang Chhin Sothy/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe 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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      After Attacks, Israel and Hezbollah Swiftly Move to Talk of Containment

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      For weeks, Israelis have waited in trepidation for a major attack by Hezbollah in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of a senior commander of the Lebanese group in Beirut last month, amid widespread fears that a cross-border escalation could spiral into an all-out regional war.But much of Israel woke up on Sunday to find that, at least for the immediate term, the long-dreaded attack appeared to be over almost before it started.Both Israel and Hezbollah quickly claimed victories of sorts: Israel for its predawn pre-emptive strikes against what the military said were thousands of Hezbollah’s rocket launcher barrels in southern Lebanon; and Hezbollah for its subsequent firing of barrages of rockets and drones at northern Israel, which the Israeli military initially said had caused little damage.By breakfast time, the two sides were employing the language of containment. Hezbollah announced that it had completed the “first stage” of its attack to avenge the assassination of the senior commander, Fuad Shukr, and appeared to be calling it a day, at least for now. Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said he had spoken with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and they had “discussed the importance of avoiding regional escalation,” according to a statement from Mr. Gallant’s office.Still, the Middle East remained on edge, the days ahead uncertain. “There can be stages,” cautioned Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research group. “You can have escalation that is gradual.”Smoke billowing from the site of an Israeli airstrike on Zibqin in southern Lebanon on Sunday.Kawnat Haju/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe 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