It’s time for UNGA 79!

Quick explanation: the United Nations General Assembly is an annual world leaders’ summit that has gone on for nearly eight decades since the international body’s founding in San Francisco. It’s a place for long speeches, private country-to-country whisper sessions, and group meetings on everything from regulating artificial intelligence to global conflicts.

This year features a UN once again caught in a debate over its relevancy while attempting to stem wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan. All of which its Secretary General Antonio Guterres is keen to remedy.

“I have one overriding message today; an appeal to member states for a spirit of compromise,” Guterres implored on Wednesday.  

It is a refrain he and his predecessors have been saying for years. The UN’s 193 member states can’t decide on what to order for lunch, let alone find consensus on how to deal with the Israel’s ongoing siege of Gaza, a major issue in Security Council meetings since the war began last October with militant group Hamas’ terror attacks in Israel.

The Security Council, the UN’s most powerful organ, has been dominated by just five veto-wielding countries (the United States, China, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom) since its inception and has increasingly found itself at a stalemate.

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine is part of a series of stunning developments that have rocked the UN system and runs contrary to what the international body was established to prevent.

But the past years have seen Russia block any pro-Ukraine resolution it doesn’t like, while the US stops the most sharp-edged resolutions aimed at Israel. Moves that only help to reinforce the idea that the West uses multilateral institutions to criticize its geopolitical adversaries.

The tone inside the Security Council has notably become rough, said one UN diplomat. “It has changed. I think it is harsher,” the diplomat added.

Sniping in the open council sessions often feature sharp-tongued exchanges between the big powers. Slovenia’s UN envoy Samuel Žbogar, who is also the current president of the Security Council, described the atmosphere of council meetings as “poisonous.”

The Council meets Friday to speak about exploding communications devices in Lebanon. That’s a new one amid hundreds of angry meetings on Gaza, Ukraine and the rest.

Taking the world stage

Still, diplomats are optimistic about the possibility of change. US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said this week: “it’s easy to fall into cynicism, to actually give up hope and to give up on democracy, but we can’t afford to do that.”

She is leading a US effort to expand the Security Council with two seats for Africa. However, new members would not have the crucial veto power that the the post WW2 five wield.

The veto allows permanent members, known as the P5, to block any resolution, ranging from peacekeeping missions to sanctions, in defense of their national interests and foreign policy decisions.

The council also has 10 non-permanent members elected to two-year terms – but some feel toothless without veto privileges.

“I am critical of the permanent members because they have a bigger responsibility than the elected (10) members,” Slovenia’s Žbogar said.

What the New York headquarters of the UN will provide next week is a forum for the Palestinians, Israelis, Ukrainians, Russians and others to speak their minds to the world and directly to each other.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is due to give a speech next Wednesday and appear at a special Security Council meeting.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – a former ambassador to the UN – may also be in attendance, speaking to the General Assembly later next week, which is expected to lead to a lot of walkouts from the assembly hall.

According to Richard Gowan, UN director at the International Crisis Group, Netanyahu “hates the organization and he has a deep mistrust of it.”

New British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to make his first showing at the General Assembly after his predecessor, Rishi Sunak, skipped last year’s meeting.

And once again the leaders of China and Russia will skip it all, sending high-ranking ministers to speak in their stead.

Climate, conflict, hunger and US politics

The amount of hot air from the speeches could turn the UN into one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases next week.

Climate change will be one of the biggest issues being discussed, with the General Assembly expected to hold a meeting on sea level rise on Wednesday. Look out for leaders from vulnerable island nations push for more action to tackle global warming.

The war in Sudan will also be a talking point, where famine was declared in a refugee camp near El Fasher, the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur state. The city has for months been besieged by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a rebel group that took up arms against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in April 2023.

Millions have been forcibly displaced in the conflict and 25.6 million people in the country are facing acute hunger, according to UN agencies

The US presidential race also looms. A lot of diplomats are already concerned about who will be speaking for the US next year.

“I think in a lot of the private conversations around the General Assembly, the number one question will be: “what will [Republican presidential nominee Donald] Trump do to the organization?” Gowan said.

If the former US president is re-elected, the fallout for the UN won’t be pretty, he said, predicting some heavy budget slashing. The US and China are by far the biggest funders to the UN.

If you felt six days of speeches could glaze the eyeballs, there is another big summit right before UNGA.

Do not feel like you have to read on here, but it’s a meeting called the “Summit of the Future,” and naturally countries are still negotiating its final summit document, called the “Pact for the Future,” after months of talks.

The pact, now in its fourth revision, aims to provide a blueprint on how to tackle critical issues like conflicts, climate change, security council reform and the regulation of artificial intelligence.

The UN Secretary-General thinks the final document has the most significant reform in a generation. Another diplomat said “it should make the UN more relevant.” But getting 193 of anything to agree on anything is difficult; so is the task for the 193 members of the UN General Assembly.

Just think we almost made it through an UNGA story before a mention of New York traffic delays during UNGA. Watch out for those motorcades!

West Papua, Indonesia — New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens has been freed from more than 18 months in captivity in Indonesia’s Papua, the Indonesian police said in a statement on Saturday.

An armed faction of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), led by Egianus Kogoya, kidnapped Mehrtens on Feb. 7, 2023, after he landed a small commercial plane in the remote, mountainous area of Nduga.

“We are prioritising approach through religious leaders, church leaders, traditional leaders and Egianus Kogoya’s close family to minimise casualties and maintain the safety of the pilot,” said the chief of Cartenz 2024 Peace Operations, Brigadier General Faizal Ramadhani.

Mehrtens was freed and picked up by a joint team in Nduga Regency and is undergoing health check-ups and a physiological examination in Timika regency, the police said.

The police they would hold a press conference later.

In Frankfurt an der Oder, an ironic sign reads, “Frankfurt Oder/Slubice – no borders.” Slubice is the Polish town across the fast-flowing Oder river that marks the beginning of German Federal Republic.

Straddling the river, a bridge connects these two European nations. A single-file line of cars waits patiently to enter from Poland. German police, some carrying machine guns and adorned in high-viz vests, wave cars through or pull over the ones they deem suspicious.

“It’s daily business here that people don’t meet the entry requirements for Germany and perhaps even for the Schengen area and then have to be subjected to further police measures,” Tom Knie, a youthful-looking police officer says in between checks, referring to the passport-free travel zone within the European Union.

These are now the new realities on all of Germany’s land borders.

On September 16, Berlin ordered the “temporary reintroduction of border control” at Germany’s borders with Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, France and Denmark.

The move extends the controls already in place at the borders with Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Switzerland that have been in operation since October.

The reason for the reintroduction of these checks lies largely in German domestic issues, all of them interconnected, but each compounding pressure on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his governing coalition, the most severe of which is coming from Germany’s burgeoning and increasingly confident far right.

But they also mark the end of an era of Germany’s liberal migration policy – Wilkommenskultur, or “welcome culture” – initiated by Scholz’s predecessor Angela Merkel in 2015 and raise questions over the viability of the entire Schengen zone.

Terror, migration and the AfD

As if a reminder of the importance the surging Alternative for Germany (AfD) party places in securing Germany’s border, pinned to the lamp posts along the road into Frankfurt/Oder are their campaign posters.

One reads “WE PROTECT YOU!” with an eagle, the federal symbol of Germany, swoops over a bin which contains a traffic light – the symbol of the coalition government here, known as the “traffic light coalition” – and more insidiously, a mosque.

A spate of terror attacks ahead of key state elections in right-wing leaning regions thrust the issue of migration front and center of the recent votes.

In June, a 25-year-old Afghan man killed a police officer in Manheim, and weeks later a 26-year-old Syrian man killed three people in knife attacks in Solingen. Both incidents were capitalized on by the AfD.

One of the party’s most controversial figures, Bjoern Hoecke, called on X for an “end to this misguided path of forced multiculturalism.”

In early September, the AfD became the first far-right party since the Nazi era to win outright a state election. Victory in Thuringia, a former East German state, was followed by a close second in Saxony.

Eroding Scholz’s control

The AfD has long campaigned on a ticket that is largely anti-immigration. Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the AfD, has said in the past that Germany had become “a country without borders, where anyone can come in and we do nothing about it.”

Their success, coupled with the rise of the far left, which also has anti-immigration stances, has found a way to gnaw at Scholz’s support and has ultimately forced the chancellor to act, especially on migration.

Speaking in the Bundestag ahead of the border restrictions, Scholz said “we’re doing this although it will be difficult with our neighbors… I think we have to get through this. It is now necessary for us to endure this dispute.”

There is potential for more misery to be heaped on Scholz and his government this weekend, as Brandenburg also goes to the polls to elect its regional leaders.

Current forecasts put the AfD on course for 28.4% of the vote, beating Scholz’s  Social Democratic Party, which is polling in second with 24.7%.

The outcome could easily spell more trouble for Scholz and a further weakening of his coalition, and increase the calls for new federal elections sooner than next September.

The end of Wilkommenskultur?

The calls for more checks on Germany’s borders also mark a step-change at the heart of the European Union from Merkel’s policies.

In 2015, the long-serving, and ever popular former German chancellor Merkel opened Germany’s borders to migrants fleeing their homes – at the time largely Syrians because of the country’s civil war.

Migration data from the German government shows that 13.7 million non-German migrants entered from 2015-2023. In the same period before 2015 that number was just 5.8 million.

The moves by Merkel became known as Wilkommenskulturand and set Germany apart on the world stage in liberal migration policy.

He said the promise to control irregular migration at the border won’t be possible but instead “will raise expectations that will lead to demands to really build fences, in the end, to turn countries into fortresses.”

The current government, Knaus said, is “faced with the demand to regularize and control movement, [and] the government accepts the legitimacy of the demand [by the far-right] but then doesn’t have a policy that will work.”

For Knaus, the prospect of the change in German policy raises another specter.

“If you promise to control an emotional issue like migration and what you propose doesn’t work, not only are you not going to achieve your objective, you’re setting yourself up for a failure that will be exploited by those prepared to go much, much further,” Knaus said.

Eden Yerushalmi was taken from the Nova music festival when Hamas launched its October 7 attack on Israel, and her body was among six recovered by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) late last month. 

“It’s very difficult for us. We feel like we’re in a nightmare,” Shani Yerushalmi said. “Sometimes it feels like it isn’t real, like it’s not happening to us, because the whole time we truly believed that Eden would come back home alive.”

Yerushalmi’s family have learned details of her captivity from the IDF since her body was returned to Israel from Gaza. Describing the tunnel in which she was kept for several weeks, Shani said: “They barely could stand fully … they couldn’t sleep next to each other, only in a line. There were no windows, no air, no light. Barely food, and if they needed to go to the bathroom they were forced to do it in a bucket.”

Yerushalmi’s death, along with five other Israeli captives, ignited fresh rage in the country, much of it directed at the handling of the crisis by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

More than 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage on October 7, according to Israeli authorities, and more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s ensuing war began. Netanyahu has been under intense pressure to reach a ceasefire-for-hostages deal that would secure the return of more than 100 people still held in the enclave.

The 23-year-old from Tel Aviv was a pilates instructor and working as a bartender at the Nova music festival on October 7. When sirens sounded, Yerushalmi sent a video of rocket fire to her family group chat, saying she was leaving the festival, according to the Hostages Families Forum.

For four hours, she spoke with her two sisters, May and Shani, who heard everything she went through as she tried to escape. Her last words were: “They’ve caught me.”

The sisters described Yerushalmi as a friendly and warm person, with May saying: “The most important thing is that she was a hero, and she survived 11 months in those tunnels.”

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador says the United States is partially responsible for a wave of violence in the state of Sinaloa that has left dozens dead in the past two weeks, with bodies repeatedly found on public streets and highways.

López Obrador suggested during a press conference Thursday that Washington helped stir up enmity between factions of the Sinaloa drug cartel after arresting two cartel leaders in the US.

On July 25, Sinaloa Cartel co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada was arrested along with Joaquín Guzmán López, son of drug kingpin “El Chapo” Guzmán, after they landed near El Paso, Texas on a small plane.

Zambada would later claim that he was “ambushed” and “kidnapped” by Guzmán López and hand-delivered to US authorities.

“A group of men assaulted me, knocked me to the ground, and placed a dark-colored hood over my head,”  Zambada said in a statement released by his attorney in August, adding he was tied and handcuffed and forced into the back of a pickup, driven to a landing strip, and forced onto the US-bound private plane.

It remains unclear why Guzmán López surrendered to US authorities and brought Zambada with him.

The Mexican president alleged the US Department of Justice had “agreements” with an organized criminal group that led to the arrest of Zambada, also referring to the operation as a kidnapping.

US Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar previously denied that Washington was involved in the operation that led to Zambada’s arrest.

“It was not a US plane, it was not a US pilot, it was not our agents or our people in Mexico. This was an operation between the cartels, where one handed over to the other,” he said on Aug. 9.

‘In Sinaloa, there wasn’t the violence that there is now’

In the weeks after the arrests, violent clashes erupted in Sinaloa between what Mexican authorities call rival factions loyal to Zambada and those led by other sons of “El Chapo.”

The surge in violence has left at least 49 people dead since September 9, according to official figures.

The state prosecutor’s office has reported numerous cases of dead bodies being found with gunshots in the streets, on highways and in other locations across Sinaloa.

The situation forced Gov. Ruben Rocha Moya to suspend Independence Day celebrations last week and cancel classes at all levels for two days.

“In Sinaloa, there wasn’t the violence that there is now,” the Mexican president said Thursday.

However, López Obrador also denied that the situation in the state is completely out of control, insisting that Mexican authorities are handling it.

“No, we are there, but we have had to take special measures and move elements of the Armed Forces and we have also lost officers who have been killed due to this special, extraordinary situation,” he said.

Mexican Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said on Tuesday that at least two soldiers died last week during the violence in Sinaloa.

Israel’s military claimed it killed a senior Hezbollah commander in an airstrike on the group’s stronghold in southern Beirut on Friday, sharply escalating the conflict between the two sides and raising fears of all-out war.

Ibrahim Aqil, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, was assassinated along with “about 10” other commanders, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari said. He accused Aqil and the commanders of planning to raid and occupy communities in Galilee in northern Israel.

Hezbollah has not confirmed the deaths.

Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 12 people were killed and 59 others injured in the airstrike, which leveled a multistory building in a densely populated neighborhood.

According to Hagari, the targeted commanders were “underground underneath a residential building in the heart of the Dahya neighborhood, using civilians as a human shield” at the time of the attack.

Aqil had a $7 million bounty on his head from the United States for his suspected involvement in the 1983 strike on the US Embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people, as well as the bombing of the Beirut Marine barracks, which killed 241 US personnel later that year.

A week of surprise attacks

Friday’s strike marked the fourth consecutive day of surprise attacks on Beirut and other sites across the country, even as Israeli forces continued deadly strikes and operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

The first major attack against Hezbollah this week came Tuesday afternoon when pagers belonging to the militant groups’ members exploded near-simultaneously. The pagers had been used by Hezbollah to communicate after the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, encouraged members to switch to low-tech devices to prevent more of them from being assassinated.

Almost exactly 24 hours later, Lebanon was rocked by a second wave of explosions, after Hezbollah walkie-talkies detonated in Beirut and the south of the country on Wednesday.

At least 37 people were killed, including some children, and more than 3,000 were injured in the twin attacks.

After initially refusing to comment on Tuesday’s pager explosions, Israel on Wednesday tacitly acknowledged its role in the attacks. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant praised the “excellent achievements” of the IDF, together with the country’s security agency, the Shin Bet, and its intelligence agency Mossad.

Gallant said a “new era” of war was beginning, and on Thursday Israel targeted Beirut for a third time, flying jets and dropping flares over the city while Nasrallah made a speech in which he pledged Israel would face a “reckoning.” Later, Israel launched one of its most intense bombardments against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in nearly a year of cross–border strikes, saying it hit about 100 Hezbollah rocket launchers.

Friday’s airstrike was the third Israeli airstrike on Beirut since hostilities began last year, after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. In January, an Israeli airstrike killed Saleh Al-Arouri, deputy head of Hamas’ military wing, who had been living in Beirut. In July, a second Israeli strike on Beirut killed Hezbollah’s most senior military official, Fu’ad Shukr.

Before the surprise attacks on Lebanon, Israel’s security cabinet on Monday voted to add a new objective to its ongoing conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah: ensuring the safe return of residents from communities along its northern border with Lebanon to their homes.

After nearly a year of cross-border exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel, tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes both in southern Lebanon and northern Israel. While the return of residents of northern Israel has long been understood to be a political necessity for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, this is the first time it has been made an official war goal.

The legal team representing the alleged victims of the former owner of Harrods, Mohamed Al Fayed, say the late billionaire was a “monster” whose crimes were “enabled” by the high-end department store.

At least 37 women have accused Al-Fayed, who died in 2023 aged 94, of sexually assaulting them, barrister Dean Armstrong told reporters in London Friday. Armstrong said Al-Fayad was a “monster” who committed a “vast web of abuse.”

Setting out the legal claim being brought against Harrods, Armstrong said Al-Fayad was “enabled by a system” that pervaded the store.

“This is and was a systematic failure of corporate responsibility, and that systematic failure is on the shoulders of Harrods,” Armstrong said.

The legal team involved in the BBC investigation claimed Harrods knew of Al Fayed’s alleged crimes. The store showed an “abject failure of corporate responsibility, and a failure to provide a safe system of work,” Armstrong said.

The team called the case “horrific,” comparing it to that of Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted pedophile who died in jail before he could face trial on federal sex-trafficking charges, and of Jimmy Savile, a British television personality who was revealed to a be a prolific sexual offender after his death.

Barrister Bruce Drummond described the case as “one of the worst cases of corporate sexual exploitation that certainly I, and perhaps the world, has ever seen.”

Harrods apologized to victims in a statement Thursday, saying it was “utterly appalled” by the allegations of abuse perpetrated by its former owner. The billionaire businessman owned the department store between 1985 and 2010.

In the statement, Harrods said that “new information came to light” last year about historic allegations of sexual abuse perpetrated by Al-Fayed.

Since then, it said, “it has been our priority to settle claims in the quickest way possible, avoiding lengthy legal proceedings for the women involved.”

It is unclear if the current owners will be liable for the alleged crimes committed under Harrods’ previous ownership, and whether they will be responsible for compensating the alleged victims and survivors of abuse.

Speaking at the news conference, Gloria Allred, a world-leading women’s rights attorney who has represented women who said they were abused by Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein, described Al-Fayed as “the epitome of a serial sexual abuser.”

The allegations against Al-Fayed include “serial rape, attempted rape, sexual battery and sexual abuse of minors,” Allred detailed.

London’s Fulham Football Club, which Al-Fayed owned between 1997 and 2013, said in a statement posted on X on Friday: “We are deeply troubled and concerned to learn of the disturbing reports following yesterday’s documentary. We have sincere empathy for the women who have shared their experiences.”

It added that it was working to establish whether anyone at the club had been affected.

The Egyptian-born Al-Fayed was a fixture of the business and celebrity world in Britain during his life. Al Fayed’s son, Dodi Fayed, died in 1997 along with Princess Diana in a high-speed car crash in Paris.

The Israeli military is investigating soldiers for throwing bodies from a rooftop in the northern occupied West Bank on Thursday, amid an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) incursion in the area that left seven dead, according to the Palestinian government, and has seen clashes and intense gunfire with militants.

The longest video shows three Israeli soldiers standing on a rooftop. They can be seen pushing a body over the edge of the building. The feet of the body get stuck in what appears to be electrical or telephone cables, and it dangles over the edge, headfirst. One of the soldiers then reaches over to dislodge the person’s feet, and the body tumbles to the ground.

Approaching a second body on the roof, a soldier picks up the person’s hands and another picks up the feet. They swing the body back and forth, then toss it over the side.

Finally, a soldier uses his feet to kick a third body over the side of the building.

Militaries are required under international law to treat the bodies of enemy soldiers with respect, prevent them from being mutilated, and return them to the deceased’s family. The Israeli military often confiscates the bodies of militants killed in battle.

Ameed Shehadeh, a correspondent for Al-Arabi, also witnessed the incident.

The IDF later said that along with the Israeli Security Agency, its forces had killed “the head of the terrorist organization in Qabatiya and six other terrorists.”

The IDF did not name the group it was targeting but said that several armed terrorists were identified last night who shot at the forces operating in the area. “The terrorists’ vehicle had weapons and explosives that caused a secondary explosion,” it added.

Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti called the treatment of the bodies “a barbaric act that shows the extent of the degradation and brutality of the behavior of the occupation army.”

Video shot earlier in the day showed a Palestinian militant with a rifle darting across the rooftops, with loud gunfire echoing off the concrete walls. Another video showed an Israeli soldier on the rooftop, shooting at the prone body of a man. A photo shows three bodies on the roof.

Later in the day an Israeli airstrike struck a car in the town, according to multiple videos from the scene. The IDF said in a statement that it was targeting “armed terrorists operating within a vehicle.”

Clashes between militants and Israeli security forces are ongoing in Qabatya with intense gunfire heard in the town well after sunset on Thursday.

The Israeli military has in recent weeks used increasingly militarized tactics in the occupied West Bank. Around 700 people have been killed in the West Bank and east Jerusalem since October 7, including more than 150 children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Thursday that had treated eight people wounded by live ammunition, two of whom were in critical condition.

Lauren Izso and Tim Lister contributed to this report.

Israel launched one of its most intense bombardments against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon this year Thursday, hours after the militant group’s leader condemned deadly twin device attacks that he said crossed “all the red lines.”

Israel’s audacious, coordinated attacks, which targeted Hezbollah members with explosives hidden inside pagers and walkie-talkies, have once again brought the Middle East to the brink of a wider conflict nearly a year after Palestinian militant group Hamas’ October 7 assault on Israel that resulted in the ongoing war in Gaza.

Focus is now on what Hezbollah and Israel’s next moves will be, with the United Nations Security Council due to hold an emergency meeting Friday to discuss the situation.

Uncertainty remains over whether Israel’s attacks are a precursor to a ground invasion across its northern border into Lebanon and to what extent Iran-backed Hezbollah, one of the most powerful paramilitary forces in the region, is capable of responding even as its leader vowed that a “reckoning will come.”

Here’s what we know.

What’s the fallout?

At least 37 people were killed in the attacks Tuesday and Wednesday, including children, and nearly 3,000 injured. Hezbollah said at least 38 of its members have been killed since Tuesday afternoon, but didn’t provide further details.

In a speech Thursday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah condemned the twin attacks, calling them “massacres” that “crossed all the red lines” because the devices exploded in public areas, with civilians among those harmed.

Though Hezbollah “suffered a major blow,” a “reckoning will come,” he added, and vowed the attacks would not bring the group down. The Hezbollah chief also warned Israel that fighting on the Lebanese front will not stop until hostilities end in Gaza.

What’s Israel’s plan?

As Nasrallah spoke Thursday, Israeli jets flew over Beirut, dropping flares and shaking windows with a wave of sonic booms that raised fears of an escalation in the Lebanese capital. Hours later, Israel launched a barrage of strikes in Lebanon, saying it hit about 100 Hezbollah rocket launchers and “terrorist infrastructure sites.”

Meanwhile, Hezbollah said it launched at least 17 attacks on military sites in northern Israel.

Israel has signaled its readiness for war with Hezbollah. The Israeli defense minister’s warning on Wednesday that a “new era” of war was beginning was followed by the military confirming its top commander had “completed approval of plans for the northern arena” along the Lebanon border.

The refocus north comes after Israel made it a new war objective to return diplaced residents to their homes near the northern border after being evacuated due to Hezbollah attacks.

How could Hezbollah respond?

Hezbollah leader Nasrallah hinted at retaliation for the twin attacks but it’s unclear what capacity the group might have to launch a counterattack if many of its members are wounded, and key communication methods are no longer reliable.

Despite Hezbollah appearing weakened, it is still believed to be the most heavily armed non-state group in the world with an increasingly sophisticated arsenal that has the potential to inflict significant damage on Israel.

There are however signs the already secretive group may have been driven deeper underground. The usual public gathering – typically consisting of high-level party officials and supporters – to watch Nasrallah’s speech was absent on Thursday.

And Nasrallah’s address – his first since the two waves of attacks – was possibly pre-recorded.

But the Hezbollah chief – who said the group’s leadership was mostly spared in the attacks as they were using older devices – has a powerful backer in Iran.

Lebanon-based Hezbollah is part of a Tehran-led axis spanning Yemen, Syria, Gaza and Iraq that has engaged in a simmering conflict with Israel and its allies over the past 11 months.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Hossein Salami reportedly told Nasrallah that Israel “will soon” face “a decisive and crushing response from (the) axis of resistance.”

The group also has a history of targeting Israel overseas, including a 1992 bomb attack at the Israeli embassy in Argentina that killed 29 people, and attacks on Israeli diplomats in India, Georgia and Thailand in 2012 that Israel blamed on Iran and Hezbollah, though the group denied involvement at the time.

Haven’t we been here before?

Fears that Israel’s devastating war in Gaza could spill into a wider regional conflict have flared to varying degrees of alarm since Hamas launched its deadly October 7 killing and kidnapping rampage.

Key players have at times appeared to walk right up to the brink, but tensions have de-escalated given the grave consequences of an all-out war in the Middle East.

But almost every week brings another violent incident that sets the region on high alert once again, with fears that an all out war would drag in the entire region, as well as Israel’s chief ally the United States.

In August, Iran pledged retaliation against Israel for the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which came a day after a Hezbollah commander was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut.

For months, the international community has been trying to de-escalate tensions between Israel and Hezbollah. That will continue Friday with the UN Security Council’s emergency meeting.

While Hezbollah’s leader has previously stated he does not want a fully-fledged regional war, experts have said he may now be under more pressure to act following the spate of explosions, and with Israel set on moving its military objectives to its northern border.

Karachi, Pakistan — Police in southern Pakistan shot dead a blasphemy suspect during an alleged shootout with armed men, officials said Thursday, the second such apparent extra-judicial killing in a week, drawing condemnation from human rights groups.

Police identified the slain man as Shah Nawaz, a doctor in Umerkot district, Sindh province, who had gone into hiding two days ago after being accused of insulting Islam’s prophet Mohammed and sharing blasphemous content on social media.

Local police chief Niaz Khoso said Nawaz was “killed just by chance” on Wednesday night when officers signaled two men riding on a motorcycle to stop in Mirpur Khas, a city in Sindh.

He said instead of stopping, the men opened fire and tried to flee, prompting police to return fire. One of the suspects fled on the motorcycle, while the other was killed, he said.

Khoso claimed it was only after the shootout that officers learned the slain man was the doctor being sought by them for the alleged blasphemy.

Videos circulating on social media showed local clerics throwing rose petals at police and praising officers for killing the blasphemy suspect. There was no immediate clarification from the Sindh government about the circumstances in which the suspect was killed.

The killing of Nawaz drew strong condemnation from the country’s independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, or HRCH, which said it was “gravely concerned by the alleged extrajudicial killing of two people accused of blasphemy.”

“This pattern of violence in cases of blasphemy, in which law enforcement personnel are allegedly involved, is an alarming trend,” it said in a statement. HRCP also asked the government to conduct an independent inquiry to ascertain who was responsible for Nawaz’s death and ensure those responsible for it were punished.

The killing of Nawaz in Mirpur Khas came a day after Islamists in a nearby city, Umerkot, staged a protest demanding his arrest. The mob also burned Nawaz’s clinic on Wednesday, officials said.

The latest killing comes a week after an officer opened fire inside a police station in the southwestern city of Quetta, fatally wounding Syed Khan, another suspect held on accusations of blasphemy. Khan was arrested Wednesday after officers rescued him from an enraged mob that claimed he had insulted Islam’s prophet.

But he was killed by a police officer, Mohammad Khurram, who was quickly arrested.

However, the tribe and the family of the slain man said they pardoned the officer, saying Khan hurt the sentiments of Muslims by insulting the prophet Mohammed.

Though killings of blasphemy suspects by mobs are common, the extra-judicial killings by police are rare in Pakistan, where accusations of blasphemy — sometimes even just rumors — often spark rioting and rampage by mobs that can escalate into killings.

Under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws, anyone found guilty of insulting Islam or Islamic religious figures can be sentenced to death — though authorities have yet to carry out a death sentence for blasphemy.

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in attacks on blasphemy suspects in recent years.

In June, a mob broke into a police station in the northwestern town of Madyan, snatched a detainee who was a tourist, and then killed him over allegations that he had desecrated Islam’s holy book.

Last year, a mob in Punjab province attacked churches and homes of Christians after claiming they saw a local Christian and his friend desecrating pages from a Quran. The attack in the district of Jaranwala drew nationwide condemnation, but Christians say the men linked to the violence are yet to be put on trial.