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‘Like smoking a cigarette’: Indonesia chokes on haze as blazes intensify amid super ‘El Niño’

Suwadi can barely see five metres in front of him when he steps outside his home in Indonesian Borneo. Each breath, he says, feels “like smoking a cigarette”. It has been like this for weeks in Kalimantan, the Indonesian side of Borneo island, where fires have raged across tens of thousands of acres of land, including ancient rainforest, triggering a trans-boundary haze now threatening Malaysia and Singapore. In West Kalimantan there has been a spike in emergency room visits, with about 5,000 people arriving with respiratory symptoms each week since July, compared with 500 per week in the first half of the year, health ministry data shows. Children continue to go to school and adults to work, but many are suffering from the unhealthy effects of breathing in thick smoke, constantly. “What about babies, the elderly, and pregnant women who are exposed to this?” asks Suwadi. Some classes have been suspended, with parents urging schools to switch to online learning. Fires each year in Kalimantan are often blamed on “slash and burn” techniques used to clear land for plantations that produce palm oil, of which Indonesia is the world’s largest producer. Authorities say this year’s “super” El Niño may be intensifying the blazes, with the weather phenomenon expected to peak in September. Experts have warned the worst could be yet to come as the dry season continues into October, and the rains that could extinguish the fires look unlikely before November. The haze is fast becoming a regional issue, with Malaysia and Brunei agreeing to raise it at Asean as thick smoke from forest and peatland fires drifts across the border. On Tuesday, the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, was the most polluted city on earth, followed by Jakarta, according to air quality monitoring company IQAir. Almost 600 schools in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on Borneo island closed due to hot and dry conditions. Singapore went on alert. On social media, Indonesians have tried to draw attention to the issue – highlighting the huge blazes in Kalimantan, and also in Sumatra, West Papua, and in Lombok where a fire destroyed a traditional Sade village over the weekend. Forestry ministry data shows that nearly 94,000 hectares (232,000 acres) have burned nationwide this July alone. On Monday, the Indonesian president, Prabowo Subianto, ordered authorities to revoke the business permits of corporations suspected of directing the land clearing, state news agency Antara reported. Indonesian police arrested 72 people suspected of starting fires in Borneo and Sumatra, with most accused of deliberately burning land to clear areas for plantations. The response comes as regional experts fear this could be another devastating fire year, with many of Indonesia’s most severe blazes occurring during El Niño cycles. In 2015, another El Niño year, more than 6m acres were burned, with trans-boundary haze again plaguing neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore. During a recent visit to the region, Prabowo promised government resources to contain the fires, including helicopters and water pumps. But some Indonesians have expressed frustration at what they see as government inaction against the companies allegedly involved. Indonesia’s unique rainforests are home to peatland ecosystems, which should be naturally resilient to fire when water tables remain high. However, drainage networks built to clear land for pulp and oil palm plantations have robbed the soil of its natural capacity to retain water, experts say. Fires on degraded peatlands are more difficult to control because they burn deep underground, says Justin Sentian, a professor in climate change at Universiti Malaysia Sabahand. And they produce thick, acrid smoke. “If authorities only act after hotspots appear, they will forever be playing catch-up,” says Sentian. “True prevention must address the soil itself by halting the conversion of peatlands and actively restoring degraded areas.” On Monday another fire broke out near the factory where Suwadi works in Kalimantan. With houses burning and smoke everywhere, Suwadi says he is afraid for the future of the region. “The fire is getting dangerously close to homes,” he says, “People are [in] panic now.” With Agence France-Presse and Associated Press

Gulf between Hezbollah and Lebanese state grows wider as Israeli occupation continues

Fatima al-Ashkar used toys to explain to her children that their father had been killed. She arranged toy soldiers in a mock battle and picked up an airplane, miming an air raid on the plastic men below. “I started explaining to them: ‘Israel came and bombed here. Daddy was here. Daddy was martyred. Daddy was protecting us from Israel,’” said al-Ashkar, a 26-year-old resident of Markaba, south Lebanon. Her husband, Mohammed Ali, who was a member of Hezbollah, was killed fighting Israel in the region in early April. But the young widow was not alone in shouldering the burden of her sudden loss. The sophisticated machinery of Hezbollah’s social support system soon stepped in. Hezbollah’s martyr foundation found and furnished an apartment for al-Ashkar and her children in the southern suburbs of Beirut, covering the rent in full. It continues to provide stipends for each child, pay for their school fees and cover all healthcare costs for the family. Every so often, representatives of the foundation will visit al-Ashkar’s home and sit with her and the children for psychological support sessions. “[Hezbollah] is standing by us. They do everything for us,” said al-Ashkar. It was not the state that al-Ashkar, and other residents of south Lebanon who were displaced or lost loved ones in the war, turned to, it was Hezbollah. Many did so because they believed in it; others because the absence of the state left them little alternative. As the Lebanese state tries to reassert its authority, it finds the country deeply divided. It faces a challenge that extends far beyond disarming Hezbollah, which the US and Israel are pushing it to do. The state must contend with Hezbollah’s deep-rooted social welfare system and persuade its supporters that it can provide security – even as continuing Israeli occupation and attacks undermine the state’s claim that it can protect Lebanon. The latest round of war has hardened existing divisions over Hezbollah. The group’s supporters accuse the government of humiliating Lebanon by negotiating directly with Israel and not responding to its attacks. Hezbollah’s opponents blame the group for provoking a war by launching rockets at Israel on 2 March, triggering Israel’s invasion and current occupation. “Honestly, I don’t care about the state. Before, we used to say: ‘They should speak, they should do something.’ Now, whether they speak, or don’t speak, it makes no difference to us,” said al-Ashkar. Her home was blown up during a nominal ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel in 2024, and her village was occupied by Israel until its withdrawal in 2000. For Mustapha Hamze, a 66-year-old doctor from the outskirts of Nabatieh, a stronger state would make a difference. Neither Hezbollah’s weapons nor the government’s diplomacy has helped him access his home, which he fled in the early days of the war. The last time he tried, an Israeli drone fired on him. “Israel says it wants peace, that’s a lie. But Hezbollah also needs wars, these groups live through war. They have weapons and they take everything from you. They resemble one another,” said Hamze. “There is no other strong political organisation. [Hezbollah] wants everyone to be with them and under their wing, anything else is unacceptable.” But he also has little faith in the Lebanese state’s ability to defend his rights. He has applied for safe passage to visit his home through the Lebanese army, which has a place in a deconfliction mechanism that includes Israel, but has yet to receive it. Lebanese officials know one of their biggest challenges will be convincing people to place their faith in the state – particularly supporters of Hezbollah. “This needs to be a whole-of-government approach. For supporters of Hezbollah, you are talking about three generations of social indoctrination. You have to start with the culture, then inclusion in government, and then we can talk about security,” a senior Lebanese security official said on condition of anonymity. The Lebanese government is using the three “pilot zones” – areas handed back to the Lebanese army from Israeli occupation – as prototypes of communities where it is trying to rebuild trust in the state. Reconstruction in these areas, mostly destroyed by Israeli shelling, is following a different blueprint from previous wars. The army is not allowing the southern council, a government body closely tied to the Hezbollah-allied Amal movement, to conduct reconstruction as was the case in the past. Instead, it is the Lebanese army taking charge of rebuilding roads and repairing infrastructure. This way, the security official said, the state is visible and citizens will turn to Beirut, rather than Hezbollah. And, the army can fulfil its obligations under the pilot zone agreement by ensuring that infrastructure projects are not being used for military purposes. But the state’s narrative is undermined every time Israel shells Lebanese land – which happens several times a day – and it does not respond. Last week, Israeli troops blew up the municipal building, a public school and a clinic in eastern Zawtar, in view of one of the three pilot zones, Zawtar al-Gharbiyah. The cash-strapped state also cannot match the extensive social services Hezbollah has to offer. “We got medical treatment, free medicine, blood tests from Hezbollah and Samidoun [an affiliated aid group]. As for the state, we haven’t gotten anything from them. And the army’s hands were tied by the government,” said Tia Abdalah, a displaced resident from the border village of Aitaroun. Although she was not affiliated with Hezbollah, she said the group gave her family monthly cash stipends, as well as aid boxes. Lebanese officials are painfully aware of the limits of their ability to stop Israeli bombing; they are determined to go through the diplomatic process regardless. But without Israel’s withdrawal from south Lebanon, they fear the legitimacy of the state will collapse. “The pilot zones won’t work unless there is a clear timetable for withdrawal. We want to push out Hezbollah, but we don’t want to appear as if we are playing the role of the South Lebanese Army,” said the security official, referencing Israel’s proxy that aided its occupation of south Lebanon from the 1980s until 2000. To people such as al-Ashkar, whose husband died in what she sees as the fight to defend Lebanon from Israel, the state offers little promise of security. “[Israel] calls [the army] on the telephone and tells them: ‘Leave the village,’ so they leave the village. Then there’s nobody left defending it … Sometimes you feel they’re working for the Israelis,” she said.

China is the biggest buyer of Iran’s oil. Could US sanctions threaten those ties?

The US has unveiled an expansion of sanctions that it says will cut off Iran’s economic lifeline but stopped short of the most punishing measures, instead putting the world on notice to cease doing business with the Islamic republic. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent ⁠warned other countries would need to sever ⁠business ties with Iran or risk being forced out of the dollar-based financial system. He previously urged cooperation from China – the biggest buyer of Iranian oil for several years – although the US blockade of Iran’s ports, renewed in mid-July, has already cut much of the Iranian oil flows to China. Experts say Washington is wary of Chinese retaliation for any sanctions on its banks ahead of expected ⁠talks next month between US president Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, with any curbs on China’s exports of critical minerals especially sensitive. What do the new moves by the US mean for China and oil and how might Beijing respond? How much oil does China buy from Iran? Through the early weeks of the war Iran continued to ship to China, with Beijing’s imports of Iranian crude slipping only marginally, according to Kpler ship-tracking data, from 1.57m barrels a day in February to 1.47m barrels a day in March. Since then imports have dropped dramatically. The US renewed its blockade of Iran’s ⁠ships and ports in July in an attempt to cut off oil sales, as a deal to halt their war broke down. Shipments fell to 785,000 ‌barrels a day in June – ‌the lowest since February 2023 – but then rose slightly in July to 823,000, provisional Kpler data showed. The intake so far in August ‌has dropped to 534,000. Who are the Chinese buyers? Chinese independent refiners have been the main Iranian crude buyers, attracted by what has typically been a steep discount to mainstream barrels. Known as “teapot” refineries, they survive by buying cheap crude wherever they can, turning it into petrol and diesel for neighbouring provinces. China’s big state refiners have shunned Iranian oil since 2019, when the US reimposed sanctions on Tehran, because they do not want to be cut off from the US dollar-based international financial system. But the teapots, which cater to a domestic market, have no such qualms. Iranian oil delivered to China has long been branded as Malaysian, and more ‌recently Indonesian, and is settled in Chinese currency, trading in a tight loop involving a chain of difficult-to-track intermediaries, according to refinery sources and traders involved in the business. Have previous US sanctions been effective? Washington has intensified its efforts to clamp down on Chinese purchases of Iranian oil since Trump returned to the White House early last year, imposing sanctions on mostly smaller Chinese refiners and other participants in the supply chain, which have in some cases proven disruptive. The US treasury department has also warned two larger Chinese banks they could face ⁠secondary sanctions if Iranian funds were found moving through their systems, but has stopped short of designating them. In April, Washington imposed sanctions on Hengli Petrochemical (Dalian) refinery, along with about 40 shipping firms and vessels, accusing Hengli of buying billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian oil, escalating its ‌efforts to curb Tehran’s oil revenue. Hengli has denied buying Iranian oil. In the past, however, sanctions themselves have done little to slow overall flows of Iranian oil into China. Asked about Chinese banks on Monday, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said: “We want to make clear here today that no one is above the reach of US sanctions.” What have China and Iran said? The Chinese foreign ministry said sanctions and pressure tactics did not help and Beijing would do what was necessary to protect China’s interests. China, which has said it rejects unilateral sanctions, has called for a resolution through diplomatic and political means. Iranian economy minister ⁠Ali Madanizadeh told state television that neither China nor ‌Russia had “accepted” the US measures, and predicted other countries would resist them. He said: “Naturally, the enemies intend to launch an economic terrorist attack on us, but we also have our own tools and know how to play the game.” With Reuters

Ukraine war briefing: Ozon next in Kyiv’s sights as sheds of Wildberries rival burn

Ukraine has targeted four more warehouses of Ozon – Russia’s second-largest online retailer after Wildberries, which has itself been crippled by Ukrainian attacks. Ozon’s shares fell by almost 30% on Monday after it reported strikes in southern Russia that brought to six the number of its facilities targeted within three days. Ozon said a logistics hub in Makhachkala in Dagestan was on fire and had halted operations after a drone attack in which “several people” were injured. Another was on fire in Enem on the outskirts of the city of Krasnodar, while workers were evacuated from warehouses that came under attack in Adygeysk, in the Adygeya region, and in Nevinnomyssk in the Stavropol region. In earlier events, drone strikes halted work at an Ozon ‌logistics centre in the Samara region and another ‌in the Orenburg region. Financial analysts said that unlike privately owned Wildberries, which has the backing of state-owned bank VTB, Ozon’s main shareholder AFK Sistema has a large debt and is unlikely to provide substantial support. Before the latest Ozon attacks, Vladimir Putin promised state help in the restoration of warehouses “at a new technological level” and asked the government to design a programme to help the sector. The EU imposed sanctions on Ozon’s and Wildberries’ financial units on 24 July. Putin has geared up the Russian state to seize control of companies like Wildberries and Ozon, as well as fuel companies and transport operators, by deeming them too poorly protected from Ukrainian attacks. Special powers set out in a presidential decree will allow ⁠the state to take charge of them at a time when Ukraine has stepped up drone ⁠attacks on oil refineries and e-commerce warehouses. The state will be able to seize physical and financial assets, ‌and assume formal ownership ‌rights, if entities responsible for such facilities are judged to have failed to protect them and are too slow to repair them after any attack. It applies to fuel, energy, industrial, communications, transport and logistics facilities and other objects regarded as critically important for security and economic stability. The ⁠Ukrainian military struck ⁠a ⁠Russian Mig-29 fighter plane and two ⁠Russian vessels in the Black ⁠Sea, Ukraine’s ‌drone ‌forces commander ‌Robert Brovdi said on Monday. It is the third Russian warplane hit in two days. Brovdi said on the ‌Telegram app that one of the vessels attacked was ⁠a tanker and the other was a bulk ‌carrier. Ukraine’s ⁠military struck a ⁠Russian military ⁠plant at Kamensky in the Rostov ⁠region, causing ⁠a fire, the ‌Ukrainian ‌general staff ‌said. The plant produces solid rocket fuel for Russian weapons. The Perm oil refinery, Russia’s seventh-largest by volume, has shut down after a Ukrainian drone attack on 21 August, two industry sources ⁠told Reuters. The primary CDU-4 unit, which accounts for almost 40% of the plant’s capacity, stopped working on that day. Repair ‌works could take between one and two weeks. Another primary refining unit, CDU-5, which accounts for 34% of the plant’s capacity, has been idle since a 29 July drone attack. Lukoil, which controls the refinery, did not reply to a request for comment. The plant usually makes millions of tonnes of petrol and diesel. Andy Burnham urged Ukraine’s allies to “dig into our own stocks” to provide it with more Patriot interceptor missiles, saying it “needs more help to protect its people right now”. The British prime minister chaired his first meeting of the “coalition of the willing” in Kyiv as Ukraine celebrated its independence day. Burnham said the coalition was “doing everything we can all do and working with our allies outside of this coalition to dig into our own stocks and help others dig into their stocks”. He called on the US Congress to “ratchet up” economic pressure on Russia as it struggles with a record budget deficit and declining oil revenues. Ten Ukrainian prisoners of war who were thought to be missing in action have been released in a prisoner exchange, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. He did not mention Russia in his statement, saying only that the prisoners had been released via Belarus, one of Moscow’s closest allies. Russia did not immediately say if Kyiv had returned soldiers in the exchange.

Japan enlists 1,800 people to drag a 360-tonne castle keep using ropes and rollers

To chants of “so-re, so-re”, about 1,800 people came together in northern Japan over the weekend to pull a 360-tonne castle keep a little more than two metres closer to its original resting place as part of ongoing renovations. The keep – a fortified tower within a castle – had to be moved to repair a wall that was damaged in a major earthquake. Rotating teams of 80 people heaved on 30-metre ropes as the keep of Hirosaki Castle in Aomori prefecture edged closer to its destination. On Saturday participants towed the building – which has been set on rails – 1.13m, while on Sunday it was shifted another 1.09m. “We had about 8,000 applications for the 1,800 slots over the last two days, roughly four times oversubscribed, so not everyone could participate,” Kensuke Hayasaka, head of the parks and green spaces division at Hirosaki City, told the Guardian. “Not only from the city, but from across Japan and overseas; a fair number from south-east Asia and from Europe and North America.” In order to preserve the historic structure, a technique known as hikiya – whereby buildings are put on rollers and moved rather than dismantled – was used. In 2015 the city put out a call for people to come and participate directly. The result was the first citizen-driven hikiya, and the first time the method has been used in any form to move a castle for a century. “Because the keep is a nationally designated important cultural property, we didn’t take it apart,” Hayasaka said. “We’re using hikiya, a building-relocation method that has existed in Japan since ancient times.” Work to preserve the castle has been going on since. The wall was completed in December 2024, with all 2,185 stones restacked in their original positions. With that task completed, this year officials again asked for the public’s help to pull the keep back to its original position. Motoharu Nakata, 61, travelled from Hiroshima at the other end of Japan. “I pulled it 11 years ago too. It’s very moving to be able to participate again. There’s absolutely no other opportunity to pull a castle – it was fantastic,” Nakata told the Sankei Shimbun. Pulling the keep by hand will continue until the end of August, with about 4,100 people scheduled to move it a total of 5m. It is a symbolic, community-building effort and the rest of the about 73m will be carried out using machinery by the end of the year. The keep at Hirosaki Castle is one of 12 such structures left in Japan, and the only one in the north-eastern Tohoku region. Seat of the Tsugaru clan, the castle was completed in 1611 but the original keep burned down after a lightning strike ignited a gunpowder store in 1627. The current structure was rebuilt in 1810 and the castle is now the centrepiece of a park that draws about 2 million visitors each year during cherry-blossom season. Major renovations mean the keep will not be accessible to tourists for years. “Once it’s back on the original base, the preservation work on the keep begins and the whole structure will be covered over,” Hayasaka said. “As things stand, we expect it to reopen to visitors in 2033.”

Colombia’s new president Abelardo de la Espriella announces immigration crackdown

Colombia’s far-right president, Abelardo de la Espriella, has announced a crackdown on immigrants, ordering authorities to detain and deport people who are in the country irregularly or have committed crimes. In office for just over two weeks, the millionaire former lawyer made the announcement on Sunday as the country continued to grapple with the aftermath of a 7.4-magnitude earthquake on 10 August that killed more than 300 people and destroyed more than 30,000 homes. De la Espriella said the first joint operations involving the police and the migration authority should begin “this very week”. “Let the coordinated operations begin to track down illegal immigrants: first, those committing crimes; second, those who have not regularised their status and who will have to be deported immediately,” de la Espriella said during a cabinet meeting held on Sunday in Barranquilla, the Caribbean city that has in effect been turned into an alternative capital. He echoed the “Americans first” rhetoric of his ally, US president Donald Trump, saying that from now on it would be “Colombians first, Colombians second and Colombians third”. The Colombian president has joined other Trump-aligned leaders in the region who have also tightened migration rules, including Argentina’s Javier Milei and Chile’s José Antonio Kast. De la Espriella’s order is facing criticism from the opposition and human rights activists, who say it will end a migration policy that endured for more than a decade under both rightwing and leftwing governments and benefited above all migrants fleeing the humanitarian crisis in neighbouring Venezuela. Although he used the anti-immigration rhetoric characteristic of other far-right candidates during his campaign, his platform focused chiefly on his promise to pursue an iron-fist policy against criminal groups. In the same announcement, he also declared that all gangs involved in drug trafficking, illegal mining, extortion and smuggling were “terrorists and we will treat them as such. Whatever happens, we will defeat them, by reason or by force.” The president did not directly mention Venezuelans when discussing immigration, but they account for roughly 90% of all migrants in the country. Of the 2.8 million Venezuelans living in Colombia, about 848,000 are in an irregular situation, including 193,000 children and adolescents. The leftwing senator María José Pizarro Rodríguez reposted the president’s announcement and asked whether he was “proposing a Colombian ICE against fellow Latin Americans”, in reference to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). She added that the “order to deport irregular migrants is pure xenophobia and aporophobia”. “Instead of persecuting people fleeing poverty and violence, regularise their status. There are thousands of migrants who work hard and contribute to the economies of the countries that receive them,” she wrote. The Colombian newspaper El Tiempo reported that sources within the migration department believe the agency does not have enough staff to carry out the operations De la Espriella has promised. Analysts have also noted that under Colombian law there is no such category as an “illegal” immigrant, as De la Espriella said, but rather migrants in an “irregular” situation, since being in the country without the proper documentation is not a crime.

US strikes a vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing 2 people in first attack in months

The US military has launched a deadly strike on a vessel in the Pacific Ocean, killing two people accused of drug trafficking. On Monday, US Southern Command (SouthCom) announced it “executed a lethal kinetic strike on a low-profile vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific”. “Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking. The operation killed two narco-terrorists,” SouthCom added. Southern Command did not provide evidence for the vessel’s alleged involvement in drug trafficking. In a statement on the strikes, Francis L Donovan, SouthCom’s commander general, said: “We are committed to imposing total systemic friction on narco-terrorists – disrupting their operations, dismantling their leadership and eliminating cartel terror across the region.” “This operation is a powerful demonstration of our lethal precision, overwhelming capability, and absolute resolve to protect the US homeland,” Donovan added. A pixelated black-and-white video posted to SouthCom’s X account on Monday showed a vessel moving through the water before it was struck by an explosion that produced a large flash of light. Monday’s strike marks the latest in a series of US military strikes since the Donald Trump administration launched what it described as a campaign targeting “narco-terrorists” smuggling drugs into the US, despite numerous reports indicating that the strikes have done little to stem the flow of drugs into the country. It brings the overall death toll to 223 people killed in 67 strikes during the nearly year-long US campaign of bombing alleged drug boats off Latin America’s Caribbean coast and in the eastern Pacific Ocean. US Southern Command says the campaign has resulted in the destruction of 64 speedboats, three “low-profile” ships and a semisubmersible craft. The latest strike comes as the Trump administration pursues deals with allied nations to extend its offensive to land across multiple Latin American countries. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a visit to Panama this month that Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras had agreed to allow the US to carry out joint military operations against criminal groups on their soil. Guatemala denied reaching such a deal. Ecuador launched similar missions with the US in March. The Trump administration’s boat bombing campaign began in early September and has left numerous survivors, but most of them have never been recovered. US Southern Command said in a separate statement on Monday that there have been more than 20 search and rescue efforts overall, almost all of which were unsuccessful. According to data compiled from the command’s social media posts, the strikes have generated 28 survivors with only three people ever being rescued – one person during a strike in March who was transferred to the Costa Rican Coast Guard, and two wounded people who were later repatriated to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia. The very first strike in September 2025 left two survivors who were killed in a second, follow-up strike. When that became public, it drew concern from some lawmakers and those who study military law. The White House insisted it was done “in self-defense” to ensure the boat was destroyed and in accordance with armed conflict laws. Despite the defense department framing the strikes as attacks against “narco-terrorism”, it has provided little evidence on whether the vessels were actually transporting drugs. The attacks have been condemned as extrajudicial killings by the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations. According to a 2020 report by the US Drug Enforcement Administration, 74% of the cocaine reaching the US arrived through the Pacific while only 8% came from fast boats from the Caribbean. Critics have questioned the overall legality of the boat strikes as well as their effectiveness, in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the US over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India. The Pentagon’s watchdog said in May that it plans to look into whether the US military followed an established targeting framework when carrying out the strikes. However, the evaluation is focused specifically on what’s known as the six-phase Joint Targeting Cycle and not on the legality of the strikes, the inspector general’s office said. Meanwhile, an investigation by the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (Clip) this year identified 13 previously unidentified victims of US vessel attacks. All came from impoverished communities across Latin America and the Caribbean and several were fishers with no indication of involvement in the drug trade, it found. “There are communities where they stopped fishing for several weeks – and if they do that, people go hungry – because they were terrified of being bombed,” María Teresa Ronderos, Clip director, said at the time of the report’s release. Other families continue to grieve as they seek answers about their relatives killed in US airstrikes. “If the boat was carrying so much cocaine and then exploded and caught fire, where is the evidence? Where is the cocaine? That is what I want to know. I know Ricky. He was a fisherman. That was his life,” Titus, the brother of Ricky Joseph, one of the 13 people identified in the CLIP investigation, said in June from the Carribean island of St Lucia.

US threatens severe sanctions against countries with economic ties to Iran

The US has threatened to impose severe sanctions against any country or entity maintaining economic ties with Iran, hoping to achieve with economic measures what military means have so far failed to do. It is unclear, however, how far the Trump administration is prepared to go in confronting China, Iran’s biggest trading partner, which has signalled its resistance to US economic pressure to cut off links with an ally. Iran, meanwhile, vowed retaliation against any country that took part in the US-led isolation campaign. Launching what he called Operation Economic Outcast, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, called it an unprecedented campaign and compared it with the D-day Normandy landings, a turning point in the second world war. “Today, in that same spirit, we are launching an economic onslaught against Iran’s financial connections around the globe,” Bessent said on Monday. “Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone.” Asked whether sanctions would be applied to China, which bought an estimated 80% of Iran’s shipped oil last year, he replied: “We want to make clear here today that no one is above the reach of US sanctions. That if they facilitate transactions and are part of the ecosystem that turns Iranian oil into money, into repression, they will be targeted.” Bessent said the US had identified those that continued to deal with Iran and each violator would be given a deadline to cut ties or face US sanctions. He said the deadlines imposed would depend on individual circumstances. “Any entity that facilitates money laundering on behalf of Iran will be removed from the US dollar system,” he said. “The clock just started ticking.” Bessent said Donald Trump was “making phone calls to world leaders with specific requests to cease their interactions with the regime”, but he did not specify whether the US president would talk to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. China’s embassy in Washington told reporters: “Regarding the Iran issue, sanctions and pressure do not help resolve the problem. China calls on the relevant parties to take responsible actions and resolve the issue through political and diplomatic means.” Tehran said it would retaliate against the sanctions using a range of measures. Maj Gen Ali Abdollahi, the armed forces’ chief of staff, said the retaliation could take the form of land, sea or air operations or cyber-attacks. The announcement of secondary sanctions against Iran comes nearly six months after the the US and Israel launched an attack on Iran that killed its supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Early expectations that the regime in Tehran would collapse or agree to Washington’s demands to give up uranium enrichment and other key elements of its nuclear programme were dashed. Hardliners appeared to strengthen their grip on government in Tehran and responded by declaring the closure of the strait of Hormuz, attacking ships that ignored its declaration. Trump imposed a counter-blockage on Iranian oil exports through the strait, leading to an impasse that has had profound effects on the global economy. Sina Toossi, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy, said: “After nearly six months without a military or diplomatic victory, Washington appears to be trying to accomplish through intensified economic strangulation what military force has so far failed to achieve. But Tehran is answering that zero-sum approach with one of its own.” The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, however, said further military action was not off the table. “By no means are we foreclosing using ‌kinetic strikes anywhere in the strait of Hormuz or around Iran,” Hegseth ⁠told reporters on Monday. In apparent anticipation of the US measures, the United Arab Emirates, a close US and Israeli ally, announced it was suspending trade ties with Iran. Turkey, another trading partner with Iran, which has been critical of the US-led campaign against the Islamic Republic, has yet to respond to the US threat of sanctions. Andrew Miller, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said: “The announcement of new economic sanctions on Iran and those countries trading with it signals what is plain to all: this war has brought the United States no closer to eliminating Iran’s nuclear programme or crippling the Iranian regime. But while sanctions can be effective, it is highly unlikely they will produce a quick settlement favourable to the United States.”