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Fighting rages from Ukraine to the Middle East
As the summer progresses, conflicts which have raged from Ukraine, Lebanon, Gaza and Iran continue without pause.
By Nathan Morley
The conflicts that have defined this year — in Ukraine, Lebanon, Gaza and Iran — show no sign of abating as summer continues.
Russia and Ukraine are continuing to trade overnight strikes, with President Zelensky accusing Moscow of deploying North Korean-made ballistic missiles in an attack on Zaporizhzhia that has killed at least six people and wounded 19.
“The more North Korean strikes there are here in Ukraine, in Europe, the more their missiles and soldiers are used, the more they correct their shortcomings and blind spots”, Zelensky said.
In Voronezh, southern Russia, Ukrainian forces struck warehouses belonging to Wildberries, the online retailer, in the latest of a series of attacks on the company’s infrastructure.
The strike comes a day after Ukrainian drones killed at least thirteen people, among them a child, in the republic of Tatarstan — more than 1,100 kilometres from the Ukrainian border.
Wildberries’ warehouses were also targeted in July, in raids that disrupted trade for a large number of Russian businesses.
The United Nations says Russia’s continuing invasion has left civilians exposed to repeated deadly attacks, with humanitarian workers and infrastructure increasingly among the targets.
Toby Fricker from UNICEF Ukraine said the organisation was working with partners on the ground in all areas to support immediately after attacks, “providing…psychological first aid and psychologists speaking with families with children whose homes have been destroyed or damaged or who live very close in the area and that fear and the shock of an attack that you really can’t imagine unless you’re there.”
Middle East
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, the Israeli army has sealed off the Palestinian village of Taybeh, near Ramallah, and arrested thirteen Palestinians. Kan- TV, an Israeli network, reports that the area has been declared a closed military zone amid concerns over potential attacks by Israeli settlers.
In southern Lebanon, an Israeli drone struck ambulances operated by the Islamic Health Organisation, Bayt al-Talaba and the Islamic Risala Scouts, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency.
The vehicles were reportedly transporting a casualty from an earlier strike on a car in the Universities district of Nabatieh.
And in the Strait of Hormuz, where a shipping crisis continues to unfold, the United Nations’ maritime agency has warned that seafarers stranded on vessels in the waterway are suffering a mounting toll on their mental health. “They feel forgotten because when they turn on the media, all the headlines are about how petrol is going up, how this is affecting the global economy, how things cost three, four times the price that normally they will pay for it,” Head of the International Maritime Organization – IMO – Arsenio Dominguez told UN media. “Nobody talks about the seafarer. We need more countries to recognize them as key workers.”
Meanwhile in Syria, a court has sentenced the deposed president, Bashar al-Assad, to death in absentia, having found him guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the civil war. It is the first conviction secured against Mr Assad, who fled to Moscow with his family after his government collapsed in December 2024, bringing to an end more than five decades of Assad family rule.
However, it remains unclear whether Syria’s new government will be able to obtain al-Assad’s extradition from Russia.
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