Category: 2. World

Al Jazeera

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump pledged on Sunday to evict homeless people from the nation’s capital and jail criminals, despite Washington’s mayor arguing there is no current spike in crime.

“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don’t have to move out. Were going to put you in jail where you belong,” Trump posted on the Truth Social platform.

The White House declined to explain what legal authority Trump would use to evict people from Washington. The Republican president controls only federal land and buildings in the city. Trump is planning to hold a press conference on Monday to “stop violent crime in Washington, DC.” It was not clear whether he would announce more details about his eviction plan then.

Trump’s Truth Social post included pictures of tents and DC streets with some garbage on them. “I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before,” he said.

According to the Community Partnership, an organisation working to reduce homelessness in DC, on any given night there are 3,782 single persons experiencing homelessness in the city of about 700,000 people.

Most of the homeless individuals are in emergency shelters or transitional housing. About 800 are considered unsheltered or “on the street,” the organisation says.

A White House official said on Friday that more federal law enforcement officers were being deployed in the city following a violent attack on a young Trump administration staffer that angered the president.

The Democratic mayor of Washington, DC, Muriel Bowser, said on Sunday the capital was “not experiencing a crime spike.” “It is true that we had a terrible spike in crime in 2023, but this is not 2023,” Bowser said on MSNBCs The Weekend.

“We have spent over the last two years driving down violent crime in this city, driving it down to a 30-year low.”

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2025

Sergen Sezgin/Anadolu via Getty Images

Five Al Jazeera journalists were killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Sunday, the network said, with the Israel Defense Forces claiming one was a Hamas leader posing as a journalist.

The network said that Anas al-Sharif; another journalist, Mohammed Qreiqeh; and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa were killed.

The network reported that they died “in a targeted Israeli strike on a tent housing journalists in Gaza City.” The Al Jazeera Media Network said in a statement that the killings were a “targeted assassination.”

Al-Sharif and the other journalists were stationed opposite the Al-Shifa Hospital complex when they were killed, the statement said.

The Israel Defense Forces claimed that al-Sharif was “the head of a terrorist cell in the Hamas terrorist organization and was responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops.”

The IDF said in a statement about the killing that it had “previously disclosed intelligence information and many documents found in the Gaza Strip” that it said confirm that al-Sharif was a member of Hamas.

Al Jazeera reported Sunday that al-Sharif was a well-known Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who reported extensively from northern Gaza.

Al-Sharif and Al Jazeera have previously denied accusations that he was a terrorist.

In October 2024, the IDF shared a photo on X of al-Sharif and five other Al Jazeera journalists it claimed were “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.” The Al Jazeera Media Network called the claims “baseless” and “fabricated accusations.”

“Al Jazeera fear these allegations may serve as a pretext for further violence against the journalists, mirroring the tragic fates of other media professionals targeted and killed by Israeli occupation forces,” the media network said at the time.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said that Israel has a longstanding practice of accusing journalists of being terrorists without providing credible evidence.

It called al-Sharif one of Al Jazeera’s best-known journalists, who has recently been reporting on starvation in Gaza to a lack of aid allowed in the territory.

“Israel’s pattern of labeling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intent and respect for press freedom,” CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah said in a statement. “Journalists are civilians and must never be targeted. Those responsible for these killings must be held accountable.”

After an IDF spokesperson accused al-Sharif of being affiliated with Hamas’ military wing in July, al-Sharif told the CPJ that he was being retaliated against for news coverage that made Israel look bad.

“All of this is happening because my coverage of the crimes of the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip harms them and damages their image in the world. They accuse me of being a terrorist because the occupation wants to assassinate me morally,” al-Sharif told the CPJ then.

Al Jazeera, a network funded by Qatar’s government, said that 10 of its staff have been killed by Israel since Israel launched the war in Gaza in 2023.

Israel’s government has also accused the network of biased coverage of conflicts and violence involving itself and the Palestinian territories.

In May 2024, Israel’s government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voted to shut down the channel’s local offices. Netanyahu at the time called it an incitement channel.

Al Jazeera has repeatedly denied the allegations of incitement made by Israel.

Israel launched the offensive in Gaza, targeting Hamas, after the Hamas-led terror attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 251 people were taken hostage. Many of the targets of those attacks were civilians, including people attending a music festival.

Over 61,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the offensive began, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the enclave.

Israel last week said that it will take control of Gaza City, an escalation of the war. The move was criticized, and Germany announced that it is suspending the export to Israel of military equipment that could be used in Gaza.

US President Donald Trump has said homeless people must “move out” of Washington DC as he vowed to tackle crime in the city, but the mayor pushed back against the White House likening the capital to Baghdad.

“We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital,” he posted on Sunday. The Republican president also trailed a news conference for Monday about his plan to make the city “safer and more beautiful than it ever was before”.

Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, said: “We are not experiencing a crime spike.”

Trump signed an order last month making it easier to arrest homeless people, and he last week ordered federal law enforcement into the streets of Washington DC.

“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social on Sunday.

“We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you belong.”

Alongside photos of tents and rubbish, he added: “There will be no ‘MR. NICE GUY.’ We want our Capital BACK. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

The specifics of the president’s plan are not yet clear, but in a 2022 speech he proposed moving homeless people to “high quality” tents on inexpensive land outside cities, while providing access to bathrooms and medical professionals.

On Friday, Trump ordered federal agents – including from US Park Police, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and the US Marshals Service – into Washington DC to curb what he called “totally out of control” levels of crime.

A White House official told National Public Radio that up to 450 federal officers were deployed on Saturday night.

The move comes after a 19-year-old former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) was assaulted in an alleged attempted carjacking in Washington DC.

Trump vented about that incident on social media, posting a photo of the bloodied victim.

Mayor Bowser told MSNBC on Sunday: “It is true that we had a terrible spike in crime in 2023, but this is not 2023.

“We have spent over the last two years driving down violent crime in this city, driving it down to a 30-year low.”

She criticised White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller for dubbing the US capital “more violent than Baghdad”.

“Any comparison to a war-torn country is hyperbolic and false,” Bowser said.

Washington DC’s homicide rate remains relatively high per capita compared to other US cities, with a total of 98 such killings recorded so far this year. Homicides have been trending higher in the US capital from a decade ago.

But federal data from January suggests that Washington DC last year recorded its lowest overall violent crime figures – once carjacking, assault and robberies are incorporated – in 30 years.

Trump has said there will be a news conference at the White House on Monday to outline their plans to stop violent crime in the US capital.

In another post on Sunday he said the event at 10:00 EDT (14:00 GMT) would address ending “crime, murder and death” in the city, as well as its “physical renovation”.

He described Bowser as “a good person who has tried”, adding that despite her efforts crime continues to get “worse” and the city becomes “dirtier and less attractive”.

Community Partnership, an organisation that works to reduce homelessness in Washington DC, told Reuters news agency that the city of 700,000 residents had about 3,782 people homeless on any given night.

Most were in public housing or emergency shelters, but about 800 were considered “on the street”.

As a district, rather than a state, Washington DC is overseen by the federal government, which has the power to override some local laws.

The president controls federal land and buildings in the city, although he would need Congress to assume federal control of the district.

In recent days, he has threatened to take over the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department, which Bowser argued was not possible.

“There are very specific things in our law that would allow the president to have more control over our police department,” Bowser said. “None of those conditions exist in our city right now.”

A prominent Al Jazeera journalist who had previously been threatened by Israel has been killed along with four colleagues in an Israeli airstrike.

Anas al-Sharif, who was one of Al Jazeera’s most recognisable faces in Gaza, was killed while inside a tent for journalists outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Sunday night.

Seven people in total were killed in the attack, including al-Sharif, Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, according to the Qatar-based broadcaster.

The Israel Defense Force admitted the strike, claiming the reporter had “served as the head of a terrorist cell in the Hamas terrorist organisation and was responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF forces”.

It claimed it had intelligence and documents found in Gaza as proof but rights advocates said he had been targeted for his frontline reporting on the Gaza war and that Israel’s claim lacked evidence.

Calling al-Sharif “one of Gaza’s bravest journalists,” Al Jazeera said the attack was “a desperate attempt to silence voices in anticipation of the occupation of Gaza.”

Last month Israeli IDF spokesperson Avichai Adraee shared a video of al-Sharif on X and accused him of being a member of Hamas’ military wing. At the time the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, Irene Khan, called it “an unsubstantiated claim” and a “blatant assault on journalists”.

In July, al-Sharif told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that he lived with the “feeling that I could be bombed and martyred at any moment”.

After the attack, the CPJ said it was “appalled” to learn of the journalists’ deaths.

“Israel’s pattern of labelling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intent and respect for press freedom,” said CPJ regional director Sara Qudah.

“Journalists are civilians and must never be targeted. Those responsible for these killings must be held accountable.”

The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate condemned what it described as a “bloody crime” of assassination.

In January this year, after a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, al-Sharif drew widespread attention when, during a live broadcast, he removed his body armour while surrounded by dozens of Gaza residents celebrating the temporary halt in hostilities.

A few minutes before his death, al-Sharif posted on X: “Breaking: Intense, concentrated Israeli bombardment using ‘fire belts’ is hitting the eastern and southern areas of Gaza City.”

In a final message, which Al Jazeera said had been written on 6 April and which was posted to al-Sharif’s X account after his death, the reporter said that he had “lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification.”

“Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half,” he continued.

The 28-year-old leaves behind a wife and two small children. His father was killed by an Israeli strike on the family home in Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza City in December 2023. At the time al-Sharif said he would continue to report and refused to leave northern Gaza.

Another Al Jazeera journalist in Gaza, Hani Mahmoud, said: “This is perhaps the hardest thing I’m reporting about the past 22 months. I’m not far from al-Shifa hospital, just one block away, and I could hear the massive explosion that took place in the past half an hour or so, near al-Shifa hospital.

“I could see it when it lit up the sky and, within moments, the news circulated that it was the journalist camp at the main gate of the al-Shifa hospital.”

Al-Sharif and his colleagues have been reporting from Gaza since the beginning of the conflict.

“It’s important to highlight that this attack is just a week after an Israeli military official directly accused Anas and directly ran a campaign of incitement on Al Jazeera and correspondents on the ground because of their work, because of their relentless reporting on the starvation and the famine and the malnutrition,” Mahmoud added.

Israel has killed multiple Al Jazeera journalists and members of their families, including Hossam Shabat, who was killed in March, and Ismail al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami al-Rifi, who were killed in August.

Chief correspondent Wael al Dahdouh’s wife, son, daughter and grandson were killed in October 2023 and he himself was injured in an attack weeks later that killed Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa.

Israel, which does not allow foreign journalists into Gaza and which has targeted local reporters, has killed 237 journalists since the war started on 7 October 2023, according to Gaza’s government media office. The Committee to Protect Journalists said at least 186 journalists have been killed in the Gaza conflict. Israel denies deliberately targeting journalists.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse

Not for the first time, European capitals are gripped with apprehension that Russian President Vladimir Putin will surgically divide the transatlantic alliance as well as get everything he wants in Ukraine.

Ahead of the suddenly announced summit in Alaska on Friday between Putin and US President Donald Trump, one European diplomat, who declined to be named as they were not authorized to speak on the record, told CNN: “We are at risk of being a footnote in history.”

In part, European fears are down to just how little is known about what the Kremlin has proposed in order to halt the fighting in Ukraine. Putin has given no details. US envoy Steve Witkoff said nothing after his meeting with the Russian leader last Wednesday.

Trump himself said after Witkoff left Moscow: “It’s very complicated. We’re going to get some back, we’re going to get some switched. There will be some swapping of territories, to the betterment of both.”

The Europeans fear “the betterment of both” is a very unlikely outcome. There is zero indication that Putin has shifted an inch on his maximalist demands – either territorially or in terms of Ukraine remaining a punching bag for Russia without any security guarantees and with limits on the size and capabilities of its military.

“There is no sense in Paris, Berlin or London that seizing someone else’s territory matters to this US administration, and the (Europeans) find that deeply disturbing,” said the diplomat.

The UK, France, Germany, Italy and the EU felt obliged to say in a joint statement Saturday: “We remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force.” Poland and Finland also signed the statement.

They spent much of the day making the case to US Vice President JD Vance, who was about to start a vacation in the UK, and trying to get clarity on what would be negotiated.

The “Trump Administration has described Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reported demands for a ceasefire in Ukraine in four different ways since August 6,” according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington DC-based think-tank.

There is one thread common to all versions: that Putin will demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw from all parts of Donetsk region they still hold. This would include substantial cities: Slovyansk, Kramatorsk and Kostyantynivka.

“Conceding to such a demand would force Ukraine to abandon its “fortress belt,” the main fortified defensive line in Donetsk Oblast since 2014,” noted ISW, exposing Ukraine to further aggression down the line.

Mick Ryan, who tracks the Ukrainian conflict in his Futura Doctrina blog, said Sunday that “Ukraine, more than anyone, understands that ceded territory would then be used as the launch pad for future Russian aggression.”

The parallels with the Munich Agreement between British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler in 1938 are striking. Even after the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain said he had been assured by Hitler: “This is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe.”

Unknown: whether Putin will persist in his demand that Russia also be ceded control of two other Ukrainian regions – Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – whose regional capitals are still in Ukrainian hands. Or whether he would accept a freeze along the current frontlines in these regions, part of which run through open countryside and would be difficult to monitor.

It’s also unclear whether Putin will demand Ukraine recognize Moscow’s sovereignty over Crimea – and if so, what he might offer in return. Zelensky has already pointed out that the Ukrainian constitution prevents giving up any of its territory.

There is also a question over the sequence of events, with the Europeans regarding a ceasefire as the precondition for any talk about territory. “The current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations,” the European leaders said Saturday.

Another unknown: whether the Kremlin will agree to some sort of European “reassurance force” that would guarantee the ceasefire. All the indications to date are that it will not permit any NATO member to contribute to such a force.

The European leaders said in a statement Saturday that there must be “robust and credible security guarantees that enable Ukraine to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

But experience suggests the Europeans may be whistling in the wind, for all their efforts to flatter and pacify Trump.

“Since his inauguration in January, the Europeans have bought unlimited passes for the Trump roller coaster ride. They have climbed on, strapped themselves in, and regularly screamed out in terror but failed to get off,” said Rym Momtaz at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington DC-based think tank.

They are paying the price for not developing a strategic identity independent of US apron-strings, as French President Emmanuel Macron has been urging for eight years.

As much as they want to support and protect Ukraine, the Europeans are reduced to pleading – and guessing what might be decided in their absence.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, who is convening a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday to discuss “Russia’s aggression against Ukraine” said Sunday that “any deal between the US and Russia must have Ukraine and the EU included, for it is a matter of Ukraine’s and the whole of Europe’s security.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz struck the same tone in an interview on Sunday, saying, “We cannot accept that territorial issues between Russia and America are discussed or even decided over the heads of Europeans and Ukrainians. I assume that the American government sees it the same way.”

To Ryan, a former Australian general who now tracks the conflict, Europe’s predicament is much more hazardous than it should be, because – he says – the US itself has no Ukraine strategy.

“There is just anger, impulses, social media posts, multiple course-changes in direction and an underpinning desire from Trump to win the Nobel Peace Prize.”