Almost an hour behind schedule, Donald Trump has finally appeared. As expected, he begins by touting what he considers the accomplishments of his administration so far.
A six-year-old girl who had travelled to Madrid to see a musical was the only member of her family to survive Sunday’s rail disaster in southern Spain, which killed 42 people, among them her parents, her brother and her cousin. The girl, who has not been named, was found walking along the tracks after two trains collided near the town of Adamuz in the Córdoba province of Andalucía. She had emerged from the accident with only a minor head wound. According the Spanish media, the child and her family had been on their way home to Aljaraque, on the Atlantic coast near Huelva, after travelling to the capital to see the Lion King musical and to visit the Bernabéu stadium in Madrid. The outing had been a treat to celebrate the Christian feast of the Epiphany, which is when Spanish children traditionally receive their Christmas presents. “We’d been hoping that we wouldn’t have to declare any days of mourning or to lower the flag to half mast,” José Carlos Hernández Cansino, the mayor of the nearby town of Punta Umbría, told the Canal Sur broadcaster. “But then we got the call telling us that four members of the same family who were missing had been found dead, confirming our worst fears.” The little girl’s survival, he added, was “a miracle”. Adrián Cano, the mayor of Aljaraque, said the town was “broken with grief and almost without words of comfort”. The girl was cared for overnight by a police officer before being reunited with her grandmother in Córdoba, authorities said. As work continued to recover the remaining bodies of those who died in Spain’s worst rail crash in more than a decade, other families shared stories of what had happened to their loved ones. Alberto García told the Antena 3 TV channel that one of his daughters, who is five months pregnant, was in intensive care because of serious injuries she suffered in the crash. Doctors have placed her under sedation and on a ventilator, he said, and are monitoring the baby’s heartbeat. Relatives told El País that firefighters had pulled her unconscious from the wreck of the carriage after passengers smashed windows to escape from the train. Her sister, Ana, who was travelling with her and their dog, had lighter injuries. Relatives say the dog, named Boro, is still missing. Ana said she believed her sister may have been injured while trying to protect the animal. “If I can’t do anything for her, at least I hope I can find Boro,” she told El Mundo. Spain began three days of national mourning on Monday to honour those who were killed when a high-speed train travelling from Málaga to Madrid derailed near Adamuz, crossing on to another track where it hit an oncoming train travelling from Madrid to Huelva. Reuters contributed to this report
Your leader marks the historic moment when European nations finally stepped up to Trump’s bullying over Greenland (The Guardian view on Trump and Greenland: get real! Bullying is not strength, 18 January). However, Keir Starmer’s response remains weak. By saying Greenland is only a matter for Denmark and Greenland, he tries to rewind the clock to a status quo that is plainly no longer adequate. Greater vision has a clear historical precedent: for nearly 70 years, Antarctica has been kept out of military competition and resource grabs by the Antarctic treaty. With this 1959 treaty, countries with competing interests accepted that some places are too important to be owned, and must instead be protected for science, peace and the common good. That precedent applies even more strongly to Greenland. Its ice sheet plays a central role in regulating the global climate, and what happens there affects everyone. Creating a new strong international protectorate, explicitly safeguarding Greenlanders’ right to have a veto over its terms, could address defence and climate risks for the international community too. If the UK and the EU truly believe in strong diplomacy, this is the moment to show imagination, and to walk as well as talk, on the road back to international cooperation. Future stability could be built around a process of creating a Greenlandic international protectorate. Dr Rupert Read Co-director, Climate Majority Project Dr Andrew Boswell Climate policy consultant Dr Nick Brooks Director, Garama 3C Bridget McKenzie Founder, Climate Museum UK • I found the piece about Donald Trump’s billionaire “friend” Ronald Lauder sickening (How a billionaire with interests in Greenland encouraged Trump to acquire the territory, 15 January). Lauder’s huge business empire deals in beauty, but his motives are beyond ugly. His cosy relationship with the president and his deals in Greenland are yet more evidence of the greedy gang of men getting rich with Trump – from his sons Donald Jr and Eric to his real‑estate pal Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. I have always loved one perfume made by Estée Lauder, called Pleasures. But I’ve now thrown it away. That sweet fragrance is poison for all of us who despise the exploitation of resources and peoples that this man and his evil gang stand for: they stink. Dee Cook Whitchurch, Shropshire • Greenland was part of the European Union until 1985, when it left following a referendum. As a then member of the European parliament’s Socialist group, I sat alongside Finn Lynge, representing the country for the Siumut party. Maybe in light of the fact that Donald Trump is intent on “conquering Greenland” and the country’s dramatically changed circumstances, and its preference for Denmark and the EU over the US, Ursula von der Leyen could offer fast-track re-entry. You never know, it might set a precedent. Glyn Ford Labour MEP 1984-2009 • Surely it would send the US government a message if all European countries – not just those threatened by additional tariffs for supporting Greenland – stated that they would pull out of both the Fifa World Cup this year and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics if Trump persists in his plans to take over Greenland. Caroline Duchet Chepstow, Monmouthshire • It’s a bit rich of Trump to ask of the Danes about Greenland: “Why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago” (Donald Trump links Greenland threats to Nobel snub as EU trade war looms, 19 January). Surely that’s the same premise that led to the existence of the United States of America? Rupert Featherstone Dickleburgh, Norfolk • Wait, so are you telling me that appeasement doesn’t work (EU considers retaliatory measures over Trump Greenland tariff ‘blackmail’, 19 January)? If only there was some historical precedent from which we could have learnt this lesson… Séamus McGrenera London
Regarding your report (Dictator ousted but regime intact – what next for Venezuela’s opposition?, 18 January), I spent the early hours of Saturday 3 January watching how my country was being bombed by the United States. While many Venezuelans hoped that Edmundo González Urrutia would be installed as the new president or that new elections would be called, those possibilities now feel further away than ever. As your report points out, Donald Trump has claimed that the US must first “rebuild” Venezuela, suggesting we are incapable of holding our own elections. We are left at a crossroads between two impossible sides: one who cannot even rebuild his own country, and another who has no intention of allowing a fair vote to happen. What my country needs is self-determination through clear and transparent elections. We do not need bombs, and we do not need contracts with the American oil industry. We must choose our own path. Only when the world values democracy more than oil will we finally be ourselves. Gabriel Moncada Belisario Barcelona, Venezuela • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
European leaders have lined up to condemn Donald Trump’s “new colonialism” and warn that the continent was facing a crossroads as the US president said there was no going back on his goal of controlling Greenland. After weeks of aggressive threats by Trump to seize the vast Arctic island, which is a largely autonomous part of Denmark, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said on Tuesday he preferred “respect to bullies” and the “rule of law to brutality”. Macron told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that now was “not a time for new imperialism or new colonialism”, criticising the “useless aggressivity” of Trump’s pledge to levy tariffs on countries that opposed a US takeover of Greenland. The US was seeking to “weaken and subordinate Europe” by demanding “maximum concessions” and imposing tariffs that were “fundamentally unacceptable – even more so when they are used as leverage against territorial sovereignty”, he said, wearing sunglasses because of an eye condition. Trump’s push for Greenland has intensified in recent weeks, with the president saying the US would take control of the vast Arctic island “one way or the other” and: “Now it is time, and it will be done!!!” He is expected to visit Davos and give a speech on Wednesday. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said Trump’s threat to impose a 10% tariff on imports from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland unless they dropped their objections to his plans was “a mistake”. Appearing to call Trump’s trustworthiness into question, she also noted the EU and US had “agreed to a trade deal last July, and in politics, as in business, a deal is a deal. When friends shake hands, it must mean something.” Europeans, she added, “consider the people of the US not just our allies, but our friends”. She warned against plunging relations into “a downward spiral”, but said the EU’s response, if necessary, would be “unflinching, united and proportional”. Belgium’s prime minister, Bart De Wever, said Europe was “at a crossroads” and “so many red lines are being crossed” by Trump that the continent had to stand up for itself or “lose its dignity … The most precious thing you can have in a democracy.” De Wever said he would “like to confirm that [the US] is an ally, but they have to behave like an ally”. Eighty years of Atlanticism could be coming to an end, he said. “A Nato country is threatening another Nato country with military invasion.” Trump posted on social media on Tuesday that during a call with the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, he had “expressed … very plainly, Greenland is imperative for National and World Security. There can be no going back.” He posted an AI image of himself, the US vice-president, JD Vance, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, planting a US flag next to a sign reading: “Greenland, US territory est. 2026.” Another image showed a map with Canada and Greenland as part of the US. Separately, the US president posted a message to him from Macron, who said he did “not understand what you are doing on Greenland”. The US president had earlier threatened to hit French wine and champagne with a 200% tariff if Macron did not accept an invite to join his “Board of Peace”. The spiralling row has plunged trade relations between the EU and the US into fresh chaos, forcing the bloc to consider retaliatory measures, and also risks unravelling the Nato transatlantic alliance that has guaranteed western security for decades. The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, fresh from a trip to Beijing to forge a new Canada-China partnership, told Davos the world’s “middle powers” need to work together to build a better world order. “It seems that every day we are reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry. That the rules-based order is fading,” Carney said in a speech that ended with a standing ovation. Carney said the world faces “the end of a pleasant fiction and the dawn of a harsh reality of geopolitics” in which the great powers are unconstrained. “We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy”, he said. UK prime minister Keir Starmer’s response to Trump’s Greenland threats has been more muted than those of his French and Canadian counterparts, but it has shifted slightly from his usually deeply cautious approach towards the US president. He told his cabinet on Tuesday that US tariffs were “the wrong thing to do”, while his government is pressing ahead with plans - criticised by the US president as an “act of great stupidity” - to cede the Chagos islands to Mauritius. While Starmer’s strategy to deal with Trump - maintaining a steady approach in the face of the chaos the US president has unfurled - is being called into question at home, sources said he for now has his cabinet’s backing. “I don’t think we’d gain very much from attacks just to get some headlines for a day or two, only to cause irreparable damage to a partnership that’s so important to us,” one saidIn what appeared to be an attempt to smooth over US-UK relations, the US House speaker Mike Johnson told parliament that he had spoken “at length” to Trump yesterday on Monday - and that his mission in London was to “help calm the waters”. Trump is due to be at the WEF gathering with EU leaders who are mulling retaliatory measures that could include a package of tariffs on €93bn (£80bn) of US imports that has been suspended for six months. Another option is the bloc’s “anti-coercion instrument” (ACI), which has never been used but would limit US access to public tenders, investments or banking activities and restrict trade in services, including digital services. Senior MEPs on the European parliament’s international trade committee are expected to announce on Wednesday the formal suspension of ratification of the EU-US trade deal sealed in July, after a deal between the largest political groups, a European parliament source said. However, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said that US relations with Europe were strong and urged partners to “take a deep breath” and let tensions over Greenland “play out”. Bessent said a solution would be found and European “hysteria” was unjustified. “It’s been 48 hours. Sit back, relax,” he said. “I am confident the leaders will not escalate and that this will work out in a manner that ends up in a very good place for all.” Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said in the capital, Nuuk, that it was “unlikely” military force would be used, but it could be. “Greenland is part of Nato, and if there is an escalation, it will have consequences for the outside world,” he said. The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, speaking in the Danish parliament, said that “the worst may still be ahead of us”. Frederiksen added that her country had “never sought conflict. We have consistently sought cooperation.” Trump has repeatedly said the US needs to take control of Greenland for “national security”, despite the US already having a military base on the island and a bilateral agreement with Denmark allowing it to massively expand its presence there. Von der Leyen said in her speech that the EU was working on a package for Arctic security based on Greenlandic and Danish sovereignty, a big investment surge in Greenland, and cooperation with the US in the region. The Danish public broadcaster TV2 reported that 58 Danish troops had landed in Greenland on Tuesday to join about 60 others who were dispatched earlier for a multinational military exercise, Operation Arctic Endurance. European leaders are considering establishing a more permanent military presence in the high north to help guarantee security in the Arctic region, a key US demand, the Swedish defence minister, Pål Jonson, said. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said he had no plans to travel to Davos but could change his plans if his delegation and US officials make a breakthrough in peace efforts aimed at ending the war in his country.
The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has told a Paris appeals court there was no “system” set up by her party to misuse European parliament funds, as she gave evidence in a fresh embezzlement trial that will determine whether she can run in the 2027 presidential election. “The word ‘system’ bothers me because [it gives] the impression of a manipulation,” Le Pen said on Tuesday, denying she had told members of the European parliament to hire assistants who instead worked for the party headquarters in Paris. “Never in my life would I ask a member of the [European] parliament to take assistants to work for the Front National,” Le Pen told the court. Le Pen, 57, who leads the anti-immigration National Rally (RN), formerly called Front National, was considered to be one of the top contenders for next year’s election until she was barred from running for public office last March after being found guilty of an extensive and long-running fake jobs scam at the European parliament. Judges ruled that Le Pen was “at the heart” of a carefully organised system of embezzlement of European parliament funds from 2004 to 2016. They gave her a five-year ban from running for office, effective immediately, and a four-year prison sentence, with two of those years suspended and two to be served outside jail with an electronic bracelet. They ordered her to pay a €100,000 fine. Le Pen, who is trained as a lawyer, is now seeking to overturn that verdict and sentence, denying wrongdoing and insisting she wants to run again for president. The appeal trial verdict and any sentence, expected before the summer, will determine her political future and whether she can make a fourth presidential attempt next year. If not, she would be replaced by her protege and party president, 30-year-old Jordan Bardella. The appeals court heard that taxpayer money allocated to members of the European parliament to pay their assistants based in Strasbourg or Brussels was allegedly siphoned off by the party to pay its own workers in France, in violation of the parliament’s rules. The staff in France had no connection to work undertaken at the European parliament. The loss to European funds was estimated at €4.8m (£4.2m). During questioning on Tuesday, the head judge, Michèle Agi, read from an email that was cited as evidence of the alleged system of fake jobs. In it, one member of the European parliament, who had previously been a lawyer, wrote to the party treasurer: “What Marine is asking is equivalent to us signing for fictitious jobs …” He warned this was likely to be spotted. The treasurer replied: “I think Marine knows all that …” Le Pen told the court she was not copied in on the email and did not know about it. She said if she had received that email she would not have replied as “casually” as the treasurer did. She said she had never asked any European parliament member to hire assistants to work for the party and that she had never given MEPs any “instructions on hiring assistants”. Le Pen was asked about statements to investigators from two former party members who alleged she had told 23 European parliament members in 2014 that they could have one parliament assistant – out of a potential two – and that the rest of the money “would benefit the party”. Le Pen said: “That is false!” She said accusations made by some former party members should be discarded because they were “terribly hostile” to her, “like in a divorce”. Le Pen has appealed against last year’s verdict alongside 10 of the 24 party members who were convicted. The appeal trial will run until 12 February. The legal proceedings stem from a 2015 alert raised to French authorities about possible fraud by Martin Schulz, then the president of the European parliament.
Kurdish-led forces in Syria have announced a withdrawal from a detention camp in north-east Syria housing tens of thousands of Islamic State-linked detainees, as the US announced it was no longer supporting them. The fate of al-Hawl, which houses among others the most radical foreign women suspected to have been members of IS, and their families, is of great concern to neighbouring states and the international community. These states have warned for years that the camp is a hotbed of extremism and that chaos could result if a jailbreak were to occur. But on Tuesday evening the US said it believed it could work with the Syrian government against IS. Al-Hawl houses an estimated 24,000 people, mostly Syrians and Iraqis, but also 10,000 from other countries, and it is unclear what will happen as Syrian government forces move in. A spokesperson for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said: “Our forces were compelled to withdraw from al-Hawl camp and redeploy in the vicinity of cities in northern Syria that are facing increasing risks and threats.” They blamed the withdrawal on a “failure of the international community”. A smaller number of female detainees, around 2,400, are being held at al-Roj camp – including Shamima Begum, who was stripped of her UK citizenship – further to the north-east and still under Kurdish control. The Syrian government said it would assume control of the camp, accusing the SDF of leaving it without guards, allowing detainees to escape. It also accused the SDF of doing the same in a prison in Raqqa from which 120 prisoners escaped; a claim the SDF denied. The withdrawal came as the Syrian government swept through northeast Syria, making unprecedented gains as the SDF lost vast swathes of its territory in just a few days. The SDF lost Raqqa and Deir el-Zour on Sunday, as tribal elements defected from the Kurdish-led force and pushed it to withdraw from the Arab-majority areas. The rapid advance of Damascus’s forces and partial collapse of the SDF almost overnight was stunning: the Kurdish-led group had controlled nearly a third of the country, with US support, since 2019. It was the biggest shift in frontlines since the fall of the former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. Tom Barrack, the US envoy for Syria, said on Tuesday evening the US no longer supported the SDF in the fight against IS. Though the SDF “proved the most effective ground partner in defeating Isis’s territorial caliphate by 2019”, he said that was because there was “no functioning central Syrian state”. The US diplomat said the situation had “fundamentally changed” with the overthrow of al-Assad and his replacement by Ahmad al-Sharaa. “Syria now has an acknowledged central government that has joined the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS,” he wrote on X, meaning that “the original purpose of the SDF as the primary anti-ISIS force on the ground has largely expired”. A 14-point ceasefire agreement signed on Sunday by President al-Sharaa, and the head of the SDF, Mazloum Abdi, collapsed the next day after a disastrous meeting in Damascus. However, on Tuesday night, the Syrian presidency announced a four-day ceasefire with the SDF so that the 14-point agreement could be implemented. It said that if an agreement could be reached, the Syrian government would allow Kurdish-majority cities, such as al-Hasakah and Qamishli, to the Kurdish authorities, and that security forces will be drawn from local residents. It also said Abdi would nominate a candidate from the SDF to be the deputy defence minister, MPs for the national parliament, and lists of people to be employed in the Syrian public sector. The announcement seemed to stave off immediate further fighting between the two sides, and reassured Kurdish officials that their rights would be respected. Syrian government sources had previously accused Abdi of trying to stall the implementation of the 14-point agreement, which would turn over most of the Kurdish-led authorities’ institutions and governance to Damascus. Ilham Ahmed, a senior leader of the Kurdish-led authority, said Abdi requested a five-day grace period to implement the agreement, which was initially rejected by Damascus. “They wanted a direct handing over of everything to Damascus. However, with or without this meeting they wanted to go to war … and now their plan is to massacre the Kurds,” Ahmed said on Tuesday. After the meeting, Kurdish officials, Abdi included, called for a general mobilisation across Kurdish-majority areas and to resist Damascus’s advance towards their territory. SDF media published pictures of people, young and old, holding assault rifles seemingly in preparation for a further assault. Clashes between the two sides continued on Tuesday, with shelling reported in Kobani, a Kurdish-majority area on the Turkish border, and Syrian government forces entering al-Hasakah. The areas lost to Damascus’s forces so far have been Arab-majority areas, where many residents had longstanding resentments against the SDF. The SDF has seemingly dug into areas closer to the borders with Iraq and Turkey, which are populated mainly by Kurds. If the four-day ceasefire fails and Damascus’s forces advance into Kurdish-majority areas, fighting is likely to be deadlier than in previous days. In those areas they have infrastructure, including heavy artillery, drones and underground tunnel networks. The Kurdish population view the fight as existential, and have pointed to the mass killings when Syrian government forces entered Sweida province and the Syrian coast last year as an example of what could happen to them if Syrian government forces took over the area. The Syrian government said in a statement on Tuesday that it would not enter Kurdish areas, and that the army’s goal was “to restore stability and protect government institutions”. The SDF was for years the US’s biggest partner in Syria and together they defeated the IS “caliphate” in 2019. It is the military wing of a Kurdish statelet, an autonomous area that had its own institutions and government. Among other things, it protected Kurdish rights, which for years had been repressed by al-Assad and his father. When al-Assad fell, the SDF and Damascus came to the negotiating table, with the former seeking to retain its autonomy and the latter wanting to consolidate control over the country. Despite the signing of an agreement on 10 March last year to integrate the SDF into Syria’s army, the two sides remained at odds and occasionally clashed. At the weekend, the US urged the Syrian government to halt its advance at the dividing line of the Euphrates River, but government forces pushed on. It has since stayed silent as the government continued its campaign against the SDF. Damascus’s advance over the last week has helped it extend control over most of the country, and crucially, the country’s largest oil and gasfields, as well as key dams.
Israeli crews have started bulldozing the Jerusalem headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in Jerusalem and fired teargas at a UN vocational school in Qalandia, in the West Bank. Israel accuses the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unwra) of collaborating with Hamas – a charge the agency denies – and last year banned it from operating on its territory. The demolition marks Israel’s latest step against Unrwa, which provides aid to millions of Palestinian refugees. Roland Friedrich, Unrwa’s director in the West Bank, said the agency had been informed that demolition crews accompanied by police arrived at its East Jerusalem headquarters in the early hours of the morning. The facility had been largely unused for nearly a year because of security threats and incitement, he said, but Israeli forces nonetheless entered the compound, confiscated equipment and expelled the private security guards hired to protect the site. An Israeli flag was seen hoisted above the facility in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, where some Israeli politicians arrived on the scene to celebrate the organisation’s fate. Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, called it “a historic day”. Israel defended the move to demolish the compound, with the foreign ministry saying: “Unrwa-Hamas had already ceased its operations at this site and no longer had any UN personnel or UN activity there.” It added: “The compound does not enjoy any immunity and the seizure of this compound by Israeli authorities was carried out in accordance with both Israeli and international law.” But Friedrich called it a violation of international law guaranteeing such facilities protection and said: “What we saw today is the culmination of two years of incitement and measures against Unrwa in East Jerusalem.” Founded in 1949, Unrwa’s mandate is to provide aid and services to 2.5 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as 3 million more refugees in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. The group has for years maintained infrastructure in refugee camps, run schools and provided healthcare. A few months after the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, Israeli settlers and rightwing activists protested by blocking the entrances of the Unrwa office in Jerusalem and calling for the body’s closure, following accusations by the government of collaborating with Hamas in Gaza, and with its staff facing a systematic campaign of obstruction and harassment by the Israeli military and authorities. In 2024, according to the Wall Street Journal, a US intelligence report assessed with “low confidence” that a handful of Unrwa staff had participated in the attack, but indicated that it could not independently confirm the assessment’s veracity. Nevertheless, Unrwa’s operations were curtailed last year when Israel’s Knesset passed legislation severing ties and banning it from functioning in what it defines as Israel – including East Jerusalem. Unrwa has recorded 382 colleagues killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since the start of the conflict. The acts of sabotage against Unrwa ultimately culminated in the demolition on Tuesday. Videos showed Israeli bulldozers destroying the compound and the facilities inside the agency’s headquarters. “This comes in the wake of other steps taken by Israeli authorities to erase the Palestine refugee identity,” Philippe Lazzarini, Unrwa’s commissioner general, said in a statement on X. “This must be a wake-up call. What happens today to Unrwa will happen tomorrow to any other international organisation or diplomatic mission, whether in the Occupied Palestinian Territory or anywhere around the world.” The latest action comes amid a long-running political and financial campaign against the agency. The US cut funding to Unrwa in 2018 under Donald Trump, restored it in 2021 under Joe Biden, and then paused contributions again in 2024. Israel’s ban on Unrwa has coincided with broader efforts to tighten controls on humanitarian organisations operating in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. New legislation requires nongovernmental groups to dismiss staff accused of activities deemed to “delegitimise Israel” or support boycotts, and to submit detailed staff lists as a condition for continuing operations. Israeli authorities warned dozens of organisations – including Médecins Sans Frontières and Care – that their licences would expire at the end of 2025. Aid groups have described the measures as arbitrary, warning that further restrictions will fall most heavily on a civilian population already facing an acute humanitarian crisis.