Nigerian court convicts Biafran separatist leader on terrorism charges

A Nigerian court has convicted the Biafran separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu on terrorism-related charges. Judge James Omotosho said prosecutors had shown that Kanu, who also holds British citizenship, had used his Indigenous People of Biafra group (Ipob) to incite attacks on security officials and civilians in south-east Nigeria. “His intention was quite clear as he believed in violence. These threats of violence were nothing but terrorist acts,” Omotosho said. Kanu, 58, who had dismissed his legal team and represented himself during the trial, was earlier ejected from court for “unruly” behaviour. “Which law states that you can charge me on an unwritten law? Show me,” Kanu said before he was removed from the court. “Omotosho, where is the law? Any judgment declared in this court is a complete rubbish.” The Ipob leader was first taken into state custody in October 2015 and faced multiple charges, including treasonable felony. Eighteen months later, he was granted bail before disappearing until a controversial 2021 extradition from Kenya, which his supporters described as an extraordinary rendition. Prosecutors had called for Kanu to face the death penalty. Kanu sought to revive the short-lived state of Biafra, which seceded from Nigeria in 1967 sparking a civil war during which up to 3 million people died. After its troops surrendered in 1970, Biafra, which comprised the old eastern region – most of which is today’s south-eastern Nigeria – was reintegrated into the country. Several secessionist movements have sprung up to protest against what they see as political and economic marginalisation of the region, rallying members of the diaspora to donate to the agitation for independence, including training militia in the region’s forests. Ipob, seen as the most consequential of these movements, relied for long periods on Kanu’s oratory on the London-based Radio Biafra as a tool of campaign. During Kanu’s time in prison, a splinter group emerged, the Biafran Government in Exile (BGIE), whose self-declared prime minister, Simon Ekpa, was sentenced to six years on terrorism-related charges by a Finnish court in September. Both groups have been accused of a campaign of terror in south-east Nigeria where militants regularly and violently enforce Mondays as “sit-at-home days”, banning business, schooling and other activity. According to the geopolitical risk consultancy SBM Intelligence, as many as 700 deaths have been linked to separatist militants since 2021, including a May 2024 incident where five soldiers and six others were killed in an ambush in Abia state. During the conflict, military personnel have also been implicated in multiple cases of human rights abuses. In 2017, Ipob was proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the Nigerian government. Since then, Kanu has hired US lobby firms, including one owned by the ex-congressman Jim Moran. Reports in Nigeria have tied those efforts to the designation of Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” this month by Donald Trump, who threatened to attack Nigeria while citing unproven claims of a “Christian genocide” in the north. Ahead of the final verdict, it emerged that Kanu had written directly to Trump claiming that a “Judeo-Christian genocide” was under way in south-east Nigeria.

Zelenskyy to meet US army secretary after American and Russian officials draft plan to end war – Europe live

in Brussels EU ministers were meeting as Russia’s parliament said that any “confiscation” of Russian assets by the EU should draw legal action against Belgium and Euroclear, the Brussels-based depository where most of the frozen sovereign wealth is held (11:08). The EU is stalled over a plan to use Russia’s frozen assets to generate a €140bn (£123bn) loan for Ukraine, largely because Belgium is seeking further guarantees about legal risks. EU officials insist their proposal does not impinge Russia’s property rights and have previously downplayed the consequences of legal action against Belgium and Euroclear. The Duma vote is a response to a letter by the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, to EU leaders on Monday, where she warned that Ukraine faced a €136bn shortfall in 2026-27 to pay for its defence and keep the country running. She outlined three options to fund Ukraine, but made clear she favoured a reparations loan based on the Russian frozen assets. EU leaders are to discuss the plan at a summit next month, having failed to reach an agreement in October. Belgium argues that the EU plan lacks crucial details, such as what happens if Russia refuses to pay reparations to Ukraine, or how the risk would be shared if Moscow sued Euroclear. The Brussels-based securities depository houses around two-thirds of all Russia’s sovereign wealth in the west. Euroclear declined to comment, but referred to an interview its chief executive, Valérie Urbain, gave to Le Monde earlier this month. Anything that remotely resembled confiscation would be illegal, she told the paper: “We must be extremely vigilant,” she said, warning that Russia could take legal action. Separately, the continent’s top diplomats insisted that Europeans must be involved in any attempt to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia, after reports of a US-Russia plan favourable to Kremlin interests emerged (12:56).

UK construction workers at risk from modern slavery, charity warns

Hundreds of workers are at risk of modern slavery in the UK construction industry, according to human rights monitors. Data from the helpline of the antislavery charity Unseen has identified the construction industry as an emerging area of risk. It was second only to the care sector in terms of calls to its helpline in 2024 from people who claimed to be exploited. The charity identified 492 calls relating to construction and 586 to the care sector. It said exploitation of workers in the construction industry was an emerging trend. The industry is a cornerstone of the economy and is key to the government’s plan for 1.5m homes to be built over the next five years. CCLA, the UK’s largest charity asset manager, has repeatedly raised concerns about the incidence of modern slavery in construction. It measures how companies perform at finding, fixing and preventing modern slavery and has found that the industry underperforms on compliance with the 2015 Modern Slavery Act. Working conditions are physically demanding, there is a high reliance on migrant labour and workplaces are often not visible, leaving some workers isolated. Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, attended a meeting organised by CCLA with senior construction industry representatives and civil society organisations. In comments she made during the private discussions, which were shared with the Guardian, she said: “The construction sector is vital to our national ambition and our economy, but it is also vulnerable. The risk of exploitation is incredibly high in this sector. We are at a pivotal juncture as we push forward with major housing and infrastructure programmes, but we must ensure that progress does not come at the cost of workers’ rights. “I know it can be uncomfortable to publicly disclose these issues, but the culture needs to shift. Modern slavery is extremely prevalent. If you are not finding it, I would suggest you are not looking hard enough.” The employment rights bill, which is going through parliament, aims to strengthen protections for workers including against modern slavery and labour exploitation. The Work Rights Centre has raised concerns that protections against modern slavery and labour exploitation do not go far enough. The government updated its guidance on transparency in supply chains earlier this year. Research commissioned by the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre at the University of Oxford last month found significant gaps in knowledge of modern slavery and labour exploitation in the construction industry. “Without improved data, reporting mechanisms and enforcement capacity the true scale of exploitation is likely to remain hidden,” the report said. It called on agencies that monitor modern slavery and labour exploitation to do more to analyse and share the data they collect. Sara Thornton, the director of modern slavery at CCLA, said: “Multiple layers of subcontracting, the use of casual labour and skill shortages mean that the construction sector remains at high risk of labour exploitation in the UK. And material supply chains are long and opaque with many raw materials sourced from countries with weak labour market enforcement and poor human rights records.” Case study Frank (not his real name) was tricked into coming to the UK from Barbados with his 14-year-old son and endured more than three years of slavery in the construction industry. “The person that brought me here won my trust, so I was shocked. I didn’t understand there was such a thing as modern-day slavery,” he said. “One day I lost my job. It was a big salary hit, and it knocked me flat. He gave me a lifeline. ‘Come work for six months – you can earn up to £600 per week.’ “They took us back to this house, and then they let me know the business. If I don’t do the work, they were gonna kill my son – I had no choice. “So I was getting up at five in the morning until six at night, going out in extreme weather conditions. I’d never been in snow before, working in snow with no proper clothing or equipment. I was hungry to the point where you have conversations with your stomach. Lifting 500 to 600 blocks from one scaffolding to another scaffolding, stirring concrete, tiling roofs, building walls – boy, it was hard. “I never worked the same place twice. I used to be in the back of the van with the tools, and we drive all over. I worked places I never even knew existed. “The people whose houses we worked on, private homes and stuff, they don’t know this was going on. When they come in, you’re gone. They don’t care who’s doing the work, they just pay to get the work done. “For three-and-a-half years, I just complied and did what they wanted, but I got weaker and weaker and weaker, and I couldn’t get the work done any more. “One morning, I just snapped because I was too weak to lift the blocks, too weak to do anything. This guy was just cursing me, calling me all kind of names and then I think they realised. They brought my son in the van and tell me to get in. They drove us out to a strange neighbourhood and dumped me and my son out on to the street and left us there.”

Europe calls for role in Ukraine talks amid reported US-Russian peace deal

Europeans must be involved in any attempt to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia, the continent’s top diplomats said after reports of a US-Russia plan favourable to Kremlin interests emerged. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, welcomed any “meaningful efforts” to end the war, but said Ukrainian and European input was needed for any plan to work. “[Vladimir] Putin could end this war immediately if he just stopped bombing civilians and killing the people,” she told reporters. “But we haven’t seen any concessions on the Russian side. We welcome all the meaningful efforts to end this war, but like we have said before, it has to be just and lasting. That also means that the Ukrainians, but also the Europeans, agree to this.” The German foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, sounded a similar note. “All negotiations about a ceasefire, regarding the further peaceful development of Ukraine, can only be discussed and negotiated with Ukraine,” he said. “And Europe will have to be included.” The draft US-Russian peace plan, which emerged in media reports on Wednesday, would require Ukraine to surrender territory and cede unprecedented control over its political and military sovereignty to Russia. Jean-Noël Barrot, the French foreign minister, said peace could not mean capitulation. “The principle of peace must start with a ceasefire on the line of contact which will allow engagement in discussions on the questions of territories and security guarantees. That is what we have always said, that is what Ukraine has always said … But what we see today is that Russia and Vladimir Putin are an obstacle to peace.” Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, who was expected to inform his counterparts about the sabotage attack on Poland’s railway network this week, said: “We commend peace efforts. But Europe is the main player, the main supporter of Ukraine, and it is, of course, Europe’s security that’s at stake. So we expect to be consulted.” “I hope it is not the victim that has restrictions on its ability to defend itself, but it’s the aggressor whose aggressive potential should be restricted,” he added. Ministers were meeting as Russia’s parliament said that any “confiscation” of Russian assets by the EU should draw legal action against Belgium and Euroclear, the Brussels-based depository where most of the frozen sovereign wealth is held. The EU is stalled over a plan to use Russia’s frozen assets to generate a €140bn (£123bn) loan for Ukraine, largely because Belgium is seeking further guarantees about legal risks. EU officials insist their proposal does not impinge Russia’s property rights and have previously downplayed the consequences of legal action against Belgium and Euroclear. The Duma vote is a response to a letter by the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, to EU leaders on Monday, where she warned that Ukraine faced a €136bn shortfall in 2026-27 to pay for its defence and keep the country running. She outlined three options to fund Ukraine, but made clear she favoured a reparations loan based on the Russian frozen assets. EU leaders are to discuss the plan at a summit next month, having failed to reach an agreement in October. Belgium argues that the EU plan lacks crucial details, such as what happens if Russia refuses to pay reparations to Ukraine, or how the risk would be shared if Moscow sued Euroclear. The Brussels-based securities depository houses around two-thirds of all Russia’s sovereign wealth in the west. On Thursday the Duma – Vladimir Putin’s rubberstamp parliament – voted unanimously in favour of the resolution, according to a statement on its website. “The confiscation of Russian assets – no matter how artful the disguise – cannot be conceived as anything other than a violation of Russia’s sovereign rights,” it said. “Any infringement of Russian assets must draw an appropriate legal response, starting with claims for damages – with the demand for the seizure of property as a security measure – towards Euroclear and Belgium.” Euroclear declined to comment, but referred to an interview its chief executive, Valérie Urbain, gave to Le Monde earlier this month. Anything that remotely resembled confiscation would be illegal, she told the paper: “We must be extremely vigilant,” she said, warning that Russia could take legal action. In Brussels on Thursday, Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, voiced his government’s typical hostility to EU efforts to support Ukraine, saying it would be unimaginable to “send the money of the Hungarian people to a corrupt Ukrainian war mafia”. This is a likely reference to the corruption scandal engulfing Ukraine’s government, which Budapest has seized on to bolster its anti-Ukraine stance.

Brother Wang, a global manhunt and the Chinese-Mexican drug nexus

Like so many great escapes, it involved a tunnel. One night in July, in the Mexico City neighbourhood where he was under house arrest, Zhi Dong Zhang snuck through a hole into the property nextdoor and escaped from under the noses of the soldiers guarding him. Zhang, an alleged drug trafficker, managed to get to Cuba and then reportedly all the way to Russia – only to be turned back. At the end of October, the Cuban government announced that it had arrested him. The same day he was flown back to Mexico and extradited straight to the US. Zhang’s daring escape is still shrouded with intrigue. But experts say his case underlines the deep and growing relationship between Chinese criminal groups and Mexican cartels. “It’s emblematic of how important Chinese networks have become to the core operations of Mexican criminal groups,” said Vanda Felbab Brown, an expert on organised crime at the Brookings Institution. Zhang appeared in a Brooklyn court on Wednesday, where he was accused of smuggling tons of chemical precursors to make fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, for the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels, the most powerful criminal organisations in Mexico. He also faces charges for allegedly trafficking cocaine and crystal meth, and for laundering almost $100m through hundreds of shell companies and bank accounts in the US.Zhang pleaded not guilty to the charges at his arraignment “[Zhang] is what I would call a convergence target,” said Chris Urben, a former agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration. “He’s even better than a kingpin, because while kingpins sit at the top and only a few people communicate with them, he was involved in all of these things.” Zhang – who went by aliases such as El Chino and Brother Wang – arrived in Mexico before the coronavirus pandemic, then married a Mexican and became a Mexican citizen. As someone culturally fluent in the underworlds of both countries, “he offered something that very few can,” said Urben, who now works for the investigations firm Nardello & Co. That might explain why as yet unknown actors went to great lengths to help him escape. “It’s not like he got in a truck down to Guatemala,” said Urben. “He facilitated his release from jail. He was placed on home leave, completely set up for him to escape. And then he had this private jet to a country that’s in partnership with Russia and in some way China.” “It was the same old story of Mexico,” said Felbab Brown. “It wasn’t just his criminal genius that allowed him to escape. It was corruption.” But in the end it didn’t work: Russia turned him away, then Cuba handed him over. Felbab Brown says that Zhang may have just been trying to get to any country that wouldn’t extradite him to the US. “But it could also be that he knew specific Russian criminal actors or spies or government actors that he was planning to rely on for protection,” she said. As for the cooperation from the Cuban government, Felbab Brown says they may have been trying to “score some goodwill” with the US, having seen the pressure the Trump administration is exerting on Venezuela, nominally over drug trafficking. Given the adaptability of criminal networks, the arrest of any single individual is unlikely to disrupt the supply of precursors to Mexican cartels for long, if at all. Nonetheless, his extradition gives US law enforcement the opportunity to harvest intelligence on all the networks he was involved in. The arrest has already drawn attention to the relationship between Chinese criminal groups and Mexican cartels, which has exploded over the last 10 years as they became the principal money launderers for cash from drug sales in the US, according to Urben. Chinese criminal groups have a unique offer for money laundering, which relies on the fact that there are many people in China who want to get money out of the country but are restricted by capital controls, which limit them to the equivalent of about $50,000 a year. The process might start with a Mexican cartel associate delivering cash from drug sales to a Chinese national who lives in the US. Once that person confirms receipt, Chinese brokers use associates in Mexico to pay the cartels in pesos. The money launderers then sell the dollars in the US to people in China who want to, for example, buy property in the US, and receive payment in yuan back in China. All of this can happen near instantaneously and without any money crossing borders, making it harder to trace. And since the money launderers can impose the costs on the “captive” Chinese customers, they can afford to charge the cartels commissions as low as between 1 to 2%. “I had an undercover team that investigated [the previous money-laundering techniques] for years,” said Urben. “It used to take like 10 days for the cartels to get their money and perhaps 7 to 10% in costs. “The Chinese changed the game.”

Digitised official records of Nuremberg trials made available online

A fully digitised collection of the records of the Nuremberg trials is being launched online to mark the 80th anniversary of the start of the groundbreaking legal effort to bring Nazi leaders to justice. Open access to every official document from the trial, held by the Harvard law school library, will be available to all researchers, whether amateur or professional, for the first time from Thursday after a 25-year endeavour by a 30-strong team of historians, metadata curators and librarians. It began in 1998 with the removal of staples and paperclips from the delicate documents so they could be scanned. Paul Deschner, who led Harvard’s Nuremberg trials project, said that from the start the aim had been to digitise everything held on the court proceedings in the library’s collection, which had until then been kept in boxes and rarely seen. The goal was twofold: “to preserve these documents, which were starting to literally disintegrate as soon as they were touched, because they were … on 1940s-era acid-based mimeographed paper, and simply couldn’t withstand being handled, and to make them accessible in the dawn of the internet era”. The library’s collection contains more than 750,000 pages of transcripts, briefs and evidence exhibits from across the total of 13 cases, which between 1945 and 1949 were brought against Nazi military and political leaders held responsible for atrocities against humanity, in particular the Holocaust, and revolutionised international human rights law. In the first and main proceedings, 19 of the most influential Nazis including Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess and Albert Speer were tried. In 12 subsequent trials, almost 200 were put on trial. In all, only three were found not guilty. Twelve received death sentences and others life sentences or shorter. Included in the trove are transcripts detailing verbatim the full activity of the courtroom over the entire course of every trial as well as source documents drawn on by lawyers, and items of evidence submitted by both prosecution and defence teams. Deschner said ordinary users would now be able to discover in a variety of ways, such as using the transcript as a roadmap into the collection, or by keyword, a far wider range of information than previously available. The documents – in some the horror is explicit, while in others it is conveyed more euphemistically in bureaucratese – provide a detailed account of how the Nazis first hatched their plans for the Holocaust and then developed them. They “give a clear picture of how comparatively innocuous things might have looked in the early 30s compared to just a few years later”, Deschner said. “It has enormous utility for people who have eyes to see, ears to hear … in the context of every period of time, including our own, it could make people aware to be on the lookout for the dynamics as they are portrayed in these archives.” Inquiries so far have come from everyone from historians and film producers to people searching for information on relatives who had participated in the trial, whether as witnesses, as part of the legal teams or as a defendant. At a time when academic freedom is generally perceived to be under threat and, in the US in particular, universities are being challenged over their traditional role as places for fostering truth, the project had taken on even more significance, Deschner said. “Of course if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Holocaust denier, the sky’s the limit in terms of what you can come up with to argue that it didn’t happen. As people’s access to the world is so much influenced by what’s digitally accessible, and as we’re seeing the undermining of whatever might have previously passed as authentic, it’s absolutely essential that we are offering the user buttressing evidence that proves the authenticity of what they’re looking at.” He cited the extensive documentary trail behind each trial exhibit. “There’s a government document, of which a photostat is made, which is transcribed into German, of which a typescript version is made, which is translated into English, of which there is a one-page summary.” As for the court activity, the linguistic side offered an entirely under-researched field of its own, Deschner said. “You had the first extensive introduction of simultaneous translators, to cope with the four languages being used, then the stenographer taking down the verbatim verbiage from the translator that she’s hearing in her headset, and then someone typing it up. There were multiple layers of interpretation going on and I think very little research has been done on that.” Amanda Watson, of Harvard law school’s library and information services, said the robust preservation of the documents as digital surrogates was not enough on its own: the knowledge had to be shared. “This collection stands as an answer to one of history’s more critical questions,” she said in a statement. “How can law rise to meet moments of international crisis? Today we ensure that answer is not locked away but available to all. When we make justice visible, we make it possible.”

Spanish PM calls for nation to heed past lessons on anniversary of Franco’s death

Spain has marked the 50th anniversary of Francisco Franco’s death with an absence of official events but a call from the prime minister to heed the lessons of the dictatorship and defend the democratic freedom “wrenched from us for so many years”. Franco, whose military coup against the elected republican government in 1936 triggered a civil war and brought about four decades of dictatorship, died in Madrid on 20 November 1975. Although the socialist government of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has organised a year-long series of events to mark the post-Franco transformation, it ruled out any state acts on Thursday, the actual anniversary of the dictator’s death, to avoid accusations that it was seeking to celebrate his death. The anniversary comes amid increasing concerns about the lack of knowledge about the dictatorship, especially among younger Spaniards. A poll last month revealed that more than 21% of those surveyed felt the Franco era was “good” or “very good”, while a poll on Thursday for El País found almost a quarter of Spaniards aged 18 to 28 felt that an authoritarian regime could sometimes be preferable to a democratic one. In an opinion piece for the online newspaper elDiario.es, Sánchez hailed Spain’s “almost unique” democratic progress over the past 50 years, saying the country had “gone from being a repressive dictatorship to being a full democracy, and from being a poor and isolated country to one that is prosperous and integrated in the world”. But the prime minister, who pointedly did not refer to Franco by name, also noted that “democracy didn’t fall from the sky”, adding that today’s freedoms had been secured by the determination and resilience of the Spanish people. “No democracy – including ours – is perfect,” he wrote. “Much remains to be done to forge the Spain we want and that we can be: a place of more opportunity; more rights and less inequality. Being conscious of all that is what will help us move forward and improve. And that is why it is precisely now – when some idealise authoritarian regimes and cling to the nostalgia of a past that never was – that we must step forward in defence of a freedom that was wrenched from us for so many years.” The government has used historical memory legislation introduced three years ago to try to help Spain come to terms with its past. As well as redesignating the Valley of Cuelgamuros – previously known as the Valley of the Fallen, where Franco’s remains lay for 44 years – as a “place of memory”, it is compiling an inventory of the goods seized by the regime and is working to strip Spain of the last vestiges of Francoist symbols. The government is also in the final stages of its attempts to shut down the Francisco Franco National Foundation, which exists to preserve and promote the dictator’s legacy. In an interview with the state broadcaster, RTVE, on Thursday, the culture minister said his department was seeking to make sure that Franco’s official archive – currently in the possession of the foundation – was handed over to the state so it could be accessed by all Spaniards. “The dissolution of the Francisco Franco Foundation raises the question of what happens with the archive,” said Ernest Urtasun. “We’ve already got a report, drawn up at the culture ministry, which is an inventory of the 30,000 documents in the dictator’s archive, and we have a report that proves that these documents are public documents that refer to the dictator as head of state and are therefore government property.” Urtasun said government lawyers were working to recover the archive, “which belongs to Spaniards and to researchers, so that everyone can document the repression and everything that’s there”. The opposition conservative People’s party is boycotting the government’s initiative to celebrate 50 years of democracy, as is the far-right Vox party, which dismissed the programme as an “absurd necrophilia that divides Spaniards”. More than 500,000 people perished in the civil war, while hundreds of thousands more were forced into exile. Reprisals continued well after Franco’s victory in 1939, and the bodies of more than 100,000 people killed during the war and in its aftermath are estimated to lie in unmarked mass graves. After the dictator’s death, Spain embarked on the transition back to democracy, holding its first free election in 41 years in 1977 and approving a new constitution in a referendum the following year.

Israeli airstrikes kill 33 people in Gaza in escalation of post-ceasefire attacks

Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed 33 people and injured many more, according to medical officials, in one of the most serious escalations of violence since the US-backed ceasefire came into effect last month. Officials at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis said they received the bodies of 17 people, including five women and five children, after four Israeli airstrikes targeted tents sheltering displaced people. In Gaza City, medical officials said two airstrikes killed 16 people, including seven children and three women. Israel said it launched the attacks after its soldiers came under fire in Khan Younis on Wednesday, though they suffered no reported casualties. Hamas condemned the Israeli strikes as a “shocking massacre” and denied firing toward Israeli troops. Palestinians in Gaza said they felt as if the two-year war had never stopped. Officials in the territory say more than 300 people have been killed by Israeli strikes since the ceasefire. “My daughter kept asking me all night, ‘Will the war come back?’ Every time we try to regain hope, the shelling starts again. When will this nightmare end?” Lina Kuraz, 33, from the Tuffah neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, told Agence France-Presse. Mohammed Hamdouna, 36, who was displaced from northern Gaza to a tent in al-Mawasi, said the war had not ended. “The intensity of the death toll has decreased, but martyrs and shelling happen every day. We are still living in tents. The cities are rubble; the crossings are still closed, and all the basic necessities of life are still lacking,” he said. Qatar, a key mediator throughout the two-year war, condemned the “brutal” Israeli airstrikes, saying they were “a dangerous escalation that threatens to undermine the ceasefire agreement”. On Monday the UN security council endorsed Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza, including the deployment of an international stabilisation force and a possible path to a sovereign Palestinian state. However, huge challenges remain. It is unclear how Hamas will be made to relinquish its weapons, who will supply the troops for the new peacekeeping force, and how “full aid” will reach Gaza without Israel lifting many of its current restrictions on humanitarian supplies. Hamas is still holding the remains of three hostages, and Israeli military forces hold more than 50% of Gaza after withdrawing from some of their positions at the time of the ceasefire. The territory is now divided by the “yellow line”. Gaza’s health ministry has reported more than 300 deaths since the ceasefire came into effect, an average of more than seven a day. Each side has accused the other of violating its terms, which include increasing the flow of aid into Gaza and returning hostages, dead or alive, to Israel. The two-year war in Gaza was triggered when Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 during a surprise attack into Israel in October 2023. More than 69,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed in the ensuring Israeli offensive and in strikes since the ceasefire. The bodies of thousands more remain under the rubble. The new violence in Gaza coincided with a barrage of Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Wednesday. A day earlier, an Israeli airstrike killed 13 people in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh, the deadliest Israeli attack on Lebanon since a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict a year ago. Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press contributed reporting