Category World News

Italy’s public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into claims that Italians travelled on weekend “sniper safaris” to Sarajevo to shoot at citizens during the Bosnian-Serb army’s siege on the city that killed more than 11,000 people between 1992 and 1996.

The alleged “safaris” – a grotesque reference to expeditions to hunt or observe wild animals – took place as the Bosnian-Serb force besieged the city in what became the longest siege on a city in modern European history.

Milan’s investigation, headed by prosecutor Alessandro Gobbis, was launched after journalist and novelist Ezio Gavazzeni, in collaboration with lawyers Nicola Brigida and former judge Guido Salvini, filed a legal complaint of “murder aggravated by cruelty and despicable motives” against alleged groups of Italians travelling to Sarajevo to join the trips.

According to Italian media, investigators hope to track down people who participated in the alleged “safaris”, in addition to five men who have already been identified in Gacazzeni’s suit.

Gavazzeni, who has turned all his evidence over to prosecutors, told the Italian news outlet La Repubblica on Tuesday that his suit “exposes a part of society that hides its truth under the carpet”.

“Because we’re talking about wealthy people with reputations, entrepreneurs, who during the siege of Sarajevo paid to be able to kill defenceless civilians,” he added.

Here’s what we know about the alleged “sniper safaris”.

How did sniper safaris work?

Between 1992 and 1996, Italian citizens and others who were mainly gun enthusiasts would gather in Trieste, northwestern Italy, on the border with former Yugoslavia on Fridays for a weekend of “hunting”. It remains unclear who arranged the trips for the alleged groups to take.

Participants would then allegedly be flown by the Yugoslav/Serbian Aviogenex airline to the hills surrounding Sarajevo, where they would pay Bosnian-Serb militias loyal to President Radovan Karadzic, who was later convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2016 and sentenced to life in prison after a 2019 appeal, to shoot at citizens.

According to La Repubblica, these “tourists” paid up to 100,000 euros ($116,000), adjusted for current inflation rates and currency change, as the euro was not introduced until 1999, to join trips to Sarajevo to commit the killings.

Gavazzeni claims that participants would be given a price list for the type of kill that foreigners would pay for who they wanted to target, with children costing the most, then men, women and elderly people, who could be killed free of charge.

“[A participant] left Trieste for the manhunt. And then he returned and continued his life as usual, respectable in everyone’s eyes,” Gavazzeni said.

“People with a passion for weapons, to indulge, who prefer to go to bed with a rifle, with money at their disposal and the right contacts of facilitators between Italy and Serbia. It’s the indifference of evil: becoming God and remaining unpunished,” he added.

Gavazzeni’s 17-page filing includes the testimony of Edin Subasic, a Bosnian military intelligence officer who claims he and some colleagues informed Italy’s military intelligence agency, Sismi, about reports of Italians who would fly from Trieste to Sarajevo to take part in early 1994. In his testimony, he stated that the Italian intelligence service told him it had “put a stop” to the trips a few months later.

The Sismi report said it had discovered the departure points in Trieste and had interrupted the operation.

Another witness cited in the filing gave Gavazzeni details of three men who are now being investigated, who come from Turin, Milan and Trieste. According to a Sismi report, cited in the lawsuit, the man from Milan who took part in the shootings in 1993 was the owner of a private plastic surgery clinic.

Former Sarajevo mayor Benjamina Karic also sent a case file to the Milan Prosecutor’s Office on these “rich foreigners engaged in inhumane activities”, Italian news agency, ANSA, reported.

Who knew about these ‘safaris’?

Serbia has denied any involvement in the killings, but investigators believe that Serbian intelligence services were aware of the tourist trips.

According to testimony from Subasic, the Bosnian military intelligence officer who is expected to be one of the first people summoned by the prosecutor’s office, the way that the trips were organised with the airline carrier pointed to the Serbian State Security Service being “behind it all”, ANSA reported.

While Sismi was informed about the first trip, the official told La Repubblica it was never discussed again between the Bosnian and Italian spy agencies.

The Bosnian consul in Milan, Dag Dumrukcic, told La Repubblica on Tuesday that his government was working in “full cooperation in the investigation”.

“We are eager to uncover the truth of such a cruel affair and settle accounts with the past. I have some information that I will pass on to the investigators,” Dumruckic added.

What do survivors of Sarajevo say?

Dzemil Hodzic, 42, who grew up in Sarajevo in the 1990s and was nine when the siege began, is the founder of the Sniper Alley Photo project, which archives photographs taken during the siege. He told Al Jazeera that the findings came as no surprise to him, as the weekends were always “especially dangerous” in Sarajevo at the time.

Hodzic said there was always “information circulating about the people from outside coming to shoot at us”.

“It is a well-known fact, but, unfortunately, it means nothing when the murderers and snipers who were shooting at us for four years are at large and we see that our Bosnian prosecutor’s office is doing nothing about it. I just hope that this case from Italy won’t disappear from our media space and that we will actually have some positive results,” he said.

“My brother was killed by a Serb sniper while he was playing tennis in our neighbourhood. We will never know if it was one of those who paid to do so,” he added.

Did people from other countries also participate?

It is believed that citizens of multiple countries took part. In 2022, Bosnian film director Miran Zupanic’s documentary, Sarajevo Safari, investigated wealthy foreigners who had participated, including some from the United States and Russia.

One notable example was Russian nationalist writer and politician Eduard Limonov, who was filmed during a documentary on the Bosnian war by Pawel Pawlikowski in 1992, shooting a machinegun towards the city of Sarajevo while personally accompanied by Karadzic.

Moreover, in 2007, former US Marine John Jordan testified to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that “tourist shooters” had come to Sarajevo.

United States President Donald Trump signed a new government finance bill on Wednesday, ending a Republican-Democrat standoff over the bill and the longest government shutdown in US history.

The federal shutdown, which began when Democrats in the Senate refused to sign off on the finance bill unless it included amendments to extend healthcare subsidies for low-income Americans, which the Republicans refused, dragged on for 43 days and left government workers without pay and agencies paralysed without funding.

Trump signed the new bill hours after the House of Representatives voted to approve a package passed earlier by the Senate that would reopen federal departments and restart food assistance programmes.

“With my signature, the federal government will now resume normal operations,” Trump said late on Wednesday.

What is in the bill, and what isn’t?

During the shutdown, an estimated 750,000 federal employees were furloughed – sent home without pay – according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Thousands of essential workers, including police, FBI and air traffic controllers, were required to continue working without pay.

Now that a finance bill has been approved by Congress and signed by Trump, furloughed employees will return to work and will receive back pay.

Among other things, the bill authorises funding for food assistance programmes such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – also known as “food stamps” – and the legislative branch of government until the end of January 2026.

However, the bill does not extend health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which Democrats had been demanding before they would agree to pass the funding bill. Tax credits for this scheme – which was passed in 2010 under President Barack Obama to expand health insurance coverage and which benefits more than 22 million low-income Americans – are due to expire on December 31.

Centrist Democrats and Republicans have agreed, instead, to hold another vote in December to decide on the healthcare subsidies separately. However, there is no guarantee that an extension of those subsidies will be approved.

How did the bill get passed in the Senate?

Healthcare subsidies were at the heart of Democrats’ demands during the funding battle. When the initial bill was proposed by Senate Republicans, most Democrats opposed it. Republicans refused to back down on subsidies, meaning no agreement could be reached, and the bill was not approved by Congress.

During a series of votes in the 43 days since the government shutdown began, Democratic senators rejected reopening the government on 14 occasions, insisting on extensions to the ACA tax credits.

However, six Democratic senators and two independents finally broke ranks and voted with the Republicans in the Senate on November 9.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer was one who voted against the measure, saying “for months and months, Democrats have been fighting to get the Senate to address the healthcare crisis. This bill does nothing to ensure that that crisis is addressed.”

However, Schumer was criticised by some Democratic senators and representatives for not joining the Democratic senators who caved and joined the Republicans because they wanted to end the shutdown. Some demanded that Schumer step down from his position as minority leader.

When the bill to reopen the government moved to the House of Representatives, many Democrats there continued to oppose it, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

“We’re not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the healthcare of the American people,” Jeffries said in a news release issued by his team on Tuesday evening.

Other Democrats in the House also opposed the measure. “To my colleagues: Do not let this body become a ceremonial red stamp from an administration that takes food away from children and rips away healthcare,” said Democratic Representative Mikie Sherrill during her last speech on the US House floor before she leaves Congress to assume office as the new governor of New Jersey.

How did House of Representatives members vote?

Ultimately, the opposing Democrats were defeated.

The US House of Representatives includes 219 Republicans, 214 Democrats and two empty seats. The bill passed in the House with a 222-209 vote.

A total 216 House Republicans voted in favour of the finance bill. They were joined by six House Democrats who wanted an end to the shutdown: Henry Cuellar from Texas, Donald Davis from North Carolina, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez from Washington, Jared Golden from Maine, Adam Gray from California and Thomas Suozzi from New York.

The remaining 207 Democrats voted against the bill. They were joined by Republicans Thomas Massie from Kentucky and Greg Steube from Florida. One Democrat, Bonnie Watson Coleman and one Republican, Michael T McCaul, did not vote.

Washington, DC-based newspaper The Hill reported that Massie’s vote against the bill was expected. He typically votes against spending bills, even if the bills are drafted by his own party, if he considers the levels of spending unreasonable.

Massie also reposted an X post by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul – the only Republican to vote against the measure in the Senate – who argued that the bill contained unnecessary provisions that would harm Kentucky’s hemp farmers and small businesses.

In an X post on Wednesday, Steube wrote that he opposed the bill because the resolution included a measure allowing certain senators to personally sue the Justice Department using taxpayer money to fund their legal action.

“I could not in good conscience support a resolution that creates a self-indulgent legal provision for certain senators to enrich themselves by suing the Justice Department using taxpayer dollars,” Steube wrote.

What happens to workers and programmes affected by the shutdown now?

A return to normal government is “easier said than done”, Scott Lucas, a professor of US and international politics at the Ireland-based University College Dublin’s Clinton Institute, told Al Jazeera.

“You’ve got to restore staff, you’ve got to restore services, you’ve got to restore payments.”

Furloughed employees

Furloughed employees could return to work as early as Thursday. It is unclear how soon government operations and services will resume fully, however.

Lucas also said that based on the measure passed, the US government now has to ensure that the furloughed employees stay on their jobs and are not fired, “which the Trump administration has threatened to do”.

“There are going to be disruptions and, of course, the big thing is you will not get back that estimated $7bn to $14bn in lost productivity,” Lucas said. That is the estimated cost to the economy – roughly 1.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) this quarter – caused by the delayed salaries of furloughed employees during the shutdown.

Food assistance programmes

The funding for SNAP, which more than 40 million Americans benefit from, ran out on October 31, and the Trump administration blocked the programme from accessing emergency funds from the US Department of Agriculture’s disaster and nutrition assistance accounts.

This week, a spokesperson for the White House budget office said that the food assistance roll-out would begin within hours of the government reopening.

But recipients could still face lengthy delays. “Those payments will now have to be arranged, which means that, you know, you have a backlog that, that you’ll have to get through,” said the spokesperson.

Air traffic controllers

On Friday last week, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an emergency order to 40 airports to reduce flights by 6 percent because of the shortage of air traffic controllers caused by the shutdown. Hundreds of domestic flights were cancelled, causing havoc for travellers. If the government shutdown had not ended, this had been expected to be extended to 10 percent of flights.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that air traffic controllers will receive 70 percent of their pay within 24 to 48 hours of the shutdown ending.

“Right now, he’s urging the air traffic controllers to continue to work without pay until that’s resolved,” Lucas explained.

On Wednesday, the New York Times cited unnamed representatives of the airline industry, estimating that flights could return to normal within a week of the shutdown ending.

For flights to resume as usual, the Transportation Department must ensure enough air traffic controllers are back at work to minimise staffing-related flight delays. FAA chief Michael Duffy then needs to lift the emergency order which reduced the flights.

Construction projects

Several government-funded construction and infrastructure projects worth $11bn were suspended during the shutdown and it is unclear how and when progress will resume. These include work on two federally owned aging bridges across the Cape Cod canal in Massachusetts and a waterfront park in San Francisco.

“It’s not just a question of ‘will they be resumed and when they resume’, it’s a question of whether that federal funding will be restored, and that’s not clear at this point,” Lucas said.

“Federal funding might be restored for construction infrastructure projects, but what happens here is, is that you have to restart the pipeline for the funding. All of these things have had contracts. There will be contracts in terms of the timing of the delivery of funds, there will be, the congressional authorisation which is behind all that.”

Release of key economic data

The monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for October was not released, as it should normally have been, during the shutdown. Additionally, the release of key inflation data set for mid-October was postponed.

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said it is likely that these still won’t be released even if the shutdown ends because, she said, the shutdown prevented surveyors from going into the field to collect raw, time-sensitive data.

Leavitt said that yet-to-be-collected data “will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers at the Fed flying blind at a critical period”.

This means policymakers in the Federal Reserve and other sectors have no access to key benchmark figures normally used to set interest rates and guide economic policy. Investors and businesses also do not have key data to make forecasts. In historical records, data from October 2025 will create a blind spot, distorting trend analysis in the future.

What happens next?

While government funding has now been secured until the end of January, there is still no resolution on the issue of the ACA tax credits. If the standoff over healthcare is not resolved by the end of January, the US could therefore face another possible shutdown. 

“Now they have said that they will schedule a vote in the Senate on this in mid December, but of course scheduling a vote to extend the tax credits doesn’t mean that the credits that the vote will succeed,” Lucas said.

“So we will be back at the end of January to square one effectively,” he added.

“We could definitely face another standoff in January – in fact, I think the chances are increased. If we do not have some arrangement in terms of keeping the premiums down for these tens of millions of Americans, the Democrats have now made that their headline issue. It’ll be the issue all the way into the 2026 elections.”

January will be the point at which the Trump administration will need to request approval from Congress for another extension of government funding, and will need the support of Democrats again.

Foreign Minister Therese Wagner challenges Rwanda’s commitment to peace as talks continue and troops remain inside the DR Congo.

France has paid tribute to the 130 people who were killed 10 years ago in a series of attacks in and around Paris, with President Emmanuel Macron stressing that the country continues to heal in the aftermath of the deadly assaults.

ISIL (ISIS) attackers carried out bombings and opened fire in coordinated attacks on cafe terraces, restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall on November 13, 2015, turning the French capital into a scene of calamity.

“The pain remains,” Macron wrote on social media on Thursday morning. “In solidarity, for the lives lost, the wounded, the families and the loved ones, France remembers.”

The French president was among a group of officials who paid their respects to the victims on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, observing a minute of silence and laying wreaths in front of the Stade de France, the national stadium of France, which was also targeted on that bloody day.

Throughout the day, Macron, survivors and relatives of the victims will honour those killed and wounded at each of the sites of the attacks.

Victims’ associations say two survivors of the attacks later died by suicide, bringing the total death toll to 132.

10 ans.

La douleur demeure. En fraternité, pour les vies fauchées, les blessés, les familles et les proches, la France se souvient.

‘The absence is immense’

Sophie Dias’s father, Manuel, was killed in a suicide bomb blast outside the national stadium.

“Since that November 13, there is an emptiness that cannot be filled,” Sophie said at Thursday’s ceremony outside the stadium. The absence of her father “weighs every morning and every evening, for 10 years”, she said.

“We are told to turn the page,” she added. “But the absence is immense, the shock is intact, and the incomprehension remains. I’d like to know why, I’d like to understand. I’d like these attacks to stop.”

Georges Salines also lost his daughter, Lola, 28, in the deadly attack at the Bataclan concert venue.

“Lola was my beautiful daughter,” Salines told Al Jazeera before Thursday’s anniversary. “She was a young, dynamic woman with a great future, I’m sure.”

The attacks reshaped France’s political and emotional landscape, triggering sweeping counterterrorism powers and years of debate over security and civil liberties.

Reporting from Paris, Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler noted that, “despite calls for unity” in the aftermath of the attacks, “far-right parties later used the assault to bolster their campaigns against immigration”.

ISIL claimed responsibility for the deadly assaults, and a 2021-22 trial ended with life imprisonment without parole for Salah Abdeslam, the lone surviving assailant, and convictions for 19 others.

But the effects of the killings continue to be felt across the country.

“The 10th anniversary is here and emotions and tension are everywhere for us survivors,” said Arthur Denouveaux, who escaped the Bataclan and leads the Life for Paris association. “You never fully heal. You just learn to live differently.”

The commemorations will culminate with the inauguration of the “November 13 Memory Garden”, a new memorial garden opposite City Hall.

Conceived with victims’ associations, it is a stone enclosure from which granite blocks rise to evoke the attack sites, engraved with the victims’ names.

The Trump administration is pushing an Israeli-crafted resolution at the UN Security Council (UNSC) this week aimed at eliminating the possibility of a State of Palestine. The resolution does three things. It establishes US political control over the Gaza Strip. It separates Gaza from the rest of Palestine. And it allows the US, and therefore Israel, to determine the timeline for Israel’s supposed withdrawal from Gaza, which would mean never.

This is imperialism masquerading as a peace process. In and of itself, it is no surprise. Israel runs US foreign policy in the Middle East. What is a surprise is that the US and Israel might just get away with this travesty unless the world speaks up with urgency and indignation.

The draft UNSC resolution would establish a US-UK-dominated Board of Peace, chaired by none other than President Donald Trump himself, and endowed with sweeping powers over Gaza’s governance, borders, reconstruction, and security. This resolution would sideline the State of Palestine and condition any transfer of authority to the Palestinians on the indulgence of the Board of Peace.

This would be an overt return to the British mandate of 100 years ago, with the only change being that the US would hold the mandate rather than the United Kingdom. If it were not so utterly tragic, it would be laughable. As Marx said, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Yes, the proposal is a farce, yet Israel’s genocide is not. It is a tragedy of the first order.

Incredibly, according to the draft resolution, the Board of Peace would be granted sovereign powers in Gaza. Palestinian sovereignty is left to the discretion of the board, which alone would decide when Palestinians are “ready” to govern themselves – perhaps in another 100 years? Even military security is subordinated to the board, and the envisioned forces would answer not to the UNSC or to the Palestinian people, but to the board’s “strategic guidance”.

The US-Israel resolution is being put forward precisely because the rest of the world – other than Israel and the US – has woken up to two facts. First, Israel is committing genocide, a reality witnessed every day in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where innocent Palestinians are murdered to the satisfaction of the Israeli military and illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Second, Palestine is a state, albeit one whose sovereignty remains obstructed by the US, which uses its veto in the UNSC to block Palestine’s permanent UN membership. At the UN this past July and then again in September, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for Palestine’s statehood, a fact that put the Israel-US Zionist lobby into overdrive, resulting in the current draft resolution.

For Israel to accomplish its goal of Greater Israel, the US is pursuing a classic divide-and-conquer strategy, squeezing Arab and Islamic states with threats and inducements. When other countries resist the US-Israel demands, they are cut off from critical technologies, lose access to World Bank and IMF financing, and suffer Israeli bombing, even in countries with US military bases present. The US offers no real protection; rather, it orchestrates a protection racket, extracting concessions from countries wherever US leverage exists. This extortion will continue until the global community stands up to such tactics and insists upon genuine Palestinian sovereignty and US and Israeli adherence to international law.

Palestine remains the endless victim of US and Israeli manoeuvres. The results are not just devastating for Palestine, which has suffered an outright genocide, but for the Arab world and beyond. Israel and the US are currently at war, overtly or covertly, across the Horn of Africa (Libya, Sudan, Somalia), the eastern Mediterranean (Lebanon, Syria), the Gulf region (Yemen), and Western Asia (Iraq, Iran).

If the UNSC is to provide true security according to the UN Charter, it must not yield to US pressures and instead act decisively in line with international law. A resolution truly for peace should include four vital points. First, it should welcome the State of Palestine as a sovereign UN member state, with the US lifting its veto. Second, it should safeguard the territorial integrity of the State of Palestine and Israel, according to the 1967 borders. Third, it should establish a UNSC-mandated protection force drawn up from Muslim-majority states. Fourth, it should include the defunding and disarmament of all belligerent non-state entities, and it should ensure the mutual security of Israel and Palestine.

The two-state solution is about true peace, not about the politicide and genocide of Palestine, or the continued attacks by militants on Israel. It is time for both Palestinians and Israelis to be safe, and for the US and Israel to give up the cruel delusion of permanently ruling over the Palestinian people.