In Hama, tens of thousands of Syrians have gathered to remember Bashar al-Assad’s assassination. In 2024, an opposition-led lightning offensive led to the Assad regime’s sacking.
Published On 5 Dec 2025
The tragedy has rekindled some of the mistrust and divisions in Hong Kong that erupted as a result of the devastating housing estate fire that claimed the lives of at least 159 people.
On November 26, the city watched horrifiedly as the fire started at Wang Fuk Court and quickly spread to seven of the complex’s eight towers. According to official reports, many residents were trapped inside because the alarms were malfunctioning.
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After burning for more than 40 hours, Wang Fuk Court is on track to be one of the worst fires ever to occur, with 176 people killed in the blaze that started in 1948. However, the casualties rate have kept rising since the fire was extinguished on November 28.
Many Hong Kongers have never considered the scale.
This is a downtown area, not a small village in the middle of nowhere. We wouldn’t have anticipated that this would have happened, Issie, an educator who works in Wang Fuk Court’s Tai Po district, told Al Jazeera.
“This is a completely unthinkable situation. We anticipated that the government would have “put out the fire.”
Hong Kongers quickly mobilized following the fire’s eruption, when they distributed food, water, and shelter to young protesters despite not always agreeing with them. This is unlike the protests of 2019, which have taken place since.
As other residents of the housing estate’s 4, 000-plus residents were quickly gathered online assistance databases, including clothing, food, and other supplies, in Tai Po.
A petition was then released calling for “four demands” of government accountability in response to the protest’s “five demands, not one less” slogan. More than 10,000 people signed the petition, according to local media, before it was eventually removed.
In a striking visual similarity to the 2019 protest artwork “Lennon Walls,” handwritten notes adorned the fire’s victims.
A Hong Kong professor with experience with the city’s governance structure told Al Jazeera, requesting anonymity because of concerns for the impact on their careers, that “mobilization is in Hong Kong’s “DNA.”
Because it was meant to be a significant renovation project, “people couldn’t explain why that happened.” He claimed that the renovation project, which was carried out to make the building structure and the residents safer, ended in tragedy.
Athena Tong, a visiting research fellow from Hong Kong and a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo, shared the sentiment that the government was slow to act.
According to Tong, “the fact that society, the regular citizens, needed to mobilize at that scale to help with relief demonstrates that there is no trust in the government’s competence,”
Hong Kongers began to question the government’s prompt response online, including a suggestion from early experts and officials that Wang Fuk Court’s bamboo scaffolding, a custom in Hong Kong construction, should be replaced with metal.
Later, fire investigators determined that Styrofoam blocks and subpar mesh netting were the main culprits.
However, some of the discontent stems from the deep existential questions that the protests in 2019 raised about Hong Kong’s future, according to observers.
As a number of grievances began to surface, some of which date back to the city’s 1997 return to Chinese sovereignty, the protests erupted into a widespread antigovernment movement in 2019.
The issue ranged from whether Beijing was backing off with its commitments to the former British colony’s “high degree of autonomy” until 2047 under the “one country, two systems” agreement with China to how the local leader of Hong Kong would be chosen. Some people were concerned about the future of Hong Kong’s distinctive identity and culture.
By contrast, pro-government Hong Kongers and Chinese officials perceived the protests as a city ebbing into pieces, possibly with the support of the US government, who wanted to destabilize Hong Kong for their own reasons.
Hong Kong was temporarily at a standstill for months as a result of the protests, but as a result, COVID-19 containment laws started to become in effect in 2020. Beijing passed legislation that made it next to impossible for large-scale protests in the middle of 2020.
The government’s response in 2019 and 2025, according to Issie, the resident of Hong Kong.
These things wouldn’t have happened before, she said, “especially when it comes to people being critical of their policies, and even this time when people were trying to help.”
A Hong Kong government spokesman earlier this week claimed that “foreign forces, anti-China, and destabilizing forces” were using “seditious pamphlets” to “maliciously smear the rescue work, instigate social division and conflict to undermine the society’s unity” in a language that was strikingly reminiscent of its 2019 remarks.
According to China’s state-run Global Times newspaper, a “small number of external hostile forces” were attempting to “reverse the tragedy and “replica tactics from the anti-extradition bill unrest” in 2019 to obstruct rescue and recovery efforts.
According to local media reports, Hong Kong police have detained at least 15 people on suspicion of manslaughter in connection with the fire, and have also detained at least three others on suspicion of sedition and “attempting to incite discord” in response to the arrests.
According to local media, Miles Kwan, a university student, and former district councillor Kenneth Cheung, who was detained for leafleting, are among them.
The local government’s Executive Council member Ronny Tong claimed that there isn’t much information available about the sedition-related arrests, and that more evidence than criticism of the government would have helped to support the national security charges brought against them.
The law is the law, in our opinion, with a capital W. The police might err on the side of caution if someone violates the law at a sensitive time. The courts will be there to protect them if they overreacted, Ronny Tong said.
He claimed for Al Jazeera that it made sense for the government to reroute volunteers’ efforts to streamlined their work. The government provided a 100, 000 Hong Kong dollar ($12, 847) subsidy over the course of the past week, promising Wang Fuk Court residents would receive free housing until their homes were rebuilt.
Although only a small number of details have been made public, Hong Kong leader John Lee has also demanded an independent committee to look into the fire and review the building-work system in Hong Kong.
No government official had resigned as of Friday due to the deadly fire.
Published On 5 Dec 2025
27 of the players who were detained were allegedly involved in betting on games that took place against their own teams, according to a statement released on Friday by the Istanbul public prosecutor’s office.
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Metehan Baltaci, a former Turkish champion, was one of them, according to the statement. He had been given a nine-month suspension earlier this month as a result of the betting scandal.
Six referees and the president of Eyupspor, one of Turkey’s top Super Lig division clubs, were put in pre-trial detention on November 10 as a result of the investigation.
The other 26 players who were suspected of betting on their own teams were not identified by the prosecution, but Mert Hakan Yandas, who plays for Fenerbahce, a significant club in Istanbul, claimed they had made the wagers on someone else’s account.
Murat Sancak, the ex-president of Adana Demirspor, was also listed on the detention list, according to a report from the A Haber news channel. Additionally, there were a number of additional players listed.
None of the organizations mentioned could be reached for comment right away.
According to the prosecutor’s office, 35 of the 46 people named in the arrest order have been apprehended so far. According to the report, five people are known to be currently abroad.
According to the statement, two club presidents were among those who were “attempting to influence the outcome” of a game between their two third-division rivals in the 2023-2024 season.
According to Turkish media, neither team had even attempted to score a goal, which was where the investigation actually began, according to reports from newspapers in Turkey.
More than 1, 000 Turkish football players have been suspended by the Turkish Football Federation (TFF), 25 of whom have been banned from the Super Lig, for a time frame of 45 days to 12 months.
Alassane Ndao, the Senegalese winger for Konyaspor, was the only foreigner to receive a 12-month suspension.
More than 900 people come from the third and fourth divisions, a majority of whom are from those divisions.
A day after a wave of Israeli raids rocked the south of Lebanon, President Joseph Aoun reported to have met with a delegation from the UN Security Council (UNSC) to discuss the rising tensions with Israel and efforts to disarm Hezbollah.
Aoun urged the UNSC team to press Israel to abide by a ceasefire that it had violated almost daily on November 2024 and to leave southern Lebanon.
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In remarks made by the NNA, Aoun said, “We look forward to pressure from your side.”
Aoun previously stated that the UN delegation would travel to southern Lebanon to check “the situation on the ground,” which included meetings with prime minister Nawaf Salam and parliament speaker Nabih Berri. According to Aoun, the trip would allow the delegation to “see the real picture of what is happening there” as the army implements a plan to destroy Hezbollah’s weapons.
Hezbollah is angered by the UN’s visit, which comes amid flimsy indications of potential deeper ties between Lebanon and Israel.
Hezbollah’s chief Naim Qassem criticized the two states’ first direct discussions on Wednesday as a “free concession” to Israel, which Lebanon technically is still at war with.
Qassem claimed that the civilian-led discussions violate the Lebanese government’s policy, which should be ensuring state sovereignty, in comments made by the pro-Hezbollah Al-Akhbar newspaper.
Qassem called Israel an “expansionist” and claimed that it had carried out “constant” attacks and refused to abide by the ceasefire agreement signed last year with Hezbollah.
Qassem stated that the US has no business interfering with internal Lebanese issues, including the country’s defense strategy or Hezbollah’s efforts to disarm the country. “This aggression is not due to Hezbollah’s weapons, but rather aims to gradually occupy Lebanon and establish a “Great Israel” through Lebanon,” Qassem continued.
Salam, for his part, defended the “positive” discussions with Israel, which were held during a meeting of the military committee monitoring their ceasefire, saying they were only concerned with putting the 2024 truce into effect.
Israel’s military continued the negotiations with additional attacks in southern Lebanon despite the apparent diplomatic opening. It launched its latest of hundreds of attacks on southern Lebanese villages on Thursday, breaking the 2024 truce and causing the deaths of dozens of civilians and destroying important infrastructure, all of which were attributed to Hezbollah.
Zeina Khodr, a correspondent for Al Jazeera in Beirut, claimed that the strikes “will continue until Hezbollah is completely disarmed.”
Hezbollah has publicly resisted disarming it, but the organization has continued to bombard and occupy Lebanon.
Qassem asserted in recent days that the armed group has the authority to respond to the country’s top military official’s assassination last month in a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Hezbollah has “the right to respond, and we will determine the timing for that,” according to Qassem, calling Haytham Ali Tabatabai’s killing “a blatant aggression and a heinous crime.”
The government’s negotiations with Israel, which are scheduled to resume on December 19, are seen by Aoun’s Information Minister Paul Morcos as the only way to progress, according to Morcos. There is negotiation as the only option. At a cabinet meeting, Aoun, a former commander of the Lebanese army, said, “This is the reality, and this is what history has taught us about wars,” Morcos claimed.
There would be no concession to Lebanon’s sovereignty, according to Morcos, and Aoun stressed the necessity for “the language of negotiation, not the language of war,” to prevail.
Lebanon was tasked with putting an end to armed groups’ hostilities in the wake of the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon in November 2024, with Lebanon tasked with putting an end to Israeli military action.
Despite the terms of the agreement, Israeli forces are still occupying at least five positions in Lebanese territory and have not withdrawn. More than 300 people have been killed in near-daily attacks across Lebanon, including at least 127 civilians, according to the UN.
The likelihood of a US attack on Venezuela seems to be getting more and more likely as the US naval deployments in the Caribbean get worse and rhetoric gets worse.
Since early September, the US has carried out military strikes on at least 21 Venezuelan boats it claims are trafficking drugs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 87 people. The Trump administration cites a threat to national security as justification for the attacks, according to the Trump administration. However, it has not provided any proof of drug trafficking, and experts claim that Venezuela is not the main hub for the flow of drugs, such as cocaine, into the US.
US President Donald Trump has given conflicting messages about whether he plans a ground operation inside Venezuela. He has denied that he was considering strikes inside the country while also denying that he has ruled and not yet. However, he has authorized CIA operations there.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro claims Trump’s real objective is to force a regime change by removing him from power, and warned that the country would resist any such attempt.
What we know is as follows:
Analysts say the US has several military options for striking Venezuela, most of which employ air and maritime power rather than ground troops.
The US has recently deployed a sizable air and naval force to the Caribbean, including the USS Gerald Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, to the area close to Venezuela’s coast.
Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, stated to Al Jazeera that “the pieces are in place for an air and missile attack.”
“The first strike will likely be long-range missiles launched from air and sea because Venezuela has relatively strong air defences”, he said.
Analysts believe that targeting alleged cartel-linked infrastructure would be easier to justify internationally and to arrive at a conclusion quickly given the Trump administration’s rhetoric’s growing focus on the Maduro government, which it claims has links to drug gangs in Venezuela.
A ground invasion has been ruled out by almost all experts.
“I don’t really see that an attack is likely at all at this stage”, Elias Ferrer, founder of Orinoco Research and the lead editor of the Venezuelan media organisation Guacamaya, said.
Because the region’s ground forces are insufficiently strong for an invasion, Cancian said, “There will be no boots on the ground.”
Additionally, a large-scale land operation would likely face significant challenges domestically and be deeply unpopular.
“Any move toward overt ground operations would encounter significant legal barriers, congressional pushback, and the shadow of Iraq and Afghanistan – all of which make a full occupation extremely unlikely”, Salvador Santino Regilme, a political scientist who leads the international relations programme at Leiden University in the Netherlands, told Al Jazeera.
Not a binary choice between “no attack” and an invasion a la the way of Iraq, he said, “an analysis should be made in terms of a spectrum of limited but potentially escalating uses of force.”
An “Iraq-style invasion” refers to a massive ground invasion that is followed by a US-led occupation, the dismantling of state institutions, and a never-ending nation-building effort. This type of intervention would require the deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops, years of counterinsurgency operations, and significant political and financial investment.
Analysts warn that a military strike is far more likely to cause instability for the country than it does for policymakers in Washington.
Ferrer described the idea of an attack as opening a “Pandora’s box”.
Armed actors have the power to take control of some areas of the country, whether they’re politically motivated or just organized crime, because both the military and paramilitary actors have that power in a conflict. Not just the outcome, either. But you open up all of those possibilities”.
Ferrer warned that the political opposition would be one of the least likely to suffer in such a setting.
The Venezuelan opposition is one of the most likely losers from this scenario, he said, only because they don’t have strong ties to the armed and security forces or have strong ties to them.
Indeed, some analysts argue that even a limited US strike would likely strengthen the Maduro government in the short term.
According to Santino Regilme, “external aggression frequently results in a rally-around-the-flag effect and gives incumbents a potent pretext to criminalize dissent as treason.”
The opposition, which is already dispersed and socially uneven, would likely split more between those who support US pressure and those who fear being permanently discredited as foreign proxies, he added.
“Comparative experiences in Iraq, Libya, and other cases of externally driven regime change suggest that coercive intervention rarely produces stable democracy”, Santino Regilme explained.
Senior Venezuelan officials have taken a standoffish position in the face of mounting tensions. They publicly call for peace, but they also refer to any potential US action as a violation of international law.
“They]the US] think that with a bombing they’ll end everything. “Here, in this nation” On state television in early November, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello made fun of himself.
Maduro struck a similar tone earlier this month.
He declared, “We want peace, but peace with sovereignty, equality, and freedom.” We oppose peace in colonies and between slaves.
The retired Marine Corps colonel from CSIS, Cancian, claimed that the US is working with the CIA to undermine Venezuela’s military’s loyalty to the Maduro government.
“The United States may tell these forces that they will be left alone if they remain in garrison during any fighting”, Cancian explained.
He claimed that during Desert Storm, the US carried out similar actions. A US-led coalition expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait in the Gulf War of 1991.
In that conflict, US officials quietly signalled to certain Iraqi units that if they stayed in their barracks and did not resist, they would not be targeted – an approach that helped limit resistance during the ground offensive.
Cancian claims that the Venezuelan government has removed any military-related opposition.
There is therefore a high likelihood that the military and security forces will engage in combat, he added.
Ferrer argued that everything depends on what the US sends them before an attack. What’s actually more intriguing is the kind of deal being tried by the US,” she said. How is it trying to involve or marginalise the armed forces and the security forces”?
Is it telling them, “Hey guys, you can stay in control of these businesses, these ministries – the generals can keep their posts,” he asked? Or will it engage in “de-Baathification” in Iraq, where all officers are fired and all soldiers are fired to purge the armed forces of pro-Maduro elements?
Marginalising the armed forces could trigger more, not less, violence, Ferrer warned.
You might have pockets of conflict that are occurring throughout the nation, not necessarily a coup or civil war that involve the entire nation. If the armed forces are marginalized, he continued, “that’s definitely a possibility.”
The picture is complicated, according to analysts. “Ordinary Venezuelans have already endured a prolonged socioeconomic collapse, hyperinflation, widespread shortages, international sanctions and one of the largest displacement crises in the world”, Santino Regilme said.
In 2025, a recent study found that about 28 to 30 percent of Venezuelans needed humanitarian aid.
A US attack, in contrast, “would likely be seen less as a moment of “liberation” and more as yet another layer of insecurity, one that threatens what is left of basic services like food and medicine.”
“Public opinion research shows deep distrust both toward the government and toward foreign military intervention, suggesting that popular reactions would be heterogeneous, ambivalent, and heavily shaped by class, geography, and political identity”, Santino Regilme added.
Regional and international actors’ responses are likely to reflect their current strategic alliances with Caracas.
According to analysts, China, now one of Venezuela’s largest creditors and economic partners, is expected to maintain firm diplomatic support for Maduro, but its ability to shape events on the ground would be limited if open conflict erupted.
We are aware that China’s influence would be diminished in the event of an armed conflict between Venezuela and the US, according to Carlos Pina, a political analyst from Venezuela.
Russia, on the other hand, has a closer military stance toward Venezuela. Moscow has supplied advanced weapons systems, trained Venezuelan personnel, and maintained intelligence cooperation for years.
The use of military equipment that this Eurasian nation has sold to Caracas would be linked to Moscow’s [role],” said Pina.
In any case, both nations would continue to support Maduro politically. As the expert noted, “the diplomatic support of these countries for Nicolas Maduro would be undisputed”.
Analysts warn that Venezuela’s US aggression might have regional effects.
During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday this week, Trump warned that any country producing narcotics would be a potential target, and singled out Colombia for producing cocaine, which ends up in the US.
Therefore, according to experts, what is happening right now with Venezuela could serve as a general framework for defining regional domestic political crises as “narco-terrorist” threats, a term that could serve as a justification for military action under the auspices of counterterrorism or law enforcement.
According to Santino Regilme, “what is being tested around Venezuela is less a single country policy than a broader template, where complex domestic crises are reframed as “narco-terrorist” threats that justify extraterritorial use of force under the banners of law enforcement and counterterrorism.”
If applied to other countries in the region, he warned, this model could “further erode the already fragile constraints on the use of force in international law and weaken regional mechanisms that seek negotiated political settlements”.