Category World News

During the deadly shooting at Australia’s Bondi Beach in Sydney on Sunday, a bystander was filmed tackling and disarming one of the attackers.

The man, identified as 43-year-old fruit-shop owner Ahmed al-Ahmed, has been hailed as a hero.

On Tuesday, Anthony Albanese, Australia’s prime minister, said al-Ahmed’s actions were an example of “Australians coming together”.

“Ahmed al-Ahmed … took the gun off that perpetrator at great risk to himself and suffered serious injury as a result of that, and is currently going through operations today in hospital,” Albanese said.

This is what we know about al-Ahmed.

What happened at Bondi Beach?

During a gathering at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration, two men opened fire at Bondi Beach, killing 15 people and wounding at least 42.

In a news conference on Monday, New South Wales Police identified the suspects as a 50-year-old man and his 24-year-old son. The father was shot and killed by the police during the attack.

Authorities are referring to this as an anti-Semitic terrorist attack.

Who is Ahmed al-Ahmed?

Al-Ahmed, 43, owns a fruit shop in another area of Sydney, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed on Monday.

In video footage from the scene of the shooting, al-Ahmed can be seen disarming one of the attackers. He grabs the attacker from behind, twists him around and disarms him. He then lifts the gun and points it at the attacker, who has fallen to the ground. The attacker gets up and backs away, eventually leaving the scene.

Al-Ahmed is an Australian Muslim citizen of Syrian origin, and comes from the village of al-Nayrab, near Idlib in Syria, a relative of his, who identified himself as Mustafa Asad, told the Al Araby television network. Al-Ahmed is understood to have moved to Australia in 2006.

Al-Ahmed was having lunch in the area when the shooting took place, and he intervened, his brother, Huthaifa, told Australian public broadcaster ABC.

“I’m really proud about my brother,” Huthaifa told ABC.

Several social media accounts around the world tried to discredit al-Ahmed, claiming variously that he was a Lebanese Maronite Christian or a Jewish man. Some even tried to give him a completely different name for a while. These claims were debunked when Albanese confirmed his identity on Monday.

Was al-Ahmed injured?

Yes. Al-Ahmed’s relative, Asad, told the Australian television news service 7News that al-Ahmed was shot twice during the incident.

He was then taken to hospital where he has been treated for his bullet wounds. His brother said he is getting better, but has not fully recovered yet, ABC reported.

How is he now?

Al-Ahmed is being treated at Saint George Hospital in Kogarah, New South Wales.

On Tuesday, Albanese told a news conference that he met with al-Ahmad on the same day. Albanese added that al-Ahmad’s parents and other relatives are visiting him in Australia.

Albanese said that al-Ahmad will undergo surgery on Wednesday.

“I thanked him for the lives that he helped to save and I wished him all the very best with his surgery that he will undertake tomorrow,” the Australian PM said during the news conference.

What has the Australian government said about al-Ahmed’s actions?

Albanese said the actions of the two attackers were “completely out of place with the way that Australia functions as a society”, contrasting them with al-Ahmed’s response.

“At the best of times, what we see is Australians coming together. And what I want is for Australians to come together, for this to be reinforcing the need for us to promote national unity, and that is critical. There is no place in Australia for anti-Semitism. There is no place for hatred,” Albanese said.

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns posted a picture on Instagram on Monday with al-Ahmed at the hospital, writing: “Ahmed is a real-life hero. Last night, his incredible bravery no doubt saved countless lives when he disarmed a terrorist at enormous personal risk.”

What has the public response been?

A fundraiser for al-Ahmed on the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe has raised more than $218,000. The American billionaire hedge fund manager, Bill Ackman, is the biggest donor so far, contributing more than $66,000 and sharing the fundraiser on his X account.

On Monday, GoFundMe posted on X: “We’re seeing an outpouring of love for Ahmed al-Ahmed following his heroic actions at Bondi Beach. We’re working directly with organizers to ensure funds safely reach Ahmed & his family. All funds remain securely held with our payment processors during verification until transfer.”

Al-Ahmed has been praised around the world.

“A Muslim, 43-year-old father of two, who bravely risked his life to save his neighbors celebrating Hanukkah,” New York City Comptroller Brad Lander wrote on social media. “Praying for his full and speedy recovery. And so deeply inspired by his example.”

New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani also held al-Ahmed up as an example of courage against hate.

“On Bondi Beach today, as men with long guns targeted innocents, another man ran towards the gunfire and disarmed a shooter,” Mamdani wrote.

Growing global disorder threatens to deepen humanitarian crises around the world, with Sudan and Palestine facing the greatest risk of all, according to a new report.

The pair once again topped the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) Emergency Watchlist, the 2026 version of which was released on Tuesday.

The report on the world’s top 20 crises warns that diverging trends of surging catastrophe and shrinking funding signal the advent of a “new world disorder” replacing the post-World War II rules-based order.

“Disorder begets disorder,” said IRC president David Miliband. “This year’s Watchlist is a testament to misery but also a warning: without urgent action from those with power to make a difference, 2026 risks becoming the most dangerous year yet.”

The report said the new state of global disorder was characterised by “intensifying geopolitical rivalries, shifting alliances, and transactional deal-making”, which had conspired to create “a cascade of crises and eroding support for the world’s most vulnerable”.

A “surge of vetoes” at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has stalled responses in Sudan and Palestine, it points out.

Russia has regularly stood in the way of a ceasefire in Sudan, while the United States repeatedly vetoed a Gaza truce before drafting a peace plan with the backing of regional actors earlier this year.

The 20 countries on the watchlist, which also include South Sudan, Ethiopia, Haiti, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, make up only 12 percent of the world’s population, but account for 89 percent of the nearly 300 million people around the globe that need humanitarian aid, reads the report.

Highlighting the scale of the crisis, it notes that 117 million people are forcibly displaced and 40 million face life-threatening levels of “severe hunger”, yet funding has shrunk by 50 percent.

That has created a funding gap that leaves humanitarian responders unable to keep pace with needs.

‘Impunity on a dangerous scale’

Sudan, ravaged by nearly three years of fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), headed the list for the third year in a row.

The IRC highlights the role of “regional backers” complicit in a war that it says has killed 150,000 people and displaced more than 12 million. Some 33 million people need humanitarian aid, with 207,000 facing “catastrophic” food shortages.

“Large quantities of gold flow out of the country, while weapons move in the opposite direction,” says the report, which did not name the “backers”.

The United Arab Emirates is widely accused of backing the RSF, a claim the Gulf country denies.

Palestine, facing the twin crises of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, which has killed more than 70,000 people and created a humanitarian catastrophe, and escalating settler violence in the occupied West Bank, ranked second for the third year running.

The IRC report said there was “limited hope” that “external pressure” would “reduce the intensity of conflict” in Gaza, where authorities say Israel has carried out nearly 800 attacks, killing about 400 people, since a ceasefire deal reached in October under the US-led peace plan, which was backed by the UNSC.

Even if conflict in Gaza remains at “lower levels”, the IRC said, “civilians will face intense suffering and a struggle for survival amid what remains of Gaza”.

In late 2025, the report said 641,000 people were experiencing “famine or catastrophic food insecurity” in the enclave, and the situation is likely to persist.

“Tight restrictions and militarized delivery will leave aid access limited,” it said, referring to Israel’s choking of aid supplies entering the enclave.

When armed soldiers in the small West African nation of Benin appeared on national television on December 7 to announce they had seized power in a coup, it felt to many across the region like another episode of the ongoing coup crisis that has seen several governments toppled since 2020.

But the scenes played out differently this time.

Amid reports of gunfire and civilians scampering to safety in the economic capital, Cotonou, Beninese and others across the region waited with bated breath as conflicting intelligence emerged. The small group of putschists, on the one hand, declared victory, but Benin’s forces and government officials said the plot had failed.

By evening, the situation was clear – Benin’s government was still standing. President Patrice Talon and loyalist forces in the army had managed to hold control, thanks to help from the country’s bigger neighbours, particularly its eastern ally and regional power, Nigeria.

While Talon now enjoys victory as the president who could not be unseated, the spotlight is also on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The regional bloc rallied to save the day in Benin after their seeming resignation in the face of the crises rocking the region, including just last month, when the military took power in Guinea-Bissau.

This time, though, after much criticism and embarrassment, ECOWAS was ready to push back against the narrative of it being an ineffective bloc by baring its teeth and biting, political analyst Ryan Cummings told Al Jazeera.

“It wanted to remind the region that it does have the power to intervene when the context allows,” Cummings said. “At some point, there needed to be a line drawn in the sand [and] what was at stake was West Africa’s most stable sovereign country falling.”

Is a new ECOWAS on the horizon?

Benin’s military victory was an astonishing turnaround for an ECOWAS that has been cast as a dead weight in the region since 2020, when a coup in Mali spurred an astonishing series of military takeovers across the region in quick succession.

Between 2020 and 2025, nine coup attempts toppled five democratic governments and two military ones. The latest successful coup, in Guinea-Bissau, happened on November 28. Bissau-Guineans had voted in the presidential election some days before and were waiting for the results to be announced when the military seized the national television station, detained incumbent President Umaro Sissoco Embalo, and announced a new military leader.

ECOWAS, whose high-level delegation was in Bissau to monitor the electoral process when the coup happened, appeared on the back foot, unable to do much more than issue condemnatory statements. Those statements sounded similar to those it issued after the coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Guinea. The bloc appeared a far cry from the institution that, between 1990 and 2003, successfully intervened to stop the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and later in the Ivory Coast. The last ECOWAS military intervention, in 2017, halted Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh’s attempt to overturn the election results.

Indeed, ECOWAS’s success in its heyday hinged on the health of its members. Nigeria, arguably ECOWAS’s backbone, whose troops led the interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone, has been mired in insecurity and economic crises of its own lately. In July 2023, when Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was the ECOWAS chair, he threatened to invade Niger after the coup there.

It was disastrous timing. Faced with livelihood-eroding inflation and incessant attacks by armed groups at home, Nigerians were some of the loudest voices resisting an invasion. Many believed Tinubu, sworn in just months earlier, had misplaced his priorities. By the time ECOWAS had finished debating what to do weeks later, the military government in Niger had consolidated support throughout the armed forces and Nigeriens themselves had decided they wanted to back the military. ECOWAS and Tinubu backed off, defeated.

Niger left the alliance altogether in January this year, forming the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) with fellow military governments in Mali and Burkina Faso. All three share cultural and geographic affinities, but are also linked by their collective dislike for France, the former colonial power, which they blame for interfering in their countries. Even as they battle rampaging armed groups like Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the three governments have cut ties with French forces formerly stationed there and welcomed Russian fighters whose effectiveness, security experts say, fluctuates.

But Benin was different, and ECOWAS appeared wide awake. Aside from the fact that it was one coup too far, Cummings said, the country’s proximity to Nigeria, and two grave mistakes the putschists made, gave ECOWAS a fighting chance.

The first mistake was that the rebels had failed to take Talon hostage, as is the modus operandi with putschists in the region. That allowed the president to directly send an SOS to his counterparts following the first failed attacks on the presidential palace at dawn.

The second mistake was perhaps even graver.

“Not all the armed forces were on board,” Cummings said, noting that the small group of about 100 rebel soldiers had likely assumed other units would fall in line but had underestimated how loyal other factions were to the president. That was a miscalculation in a country where military rule ended in 1990 and where 73 percent of Beninese believe that democracy is better than any other form of government, according to poll site Afrobarometer. Many take particular pride in their country being hailed as the region’s most stable democracy.

“There was division within the army, and that was the window of opportunity that allowed ECOWAS to deploy because there wasn’t going to be a case of ‘If we deploy, we will be targeted by the army’. I dare say that if there were no countercoup, there was no way ECOWAS would have gotten involved because it would have been a conventional war,” Cummings added.

Quickly reading the room, Benin’s neighbours reacted swiftly. For the first time in nearly a decade, the bloc deployed its standby ground forces from Nigeria, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, and Sierra Leone. Abuja authorised air attacks on rebel soldiers who were effectively cornered in a military base in Cotonou and at the national TV building, but who were putting up a last-ditch attempt at resistance. France also supported the mission by providing intelligence. By nightfall, the rebels had been completely dislodged by Nigerian jets. The battle for Cotonou was over.

At least 14 people have since been arrested. Several casualties were reported on both sides, with one civilian, the wife of a high-ranking officer marked for assassination, among the dead. On Wednesday, Beninese authorities revealed that the coup leader, Colonel Pascal Tigri, was hiding in neighbouring Togo.

At stake for ECOWAS was the risk of losing yet another member, possibly to the landlocked AES, said Kabiru Adamu, founder of Abuja-based Beacon Security intelligence firm. “I am 90 percent sure Benin would have joined the AES because they desperately need a littoral state,” he said, referring to Benin’s Cotonou port, which would have expanded AES export capabilities.

Nigeria could also not afford a military government mismanaging the deteriorating security situation in northern Benin, as has been witnessed in the AES countries, Cummings said. Armed group JNIM launched its first attack on Nigerian soil in October, adding to Abuja’s pressures as it continues to face Boko Haram in the northeast and armed bandit groups in the northwest. Abuja has also come under diplomatic fire from the US, which falsely alleges a “Christian genocide” in the country.

“We know that this insecurity is the stick with which Tinubu is being beaten, and we already know his nose is bloodied,” Cummings said.

Revelling in the glory of the Benin mission last Sunday, Tinubu praised Nigeria’s forces in a statement, saying the “Nigerian armed forces stood gallantly as a defender and protector of constitutional order”. A group of Nigerian governors also hailed the president’s action, and said it reinforced Nigeria’s regional power status and would deter further coup plotters.

Not yet out of the woods

If there is a perception that ECOWAS has reawakened and future putschists will be discouraged, the reality may not be so positive, analysts say. The bloc still has much to do before it can be taken seriously again, particularly in upholding democracy and calling out sham elections before governments become vulnerable to mass uprisings or coups, Beacon Security’s Adamu said.

In Benin, for example, ECOWAS did not react as President Talon, in power since 2016, grew increasingly autocratic, barring opposition groups in two previous presidential elections. His government has again barred the main opposition challenger, Renaud Agbodjo, from elections scheduled for next April, while Talon’s pick, former finance minister Romuald Wadagni, is the obvious favourite.

“It’s clear that the elections have been engineered already,” Adamu said. “In the entire subregion, it’s difficult to point to any single country where the rule of law has not been jettisoned and where the voice of the people is heard without fear.”

ECOWAS, Adamu added, needs to proactively re-educate member states on democratic principles, hold them accountable when there are lapses, as in the Benin case, and then intervene when threats emerge.

The bloc appears to be taking heed. On December 9, two days after the failed Benin coup, ECOWAS declared a state of emergency.

“Events of the last few weeks have shown the imperative of serious introspection on the future of our democracy and the urgent need to invest in the security of our community,” Omar Touray, ECOWAS Commission president, said at a meeting in the Abuja headquarters. Touray cited situations that constitute coup risks, such as the erosion of electoral integrity and mounting geopolitical tensions, as the bloc splits along foreign influences. Currently, ECOWAS member states have stayed close to Western allies like France, while the AES is firmly pro-Russia.

Another challenge the bloc faces is managing potential fallout with the AES states amid France’s increasing closeness with Abuja. As Paris faces hostility in Francophone West Africa, it has drawn closer to Nigeria, where it does not have the same negative colonial reputation, and which it perceives as useful for protecting French business interests in the region, Cummings said. At the same time, ECOWAS is still hoping to woo the three rogue ex-members back into its fold, and countries like Ghana have already established bilateral ties with the military governments.

“The challenge with that is that the AES would see the intervention [in Benin] as an act not from ECOWAS itself but something engineered by France,” Adamu said. Seeing France instigating an intervention which could have benefitted AES reinforces their earlier complaints that Paris pokes its nose into the region’s affairs, and could push them further away, he said.