Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa has formed a new transitional government tasked with rebuilding state institutions, following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in December. The cabinet includes members from Syria’s minority communities, with Alawite, Druze and Christian ministers sworn in.
The 1987 order from the German government was clear: Shut down your operations in Libya. For Lutz Kayser, this marked the heartbreaking finale to his private rocketry enterprise, OTRAG, and to his dream of “making access to space affordable for everyone”.
Founded in Germany and based, in a series of bizarre turns, first in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and then deep in the Libyan desert, OTRAG had developed an IKEA-like concept for rocket design, using mass-produced modular components that could be assembled into spacecraft of various shapes and sizes.
The two African countries both offered potentially ideal conditions for rocket launching: vast, unregulated spaces far from prying eyes. But when United States and Israeli intelligence came to suspect that Libya was coopting the programme for its own military ends, it meant the end of the line for OTRAG, given that Kayser and his colleagues could face criminal charges in their home country had they persisted. In a final, devastating twist, all of OTRAG’s equipment was seized by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, but its modular approach to rocketry would go on to influence later generations of aerospace players.
While government agencies sent Sputnik into orbit and put men on the moon, Kayser represented one of a succession of individual pioneers – incidentally all white and all male – who have endeavoured to conquer the skies despite being regularly dismissed by their contemporaries as absurd or deluded.
And although the second explosion this year of a SpaceX rocket presents another setback for CEO Elon Musk in his ultimate mission to colonise Mars, it is likely only a hiccup in the ongoing privatisation of aerospace, the roots of which go right back to the late 19th century.
Born in 1857, the Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is credited for laying the mathematical and theoretical foundations for rocketry. As the reclusive home-schooled child of a minor government official living in a log cabin about 200km (125 miles) southeast of Moscow, Tsiolkovsky developed an interest in mathematics and physics and then, reading the science fiction of Jules Verne, became enthralled by the possibility of space travel.
Although never formally educated, Tsiolkovsky went to Moscow and carried out his own research there under the influence of Nikolai Fyodorov, a proponent of “cosmism”, a philosophical movement at the time that integrated science, religion and , metaphysics , with a belief in the potential immortality of mankind and the harnessing of science for space exploration.
In contrast to the present archetype of “capitalist turned space crusader”, Tsiolkovsky went on to earn his living as a teacher in another remote part of southwest Russia. Beset by personal tragedies – including the suicide of his son, the loss of many of his research notes and manuscripts in a flood and the arrest of his daughter for revolutionary activities – Tsiolkovsky defied misfortune to publish almost 100 works on space travel and related subjects, including designs for rockets with steering thrusters, multistage boosters, space stations,  , airlocks for exiting a spaceship and closed-cycle biological systems to provide food and oxygen for , space colonies.
And in 1895, inspired by the newly constructed Eiffel Tower, Tsiolkovsky conceived the “space elevator”, a cable theoretically attached to the Earth somewhere along the equator and reaching well beyond the atmosphere, using centrifugal power from Earth’s rotation to counter downward gravity, keeping the cable upright and taut. The immensely long cable, according to Tsiolkovsky, would enable vehicles attached to the cable to carry people and cargo all the way up to a stationary space station and back again.
While that and many of his other ideas might seem far fetched even today, Tsiolkovsky is regarded as a theoretical grandfather of spaceflight. “Tsiolkovsky was the prophet of the Space Age”, Sergei Korolev, chief designer of the Sputnik-era Soviet space programme, wrote in his 1934 book Rocket Flight in the Stratosphere. “His ideas and calculations formed the foundation of modern astronautics”.
Tsiolkovsky died in 1935, and although he never obtained the means to put his ideas into practice, other space pioneers of that era were developing similar theories and trying to execute them. One such figure was Robert H Goddard, the American engineer who built and launched the world’s first liquid-fuelled rocket.
Goddard, born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1882, also had a deep fascination with science and mechanics from an early age. Like Tsiolkovsky, he too was galvanised by science fiction, writing in his diary as a teenager about the HG Wells novel The War of the Worlds sparking the idea of space travel in his imagination.
Goddard grew up in a comfortable home as the son of a businessman and conducted experiments with kites, balloons and homemade fireworks. While climbing a cherry tree in his back yard, aged 17, he had a kind of epiphany, imagining a rocket capable of reaching Mars. This vision stayed with Goddard throughout his career and was the motivation behind his scientific curiosity and his concept of space travel. He later wrote in an unpublished autobiography, “I was a different boy when I descended the tree, for existence at last seemed very purposive”.
While working on his doctorate in physics at Clark University in Massachusetts, Goddard began experimenting with solid and liquid fuel propulsion, believing that rockets could be used for high-altitude research, atmospheric studies and eventually exploration of space.
He obtained patents in 1914 for a multistage rocket and a liquid-fuelled rocket engine and five years later published A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, a groundbreaking book that outlined his theories on spaceflight, for example, that a rocket could function in the vacuum of space.
Goddard faced considerable scepticism from both his peers and the media. “He does not know the relation of action to reaction”, a 1920 New York Times editorial mocked, “and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react – to say that would be absurd. Of course, he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools”.
Unfazed by the criticism, Goddard countered to a reporter: “Every vision is a joke until the first man accomplishes it. Once realised, it becomes commonplace”.
On March 16, 1926, Goddard succeeded in launching the world’s first liquid-fuelled rocket in Auburn, Massachusetts. Nicknamed “Nell”, the rocket flew for about 2.5 seconds, reaching a height of 12.5 metres (41ft) – seemingly unremarkable now but identified as a seminal moment in the evolution of rocketry.
Goddard went on to work with the US military on rocket-assisted takeoff systems for aircraft.
He died in 1945, not living long enough to learn that German scientists captured during World War II had revealed that the Nazi V-2 rocket programme was heavily influenced by Goddard’s work. Upon their release, a number of those scientists were invited to join NASA, meaning that Goddard’s theories were ultimately applied in the US mission to put a man on the moon.
And Goddard would no doubt have been amused to read the retraction by The New York Times of its derisory 1920 editorial, published just prior to the Apollo 11 moon landing of 1969.
“It is now definitely established”, the Times editors wrote, “that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere”.
“The , Times , regrets the error”.
One of Goddard’s students of rocketry had been a man by the name of Edwin Aldrin, whose son Buzz Aldrin was an astronaut and the second person to walk on the moon after Neil Armstrong.
Today, Goddard is recognised as a visionary of the space age, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is named in his honour.
As Goddard’s life was drawing to a close, another seminal character in private space exploration was still in his infancy. Born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1939, Lutz Theodor Kayser was spellbound by rocketry from his early childhood. He idolised Wernher von Braun, leader of Germany’s V-2 guided missile programme during World War II, who later became famous for his role in NASA. Witnessing Russia’s 1957 launch of Sputnik I, the world’s first artificial satellite, Kayser became captivated by the emerging Cold War space race between the US and the USSR.
At the University of Stuttgart studying rocket propulsion, Kayser came to the conclusion that existing space programmes were overreliant on highly complex and expensive systems and that there existed a possibility of far simpler, cost-efficient modular rocket design – a flat-pack-like approach to rocketry that could potentially democratise space travel and bring it within the grasp of people around the world.
Kayser joined the Working Group for Rocket Technology and Spaceflight, a student-led organisation that designed small-scale rockets and conducted test launches. He also connected with leading German aerospace figures such as Kurt Debus, a former Nazi scientist who later became an important figure in NASA.
Kayser’s vision was to develop a low-cost space transportation system independent of government control, challenging the assumption that space exploration could only be managed by state-run agencies, such as NASA and the Soviet space programme.
In 1975, backed by private investors, Kayser founded OTRAG (Orbital Transport und Raketen AG – Orbital Transport and Rocketry Ltd) with a unique concept: Instead of building a single large, expensive spacecraft, the idea was to manufacture modular rocket segments that could be mass-assembled in different configurations, enabling space expeditions to be cheaper and more frequent.
However, OTRAG faced a challenge in that launching rockets required access to vast and unrestricted land tracts – not readily available in Germany or indeed anywhere in Western Europe – leading Kayser to embark upon a rather outlandish and controversial strategy. Introduced to President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire by a fellow German businessman, Kayser negotiated the leasing of a 100, 000sq-km (38, 600sq-mile) launch site in a remote and underpopulated region of that country, enabling OTRAG to conduct its tests free from any regulations and far from any unwanted scrutiny. That apparent solution turned out to be its downfall.
Initial OTRAG test launches were apparently successful, but both Western and Soviet intelligence agencies began to speculate that the operation was secretly developing military missiles – German arms development being an especially sensitive issue after World War II. Mobutu was pressured by both NATO and the Eastern Bloc to shut down the entire programme, and in 1979, OTRAG had no option but to leave Zaire.
Undeterred, Kayser searched for an alternative location and found a warm welcome in Libya, whose fiercely independent President Gaddafi was only too willing to defy Western powers and host such a grandiose aerospace project. The Libyan desert provided another optimal test site, again without much regulatory control.
OTRAG conducted several test launches from the Sebha region of the Sahara, using multiple small engines, potentially enabling a “scalable” rocket system for various commercial or military applications.
But geopolitics interfered once again. The US and its NATO allies soon concluded that OTRAG’s technology could be applied to long-range ballistic missiles, and the CIA and Israel’s Mossad spy agencies both accused Libya of co-opting OTRAG for its own missile capabilities, potentially in league with North Korea and Pakistan.
By the mid-1980s, the resulting diplomatic and military pressure made it impossible for OTRAG to continue operating in Libya – hence the 1987 German government directive to cease all operations. The company shut down its base there in 1987, only for its assets to be seized by the Gaddafi regime, apparently, as suspected, to further its own missile development – an unsuccessful bid in the absence of Kayser’s blueprints and personal expertise.
This ended Kayser’s vision of accessible space travel, but surprisingly, he remained in Libya for another decade, teaching rocket science at a university in Tripoli. It is unclear why he chose to stay, but given the financial clout of Libya at that time, it could have simply been the temptation of a large, tax-free salary after his business losses.
Kayser withdrew from the public spotlight and died in 2017, aged 78, on a trip to India, but his work remains a notable chapter in the history of private rocketry. OTRAG is now recognised as a foundation stone of contemporary space travel, its impact seen for example in the “modularity” of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which uses nine identical engines in its first stage, and in the now common aerospace strategy of using relatively cheap, over-the-counter equipment instead of more expensive proprietary components.
Commercialisation of the aerospace industry was kick-started in earnest by an American man called Elbert Leander “Burt” Rutan. Born in 1943 in Estacada, Oregon, the young Rutan inherited his dentist father’s passion for aviation, sketching futuristic aircraft designs, testing model gliders and experimenting with wind tunnels.
With a degree in aerospace engineering from California Polytechnic State University, Rutan went on to work as a flight test engineer at Edwards Air Force Base in California, where he gained experience with experimental aircraft and aerodynamics. He left the US air force in 1972 to found the Rutan Aircraft Factory in Mojave, California, aiming to produce easy-to-build, high-performance aircraft. Having succeeded with two planes – the light and fuel-efficient VariEze, and the ultra-lightweight Voyager – Rutan set his sights on space travel.
With funding from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen – this connection between tech money and space travel being the shape of things to come – Rutan embarked upon Space Ship One, a “suborbital” spacecraft designed to go beyond the atmosphere but not make a full orbit of the Earth.
On June 21, 2004, SpaceShipOne became the first private spacecraft to reach outer space – that is, to get beyond Earth’s atmosphere – returning safely with a “feathering” re-entry system, allowing it to descend safely without complex heat shields.
This achievement, followed by the equally successful Space Ship Two – which was subsequently used and developed by the British entrepreneur Richard Branson in his Virgin Galactic space tourism enterprise – heralded the present “corporatisation” of space travel, underwritten by the financial masters of the universe.
“Welcome to the dawn of a new space age”, declared Branson upon the successful touchdown of his touristic spacecraft Galactic 01 on June 29, 2023 – provided, of course, that you have $600, 000 for the suborbital ride. The 72-minute voyage takes passengers about 85km (53 miles) high, where they can experience weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth.
The corporate space race is now in full thrust, and it is perhaps only a matter of time before Musk and his archrival, Jeff Bezos, fulfil their respective ambitions to dispatch millions of human workers to the moon and onwards, begging the question: Is an interplanetary commute any more desirable than the kind we put up with here on Earth?
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has announced a transitional government, appointing 23 ministers in a new broadened and diverse cabinet.
The cabinet announced on Saturday included Yarub Badr, an Alawite who was named transport minister, while Amgad Badr, who belongs to the Druze community, will lead the agriculture ministry.
“The formation of a new government today is a declaration of our joint will to build a new state”, al-Sharaa said in a speech marking the formation of the government.
The government will not have a prime minister, with al-Sharaa expected to lead the executive branch.
Al Jazeera’s Resul Sardar, reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, said al-Sharaa was “trying to show Syrians and the world the new government is reflecting the diversity of Syria”.
“People had criticised the president that he had previously appointed all of his close friends to all of the ministerial positions]in the caretaker cabinet]”, he added.
Syria’s new rulers have been under pressure from the West and Arab countries to form a government that is more inclusive of the country’s diverse ethnic and religious communities.
That pressure increased following the killings of hundreds of Alawite civilians – the minority sect from which ousted ex-President Bashar al-Assad hails – in violence along Syria’s western coast this month.
Veteran opposition figure Hind Kabawat, a member of Syria’s Christian minority and longtime al-Assad opponent, was named social affairs and labour minister, the first woman to be appointed by al-Sharaa.
Mohammed Yosr Bernieh was named the finance minister, while Murhaf Abu Qasra and Asaad al-Shibani, who were serving as defence and foreign ministers respectively in the previous caretaker cabinet, were also retained.
The caretaker cabinet under al-Sharaa has governed Syria since al-Assad was toppled in December by a lightning rebel offensive. In January, al-Sharaa was named interim president, and he pledged to form an inclusive transitional government that would build up Syria’s gutted public institutions and run the country until elections, which he said could take up to five years to hold.
Al-Sharaa said he has established, for the first time, a ministry for emergency situations and disasters, with the leader of the White Helmets, the Syrian rescuers who worked in rebel-held areas, Raed al-Saleh, appointed to lead it.
Here is where the war stands on Sunday, March 30:
While global attention remains fixed on Israel’s war on Gaza, Israel is rapidly redrawing the map of the occupied West Bank.
On January 21, just two days after a ceasefire took effect in Gaza, the Israeli military intensified its assault across the occupied West Bank, particularly in the northern regions. Israeli bulldozers have razed entire residential areas, forcibly expelling at least 40, 000 people from their homes.
For the first time since the second Intifada, Israeli forces have reintroduced tank incursions and air attacks into the West Bank, part of a systematic Israeli strategy to change the geography of the West Bank, paving the way for full annexation.
This report, produced by Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency, SANAD, draws on United Nations data, satellite imagery, and maps to reveal how this is happening.
The West Bank, called al-Daffah in Arabic, is , west of the Jordan River, from which it gets its name.
Together with occupied East Jerusalem, it covers an area of 5, 655sq km (2, 183sq miles), making it about 15 times larger than Gaza or roughly the same size as the US state of Delaware.
Since 1967, Israel has militarily occupied the West Bank, subjecting Palestinians to checkpoints, arbitrary arrests, home demolitions, land seizures, settlement expansion and frequent raids, severely restricting every aspect of their lives.
The West Bank is home to approximately 3.3 million Palestinians. It is divided into 11 governorates, with Hebron, or al-Khalil in Arabic, being the most populous at about 842, 000 residents. Jerusalem follows with 500, 000, Nablus with 440, 000, Ramallah and el-Bireh with 377, 000 and Jenin with 360, 000.
About 700, 000 Israelis live in illegal settlements on Palestinian land.
Deadly attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have persisted for years.
Since systematic documentation began in 2008, UN data shows that at least 1, 896 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers.
By October 6, 2023 – just hours before the Al-Aqsa Flood operation – the death toll for 2023 had already risen to 198, surpassing 2022’s total of 154 and making it the deadliest year on record at the time.
Since October 7, 2023, the number of attacks has skyrocketed.
Over the past 17 months, more than 900 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank. More than half of them were from Jenin and Tulkarem.
Amnesty International described this violence as “brutal”, citing unlawful killings, the disproportionate use of deadly force, and the deliberate denial of medical care to the wounded – all unfolding as global attention remains fixated on Gaza.
Israel’s continuing military incursion, which it calls “Operation Iron Wall”, has primarily targeted the northern governorates of Jenin and Tulkarem.
These governorates have fewer Israeli settlements than the rest of the West Bank and have long been centres of Palestinian resistance, a factor that has historically hindered their annexation. In response, Israel has carried out systematic raids and large-scale demolitions in these regions, aiming to suppress resistance and establish full control – part of a broader strategy to tighten its hold on the entire West Bank.
The refugee camps in particular have been heavily targeted. Since October 2023, the Tulkarem refugee camp, the second-largest in the West Bank, witnessed the destruction of 205 structures, including homes, commercial buildings, and agricultural infrastructure, followed by 174 structures in Nur Shams camp and 144 in Jenin camp. The peak in Jenin occurred in August 2024, when 37 structures were demolished in a single month.
According to Peace Now, an Israeli nongovernmental organisation (NGO), in 2024 a record-breaking 48 new settlement outposts were established in the West Bank.
Even before the war, settlement expansion was accelerating. In 2023, 31 new outposts were set up, with 21 appearing in just six months between February and July – well before October 7.
Settler attacks have become a daily occurrence in the West Bank, especially in rural areas near settlement outposts. Settlers have blocked roads to Palestinian communities, hindering access to essential services and livelihoods. In some instances, they have destroyed water sources, cutting off vital resources for Palestinian herding communities.
Testimonies from the southern West Bank village of Khirbet Zanuta describe homes and water sources being destroyed, forcing residents to flee. In Nablus, eight families (51 people) were forcibly displaced at gunpoint.
A report by the Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din, which analysed 1, 664 police investigations into settler violence against Palestinians between 2005 and September 2023, found that:
The study highlighted a deep mistrust of Israeli law enforcement among Palestinians, with 58 percent of Palestinian victims in 2023 choosing not to report crimes to the police. B’Tselem, another Israeli human rights group, has described settler violence as “Israel’s unofficial tool” for expelling Palestinians, with the lack of accountability contributing to a culture of impunity.
A June 2024 report by HaMoked, an Israeli human rights organisation, showed that Israel has rapidly intensified its control over the West Bank since October 2023, moving towards full annexation.
This effort is led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who was recently given a newly created minister position in the Ministry of Defence, granting him extensive powers over civilian affairs in the West Bank.
Smotrich, a settler who lives on Palestinian land outside the illegal settlement of Kedumin, also heads the Settlement Administration, a division within the Israeli Ministry of Defense, responsible for overseeing the establishment and expansion of Israeli settlements.
In 2024, 24, 700 dunams (6, 100 acres or 2, 470 hectares) were classified as “state land” by Israeli authorities, surpassing the 23, 000 dunams annexed between 2000 and 2023. Additionally, 68 illegal settlement outposts were recognised by Israel and provided with infrastructure, deepening Israeli control.
Smotrich’s transfer of planning and demolition powers has accelerated the forced displacement of Palestinians. His administration works with settlers to seize land, demolish Palestinian homes, and recognise illegal outposts, further entrenching settlement control.
An analysis of satellite images from March 12 over Tulkarem and Jenin reveals widespread destruction and bulldozing by the Israeli military:
Since October 7, 2023, the bulldozing of at least 523 buildings, which housed numerous families, has forced nearly 3, 000 people from their homes, including:
![Satellite image showing destroyed buildings and roads in Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps, March 12, 2025, [Airbus]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/INTERACTIVE-Tulkarem-camp-Nur-Shams-camp-West-Bank-Israel-1743158423.png?w=696&ssl=1)
![Satellite image showing destroyed buildings and roads in Jenin refugee camp, March 12, 2025 [Airbus]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/INTERACTIVE-Jenin-camp-West-Bank-Israel-1743158434.png?w=696&ssl=1)
![Satellite image showing destroyed buildings and roads in Tulkarem refugee camp, March 12, 2025 [Airbus]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/INTERACTIVE-Tulkarem-camp-West-Bank-Israel_1-1743158444.png?w=696&ssl=1)
![Satellite image showing destroyed buildings and roads in Nur Shams refugee camp, March 12, 2025 [Airbus]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/INTERACTIVE-Tulkarem-camp-West-Bank-Israel-1743158457.png?w=696&ssl=1)
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), displacement has doubled in recent months, with the latest military operation triggering the largest wave of Palestinian displacement in the West Bank since 1967, with more than 40, 000 people being forced to flee their homes.
These figures point to a strategy of dismantling Palestinian communities, as their presence in the West Bank poses a demographic challenge to Israel.
New images and reports highlight the scale of devastation in Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams – entire neighbourhoods reduced to rubble, thousands forced to flee and the fabric of Palestinian society under systematic assault.
A unique pattern was identified in Jenin, which was not observed in Tulkarem and its camp. The Israeli military has constructed 14 earthen barriers surrounding the camp, with military vehicles positioned near some of these barriers.
![Satellite image showing Israeli military vehicles and a ground checkpoint in Jenin refugee camp, March 12, 2025, [Airbus]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/INTERACTIVE-West-Bank-Jenin-road-block-1743158410.png?w=696&ssl=1)
In addition, since October 2023, the Israeli military has imposed severe movement restrictions on Palestinians, with 793 checkpoints by November 2024, 60 percent of which are in Hebron, Nablus, and Ramallah – hindering medical access, disrupting trade and isolating communities.
Despite rapid settlement expansion, Israel faces a key demographic challenge, as the birthrate among the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel remains higher than among Israelis living in Israel and the occupied West Bank, although population numbers are roughly , equal now.
To counter this, Israeli policy increasingly focuses on reducing the Palestinian presence in strategically sensitive areas, framing displacement as both a security necessity and a “humanitarian” solution.
This strategy is evident in statements by Israeli officials. In March 2025, Defense Minister Israel Yoav Katz defended illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank as “essential for protecting Israeli cities”, while media figures like Gideon Dokov called the forced removal of Palestinians from all of Palestine “the only humanitarian solution”, labelling Palestinians as “a murderous nation”.
The “Fighting for Life” campaign echoed this message with the slogan “No Future in Palestine”, encouraging what they euphemistically called “voluntary emigration”.
Meanwhile, Meir Masri, professor of geopolitics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said on social media platform X that the annexation of the West Bank is “the greatest Zionist achievement since 1967”, calling it a historic opportunity that must not be missed.
Kylian Mbappe scored twice to help Real Madrid outgun a feisty Leganes 3-2 and pull level with Barcelona at the top of LaLiga, while Atletico Madrid fell further behind in the title race.
The match between the defending champions and a team trying to stave off relegation was billed as an easy three points for Madrid. It was anything but as Leganes showed much more bite than expected at the Santiago Bernabeu.
After Mbappe put Madrid ahead from the penalty spot in the 32nd minute, Leganes stunned the home crowd by hitting right back after the restart. Left-back Valentin Rosier sprinted clear on the right flank and crossed for Oscar Rodríguez, whose poorly-hit shot was pushed home by Diego Garcia.
The minnow from southern Madrid did it again in the 41st. This time, Rosier stole the ball from Brahim Diaz and raced down the centre of the pitch before he played Rodríguez clear, who squared the ball for Dani Raba to take the lead.
Even though Leganes continued to threaten a third goal, Madrid capitalised on its chances in the second half to turn it around.
Jude Bellingham equalised when he rushed in to finish off a rebound. Mbappe made it a brace from a free kick, slicing the ball around the barrier and just inside the post after a rigorous foul call that was protested by Leganes.
Mbappe has 22 goals in LaLiga, only one fewer than Barcelona’s Robert Lewandowski.
Barcelona can re-establish its three-point lead when they host Girona on Sunday.
Atletico’s 1-1 draw at Espanyol left it six points behind the frontrunners with nine rounds left after this weekend.
Cesar Azpilicueta put Atletico ahead in the 38th with a spectacular volley of a clearance by an Espanyol defender that fell to him outside the area. The 35-year-old defender celebrated his first career goal in LaLiga.
Espanyol pressed in the second half and Javi Puado converted a penalty to level in the 71st after Clement Lenglet pulled down Leandro Cabrera while disputing a cross in the box.
Atletico led the league in January and looked poised to have their best shot at claiming the title they had won twice under Diego Simeone’s decade in charge. But the wheels have come off in March. The slip at Espanyol followed back-to-back losses to Getafe and Barcelona, interspersed with two losses to Madrid in the Champions League round of 16.
Atletico goalkeeper Jan Oblak did not hide his disappointment, especially after the club spent big in the summer to put together arguably the deepest squad in Spain.
“Two more important points have gotten away from us. It is tough to understand why this is happening”, Oblak said. “We talked in January about how we needed to be consistent to compete for the title and we are not showing it. The teams behind us are closing and the teams at the top are getting away”.
Oblak said Atletico must regroup for Wednesday’s Copa del Rey second-leg semifinal against Barcelona because “we want to at least fight for that title”.
Simeone himself said the title will be decided “in the last five rounds”.
Espanyol, in 15th place, was undefeated in nine home games, a run which included a shock win over Real Madrid.
Atletico defender Robin Le Normand had to be substituted after knocking heads with an Espanyol player.
Atletico forward Antoine Griezmann set a new record for games played by a foreigner in LaLiga with 521 appearances. The French forward surpassed the 520 games played by Lionel Messi of Argentina.
Mikel Oyarzabal and Sergio Gómez scored as Real Sociedad beat last-placed Valladolid 2-1.