Category World News

The United Nations has called for urgent de-escalation in Libya’s capital, Tripoli, as rival gunmen exchanged fire in the city’s southern districts after the killing of a powerful militia leader, prompting authorities to impose an emergency lockdown warning.

Residents reported hearing heavy gunfire and explosions across multiple neighbourhoods from about 9pm local time (19:00 GMT), according to journalists on the ground.

Reporting from Libya’s Misrata, Al Jazeera’s Malik Traina said security sources had confirmed the killing of Abdel Ghani al-Kikli, widely known as “Gheniwa”, who is the head of the powerful Stability Support Authority militia.

Gunfire and clashes then consumed several parts of Tripoli.

Al-Kikli was one of the capital’s most influential militia leaders and had recently been involved in disputes with rival armed groups, including factions linked to Misrata.

Traina said that at least six people have been injured, although it remains unclear whether they are security force members or civilians.

“People are angry that every time these armed groups clash, civilians are caught in the crossfire,” he continued, adding that residents are demanding “accountability”.

“When these groups fight and people are killed, no one is held responsible. Locals want justice, and expect the authorities to hold those behind the violence accountable,” he said.

In a statement early on Tuesday, the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) said it was “alarmed by the unfolding security situation in Tripoli, with intense fighting with heavy weaponry in densely populated civilian areas”.

UNSMIL added that it “calls on all parties to immediately cease fighting and restore calm, and reminds all parties of their obligations to protect civilians at all times”.

UNSMIL is alarmed by the unfolding security situation in Tripoli, with intense fighting with heavy weaponry in densely populated civilian areas. 
The Mission calls on all parties to immediately cease fighting and restore calm, and reminds all parties of their obligations to… pic.twitter.com/SZ8oKgZ1p8

UNSMIL voiced support for local mediation efforts, particularly those led by elders and community leaders, emphasising the need to protect civilians amid mounting tensions.

Schools shut, residents told to stay indoors

The Ministry of Internal Affairs urged residents to stay home and avoid movement, warning of further instability. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education suspended classes across Tripoli on Tuesday, citing the deteriorating security situation.

Libyan social media platforms have been flooded with videos and images showing gunfire, plumes of black smoke rising, armed men in the streets and convoys entering the city.

Footage verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency captured the sound of medium-calibre gunfire in several neighbourhoods, including areas where the Stability Support Authority militia is known to operate.

Several districts have seen what local sources describe as “suspicious military manoeuvres”, with convoys arriving from Az-Zawiyah, Zintan, and Misrata – seen by many as preparations for a possible showdown in the capital.

A group of 59 white Afrikaners from South Africa has arrived in the United States as part of a refugee programme set up by the administration of US President Donald Trump to offer sanctuary from what Trump has depicted as racial discrimination against white people.

In a press conference on Monday, Trump mirrored the claims of a myth popular on the far right that white people in South Africa have been subjected to systematic violence since the end of white minority rule in that country.

“It’s a genocide that’s taking place,” Trump told reporters at the White House, a claim that has drawn criticism from government officials, news media, and even some Afrikaners themselves.

The move comes as the Trump administration blocks nearly all refugee admissions from non-white countries and leans into rhetoric about an “invasion” of immigrants from poor countries.

While people fleeing widespread violence and persecution in countries such as Haiti and Afghanistan have found a closed door, Al Jazeera correspondent Patty Culhane says that the Trump administration “has made a priority of getting these people [white South Africans] into the United States and paying for them to get here”.

‘Wrong end of the stick’

The South African government has called Trump’s claims that Afrikaners face persecution “completely false”, noting that they have remained among the richest and “most economically privileged” groups, even after the end of the apartheid system that upheld white minority control of the political, economic, and military resources of the country and denied basic rights to the Black South African majority.

South African whites still own about three-quarters of all private land in the country, and have about 20 times the wealth of the Black majority, according to the international academic journal the Review of Political Economy.

“We think that the American government has got the wrong end of the stick here, but we’ll continue talking to them,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, himself a veteran of the struggle to end apartheid, said on Monday.

Tensions between the Trump administration and the government of South Africa have been high, with the US expelling South Africa’s ambassador over previous criticism of Trump and at odds with the African nation’s prominent position in a case before the International Court of Justice accusing US ally Israel of genocide in Gaza.

The Trump administration offered in February to resettle Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa, stating that they face discrimination and violence against Afrikaner farmers.

“I want you all to know that you are really welcome here and that we respect what you have had to deal with these last few years,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau told the group of Afrikaners who arrived in the US on Monday. “We respect the long tradition of your people and what you have accomplished over the years.”

Bill Frelick, refugee policy director with Human Rights Watch, said the fast-track process of bringing Afrikaners into the US was unprecedented.

United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that he says will bring down the price of prescription drugs in the US by as much as 90 percent.

In an announcement on Monday, Trump said drug companies who have been “profiteering” will have to bring prices down but laid the blame for high prices primarily on foreign countries.

“We’re going to equalise,” Trump said during a news conference. “We’re all going to pay the same. We’re going to pay what Europe pays.”

People in the US have long been an outlier when it comes to the prices they pay for numerous types of life-saving medication, often paying several times more than their peers in other rich countries for nearly identical drugs.

That phenomenon is often attributed to the substantial economic and political influence that the pharmaceutical industry wields in the US.

The high cost of medical drugs has been a source of popular discontent in the US for years, and Trump accused the pharmaceutical industry of “getting away with murder” in 2017.

But in his remarks on Monday, the US leader also seemed to say that US pharmaceutical companies were not ultimately to blame for the difference in prices. Trump instead framed those high prices in the familiar terms of a trade imbalance with partners such as the European Union and said the US has been “subsidising” lower drug prices in other nations.

That perspective seems to align with the framing of the pharmaceutical industry itself. The industry’s most powerful lobbying arm stated the cause of high prices for US consumers is “foreign countries not paying their fair share”.

Senator Bernie Sanders, a left-wing politician who has railed against the high prices paid by US patients for years, said Trump’s order wrongly blames foreign countries rather than US companies for those prices.

“I agree with President Trump: it is an outrage that the American people pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs,” Sanders said in a statement.

“But let’s be clear: the problem is not that the price of prescription drugs is too low in Europe and Canada. The problem is that the extraordinarily greedy pharmaceutical industry made over $100bn in profits last year by ripping off the American people.”

A fact sheet shared by the White House said the administration will “communicate price targets to pharmaceutical manufacturers to establish that America, the largest purchaser and funder of prescription drugs in the world, gets the best deal”.

The stock prices of US drugmakers ticked upwards after the announcement. Experts have cast doubt on Trump’s optimistic assertion that drug prices would drop quickly and substantially.

“It really does seem the plan is to ask manufacturers to voluntarily lower their prices to some point which is not known,” Rachel Sachs, a health law expert at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, told The Associated Press news agency.

A glimmer of hope to end the more than three-year war in Ukraine that has killed thousands of civilians – and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has agreed to attend a meeting proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Istanbul on Thursday, as long as Putin is there in person.

Putin wants the talks to first discuss the root causes of the conflict and deal with ceasefire negotiations later.

His plan is also supported by US President Donald Trump, who says the meeting will help Ukraine’s allies, the US and European powers, decide whether a ceasefire is possible – and also the future of the war effort against Russia’s invasion.

Is the Russian leader trying to deflect growing Western pressure to agree to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire or face “massive sanctions”?

And are the talks hosted by Turkiye likely to make any progress at all?

Presenter: Cyril Vanier

Guests: 

Olesia Horiainova – Co-founder of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Centre

Vasily Kashin – Expert at Russian International Affairs Council