In the weeks since Bashar al-Assad was ousted as Syrian leader, Russia has launched multiple flights to an airbase in the Libyan desert.

Moscow’s goal appears to be to find an alternative stopover for its growing military involvement in Africa – and a way to retain its military presence in the Mediterranean. For nearly a decade, the Hmeimim air base and Tartus naval facility on the Syrian coast have served both purposes.

Now the conflict-riven North African nation of Libya is central to Russian efforts to project power into the Mediterranean.

On December 28, an Antonov returned to Hmeimim from Libya.

Hmeimim has been the hub from which Russian mercenary operations in Africa – at first in the Central African Republic and later in Sudan, Libya, Mali and Burkina Faso – were sustained.

By strengthening its presence in Libya, Moscow may retain enough capability to pursue its broader ambitions further south in Africa, absorbing the new costs inevitably associated with Assad’s downfall, Harchaoui said.

Geolocated video shows at least one of the planes that recently arrived at al-Khadim flew on to Bamako in Mali, where Russia has recently supplanted long-term French influence.

“Russian flights to Bamako via Libya demonstrate that Russia has already turned to Libya as an alternative to its Syrian bases,” analysts at the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats project said in a briefing note.

The flights are not consistent with the previous pattern of Russian Africa Corps rotations to Bamako, it added. Russia’s Africa Corps, under the aegis of its defense ministry, is the successor to the Wagner mercenary group in Africa.

The Russians have had a foothold at al-Khadim for several years, while supplying mercenary fighters and weapons to support Gen. Khalifa Haftar, the self-declared ruler of much of eastern Libya. The investigative outfit All Eyes on Wagner reported earlier this year that a secure compound had been built near the base for Russian personnel transiting to other parts of Africa.

A deputy Russian defense minister, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, has made several visits to Libya to consolidate links with Haftar in the past two years.

That relationship may be set to deepen if the Russian navy is eyeing a port under Haftar’s control as an alternative to its facility at Tartus in Syria.

NATO concerns

The prospect is not going down well in NATO capitals. Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told Italian daily La Repubblica that, “Russian ships and submarines in the Mediterranean are always a concern, and even more so if instead of being 1,000 kilometers away they are two steps from us.”

It’s no coincidence perhaps that a week ago the Italian military’s chief of staff, Gen. Luciano Portolano, visited Tripoli – where Haftar’s United Nations-backed rivals govern.

According to a senior NATO official, the 32-member defensive alliance is monitoring activity in both Tobruk and Benghazi in Libya.

A Mediterranean home for Russian warships is critical to Moscow as the Black Sea fleet is not permitted to transit the Bosphorus while Russia is at war with Ukraine.

“Russia has not deployed naval vessels to Tobruk just yet, which is very smart since such a brazen move could have provoked NATO’s mobilization prematurely,” Harchaoui said.

Haftar is a mercurial and ageing leader in a chronically divided and volatile country. “Haftar is often switching allegiances, only controls half of the country and is, at an age of 81, not exactly a youthful figure,” said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel Program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Mali.

“There is no legal agreement like with Syria, and Haftar could anytime show the Russians the door,” Laessing added. He could exploit his position to demand more sophisticated Russian hardware – which Moscow can ill afford to spare.

In some ways, Libya is a poor substitute for Syria. Transport planes can only practically reach Libya from Russia if they are allowed to overfly Turkey, providing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with a handy bargaining chip.

Damascus ambivalent

It’s not clear that Syria’s new leadership is determined to kick the Russian military out of Hmeimim and Tartus. Interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa said in an interview this week that the new government does not want Russia to leave the country “in a manner that does not fit its relations with Syria.”

But given Syria’s uncertain trajectory, Moscow will want to hedge its bets in a region of growing strategic importance.

“Even if the new rulers allow Russia to keep the Hmeimim air and Tartus naval bases it will have to cut down its troop levels and logistics such as ammunition warehouses in Syria as they are no longer needed to support Assad,” Laessing said.

Harchaoui agreed, saying that even if Russia maintains some presence in Syria, the level of comfort, logistical ease and security it once enjoyed under Assad will never return.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has shrugged off Assad’s ouster but Laessing said his fall was a real blow to Putin’s Africa ambitions.

African governments that have leaned towards Moscow for their security may now think twice about its reliability, which “will hamper its ability to strike new deals for the Africa Corps mercenaries,” said Laessing. “It didn’t (go) unnoticed in Mali or Niger that Russia did not come to Assad’s help.”

Even so, Russia has dragged a coal from the fire of Assad’s demise, said Harchaoui. Its “logistical network has neither been destroyed nor entirely decimated; it has merely been degraded and rendered more costly, more uncertain, and shakier.”

Standing barefoot in the mud with an empty container in hand at a crowded water station in central Gaza, Palestinian Alaa Al-Shawish is fearing the winter weather and looking for clean water for her family.

Her family are living in a makeshift tent in Deir Al-Balah, after being displaced from Gaza City amid heavy Israeli bombardment. But their new home holds deadly perils of its own.

“We’re dying from the cold, this is not life, this is not living – I pray every day that we die to be relieved from this life,” Alaa says as she fights her tears. “No food, no water, no life.”

Several Palestinians, including at least five babies, have died in recent days due to severe cold weather. The UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) warned on Tuesday that “more babies will likely die” in the coming days.

The babies who died from hypothermia were ere all under one month old, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. A 2-year-old has also died from the cold in recent days, health officials said.

“I am watching my children die before my eyes,” says Yahya Al-Batran, the father of 20-day-old Jumaa, who died on Sunday. “He died from the cold, he froze,” he adds as he holds his child’s lifeless body at the hospital.

The cold weather has not only claimed the lives of children. On Friday, the health ministry said a nurse was found dead in his tent in Al-Mawasi on Friday due to severe cold.

Temperatures in Gaza can reach lows of 10 degrees Celsius (50F), accompanied by wind and rain.

Flooded makeshift tents

The winter has also brought with it heavy rainfall that has flooded tents housing displaced Palestinians across Gaza over the past couple of days.

The Gaza Civil Defense says it received hundreds of distress calls on Monday and Tuesday from displaced Palestinian families whose tents and shelters have been flooded in Al-Mawasi, Rafah, Deir Al-Balah and central Gaza City, among other locations across the strip.

More than 100 tents in Khan Younis have been extensively damaged by the heavy rain, UNRWA said on Tuesday.

“Displaced people, already living through the unlivable due to the war, are now battling heavy rainstorms,” UNRWA added.

UNRWA has called for Israel to allow the entry of more winter supplies into Gaza.

“Blankets, mattresses and warm clothes are sitting outside Gaza waiting for approval to get in,” UNRWA said on Tuesday. “More and regular humanitarian assistance must come into Gaza to help people stay warm this winter.”

According to COGAT, the Israeli agency that approves aid shipments into Gaza, 1,290 humanitarian aid trucks entered the strip last week. This is well below the average of 500 trucks per day before the war started on October 7, 2023.

Salem Abu Amra is among the civilians who are bearing the brunt of the cold and lacking supplies in Gaza. He says his family is “struggling for survival” in their makeshift tent in Deir Al-Balah.

“We are suffering from the rain, we were flooded,” he said. “I have three children who were freezing cold overnight in the camp from this weather. They need clothes, they need tents, proper tents that we can live in.”

Venezuela’s Supreme Court has fined TikTok $10 million, accusing it of failing to control the spread of viral challenges that have allegedly led to the deaths of three children.

Magistrate Tania D’Amelio said Monday the company had eight days to pay the fine to the National Communications Commission (Conatel), and that the money would be used to create a special fund to “compensate the victims of the viral challenges.”

She also demanded that the video platform establish an office in the country to represent itself.

The court did not specify what the consequences would be if TikTok did not comply with the ruling.

D’Amelio said three young people had died and numerous others had been affected by these challenges, but did not offer details or refer to a specific case.

In November, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said at least two of the children had died after participating in challenges that involved inhaling toxic substances or taking anxiety medication without falling asleep.

The court ruling read by D’Amelio said TikTok had not implemented “the necessary and adequate measures to prevent the dissemination of publications whose content is allusive to the so-called viral challenges, violating the legal system in Venezuela.”

The decision comes after the education organization Bolivarian Movement of Aristóbulo Istúriz Families filed an appeal for protection which, according to D’Amelio, argued that viral challenges affect minors psychologically.

The court accepted the appeal for protection after Maduro in November demanded that TikTok remove content related to viral challenges.

The Venezuelan government has previously issued restrictions on social media platforms.

In August, Maduro announced that Conatel had suspended access to the social network X for 10 days, after its owner Elon Musk questioned the result of the presidential election on July 28.

However, many Venezuelans can still access X by using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to hide their IP address.

Thousands of Bangladeshis rallied at a ‘March for Unity’ in the capital Dhaka on Tuesday to mark the student-led uprising five months ago that led to the ouster of longstanding Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and remember the more than 1,000 killed in the violence.

The Students Against Discrimination (SAD) group that led the protests, dropped a plan to call for changes to the country’s 1972 constitution at the rally, after the interim government announced on Monday that it would prepare a proclamation.

SAD says a ‘Proclamation of the July Revolution’ is essential to honour the sacrifice of the protesters who died or were wounded, and to serve as a document reflecting the people’s aspirations. Some political analysts had expressed concern that there could be fresh instability if students sought changes to the constitution without broader consensus.

The press office of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, who leads the interim government, said it would seek national consensus on a ‘Declaration of the July Uprising’, focusing on unity, state reform, and the broader goals of the uprising. It expressed hope that a declaration would be finalized soon.

On Tuesday, groups of students arrived from across the country and families of those killed in the unrest also joined the rally. They carried the national flag and chanted slogans against Hasina.

“My son Shahriar, a ninth-grade student, was killed (during the protests),” Abul Hasan told the rally. “Our tears will never stop, this pain will never end.”

The protests were initially sparked by opposition to public sector job quotas. What started as a student-led movement quickly morphed into a broader, nationwide uprising against Hasina’s government.

The unrest reached its peak on August 5, when violence forced Hasina to resign and flee to India, just before protesters stormed her official residence. Over 1,000 people were killed during the protests, marking the country’s deadliest period since its 1971 independence war.

An interim government was formed, tasked with restoring stability and preparing elections. The interim administration includes two representatives of the students.

Yunus has said elections could be held by the end of 2025.

The damaged flight data recorder from the Jeju Air passenger jet that crash-landed in South Korea will be sent to the United States for analysis, Seoul’s transport ministry said Wednesday, as bereaved families began visiting the crash site.

The recorder is one of two “black boxes” retrieved from the Boeing 737-800 after it belly-landed at Muan International Airport in the country’s southwest on Sunday, killing all but two of the 181 people onboard, the deadliest aviation accident for South Korea in almost three decades.

Authorities said the black box was damaged in the crash, and concluded that South Korea is not capable of extracting the data, Seoul’s deputy minister of civil aviation Joo Jong-wan told reporters Wednesday. Earlier, Joo said the flight data recorder was missing a connector.

Once the device has been sent overseas, the US National Transportation Safety Board will lead the analysis and be joined by South Korean investigators. It is not clear how long the process will take.

Meanwhile, investigators have extracted initial data from the second black box – the cockpit voice recorder – and are working to convert its contents into voice files, Joo said.

The process, which is taking place in South Korea, will take about two days. Authorities hope the data from both black boxes will offer vital information that could help determine the cause of the disaster.

“The cause of the accident will be revealed by comprehensively analyzing and reviewing detailed investigations of the aircraft, fuselage and black box,” South Korea’s acting president Choi Sang-mok said Wednesday.

Authorities said they had finished identifying all 179 people killed in the crash, but only 11 bodies have been released so far from a temporary mortuary to the families so they can make funeral arrangements.

Families and loved ones of those onboard have been camped out at the airport in Muan since Sunday. Buses on Wednesday carried relatives of the victims to the crash site in groups, to pay their respects.

An altar has been set up at the airport, with queues of mourners congregating and offering prayers on the first day of the new year.

It is not yet clear what caused the crash of Jeju Air flight 7C 2216 from Bangkok to Muan, and the investigation could take months.

The pilot issued a mayday call and reported a bird strike before making the doomed emergency landing.

Footage of Sunday’s crash broadcast by multiple South Korean news outlets showed that neither the back nor front landing gear was visible. Video showed the plane sliding on its belly at high speed, hitting an earthen embankment and erupting into a fireball.

A possible bird strike, lack of landing gear deployment and a concrete barrier at the end of the runway could all have contributed to the tragedy.

Twelve investigators from South Korea and 10 from the United States – including officials from the Federal Aviation Administration, National Transportation Safety Board and plane manufacturer Boeing – are involved in the joint investigation, according to the transport ministry.