Russia has amassed 110,000 troops in the vicinity of Pokrovsk as part of its efforts to take over the strategic eastern Ukrainian city, the Ukrainian military chief said Friday.

Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Friday that the area around Pokrovsk was the “hottest spot”along the 1,200-kilometre (745 miles) front line which runs across the east.

Russian forces have been trying to capture Pokrovsk for almost a year, staging one grinding offensive after another. But despite having a clear advantage in terms of the number of troops and weapons available, Moscow has failed to take over the city.

Pokrovsk is a strategic target for Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear that his goal is to seize all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk his forces partially occupy.

Kyiv and its allies accuse Russia’s President Vladimir Putin of stalling on peace efforts so that his forces can seize more Ukrainian territory.

Although not a major city, Pokrovsk sits on a key supply road and railroad that connect it with other military hubs in the area. Together with Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, it forms the backbone of Ukrainian defenses in the part of Donetsk region that are still under Kyiv’s control.

Some 60,000 lived in Pokrovsk before the war, but the majority have left in the three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Ukraine’s last operating coking coal mine was in Pokrovsk and many of its employees were staying in the area to keep it going. Once it was forced to shut down early this year, they too began to leave.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US-based conflict monitor, said late last year that Ukrainian defensive operations in Pokrovsk have forced Russia to abandon its original plan to take over Pokrovsk in a frontal assault.

The ISW said this was because Ukrainian troops began using drones as integral part of their defensive strategy, successfully integrating drone operators with their ground forces.

At the same time, Russia was unable to increase the number of troops in the area by much, because it was trying to contain the surprise incursion of Ukrainian troops into its own territory in the southern Kursk region.

Syrskyi told reporters last week that at one point, the Kursk operation pulled back nearly 63,000 Russian troops and some 7,000 North Korean troops.

“This allowed us to weaken the enemy’s pressure on the main fronts and regroup our troops. And the enemy’s capture of Pokrovsk, announced back in September 2024, has not yet taken place, thanks in part to our Kursk operation,” he said.

Instead of continuing to attacking the city directly, Russian troops then began encircling the city from south and northeast.

The ISW said in its most recent assessment on Friday that Russian forces were continuing assaults with small fireteams of one to two soldiers, sometimes on motorcycles, in all-terrain vehicles and buggies.

In a statement issued on Friday, Syrksky said Russia continued to try to break through to the administrative border of the Donetsk region.

“They want to do this not only to achieve some operational results, but primarily for demonstrative purposes. To achieve a psychological effect: to put the infamous ‘foot of the Russian soldier’ there, plant a flag and trumpet another pseudo-‘victory’,” he said.

The Israeli military has denied a new report that soldiers were ordered to fire at unarmed Palestinians waiting for humanitarian aid in Gaza, after hundreds of people were reported killed while approaching food distribution sites in recent weeks.

On Friday, the daily Haaretz newspaper published an article alleging that Israeli soldiers in Gaza were instructed by their commanders to shoot at the crowds of Palestinians approaching aid sites, even as it was evident that the crowds posed no threat.

One soldier who spoke anonymously with Haaretz described the approach routes to the aid sites as a “killing field” where Israeli forces open fire even if there is no immediate threat. According to the article, Israeli forces recently began dispersing crowds with artillery shells, which resulted in a sharp rise in casualties.

“We strongly reject the accusation raised in the article — the IDF did not instruct the forces to deliberately shoot at civilians, including those approaching the distribution centers,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in response to the article. “To be clear, IDF directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz have also rejected the report as “vicious lies designed to discredit the IDF – the most moral army in the world.”

More than 500 Palestinians have been killed as they approached aid sites or trucks carrying aid since May 27, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Palestinians have come under fire on a near daily basis as they approach the sites, health officials and emergency responders have said.

On multiple occasions, the IDF has acknowledged firing what it called “warning shots” at Palestinians approaching military positions near aid distribution sites. It has also said that it is examining reports of casualties, but it has not publicly released any findings to date.

According to Haaretz, the Military Advocate General has instructed the IDF General Staff’s Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism – which reviews incidents involving the potential violations of the laws of war – to investigate suspected war crimes near the aid sites.

“Any allegation of a deviation from the law or IDF directives will be thoroughly examined, and further action will be taken as necessary,” the IDF said on Friday.

Shots fired at controversial aid sites

The Gaza aid sites where the deaths have occurred are run by the controversial Israel- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which hands out pre-packaged boxes of food at a handful of locations in southern and central Gaza. The group’s distribution was chaotic from the start one month ago, with crowds of desperate Palestinians rushing the sites the moment they open to take the available aid before it runs out, often within less than an hour.

GHF was set up to replace the United Nations aid distribution mechanism, which Israel and the US have accused Hamas of looting. Hamas has rejected those claims, and humanitarian groups say most of the UN-distributed food aid reaches civilians.

GHF coordinates with the Israeli military to designate specific routes for Palestinians traveling to their aid sites and has come under sharp criticism from aid experts. It has acknowledged some episodes of violence occurring outside of its immediate aid sites, but repeatedly described food distribution operations as having “proceeded without incident.”

In response to the Haaretz reporting, the organization said it was “not aware” of the specific incidents described. Nevertheless, it added, “these allegations are too grave to ignore and we therefore call on Israel to investigate them and transparently publish the results in a timely manner.”

On Thursday, the US State Department announced that it is awarding $30 million to the organization, a sign of continued US support for GHF, which says it distributed 46 million meals in four weeks of operations.

Ecuadorian forces have revealed how they captured the country’s most-wanted man, drug lord Adolfo “Fito” Macías, more than a year after his brazen prison escape prompted the president to declare an internal armed conflict to crack down on the country’s most violent gangs.

After an almost 18-month manhunt for the leader of the criminal group Los Choneros, the Ecuadorian Security Bloc made a breakthrough on June 25. They obtained intelligence that alerted them to a luxurious home in the province of Manabí, the gang’s longtime stronghold for drug operations.

Authorities immediately traveled to the area and launched a 10-hour operation to try to find and capture the notorious gangster. To prevent the raid from being thwarted, the military and police shut down access within a 15-block radius so no one could enter or leave the site.

Special teams from the armed forces eventually entered the property to gather more information and take control of the house.

It was a fully equipped villa, featuring a pool, a gym, appliances, a game room, marble-like walls, and features that indicated the property was still under construction.

In one area of the house, there was a perfectly camouflaged hole in the floor, containing a bunker with hidden access and air conditioning.

“Police and armed forces on the scene began conducting a search with instruments to see where alias ‘Fito’ was hiding,” Ecuador’s Interior Minister John Reimberg said.

A surveillance flight had identified an irregular crop field behind the house, so authorities requested the use of excavators to locate the drug lord.

“They started to excavate. As soon as this happened, Fito panicked because if we continued, the roof of his bunker would collapse. At that moment, he opened the hatch, where the military was already located, and climbed out of the hole where he was hiding. That’s how we detained him,” Reimberg said.

Soldiers pinned Macías to the ground, pointed weapons at him and ordered him to say his full name out loud.

“Adolfo Macías Villamar,” he said while lying on the floor with his hands behind his back, footage from the army showed.

After the operation, authorities arrested Macías, along with four other men identified as part of his security detail.

Macías was immediately transferred to the Manta Air Base and then to the Guayaquil Air Base. From there, he was taken to the maximum-security La Roca prison, located in the Guayaquil prison complex, behind La Regional prison, from where he escaped in January 2024.

A photo later released by the interior ministry showed the drug lord locked inside his cell.

President Daniel Noboa said Ecuador is working to extradite him to the United States – where he faces drugs and weapons charges – and is awaiting a response from American officials.

Macías is one of Ecuador’s most notorious gangsters and is the only founding member of Los Choneros believed to still be alive. In 2011 he was sentenced “for a string of crimes, including homicides and narcotics trafficking,” according to think tank Insight Crime, but sprung out of jail in February 2013 before being recaptured months later.

Little is known about his life prior to crime, but he gained a reputation for being the gang’s money laundering expert while incarcerated for over a decade.

Before he fled prison in 2024, the government was planning on moving Macías to a higher-security facility. Noboa’s press secretary told a local channel that the news had likely reached Macías and prompted him to make his escape.

Min Young-jae has not seen or heard anything about her eldest brother for 75 years. He was 19 and she was only 2 when, during the early days of the Korean War, he was kidnapped to the North.

Their peaceful days were shattered on June 25, 1950, when North Korea invaded the South. The three-year war would kill more than 847,000 troops and about 522,000 civilians from both sides, and tear apart more than 100,000 families, including Min’s.

After the war, the family kept the rusting doors of their tile-roofed house open, in hopes that their eldest would one day return. But over time, barbed wire has been installed between the two Koreas, and a modern apartment complex has replaced the house.

Though 75 years have passed without a single word about or from the brother, Min and her siblings remain hopeful that they will hear about him some day. Or, if not him, then his children or grandchildren.

A happy family

The family lived in Dangnim village, nestled between green mountains on the western side of Chuncheon city, nearly 100 kilometers northeast of Seoul. It was a village of chirping birds, streaming water and chugging tractors.

It was also dangerously close to the 38th parallel, which divided the peninsula after World War II.

Min Young-jae, the youngest of seven, does not remember fighting with any of her siblings growing up; only sharing tofu that her parents made, splashing in the stream and being carried around on her eldest brother’s shoulders.

Handsome, kind and smart, Min Young-sun was studying at the Chuncheon National University of Education, following in the footsteps of his father, the principal of Dangnim Elementary School.

“His nickname was ‘Math Whiz.’ He excelled in math, even his classmates called him Math Whiz,” Min Jeong-ja, the fifth child of the family, said.

Some days, students followed him all the way home, as he commuted via train and boat, asking him to teach math, the sisters recalled.

The sisters remember Min Young-sun as a caring brother. They caught fish and splashed in the nearby stream, now widely covered with reeds and weeds and almost out of water.

“We grew up in real happiness,” Min Jeong-ja said.

Torn apart

Living near the frontier between the newly separated Koreas – backed by the rival ideological forces of communism or capitalism – Min’s family was among the first to experience the horrors of the Korean War.

When Kim Il Sung’s North Korean troops invaded, Min Jeong-ja remembers seeing her grandmother running in tears, with a cow in tow, screaming: “We’re in a war!”

“We all spread out and hid in the mountains, because we were scared. One day, we hid the 4-year-old, Young-jae, in the bushes and forgot to bring her back because we had so many siblings. When we returned that night, she was still there, not even crying,” Min Jeong-ja said.

While the family was running in and out of the mountains, taking shelter from the troops coming from the North, Min Young-sun was kidnapped, taken to the North by his teacher.

“The teacher gathered smart students and hauled them (away). He took several students, tens of them. Took them to the North,” Min Jeong-ja said.

It is unknown why the teacher would have kidnapped the students to North Korea, but the South Korean government assumes that Pyongyang had abducted South Koreans to supplement its military.

“People called the teacher a commie,” Min Jeong-ja said.

That heartache was soon followed by another: the death of the second-eldest brother. He died of shock and pain, in deep sorrow from the kidnap of his brother, according to the sisters.

“The grief was huge. Our parents lost two sons… imagine how heartbreaking that would be,” Min Jeong-ja said.

For their father, the pain of losing two sons was overwhelming. He developed a panic disorder, she said, and would struggle to work for the rest of his life.

“He couldn’t go outside; he stayed home all the time. And because he was hugely shocked, he struggled going through day-to-day life. So, our mom went out (to work) and suffered a lot,” Min Young-jae said.

The mother jumped into earning a living for the remaining five children and her husband. Still, every morning she prayed for Min Young-sun, filling a bowl with pure water as part of a Korean folk ritual and leaving the first scoop of the family’s rice serving that day in a bowl for a son whom she believed would return one day.

“She couldn’t move house; in case the brother cannot find his way back home. She wouldn’t let us change anything of the house, not even the doors. That’s how she waited for him… We waited for so long, and time just passed,” Min Jeong-ja said.

The pain continues

Min Jeong-ja was 8 years old when the war started, but witnessed brutality that would overwhelm many adults.

“So many kids died. When I went out to the river to wash clothes, I occasionally saw bodies of children floating,” she recalled.

She remembers witnessing North Korean soldiers lining up people in a barley field, and shooting at them with submachine guns. “Then one by one, they fell on the barley field.”

“I saw too much. At one point – I didn’t even know if the soldier was a South Korean or North Korean – but I saw beheaded remains.”

The Min family is one of many torn apart by the war. More than 134,000 people are still waiting to hear from their loved ones believed to be in North Korea, which is now one of the world’s most reclusive states, with travel between the two countries nigh-on impossible.

Years after the Korean War, the two Koreas discussed organizing reunions for the separated families that have been identified from both sides through the Red Cross and both governments.

The first reunion happened in 1985, more than 30 years after the ceasefire agreement was signed, and the annual reunions kicked off in 2000, when many first-hand war victims were still alive, but occasionally halted when tensions escalated on the peninsula.

Once the two governments agree on a reunion date, one of the two Koreas selects families, prioritizing the elderly and immediate relatives, then shares the list with the other, which would cross check the family on its side to confirm the list of around 100 members.

The selected families would meet at an office specifically built for reunions at the Mount Kumgang resort in North Korea.

The Min siblings applied to the Red Cross at least five times and listed themselves under the South Korean government as a separated family. But there was never any word on their brother’s whereabouts from the other side.

As 75 years passed, the siblings grew up, got married, and formed their own families – but questions about their stolen brother linger.

Even worse, the annual reunions of separated families have been halted since 2018, following failed summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, while first-hand victims of the war age and pass away.

The Kumgang resort was dismantled by the North in 2022, also amid strained tensions.

But the siblings, following their parents’ wishes, still hope to connect with Min Young-sun, who would now be 94 years old.

“It’s been a long time since we were separated, but I would be so grateful if you’re alive. And if you’re not, I still would love to meet your children. I want to share the love of family, remembering the happy days of the past… I love you, thank you.”

She and the siblings remember the kidnapped brother by singing his favorite song, “Thinking of My Brother,” a children’s song about a brother that never returned.

“My brother, you said you would come back from Seoul with silk shoes,” Min Young-jae sang, while her sister wiped away tears.