January 13, 2020

Earth has been a particularly dangerous place in recent weeks. Airplane crashes, military clashes, terror attacks, and political unrest have taken a toll on human life and happiness lately, but it is a series of natural disasters that has caused the most trouble. A typhoon ravaged the Philippines, deadly flash floods hit Indonesia, bushfires continued to rage in Australia, a measles epidemic continued to kill in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a series of earthquakes rattled Puerto Rico.

Firefighters confront a bushfire near the Blue Mountains town of Bilpin, New South Wales, on Dec. 19, 2019. Credit: © 1234rf/Shutterstock

On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day Typhoon Phanfone (also called Ursula) struck the Philippines, producing high winds and flooding that killed 105 people in the Visayan Island provinces of Biliran, Capiz, Iloilo, and Leyte. Phanfone was a Category 2 storm (moderate strength) with sustained winds of more than 90 miles (150 kilometers) per hour. Storm surges and deadly flash floods hit communities just as families were gathering to celebrate the Christmas holiday. Thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed.

On New Year’s Day in Indonesia, abnormally heavy monsoon rains caused flash floods that killed 66 people and displaced hundreds of thousands of others in Jakarta, the capital. Some 14.5 inches (37 centimeters) of rain fell on New Year’s Eve, causing the Ciliwung and Cisadane rivers to overflow. Floodwaters submerged more than 150 neighborhoods and caused landslides in the Bogor and Depok districts on the outskirts of Jakarta. Flood water levels in some areas peaked at more than 13 feet (4 meters). Electric power was cut off, and closed schools and government buildings were converted into emergency shelters.

On January 7, the World Health Organization announced the 6,000th death from measles in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since an epidemic began there in 2019. More than 300,000 suspected measles cases have been reported in the DRC—a nation also troubled by recent terror attacks. The epidemic has continued and grown because of low vaccination coverage, malnutrition, weak public health systems, outbreaks of other epidemic-prone diseases (such as Ebola), and the difficulty of getting health care to people in remote areas.

In Puerto Rico, after several smaller earthquakes, a 6.4-magnitude temblor struck the southwestern part of the island on January 7. The earthquake, the strongest to hit Puerto Rico in more than 100 years, killed one person, toppled hundreds of structures, and forced a state of emergency. Many people lost their homes, the island briefly lost electric power, and schools and public offices were closed. In the 10 days before the 6.4-magnitude earthquake, the United States Geological Survey recorded hundreds of temblors in Puerto Rico—including 10 of 4-magnitude or greater.

A number of major bushfires have lately devastated southeastern Australia. Since September, the wild fires—mostly in New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria—have burned more than 25.5 million acres (10.3 million hectares), an area the size of South Korea. The bushfires have destroyed more than 2,100 homes and killed 27 people and hundreds of millions of animals. On January 8, the Australian government ordered the mass slaughter of thousands of wild camels and horses that have invaded rural towns looking for water. Many people are without electric power and telecommunications in Australia’s southeast, and some were without drinking water and other supplies. Smoke has obscured the city skies of Canberra, Melbourne, and Sydney. The bushfires followed a three-year drought that experts link to climate change.

May 13, 2019

The island nations of New Zealand and Sri Lanka are separated by nearly 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometers) of ocean. But in just over a month’s time, the distant neighbors were connected by ghastly mass killings. On March 15, 2019, a white supremacist gunman killed 51 Islamic people worshipping at a mosque in Christchurch, the largest city on New Zealand’s South Island. A few weeks later, on Easter Sunday, April 21, an Islamic terrorist group orchestrated coordinated attacks that killed 257 people, mostly Christians, in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s largest city, and other areas. The Islamic State terror group claimed to have organized these attacks with local Sri Lankan terrorists. They also claimed that the attacks were in retaliation for the mass shooting in New Zealand. Law enforcement agencies questioned the direct connection, however, as such a coordinated attack probably required more than a few weeks to plan.

On March 18, 2019, students display the New Zealand flag during a vigil for the people killed in a mass shooting at the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch. Credit: © Anthony Wallace, AFP/Getty Images

New Zealand is not generally known for extremism or violence, but that changed—at least for one day—on the afternoon of March 15. A gunman, inspired by hateful and racist rhetoric (influential speech), entered the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch and began firing. Minutes later, he returned to his car, retrieved a second weapon, and re-entered the mosque to continue his rampage. The shooter then fled in his car, arriving a short time later at the Linwood Islamic Centre. Unable to find a door quickly, the attacker began shooting at the windows. A worshipper chased the gunman back to his car, and he again fled. Police then captured the shooter, a 28-year-old Australian man carrying various weapons and explosives.

The gunman planned his attack for wide exposure over social media. Shortly before starting his attack, the shooter posted a lengthy manifesto (a public declaration of his motives) on several websites. The gunman, who had decorated his weapons with white supremacist slogans, live-streamed the attack over the internet using a head-mounted camera. Both the manifesto and the video of the attack quickly circulated widely across the internet, particularly on such sites as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The postings raised questions about whether or not such sites were doing enough to stop the spread of white supremacist material and other extreme content.

The government of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern worked quickly to draft a gun control bill. The bill overwhelmingly passed through Parliament and became law on April 12. In addition to banning the ownership of most automatic and semiautomatic weapons, the law established a buyback program under which owners of now-outlawed weapons could turn them in for fair compensation.

Ardern was widely hailed for the compassion and leadership she displayed in the aftermath of the attacks. She visited the survivors and publicly repudiated the gunman and his ideology. Ardern also vowed never to speak the gunman’s name in order to deny him the attention he sought.

Sri Lankan officials inspect the ruins of St. Sebastian’s Church in Negombo, a Colombo suburb, in the days after terrorist bombs struck the church and other targets on April 21, 2019. Credit: © Stringer/Getty Images

In Sri Lanka, a civil war ended in 2009, and since then the country has experienced little violence. Religious extremism is not prevalent in Sri Lanka, where Christians and Muslims together account for less than 20 percent of the mostly Buddhist population.

On April 21, 2019, however, the National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ), a Sri Lankan Islamist group linked to the Islamic State, carried out coordinated attacks on Easter, the most important Christian festival of the year. The attacks occurred in the morning as people were attending church services or enjoying breakfast with family members. NTJ suicide bombers hit several targets within minutes of each other: Saint Sebastian’s Church in Negombo, a Colombo suburb; the Shrine of Saint Anthony in Colombo; the Zion Chuch in Batticaloa, a city on Sri Lanka’s east coast; and the Cinnamon Grand, Kingsbury, and Shangi-La hotels in Colombo. Later in the day, two more attacks occurred in the Colombo suburbs of Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia (at the Tropical Inn) and Dematagoda (at a housing complex).

Initial reports listed the dead at 359, but that number was later revised to 257. The discrepancy was caused by the difficulty in identifying body parts separated by the violent explosions. Another 496 people were injured in the attacks. Sri Lanka’s government declared a state of emergency as it began investigating the attacks. Police quickly identified a number of the attackers, and in the following days, they captured or killed a number of people suspected of aiding in the attacks. Numerous weapons and bomb-making materials were confiscated.

Sri Lanka’s government looked inward for blame, finding serious lapses in domestic and international security. Several government officials resigned, and the inspector general of police was placed on compulsory leave. Social media was blacked out for several days after the attack, some government offices and university campuses were closed, and previously slack restrictions on extreme Islamic rhetoric were greatly tightened. Religious services—both Christian and Muslim—were temporarily cancelled for fear of further attacks or reprisals, and the numbers of foreign tourists in Sri Lanka dropped sharply.

October 10, 2018

On Friday, October 5, gynecologist Denis Mukwege and human rights activist Nadia Murad were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts “to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.” On Monday, October 8, the Nobel Prize for economic sciences went to United States economists William Nordhaus and Paul Romer for integrating technological innovation and climate change with economic growth.

Nobel Prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)

Denis Mukwege has spent much of his life helping the victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Working from the Panzi Hospital in the far-eastern city of Bukavu, Mukwege and his staff have treated thousands of sexual assault victims. Most of the abuses were committed during a civil war that killed millions of people in the late 1990′s and 2000′s. Nadia Murad is a member of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq. In 2014, Islamic State terrorists attacked Murad’s village, killed hundreds of people, and abducted Murad and other young Yazidi women and held them as sex slaves. Murad was repeatedly raped and abused before she managed to escape. Murad then began raising awareness of the horrors and traumas that she had experienced. Sexual violence in war and armed conflict is a grave violation of international law.

William Nordhaus is an economics professor at Yale University. He created an “integrated assessment model” that shows how economy and climate change together over time. Paul Romer teaches at the New York University Stern School of Business. He has demonstrated how economic forces govern the willingness of firms to produce new ideas and innovations.

May 24, 2018

Last month, on April 26, the new National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened along with the new Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. The sobering memorial and museum—separate places built to complement each other—are dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people, people terrorized by lynching, and the injustice of dealing with racial segregation and discriminatory laws. They also detail the current burdens of African Americans facing unfair presumptions of guilt and excessive police violence.

The hanging memorials within the National Memorial for Peace and Justice detail the chilling history of the lynching of African Americans in the United States. Credit: Sonia Kapadia (licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

The memorial and museum were created by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), an organization committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, challenging racial and economic injustice, and protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society. Work on the memorial began in 2010 as EJI staff began investigating the history of lynchings in the American South. The numbers they came up with were staggering: more than 4,400 black people were lynched in the United States between 1877 and 1950.

Covering 6 acres (2.4 hectares), the Memorial for Peace and Justice details America’s history of racial inequality with unflinching glimpses of racial terror. The site includes sculptures and a central square with 800 hanging monuments that symbolize the brutal deaths of lynching victims. Each monument is peculiar to a county and state where lynchings took place, and each lists the names (when available) of victims and the dates when they were killed.

The memorial includes exhibits on the civil rights movement in the United States, with special attention paid to the local Montgomery bus boycotts of the 1950′s. Other exhibits deal with the contemporary issues of police violence and racial bias in the criminal justice system. The memorial displays writing from author Toni Morrison, words from civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr., and a reflection space in honor of journalist and reformer Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

A short walk away in Montgomery, the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration is built on the site of a former warehouse where enslaved black people were held before being bought and sold at a nearby auction site. Montgomery was once an important center of the slave trade in the American South, and many sites in the city chronicle this unfortunate history. Like the memorial, the 11,000-square-foot (1,022-square meter) museum details the chilling history of racism in the United States. First-person accounts tell the reality of living through the slave trade, and research materials and multimedia provide sobering details. The Legacy Museum also has exhibits on lynching, segregation, and the mass incarceration of African Americans.

January 2, 2018

On Jan. 2, 1942, 76 years ago today, a United States federal court sentenced 33 members of a Nazi German spy ring led by Frederick “Fritz” Duquesne to a total of over 300 years in prison. Duquesne and the 32 others had pleaded guilty or been convicted of espionage in the months leading up to the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II (1939-1945). The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) brought down the spy ring with the critical help of a German-American citizen named William Sebold. The fall of the Duquesne Spy Ring resulted in the largest number of convictions of any single espionage case in U.S. history.

This composite shows the 33 convicted members of the Duquesne Spy Ring. Frederick Duquesne is at the top right. Credit: Library of Congress

William Sebold was a naturalized U.S. citizen who had worked in aircraft and industrial plants in the United States and elsewhere since leaving his native Germany in 1921. During a return trip to Germany in 1939, the German Secret Service asked Sebold to spy for the Nazis on the United States. Alarmed, Sebold reported the spy recruitment efforts to U.S. officials in Germany. The FBI directed Sebold to go through with the Nazi spy training. Sebold would then work as a double agent, pretending to spy for Nazi Germany while actually working for the FBI—an extremely dangerous occupation.

In 1940, after his Nazi spy training, Sebold returned to the United States. He began working among a network of Nazi spies in New York City. Sebold met with Nazi agents at a Manhattan office fitted with a two-way mirror and audio and video recording devices. FBI agents witnessed Sebold’s meetings with Nazi spies. They also altered communications from Sebold and relayed the misleading information to Germany.

Frederick “Fritz” Duquesne. Credit: Federal Bureau of Investigation

Sebold’s Nazi contacts included Fritz Duquesne, a South African who had fought against the British during the second Boer War (1899-1902). Duquesne had lived off and on in the United States since 1902, and he was involved in numerous nefarious activities. In 1917, during World War I (1914-1918), he was arrested for insurance fraud and was found to be spying for Germany. Duquesne escaped U.S. captivity in 1919. He was arrested again in 1932, but was released. In the mid-1930′s, Duquesne became involved with pro-Nazi groups in the United States, and eventually resumed spying for Germany.

In 1940, Duquesne began meeting with Sebold. Duquesne relayed schedules of ships bound for England, advised Sebold on sabotage techniques, and passed along information on new U.S. military weapons and equipment. The FBI arrested Duquesne and his co-conspirators in June 1941. All 33 either pleaded guilty to spying for Nazi Germany or were convicted of espionage in court. Duquesne was sentenced to 18 years in prison. He was released in 1954 because of failing health, and he died in 1956 at age 78.

In 1942, overseas espionage and intelligence operations were taken up by the newly created Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS was the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was established in 1947.

October 24, 2017

Yesterday, October 23, the Philippine military announced the end of a bloody five-month campaign to oust Abu Sayyaf and Maute Islamic rebels from Marawi City on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Filipino soldiers had been clearing the last rebels from the battered city since President Rodrigo Duterte declared Marawi “liberated from terrorist influence” on October 17. Duterte’s declaration came the day after the killing of the rebels’ main leaders, Isnilon Hapilon and Omarkhayam Maute. The Abu Sayyaf and Maute groups both have close ties to the Islamic State terror organization.

Filipino soldiers walk through the ruins of Marawi City on Oct. 17, 2017, the day President Rodrigo Duterte declared the city liberated from Islamic militant rebels. Credit: © Ted Aljibe, AFP/Getty Images

Marawi is the capital and only city in the province of Lanao del Sur on Mindanao. The city, officially known as the Islamic City of Marawi, and surrounding province have long been home to a significant Muslim community (most Filipinos are Roman Catholic). Marawi’s religious roots go back some 500 years, when the area was part of a sultanate linked to Islamic areas in nearby Indonesia and Malaysia.

Marawi, a city of 200,000 people, and Lanao del Sur are part of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, the nation’s only self-governing region. However, Abu Sayyaf, meaning father of the swordsman in Arabic, has been in conflict with the national government since 1991 when it was part of an armed movement vying for complete independence. Abu Sayyaf has fought pitched battles against Philippine soldiers, and the group is notorious for bombings, kidnappings, and high-profile executions.

In late May 2017, Philippine security forces tried to capture Hapilon, the Abu Sayyaf leader, in Marawi, and a protracted gun battle erupted with Hapilon’s followers. Allying with the Maute group, a newer Islamic armed faction fed by extremists from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, Abu Sayyaf seized control of government buildings and other key points in Marawi. President Duterte responded by ordering a full-scale military campaign to reclaim Marawi from the Islamic rebels. He later declared martial law in all Mindanao.

Fighting began immediately as Philippine troops arrived to retake the city, which was emptied of its civilian population by mass evacuations. Street fighting slowly went the government’s way as air strikes pulverized rebel positions—along with much of the city. Block by block, rebels were rooted out and killed or captured. As rebel control shrank to a few isolated buildings, government troops finally cornered Hapilon, along with Maute, and killed them both in a gunfight on October 16. A week later, the military announced the end of 154 days of fighting that killed more than 900 rebels and some 300 troops and civilians.

The rebel hold on Marawi has ended, but much of the city is in ruins, and both the Abu Sayyaf and Maute groups maintain a strong following in much of Lanao del Sur. The long fight against Islamic rebels in Mindanao may be long from over.

October 19, 2017

As Islamic State terrorist forces lost ground in Iraq in 2017, the terror group was also losing ground in neighboring Syria, a country torn apart by civil war since 2011. At times, the Islamic State has controlled large parts of Syria, but its grip has recently shrunk to areas along the Euphrates River in the nation’s sparsely populated east. In 2014, the terror group took control of the northern Syrian city of Raqqa (also spelled Ar Raqqah), proclaiming it a regional capital within its so-called caliphate. The group’s main capital was Mosul, Iraq, which fell in July. Other names for the Islamic State have included the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Raqqa, Syria, lies in ruins on Aug. 1, 2017. Fighting to oust Islamic State militants destroyed much of the city in 2017. Credit: Mahmoud Bali, Voice of America

The Islamic State staged euphoric parades—as well as numerous atrocities—in Raqqa, a city that once numbered 300,000 people. Most of Raqqa’s residents fled, but those who could not were forced to watch as Islamic State executioners murdered dozens of people daily. Mass executions took place regularly at the city’s main Clock Tower Square, grisly killings of people who stepped out of line with the terror group’s extreme interpretation of Islam.

Click to view larger image
Raqqa (here spelled Ar Raqqah) lies on the Euphrates River in northern Syria. Al Mayadin is down river in eastern Syria. Both cities were liberated from Islamic State control in October 2017. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

In 2017, however, the suffering people of Raqqa witnessed a turnaround. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish and Arab militia group,
chased Islamic State fighters away from areas surrounding Raqqa, leaving the city an isolated Islamic State stronghold. On June 6, SDF troops—supplied and supported by the United States-led coalition also fighting the Islamic State—entered Raqqa. Heavy fighting erupted as Islamic State militants battled invading SDF troops. Throughout June, July, and August, the SDF advanced street-by-street against stiff Islamic State resistance.

By September 1, Islamic State control was reduced to several neighborhoods in the city’s north and in the central area around the killing ground of Clock Tower Square. By early October, the battered ruins of Raqqa were firmly in SDF hands, and only scattered pockets of the most fanatic Islamic State fighters remained (thousands of fighters had fled or surrendered). At last, on October 17, the SDF declared Raqqa secured: the last Islamic State fighters in the city had fled or been killed or captured.

Like the fall of Mosul in July, the fall of Raqqa was a significant moment in the fight against the Islamic State, but the fight continues. Also in October, Syrian government forces—who are at war with rebels as well as the Islamic State (but not the SDF)—took control of the eastern town of al Mayadin in Deir al-Zor province, the Islamic State’s last Syrian stronghold.

October 2, 2017

Last night, on October 1, in Las Vegas, Nevada, a gunman killed at least 58 people at an open-air concert near the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. The gunman fired from the window of his hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay, shooting into a crowd of 22,000 people attending a music festival across the street. Armed with numerous automatic weapons, the gunman poured hundreds of bullets into the crowd until police reached his hotel room. The gunman then committed suicide. The attack—which has also resulted in over 500 injuries—is the deadliest mass shooting in United States history. The death toll from the domestic terror attack will most likely rise.

People run for cover as a gunman fires into a crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest country music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Oct. 1, 2017. Fifty-eight people died in the domestic terror attack. Credit: © David Becker, Getty Images

The attack began just after 10 p.m. local time, not long after country music star Jason Aldean had taken the stage at the Route 91 Harvest music festival, a three-day event held in an open-air venue across the Las Vegas Strip from the Mandalay Bay. The Las Vegas Strip, a portion of Las Vegas Boulevard, is famous for its large resort hotels and casinos. Many people in the concert crowd did not react immediately to the attack, as the popping of gunshots was confused with the sound of firecrackers and drowned out by the music being played on stage.

People soon realized the horror of what was taking place, however, and began running for cover and searching for loved ones in the chaos. The shooting paused occasionally as the gunman reloaded his automatic weapons, but the rapid fire then resumed as bullets ricocheted around the concrete concert ground and inflicted further injuries. Police responding to the attack saw gun flashes coming from the Mandalay Bay, and soon zeroed in on the gunman’s locked hotel room. As police used explosives to burst into the room, the gunman shot and killed himself.

Thus far, the shooter, identified as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, has not been tied with any militant or terrorist groups, and his motive remains unclear. Paddock lived in Mesquite, a small city northeast of Las Vegas. His dead body was found with 23 guns, many of which are readily available in Nevada, a state with some of the least stringent gun laws in the United States. Police found another 19 guns at Paddock’s home in Mesquite.

The previous worst U.S. mass shooting occurred just last year, in June 2016, when a gunman killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. That shooter, who was killed by police, had professed his allegiance to an Islamic terrorist group.

July 19, 2017

On July 10, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory for government forces in their bloody battle with Islamic State militants for possession of the northern city of Mosul. One of Iraq’s largest cities, Mosul had been under Islamic State control since the terrorist group took it by force in June 2014. The government campaign to retake the city began in October 2016.

An Iraqi federal policeman tries to draw fire from an Islamic State sniper in Mosul, Iraq, in April 2017. If the sniper fires, he may reveal his position. Credit: © Carl Court, Getty Images

Islamic State is the name used by a radical militant Sunni Islamist group based in Iraq and Syria. The group is known for its ruthless violence and severe interpretation of the Sharī`ah, the legal and moral code of Islam. In June 2014, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed the establishment of a caliphate from the steps of the Grand Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul. A caliphate is a government ruled by a caliph, a leader with political and religious authority recognized by Muslims as a successor of the Prophet Muhammad. No one outside the Islamic State—which is merely a well-organized terrorist group—recognized the so-called caliphate, however, and it is often referred to as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or by the acronym DAESH, based on the group’s full Arabic name (al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham). For the past several years, the group has been fighting for control of parts of Iraq and Syria and has killed thousands of people in high-profile terror attacks in Europe and the Middle East.

Northeastern Iraq is largely Kurdish, and peshmerga (Kurdish for those who confront death) fighters led a first attempt to liberate Mosul in early 2015. Coinciding Islamic State assaults on the city of Ramadi—much closer to Baghdad, the Iraqi capital—prevented the Iraqi Army from supporting the Kurds in Mosul, however. The peshmerga pried several suburban villages from Islamic State control, but they lacked the numbers and firepower to free the city itself.

Iraqi soldiers and heavy vehicles head for the fighting in Mosul, Iraq, in November 2016. Credit: Mstyslav Chernov (licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Hard fighting around Mosul resumed in the spring of 2016 as the government worked to cut off Islamic State supply routes out of the city. Government-led forces slowly tightened the net around Mosul through the summer and into autumn. Civilians in the city, already suffering under Islamic State rule (there were numerous random killings and mass executions), fled Mosul in increasing numbers—as did many Islamic State fighters. By early October, the estimated number of Islamic State militants in Mosul had shrunk to between 3,000 and 5,000, down from roughly 20,000 earlier in 2016.

On October 16, some 100,000 troops—mostly from the Iraqi army but many from peshmerga, Shī`ite, and other local militias—gathered on the outskirts of Mosul. With close air and artillery support from a United States-led coalition, Iraqi forces entered eastern Mosul the next day. They advanced against fierce pockets of Islamic State resistance, rigged explosives, and other improvised defenses. Civilians were often caught in the crossfire, particularly as Islamic State fighters used them as human shields and deterrents against coalition air and artillery strikes. Still, eastern Mosul steadily fell to government troops through November and December as assaults from the north and west put further pressure on the city’s Islamic State defenders. On Jan. 24, 2017, Prime Minister al-Abadi announced the “full liberation” of eastern Mosul.

Burned out cars and rubble flank a deserted road in Mosul, Iraq, in November 2016. Fighting in Mosul left much of the city in ruins. Credit: Mstyslav Chernov (licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

The offensive to liberate Mosul’s western half (the city is divided by the Tigris River) began on February 19. Government forces advanced from neighborhood to neighborhood, fighting from building to building both on the streets and below them in tunnels. Islamic State forces dwindled but maintained fierce and often suicidal resistance. By April, their remaining numbers had gathered in western Mosul’s old city or retreated in small groups to the city’s outskirts. By June, resistance had shrunk to a few blocks surrounding the old city’s Grand Mosque of al-Nuri. As a last act of defiance before dying in battle, Islamic State fighters destroyed the 844-year-old Grand Mosque. Shocked, saddened, and exhausted government troops at last annihilated Islamic State resistance in early July, ending the battle.

The fight for Mosul destroyed large parts of the ancient and historic city. More than 2,000 Islamic State militants died in the battle. Reports that their leader, al-Baghdadi, was among the dead remain as-yet unproven. Roughly 1,000 soldiers of the Iraqi government coalition were killed. Civilian deaths are estimated at more than 8,000, and more than 1 million people had to flee their homes. The shell-shocked citizens that remain in Mosul are now in need of food and water, medicine, sanitation, and shelter. The families of slain or escaped Islamic State fighters face a similar crisis as they are gathered in temporary camps outside the city.

For the Islamic State, the loss of Mosul—the birthplace of its “caliphate” and its capital in Iraq—is a costly defeat. However, the war against the terrorist group is far from over. Islamic State militants who fled Mosul now hold nearby towns, and many thousands of other Islamic State fighters remain in Syria and other parts of Iraq.

May 24, 2017

On Monday night, May 22, a terrorist detonated a bomb near Manchester Arena in Manchester, England, killing himself and 22 other people. The bombing, which also injured 64 people, occurred at the close of an Ariana Grande concert as many young people and families were exiting the arena. Ariana Grande is a United States pop singer currently on a concert tour of Europe. The Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Mother-and-daughter survivors of a terrorist bombing comfort each other outside Manchester Arena in Manchester, England, early on May 23, 2017. Credit: © Lindsey Parnaby, Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The terrorist detonated the bomb at about 10:30 p.m. local time in a connecting area between Manchester Arena and Victoria Station, one of the city’s main transportation hubs. Aside from the attack’s immediate casualties—which included many children—the bombing caused chaos and panic among the thousands of people leaving the arena, resulting in additional injuries.

British Prime Minister Theresa May commented on the terrorist act from her Downing Street office in London: “All acts of terrorism are cowardly. But this attack stands out for its appalling, sickening cowardice, deliberately targeting innocent, defenseless children and young people who should have been enjoying one of the most memorable nights of their lives.”

Manchester police identified the suicide bomber as 22-year-old Salman Abedi, a Manchester native born of Libyan parents. Police also announced several arrests in connection with the attack. British politicians, preparing for June parliamentary elections, suspended campaigning after the attack. The Manchester attack was the deadliest in the United Kingdom since 52 people died in suicide attacks on London’s transport system in July 2005.