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amnesty international
Another 'Extrajudicial Execution' as US Bombs Second Alleged Venezuelan Drug Boat
"There is no legal justification for this military strike," said one Amnesty International campaigner. "The US must be held accountable."
Sep 15, 2025
President Donald Trump said Monday that the US carried out a fresh strike on what he said was a boat used by Venezuelan drug gangs, killing three people in what one human rights campaigner called another "extrajudicial execution."
"This morning, on my Orders, US Military Forces conducted a SECOND Kinetic Strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists in the [US Southern Command] area of responsibility," Trump said on his Truth Social network. "The Strike occurred while these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics (A DEADLY WEAPON POISONING AMERICANS!) headed to the US."
"These extremely violent drug trafficking cartels POSE A THREAT to US National Security, Foreign Policy, and vital US Interests," the Republican president continued. "The Strike resulted in three male terrorists killed in action. No US Forces were harmed in this Strike."
"BE WARNED—IF YOU ARE TRANSPORTING DRUGS THAT CAN KILL AMERICANS, WE ARE HUNTING YOU!" Trump added. "The illicit activities by these cartels have wrought DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES ON AMERICAN COMMUNITIES FOR DECADES, killing millions of American Citizens. NO LONGER. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!"
US President Trump just announced that a second drug smuggling boat from Venezuela was hit by a US airstrike in the Caribbean, killing 3 people on board the boat.#Venezuela pic.twitter.com/dO34gYr9GZ
— CNW (@ConflictsW) September 15, 2025
Responding to arguments by legal experts and Venezuelan officials that the September 2 strike was illegal, Trump said Sunday that "what's illegal are the drugs that were on the boat... and the fact that 300 million people died last year from drugs."
Only 62 million people died in the entire world of all causes last year, making Trump's claim impossibly false.
Monday's attack followed the September 2 bombing of a vessel allegedly transporting cocaine off the Venezuelan coast, a strike that killed 11 people. Venezuelan officials say none of the 11 men were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, as claimed by Trump.
On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. Last month, the president reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force to combat drug cartels abroad, sparking fears of renewed US aggression in a region that has endured well over 100 US attacks, invasions, occupations, and other interventions since the issuance of the dubious Monroe Doctrine in 1823.
The Intercept's Nick Turse reported Monday that the Trump administration's recently rebranded Department of War "is thwarting congressional oversight" of the September 2 attack.
“I’m incredibly disturbed by this new reporting that the Trump administration launched multiple strikes on the boat off Venezuela,” Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) said in response to Turse's reporting. “They didn’t even bother to seek congressional authorization, bragged about these killings—and teased more to come.”
Common Dreams reported last week that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) introduced a war powers resolution seeking to restrain Trump from conducting attacks in the Caribbean.
Also last week, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) led a letter signed by two dozen Democratic colleagues and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asserting that the Trump administration offered "no legitimate justification" for the first boat strike.
It's not just congressional Democrats who have decried Trump's September 2 attack. Last week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said that "the recent drone attack on a small speedboat over 2,000 miles from our shore without identification of the occupants or the content of the boat is in no way part of a declared war, and defies our longstanding Coast Guard rules of engagement."
“What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial," Paul later added.
Paul also mirrored Democratic lawmakers' questioning of Trump's narrative that the boat bombed on September 2 was heading to the United States.
Echoing congressional critics, Daphne Eviatar, director of Amnesty International's Security With Human Rights program, said of Monday's attack, "Today, President Trump claimed his administration carried out another lethal strike against a boat in the Caribbean."
"This is an extrajudicial execution, which is murder," Eviatar added. "There is no legal justification for this military strike. The US must be held accountable."
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'No Safe Place Left' as Israel Moves to Ethnically Cleanse Nearly 1 Million Gazans
"This is the latest chapter in the genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza and part of a broader campaign of ethnic cleansing engulfing the entire Gaza Strip," said Oxfam International.
Sep 11, 2025
Israel's US-backed campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza City has left nearly 1 million people—half of them starved by design—with nowhere to seek refuge, United Nations agencies and other humanitarian groups warned Wednesday.
"We are witnessing a dangerous escalation in Gaza City, where Israeli forces have stepped up their operations and ordered everyone to move south. This comes two weeks after famine was confirmed in the city and surrounding areas," said the UN Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), a strategic forum of UN agency heads and over 200 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
"While Israeli authorities have unilaterally declared an area in the south as 'humanitarian,' it has not taken effective steps to ensure the safety of those forced to move there and neither the size nor scale of services provided is fit to support those already there, let alone new arrivals," HCT continued.
"Nearly 1 million people are now left with no safe or viable options—neither the north nor the south offers safety," HCT added.
One elderly woman caring for an injured 8-year-old girl who is one of tens of thousands of children orphaned by Israeli attacks told Amnesty International Wednesday that "she's all that I have left, and I have tried everything I can to protect her."
"We have been displaced twice just in the last week," the woman added. "We don't have the means to go to the south, and we are tired of being forced to relive this ordeal all over again."
An elderly disabled woman living in a makeshift refugee camp in southern Gaza City told Amnesty that "we were displaced from Sheikh Radwan three weeks ago; my son had to carry me on his shoulders because I have no wheelchair and no transportation could reach our area."
"Now we are ordered to evacuate again. Where do we go?" she asked. "To secure transportation to the south, you have to pay close to 4,000 shekels ($1,200) and to buy a tent, you have to pay at least 3,000 shekels and we don't know if we'll find any land to pitch our tent on."
"We had already spent all our savings to survive this war, looking for food and basics," the woman added. "Every day is like the war is starting all over again, only far worse, but we are totally depleted, we have no will or strength to carry on."
Photos showing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians—including some with donkey-drawn carts—slowly streaming southward from Gaza City evoked images from the Nakba, when more than 750,000 Arabs were ethnically cleansed from Palestine by Zionist terror militias during the establishment of modern Israel.
The World Health Organization (WHO), a UN body, warned Wednesday that "starvation and malnutrition in Gaza are at the highest levels ever since the conflict began almost two years ago," and that "deliberate blocking and delay of large-scale food, health, and humanitarian aid has cost many lives."
"After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterized by starvation, destitution, and death," the agency added. "Another 1.07 million people (54%) are in 'emergency' (IPC Phase 4), and 396,000 people (20%) are in 'crisis' (IPC Phase 3)."
WHO also cited overall casualties in Gaza—now approaching at least 65,000 deaths, mostly women and children—and 164,000 injuries, according to the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM)—and noted that "as of September 5, 2025, there have been 2,339 reported fatalities among aid-seekers near militarized distribution sites and along convoy routes since May 27."
Oxfam International—a coalition of over 20 independent NGOs focused on alleviating poverty—echoed the UN experts, asserting that "Israel's intent to displace around 1 million civilians, half of whom are living in famine, is impossible and illegal."
"Displacement orders, on leaflets thrown from the sky, or posted on social media, signal grave next steps, a scene all too familiar in Gaza where every order has preceded new waves of destruction and mass casualties," Oxfam said. "This is the latest chapter in the genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza and part of a broader campaign of ethnic cleansing engulfing the entire Gaza Strip, where nothing and no one has been spared."
Heba Morayef, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said Wednesday that Israel's mass displacement order for Gaza City residents "is cruel, unlawful, and further compounds the genocidal conditions of life that Israel is inflicting on Palestinians."
"Gaza City... is now facing complete obliteration," Morayef added. "It is evident that Israel is determined in pursuing its goal to physically destroy Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. It is unconscionable that states with leverage over Israel continue to provide it with arms and diplomatic support to destroy Palestinian lives."
Operation Gideon's Chariots 2—Israel's plan to "conquer, cleanse, and stay" in Gaza and "annihilate everything" there—as Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently put it—has ramped up in recent days, with intensified Israeli air and artillery strikes and ground troops pushing deeper into Gaza City.
According to GHM, at least 72 Palestinians were killed and a minimum of 356 others were wounded by Israeli forces across Gaza on Thursday, including children and infants. At least 53 of the victims were killed in Gaza City. Israeli strikes reportedly targeted homes, tents housing refugees, and aid distribution points.
Additionally, GHM said that seven Palestinians including a child died from starvation over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of famine-related deaths in Gaza to at least 411, 142 of them children.
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Nepal PM Resigns as Anti-Corruption Protesters Torch Parliament
"In every sector... corruption is increasing," said one protester. "Students are being killed by police... We would like to request that the government of Nepal stand down."
Sep 09, 2025
Nepalese Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli resigned Tuesday as youth-led anti-corruption protesters set fire to government buildings and assaulted officials as they fled for their lives as the number of demonstrators killed by state forces rose to at least 22.
On Monday, state security forces attacked protesters with weapons including water cannons, tear gas, batons, steel-coated rubber bullets, and live ammunition, killing at least 19 people and wounding upward of 350 others in the capital Kathmandu and other cities. Medical responders said that many of the protesters had been shot in the chest or head.
The BBC reported three more people were killed on Tuesday, bringing the death toll to at least 22. Protesters in Kathmandu stormed and set fire to the Singha Durbar—which houses the Nepalese Parliament and several government ministries—as well as the home of Oli, who was serving his third nonconsecutive term and said he resigned "in order to take further steps towards a political solution."
Video recordings posted on social media show protesters chasing and assaulting Finance Minister Bishnu Paudel, who is seen stripped to his underwear and dragged through a street. Another video shows bank notes raining from the sky as demonstrators set Energy Minister Deepak Khadka's home on fire.
Yet another video posted on social media shows Foreign Minister Arju Rana Deuba and her husband, former Prime Minister and Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba, bloodied after their home was attacked and burned. The home of Jhala Nath Khanal, another former prime minister, was also torched. Khanal's wife, Ravi Laxmi Chitrakar, was inside the house at the time and was severely burned, according to The New York Times.
The Condition of four time PM of Nepal @SherBDeuba and his wife curent foreign minister Arju Deuba Rana pic.twitter.com/BxrQUm9QBs
— IN- Depth Story (@in_depthstory) September 9, 2025
The demonstrations, now in their second day, were sparked by growing outrage over government corruption and impunity, pervasive nepotism personified by the "nepo-kid" children of powerful officials, and the September 4 nationwide ban on 26 social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, WhatsApp, X, and YouTube.
The ban came after the companies missed a government-imposed registration deadline. Some social media platforms, such as Nimbuzz, TikTok, Viber, and WeTalk registered in time and were allowed to remain in operation.
Critics, who include Kathmandu Mayor Balen Shah—a 35-year-old rapper-turned-politician who many believe could be a future prime minister—called the ban an attack on free expression and businesses that depend on social media for sales and marketing.
Although the government subsequently lifted the ban amid the nascent protests, the move came too late—and, critically, the social media proscription was only part of the problem.
"It's shameful to see international media framing Nepal's Gen-Z protest as merely against the social media ban. That's not what it is about," Nepalese physicist Sunny Labh wrote Monday on social media. "The protest was—and still is—against a corrupt system, unchecked government privileges, and years of exploitation. Reducing it to just the ban is dishonest and insulting to the movement."
One student protester in Kathmandu told The New Indian Express: "We are not fighting Oli, we are fighting Oli-ism—the system that rewards loyalty over competence, wealth over work, and silence over truth."
Satish Mandal, a 26-year-old protester in the capital, told the BBC that "Nepal is being corrupted day by day."
"In every sector, especially in heath and education, corruption is increasing," he added. "Students are being killed by police... We would like to request that the government of Nepal stand down."
It is unclear who will be Nepal's next prime minister. On Tuesday, the army issued a statement saying it would secure law and order, starting at 10:00 pm local time.
International human rights defenders condemned the deadly crackdown.
"We call on the authorities to respect and ensure the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression," United Nations Human Rights Office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said in a statement Monday. "All security forces must comply with the basic principles on the use of force and firearms by law enforcement officials."
"Nepal enjoys a lively democracy and active civic space, and dialogue is the best means to address young people's concerns," Shamdasani added. "We urge reconsideration of measures to regulate social media to ensure they comply with Nepal's human rights obligations."
Amnesty International Nepal director Nirajan Thapaliya said Monday that "the protestors have a right to peacefully protest and express their frustration and outrage against corruption and the government's restriction on the right to freedom of expression including the social media ban in Nepal."
"It is the obligation of Nepali authorities to respect this right in line with its commitments under international law as well as its own constitution and protect all protesters from further harm," Thapaliya added. "The government must genuinely listen to the legitimate demands of the youth to end corruption, deliver accountability, and ensure civil liberties instead of meting out such reckless violence against them."
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