One of the most powerful ethnic minority armed groups battling Myanmar’s army has claimed the capture of the last army outpost in the strategic western town of Maungdaw, gaining full control of the 271-kilometer (168-mile) -long border with Bangladesh.

The capture by the Arakan Army makes the group’s control of the northern part of Rakhine state complete, and marks another advance in its bid for self-rule there.

Rakhine has become a focal point for Myanmar’s nationwide civil war, in which pro-democracy guerrillas and ethnic minority armed forces seeking autonomy battle the country’s military rulers, who took power in 2021 after the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Khaing Thukha, a spokesperson for the Arakan Army, told The Associated Press by text message from an undisclosed location late Monday that his group had seized the last remaining military outpost in Maungdaw on Sunday.

Outpost commander Brig.-Gen. Thurein Tun, was captured while attempting to flee the battle, Khaing Thukha said.

The situation in Maungdaw could not be independently confirmed, with access to the internet and mobile phone services in the area mostly cut off.

Myanmar’s military government did not immediately comment.

Maungdaw, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, has been the target since June of an Arakan Army offensive. The group captured Paletwa and Buthidaung, two other towns on the border with Bangladesh, earlier this year.

Since November 2023, the Arakan Army has gained control of 11 of Rakhine’s 17 townships, along with one in neighboring Chin state.

Ann, a town in Rakhine that hosts the strategically important military headquarters overseeing the western part of the country, appears to be on the verge of falling entirely to the Arakan Army.

The group said in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging app late Friday that it had taken more than 30 military outposts, except the army’s western command, which controls Rakhine and the southern part of neighboring Chin state, as well as the country’s territorial waters in the Bay of Bengal.

Recent fighting in Rakhine has raised fears of a revival of organized violence against members of the Muslim Rohingya minority, similar to that which drove at least 740,000 members of their community in 2017 to flee to neighboring Bangladesh for safety.

The Arakan Army, which is the military wing of the Buddhist Rakhine ethnic group in Rakhine state, where they are the majority and seek autonomy from Myanmar’s central government, denies the allegations, though witnesses have described the group’s actions to the AP and other media.

Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for generations, but they are widely regarded by many in the country’s Buddhist majority, including members of the Rakhine minority, as having illegally migrated from Bangladesh. The Rohingya face a great amount of prejudice and are generally denied citizenship and other basic rights.

The border between Myanmar and Bangladesh extends from land to the Naf River and offshore in the Bay of Bengal.

The Arakan Army said Sunday it had ordered the suspension of transport across the Naf River because police and local Muslims affiliated with the army were attempting to escape by boat to Bangladesh.

The rebel group has been accused of major human rights violations, particularly involving its capture of the town of Buthidaung in mid-May, when it was accused of forcing an estimated 200,000 residents, largely Rohingyas, to leave, and then setting fire to most of the buildings. It was accused of attacking Rohingya civilians fleeing fighting in Maungdaw in August.

The Arakan Army is also part of an armed ethnic alliance that launched an offensive in northeastern Myanmar in October last year and gained strategic territory along the border with China.

As Syrians rejoiced across the country this week, many began the frantic search for missing loved ones who had been forcibly disappeared under Bashar al-Assad’s brutal dictatorship.

Crowds have descended on the notorious Saydnaya prison, which had become synonymous with arbitrary detention, torture and murder. Under the glaring sun, people poured toward the notorious facility north of Damascus, as traffic stretched for miles and some left their cars to walk the last stretch uphill, past barbed wire fences and watchtowers.

Just as Assad’s palaces revealed the extent of the family’s opulent wealth and luxurious lifestyle, his prisons have confirmed horrors that Syrians have known all too well over the past five decades.

The Assad regime’s notorious detention facilities were black holes where, as far back as the 1970s, anyone deemed an opponent disappeared. Saydnaya was one of the most infamous sites, known as “the slaughterhouse” – where as many as 13,000 people were hanged between 2011 and 2015, according to Amnesty International.

Unsurprisingly, it was one of the first locations rebels focused on as they swept toward Damascus in a lightning offensive.

After rebel fighters toppled Assad on Sunday, sending the dictator fleeing to Russia, images surfaced of Saydnaya prisoners being released – prompting many Syrians to flood social media seeking help to locate their loved ones.

By Monday, many had taken matters into their own hands and surged into the prison, spurred on by rumors that thousands were still imprisoned in deeper levels of the facility, an underground area known as the “red section.”

One woman, Maysoon Labut, came from Dara’a, the southern Syrian city that became the epicenter of anti-regime protests at the start of the Arab Spring and experienced the full force of Assad’s brutal response as he launched a crackdown that tipped the country into 13 years of civil war.

Labut was looking for her three brothers and son-in-law. She was breathless and emotional as she spoke.

A desperate search fueled by fear

This was the rumor that spurred the crowds on Monday – the idea that somewhere buried inside Saydnaya was a warren of undiscovered holding cells packed with missing Syrians.

But it’s not clear if the area even exists, deepening fears that those deemed missing may never be found.

The volunteer organization Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, deployed special teams to the prison who drilled and hammered through concrete on Monday.

Rebel fighters shouted for people to be quiet so that the voices of any detainees trapped inside might be heard by the rescue workers. A hush fell over the crowd and some got down on their knees as they waited for confirmation. A sniffer dog lent support. But no entrance was found.

In a statement later Monday, the White Helmets said they’d found “no evidence of undiscovered secret cells or basements,” or any “unopened or hidden areas within the facility.” They said the search for possible prisoners at the prison had ended and urged people on social media to avoid spreading misinformation.

The Association of Detainees and the Missing in Seydnayah Prison (ADMSP) said all prisoners had been released by midday Sunday, and that claims about detainees trapped underground were “unfounded” and “inaccurate.”

But the desperation of families combing through the prison on Monday – sifting through the vast trove of documents left behind, using cellphone flashlights in the darkness – reflects the agony of waiting for years with no clue what had happened to their loved ones within Saydnaya’s cramped and dingy cells.

One woman held up a photo of her brother, taken 12 years ago, his fate unknown. He would be 42 by now, she said.

“He has two girls and a son he has never met. We just want to be sure if he’s dead or alive. God knows,” she said.

Some of the newly freed have reunited with their ecstatic families – but it’s bittersweet after their long detention.

Suheil Hamawi, 61, spent more than three decades imprisoned in various Syrian jails, and finally returned home to his northern Lebanese village of Chekka on Monday.

“It’s a very beautiful feeling, a truly beautiful feeling,” Hamawi told the news agency AFP. “I’ve discovered that love is still here, and family is still here.”

However, returning home made the former prisoner realize how many years he had missed out on.

“I have grandchildren, but I never felt my age until my son’s daughter called me ‘Grandpa,’” Hamawi said. “That’s when I realized I had lost such a long period of time.”

Animal rights activists have urged the Nepali government to stop what they’ve called “an appalling bloodbath” after they claimed thousands of animals were killed as part of a festival held every five years that traditionally ends with a mass sacrifice.

At least 4,200 buffaloes and thousands of goats and pigeons were killed during a mass sacrifice held as part of the Gadhimai festival, in Bariyarpur village near the Nepal- India border, according to Humane Society International India (HSI).

Participants believe that sacrificing animals in the Gadhimai temple pleases the Goddess Gadhimai, who will then grant them wishes or good fortune. Animals are also sacrificed to celebrate the birth of sons.

In 2016 Nepal’s supreme court ordered a gradual phasing out of the practice of animal sacrifice that once saw as many as half a million animals killed, but activists say not enough is being done to end it.

“That’s why the sacrifice this year was limited,” he added.

‘They will never be able to stop it’

Animal rights groups have been campaigning to end the slaughter for a decade but have faced resistance from community members who are honoring a custom dating back more than 200 years.

Before the festival, Upendra Kushwaha, 20, said his family has been participating in the event for generations, and would be sacrificing a buffalo this year.

“It happens only once in five years, so we have to do it, it brings goodwill, it keeps us safe,” Kushwaha said.

When asked about the animal rights organizations’ attempt to stop the practice, Kushwaha said: “This is part of our culture, it’s our tradition, they will never be able to stop it.”

Shristi Bhandari, executive director of Jane Goodall Institute Nepal (JGIN), said she understands where the villagers are coming from.

“Animals are sacrificed in various religious rituals in Nepal year-round, so they feel why are they being singled out, why is all this attention, and international attention, on them.”

But Arkaprava Bhar, from HSI, who has witnessed the sacrifice, says it’s the most horrific thing he’s ever seen.

“They have butchers who come and slaughter the buffaloes in a row, it’s a massacre,” he said.

HSI India said that police were also deployed around the temple this year. Yadav, the mayor, said that police had to be deployed for crowd control.

In 2009, before the activists started their campaign, they said some half a million animals were killed, but that had dropped by half during subsequent festivals. This year, they predicted the numbers could soar again, but the figures suggest that hasn’t happened – and their efforts may be paying off.

Volunteers have been working with communities on the ground to discourage them from the practice: sensitizing children in schools, holding community meetings, carrying out awareness drives, and speaking to temple authorities.

All of this together has resulted in some shift in attitudes, Bhandari said.

She said the temple told people they may donate money instead of offering an animal for sacrifice, designating specific amounts for each animal.

“People, particularly women, have started to be more receptive to this and this year the temple has also provided an alternative,” Bhandari said.

“This is a major step, it took years and years of campaigning to get here,” Bhandari said.

A long campaign

Before this year’s festival, animal rights activists mobilized on the border to help Indian police intercept and confiscate animals suspected of being transported to the temple.

Efforts have been focused on the border since a 2014 ruling by the Indian Supreme Court that ordered the Indian government to prevent the illegal crossing of animals.

“We rescued buffaloes from the back of trucks, goats smuggled in scarves on the back of motorbikes, chickens strung upside by their feet on the side of vehicles and baskets and boxes of pigeons,” said Bhar.

“The suffering these animals endure is so upsetting and so unnecessary.”

In all, activists saved more than 750 animals, including 69 buffaloes, 325 goats, 328 pigeons and two chickens, which will be re-homed or released to the wild.

“About 80% of animals come from India so we have been working with the SSB (the Indian central armed police force responsible for patrolling to India-Nepal border) to rescue the animals,” Sneha Shrestha, president of the Federation of Animal Welfare of Nepal said.

However, the border is porous and not all of the trade can be stopped.

“We can only operate at the various checkpoints but villagers know these areas well and take internal routes so we can’t always stop it,” said Bhar of HSI India.

Shrestha works on the Nepal side of the border. Since there’s no outright ban on the slaughter in Nepal, there is little activists can do to push people to stop it, she said.

“We can only talk to people and convince them, we have no authority to take the animals from them,” Shrestha said. “No animal should die in the name of religion or tradition. Temples are not slaughterhouses, and we must not turn them into one.”

Australia announced a multimillion-dollar agreement with Nauru on Monday that gives Canberra a veto right over a range of pacts the tiny Pacific atoll might want to enter with third countries, including China.

Australia offered 140 million Australian dollars ($89 million) over five years to the remote nation’s population of 12,000 under the treaty to be implemented next year, including 40 million Australian dollars ($26 million) to enhance policing and security.

“Recognizing the security of one of us affects the security of both of us, the treaty provides that Nauru and Australia will jointly agree to any engagement by other countries in Nauru’s security, banking and telecommunications sectors,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a joint statement with Nauru President David Adeang at Australia’s Parliament House.

Adeang said Nauru’s partnership with Australia, its former colonial master, is “vital” to his country.

The pact has some similarities to a deal a struck in May with Tuvalu, another tiny Pacific island nation with a similar-size population as Nauru, which also gave Australia veto power over third-country deals.

The Tuvalu deal followed a security agreement struck between China and the Solomon Islands in 2022 that has raised concerns over a Chinese naval base being established in the South Pacific.

Meg Keen, director of the Pacific Island Program at the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank on international policy, said Nauru had sacrificed its ability to strike security, banking and infrastructure deals with China and other third parties in return for a big increase in Australian funding.

“It is a move by Australia to limit Chinese reach and influence in the region,” Keen said in an email.

“The treaty allows Australia to strengthen regional ties and cement its leading role as the development and security partner of choice,” she said.

A key part of the deal is that Nauru will retain an Australian bank. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia will open a branch in Nauru next year after Australia’s Bendigo Bank withdraws from the country.

“This treaty strengthens our own economy, enhances also our mutual security and addresses critical challenges like debanking and ensuring inclusive growth and resilience for our own people,” Adeang said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the witness for the first time on Tuesday in his long-running corruption trial to give testimony that will likely force him to juggle between the courtroom and war room for weeks.

Netanyahu, 75, is Israel’s first sitting prime minister to be charged with a crime. He is the country’s longest serving leader, having been in power almost consecutively since 2009.

“I have been waiting for eight years for this moment to tell the truth,” Netanyahu told the three judges hearing the case. “But I am also a prime minister … I am leading the country through a seven-front war. And I think the two can be done in parallel.”

He smiled confidently when he entered the Tel Aviv District Court around 10 a.m. (3 a.m. ET). The trial was moved from Jerusalem for undisclosed security reasons and convened in an underground courtroom, a 15-minute walk from the country’s defense headquarters.

Before Netanyahu took the stand, his lawyer Amit Hadad laid out for the judges what the defence maintains are fundamental flaws in the investigation. Prosecutors, Hadad said, “weren’t investigating a crime, they were going after a person.”

A few dozen protesters gathered outside the courthouse, some of them supporters and others demanding he do more to negotiate the release of some 100 hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza.

Israel has been waging war in Gaza against the Palestinian militant group for more than a year, during which Netanyahu had been granted a delay for the start of his court appearances. But last Thursday, judges ruled that he must start testifying.

Charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust, Netanyahu will testify three times a week, the court said, despite the Gaza war and possible new threats posed by wider turmoil in the Middle East, including in neighboring Syria.

Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 in three cases involving gifts from millionaire friends and for allegedly seeking regulatory favors for media tycoons in return for favorable coverage. He denies any wrongdoing.

In the run-up to his court date, Netanyahu revived familiar pre-war rhetoric against law enforcement, describing investigations against him as a witch hunt. He denies the charges and has pleaded not guilty.

“The real threat to democracy in Israel is not posed by the public’s elected representatives, but by some among the law enforcement authorities who refuse to accept the voters’ choice and are trying to carry out a coup with rabid political investigations that are unacceptable in any democracy,” he said in a statement on Thursday.

At a Monday night press conference Netanyahu said he had waited eight years to be able to tell his story and expressed outrage at the way witnesses had been treated during investigations.

Before the war, Netanyahu’s legal troubles bitterly divided Israelis and shook Israeli politics through five rounds of elections. His government’s bid last year to curb the powers of the judiciary further polarized Israelis.

The shock Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing Gaza war swept Netanyahu’s trial off the public agenda as Israelis came together in grief and trauma. But as the war dragged on, political unity crumbled.

In recent weeks, while fighting abated on one front after Israel reached a ceasefire with Hamas’ Lebanese ally Hezbollah, members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, including his justice and police ministers, have clashed with the judiciary.

In power almost consecutively since 2009, Netanyahu is Israel’s longest serving leader and its first sitting prime minister to be charged with a crime.

His domestic legal woes were compounded last month when the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him and his former defense chief Yoav Gallant along with a Hamas leader, for alleged war crimes in the Gaza conflict.

China has fielded its largest regional maritime deployment in decades, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday, as it monitors what it says is a surge of Chinese military activities in the Taiwan Strait and Western Pacific.

Taiwan has been on high alert since Monday as it braced for expected military drills after President Lai Ching-te sparked Beijing’s ire by making unofficial stops in Hawaii and the US territory of Guam earlier this month.

Taiwan on Monday said multiple formations of Chinese naval and coast guard vessels were moving in regional waters and around the Taiwan Strait. Beijing has not announced military drills or acknowledged the large-scale deployment cited by Taipei.

China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan as its own territory, despite never having controlled it, and has not ruled out taking the island by force. It views unofficial interactions between Washington and Taipei as a violation of its sovereignty. Taiwan’s leadership rejects China’s territorial claims over it.

An “astonishing” number of Chinese vessels have been deployed at a scale that “could block external forces,” Lt. Gen. Hsieh Jih-Sheng, deputy chief of the General Staff for Intelligence, said at a Taiwan Defense Ministry briefing Tuesday.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) naval deployment was not only targeting Taiwan, Hsieh said, adding that the geographic spread stretched into waters past the first island chain. The strategically significant chain of islands encompasses Japan, Taiwan, parts of the Philippines and Indonesia, and as long been a key plank in the US maintaining its position as the dominant power in the Pacific.

“The PLA’s recent activities not only exerted military pressure on Taiwan. Its naval forces, specifically, have significantly raised its posture around Taiwan and the Western Pacific,” Hsieh said.

China’s ability to block outside forces from entering the first island chain could pose a survival threat to Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, potentially cutting off naval access by outside forces seeking to aid the island.

The maritime deployment was the largest since China began holding large-scale war games around Taiwan in the mid-1990s, according to the ministry.

Taiwan authorities also reported a significant increase in PLA aircraft operating around the island, detecting 47 such jets in the 24 hours before 6 a.m. Tuesday.

In a statement Monday, Taiwan authorities said the PLA had designated seven zones of reserved airspace to the east of its coastal Zhejiang and Fujian provinces.

No live-fire exercises had yet taken place in the zones which lie to the north and northwest of Taiwan respectively, the ministry said in its Tuesday briefing.

Visit to US

The Chinese military movement comes days after Lai made unofficial stops in Hawaii and Guam during a weeklong South Pacific tour, which wrapped Friday.

The visit was Lai’s first to the United States since becoming president in May. The leader, who has long faced Beijing’s wrath for championing Taiwan’s sovereignty, used his travel to tout solidarity with likeminded democracies.

Chinese authorities voiced firm opposition to Lai’s trip, referring to him as a “separatist.” His travel came after the US approved new arms sales to Taiwan, which prompted China to vow “strong countermeasures.”

Military drills have increasingly become one of Beijing’s go-to tools to voice dissatisfaction and visits by US or Taiwanese officials to each other’s soil have in the past sparked significant war games from China.

In May, days after Lai’s inauguration, China launched two days of large-scale military drills surrounding Taiwan in what it called “punishment” for so-called “separatist acts.” It called those drills “Joint Sword-2024A.”

China then conducted “Joint-Sword-2024B” drills in October, after Lai said during a National Day address that the island was “not subordinate” to China.

When asked about the military movements during a regular briefing Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning declined to comment directly but said, “the Taiwan issue is China’s internal affair, and China will firmly defend its national sovereignty.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva underwent surgery in Sao Paulo to drain a bleed on his brain linked to a fall at home in October, a medical note published by the government said on Tuesday.

The surgery was successful and the 79-year-old Lula is “well” and being monitored in the intensive care unit, the note said. Doctors will hold a press conference at 9 a.m. local time to provide details.

Lula underwent an MRI late on Monday in Brasilia after suffering a headache, which detected an intracranial hemorrhage. He was transferred to Sao Paulo for surgery at the Sirio Libanes hospital.

Lula fell at home in late October and suffered a small brain hemorrhage and trauma to the back of his head that required stitches. Tests in early November showed his condition had remained stable.

The president’s injury forced him to cancel a trip to Russia for a summit of the BRICS group of major emerging markets being held in Kazan, following medical advice to temporarily avoid long-haul flights.

This is a developing story. More to come.