Conflicts have become more complex, more deadly, and more difficult to resolve.
From the war between Israel and Hamas to Russia's brutal fighting against Ukraine, 2023 has demonstrated the danger of armed conflicts escalating into hostilities across an entire region. But behind their long shadows, the world faces struggles from Afghanistan to Yemen.
TSN.ua offers you an adaptation of the Associated Press material with an overview of regional and local conflicts around the world.
A boy, his face covered in fresh blood, screams as rescuers try to pull him from the rubble of a collapsed building after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. A bloodied elderly Israeli hostage is taken away by Hamas on a golf cart as a man clutching a machine gun sits behind her and smiles. A 10-year-old girl cries next to the body of her brother, who is being buried near Kiev in Ukraine.
Coups and violence throughout Africa have upended the lives of the people there. Myanmar in Southeast Asia is facing what some experts call a slow-burning civil war. Drug-trafficking violence continues in Central and South America.
Nuclear India and Pakistan remain suspicious of each other. North Korea's nuclear arsenal continues to grow. And Iran is now enriching uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.
“Conflicts have become more complex, more deadly and more difficult to resolve. …Concerns about the possibility of nuclear war have re-emerged. New potential areas of conflict and means of warfare create new ways in which humanity can destroy itself,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in July.
This is what some of the world's greatest wars look like now.
Russia's deadliest war against Ukraine
The rapid pace of the war between Israel and Hamas has overshadowed Russia's war against Ukraine in late 2023. But a few months earlier, little had changed on the battlefield for either side.
Ukraine received tanks, weapons and Western training before launching a new counter-offensive believed to be aimed at accessing the Sea of Azov and splitting Russian lines in the south of the country. But Ukrainian troops faced entrenched Russian forces, multiple defense lines, minefields and other dangers, making progress slowly.
And although Western countries remained publicly the only ones in support Ukraine, polls, including next year's U.S. presidential election, could influence how much aid Kyiv receives in the future.
Russia has also faced challenges, including the march on Moscow by the leader of the private Wagner military campaign, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in the biggest challenge to President Vladimir Putin's decades-long rule. Prigogine abandoned the trip only to die a few weeks later in a mysterious plane crash.
War between Israel and Hamas
The bloody war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7 when militants breached the walls surrounding the coastal enclave of the Gaza Strip. Hamas militants killed about 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostage, forcing them to return to Israeli territory.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu , who had been in a state of protest for months against his far-right government's attempts to reform the country's judicial system and allegations of corruption, launched a massive campaign of retaliatory air strikes.
Israeli troops also entered the Gaza Strip for the first time in years, fighting intense street fighting. The offensive killed more than 18,700 people in the Gaza Strip, home to more than 2 million residents, who also found themselves under an Israeli siege that has largely blocked supplies of food, fuel, water and medicine.
Meanwhile, the massacres of Israelis and Palestinians have sparked protests around the world, with many sympathizing with the Palestinians after years of despair about creating their own state.
Iran-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah, opened fire on Israel. The US has sent two aircraft carriers, troops and other weapons to the region to try to prevent the outbreak of a wider regional war. But Israel's repeatedly stated goal of destroying Hamas has guaranteed a lengthy military campaign, which increases the risks.
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African unrest
Sudan, a major East African country reeling after the overthrow of longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir, plunged into civil war in April. The war pits the country's military against a powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Reaction Force, which has long been linked to atrocities in Darfur.
Crossfire has set planes at Khartoum International Airport on fire during the fighting, and countries are trying to evacuate their citizens by land, sea and air. To date, approximately 9,000 people have died as a result of the fighting.
Meanwhile, the wave of military coups that has swept across Africa in recent years continues. In Niger, a former French colony that is a key uranium exporter, soldiers overthrew the country's democratically elected president in July. A month later, troops also carried out a coup in Gabon, overthrowing the long-time ruling president.
Drug wars in Latin America
Drug cartel violence rages across Mexico as they fight for territory and supply lines in the United States. But the conflict doesn't stop there. Violence has increased in other Central American countries such as Honduras and even in once-peaceful Costa Rica, now considered a major staging and transhipment point for drugs bound for Europe.
Meanwhile, Colombia reached an all-time high in production of coca, the leaf from which cocaine is made.
Stalemate situations and wars in other parts of the planet
In the Southeast Asian country of Myanmar, some UN experts say there is a civil war between rebels and the army after a coup overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Afghanistan, two years after the Taliban took over the Western-backed government in Kabul, faces attacks from an offshoot of the Islamic State group as girls are still barred from secondary education.
And in Yemen, Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the Saudi-led coalition fighting them have yet to reach a permanent peace deal, prompting the militants to escalate their attacks again in recent weeks.
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