Report Details 500+ Yemeni Civilian Casualties From 2023-25 US Airstrikes

“The so-called ‘War on Terror’ never ended in Yemen,” said Costs of War Project director Stephanie Savell. “This report will allow people to hold the US government accountable for the deaths and destruction it has caused.”

Yemenis assess the damage caused by a US airstrike on a market in the capital city of Sanaa on April 21, 2025.
(Photo by Mohammed Huwais/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Sep 10, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


A report released Thursday examines the more than 500 Yemeni civilians its authors said were killed or wounded by US airstrikes in the Middle East nation during a recent 17-month period amid the open-ended so-called “War on Terror” that has left nearly one million people dead in around half a dozen nations over the past 25 years.

The report—authored by the Yemen-based group Mwatana for Human Rights and published by the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs—documents 46 US airstrikes that took place between December 2023 and May 2025 that caused at least 576 civilian casualties, including 213 deaths and 363 injuries. Among the casualties were at least 50 children and 25 women.

“The so-called ‘War on Terror’ never ended in Yemen,” Costs of War Project director Stephanie Savell contended.

“It’s important that we continue to account for the civilian lives lost, harmed, and disrupted in Yemen and other US war zones,” she added. “This report will allow people to hold the US government accountable for the deaths and destruction it has caused in Yemen in support of the Israeli government’s wars since 2023.”




The overwhelming majority of the casualties covered by the publication occurred during President Donald Trump’s 2025 “Operation Rough Rider” campaign. Mwatana estimates that the operation killed 208 civilians and wounded 341, while the Pentagon has acknowledged a smaller toll of 153 killed and 243 wounded.

Seven of the 46 strikes took place between December of 2023 and January of 2025 during former President Joe Biden’s “Operation Prosperity Guardian,” a military campaign that came amid Houthi rebel attacks on shipping lanes in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Among the deadliest attacks covered by the report was the April 2025 bombardment of Ras Isa oil port ordered by Trump, in which US strikes killed scores of people and wounded more than 150 others. Human Rights Watch called the bombing an “apparent war crime,” saying the destruction of the civilian oil facility also threatened vital fuel supplies in a country already devastated by years of war and humanitarian crisis.

The campaign also included the April 28 bombing of a detention center in Saada while jailed African migrants were sleeping. Amnesty International has called for a war crimes investigation into that attack, in which scores of migrants were killed.

Mwatana researchers conducted site visits and 59 interviews with survivors, relatives, eyewitnesses, first responders, and other sources for the new report.

“The first strike hit while we were in deep sleep. I could not believe what I saw—30 of my fellow detainees died; their bodies were charred, and the smell of burned flesh filled the air,” one 25-year-old Ethiopian survivor of the Saada attack recounted. “The place was crowded with bodies, while others were screaming and calling for help and rescue... we could do nothing for them.”

In addition to physical harm, survivors described the deep psychological trauma suffered by victims. One mother said her 8-year-old son Taha “saw his father after he was hit by shrapnel—how he was bleeding, and how his intestines were coming out.”

“His father was screaming: ‘Run… leave me and run before the American aircraft strikes again and finishes me off,’” she continued. “Taha still cannot sleep; when he does, he wakes up terrified. Whenever he hears thunder or any loud noise, he runs in fear, his whole body trembling.”

Overall, US strikes covered by the report “hit civilian structures such as homes, shops, farms, residential neighborhoods, and infrastructure,” the publication notes, adding that airstrikes “also caused severe damage to infrastructure and critical facilities, compounding the humanitarian suffering of local populations by striking essential service facilities, particularly in rural areas that already face acute shortages of clean water, electricity, and health services.”

“Given Yemen’s economic deterioration and the catastrophic humanitarian situation produced by the armed conflict that has been ongoing since September 2014, it is likely that the US strikes expanded the cycle of poverty in Yemen by increasing unemployment and multiplying the number of households that lost breadwinners and sources of income,” the report adds.

Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have died during the civil war that began in 2014, with international experts attributing more than 150,000 Yemeni deaths to a US-backed, Saudi-led bombing campaign and blockade. According to the UK-based casualty monitor Airwars, an estimated 445-643 Yemeni civilians have been killed by US forces during the George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.

The Costs of War Project says that in the first two decades following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, “between 363,939 and 387,072 civilians were killed by multiple warring parties in post-9/11 war zones, including 12,690 civilians in Yemen.”

Mwatana for Human Rights chair Radhya Al-Mutawakel said Thursday that “the losses caused by US airstrikes against civilians cannot be regarded as temporary harm that ends when military operations cease. Civilians who have lost loved ones, homes, or sources of income continue to bear the consequences of these attacks, amid economic and humanitarian conditions that do not provide them with even the minimum capacity to recover.”

“Protecting civilians is not limited to avoiding killing or injuring them; it also includes respecting civilian objects and livelihoods,” Al-Mutawakel added. “The United States must assume its legal and moral responsibility to recognize the civilian victims of its military operations in Yemen, provide them with redress and reparation, and hold accountable those responsible for the violations inflicted upon them.”

 

Houthis seize Yemeni island in Bab el-Mandeb, taking control of the strait

Copyright AP Photo

By Aleksandar Brezar

Published on 11/09/2026 - EURONEWS

Houthi fighters reached Perim Island which divides the Bab el-Mandeb into two shipping lanes after government forces withdrew, completing the group's takeover of the strait. Together with Iran's Hormuz blockade, this puts roughly a third of the world's seaborne trade under hostile control.

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis took control of the Bab el-Mandeb strait on Friday, after capturing an island located in the middle of the crucial Red Sea waterway, a local government official and eyewitnesses said.

"Boats carrying armed Houthi fighters reached Mayyun Island after government forces withdrew from it yesterday," the official said, referring to a rocky volcanic island also known as Perim that divides the narrowest part of the strait into two shipping lanes.

"The Houthis have completed their takeover of the Bab el-Mandeb area and Mayyun Island, which is located in the middle of the strait," he added, speaking on condition of anonymity.

An eyewitness said gunmen were "deploying along the Bab el-Mandeb shore and are driving around in military vehicles."

On Thursday, Houthis captured the strategic port city of Mokha from government forces in a blitz offensive that also saw them taking control of Zuqar Island in the southern Red Sea "after rocket attacks and a ground assault carried out using boats transporting fighters," according to military sources.

Footage appeared online of Houthi fighters' apparent celebrations in Mokha and their seizure of considerable weapons and equipment left behind by government forces. Euronews could not verify the authenticity of the footage.

The Houthis, who controlled about one-third of Yemen's territory prior to the offensive, have previously targeted shipping in the narrow waterway which links Asia to Europe via the Red Sea and Suez Canal.

Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb account for more than one quarter of seaborne crude oil and petroleum trade. Nearly one-third of the world's container traffic passes through the Red Sea alone.

The Houthis have also reportedly consulted with Tehran on imposing a safe passage toll through the strait over the summer, in an apparent plot to further strain global economies.

Yemen's internationally recognised government has repeatedly warned of Houthi plans for taking control of the waterway, whose name in Arabic means "Gate of Tears".

Houthis marching on

Formally known as Ansar Allah, the Houthis came to power in late 2014 after storming Sana'a and seizing the presidential palace and key military sites, forcing Yemen's government into exile.

The group is part of Tehran's so-called Axis of Resistance — a loose network of militant groups in several countries in the region including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and militias in Iraq, all backed, trained and equipped by the IRGC to varying degrees.

The group triggered a return to hostilities in Yemen's civil war in July, when they let an Iranian plane land in defiance of Saudi control of Yemeni airspace.

Riyadh retaliated by striking the airport, triggering the Houthis to declare a blockade on the kingdom targeting its oil trade in July.

The Houthis engaged in a large-scale offensive last week against government forces backed by Saudi Arabia, while also launching attacks on Saudi territory that left dozens wounded, leading Riyadh to respond with daily strikes on Houthi-held parts of Yemen.

Saudi Arabia, which earlier this week said it had always offered “opportunities for negotiation,” also said it has the right to defend itself.

Houthi attacks on oil infrastructure and Saudi tankers have further contributed to a spike in oil prices, which surpassed $100 a barrel on Thursday.

A friend in need

Last month, Saudi Arabia signed a NATO-style mutual defence agreement with Turkey and nuclear-armed Pakistan in Mecca, but it seems unlikely either of the two would get involved.

On Tuesday, Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said Pakistan would "honour" the pact "in case there is a need".

Just one day later, the Pakistan foreign ministry said that the Mecca pact was a "defensive alliance focused on deterrence".

"There is no such thing under discussion right now. When the time comes, we will act under the agreement," spokesperson Sajjad Haider Khan told the press at the weekly media briefing.

In July, US President Donald Trump said Washington would respond against the Houthis if they attempted to block maritime traffic in the Red Sea, and weeks of US strikes from March 2025, early in Trump's presidency, hit a range of military and industrial targets.

However, Washington is reportedly reluctant to enter the fray at this time as it remains bogged down in its own war with Iran since February.

Relate

Tehran chimed in on Friday, calling for an end to Saudi Arabia's blockade of Yemen and the immediate resumption of talks, in its first public statement since the Houthi Red Sea offensive.

In a statement carried by the state-run IRNA news agency, Iran's foreign ministry said Yemen’s sovereignty must be respected, and its problems cannot be resolved through a blockade or military alliances.

Meanwhile, reports have claimed that Iran's elite paramilitary IRGC has deployed dozens of advisors to aid the Houthis in their operations. Euronews could not independently verify the claims at this time.

A potential disruption to Bab el-Mandeb would work in Iran's favour, as its blockade of Hormuz has put significant pressure on the world's energy markets, sparking a crisis that could worsen even further as the northern hemisphere approaches winter.

The leader of Yemen's internationally recognised governing council on Thursday urged Arab and other nations to help it defend the country's coasts.

"The protection of Yemen's coasts and the restoration of state control over its territory, ports and waters is a joint Yemeni, Egyptian, Arab and international interest," said Rashad al-Alimi, who heads Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council, during a meeting with Egypt's ambassador.

Since last week, the fighting in Yemen has left more than 500 dead, mostly combatants, according to an AFP tally compiled from several sources.

How 41 Senators Could End the Iran War and Rein In Defense Spending

Forty-one is the number of senators needed to stop the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act—a massive bill that sets defense policies and authorities—and push for key modifications.


US soldiers drive a tank through the Vistula River during NATO military defense drills  in Korzeniewo, Poland.
(Photo by Omar Marques/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Sarah Van Gelder
Sep 11, 2026

Common Dreams


In the days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, I joined Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, the Institute for Policy Studies, YES! Magazine, and hundreds of other signatories in calling for “Justice, Not Vengeance.” We argued that the United States should find and prosecute those responsible for 9-11 rather than launch wars against countries that had not attacked us.

We were right to worry: The wars that followed cost trillions of dollars and countless lives, and left the country less secure, not more.

Ro Khanna Demands End to Trump’s Iran War ‘Before the Midterms’


‘We Are in a Constitutional Crisis’: Congress Urged to Sue Trump to End Iran War

Twenty-five years later, Congress faces a similar test—and a similar warning sign. The United States and Israel are at war with Iran, a war of choice that could prove even more disastrous than the decision to go to war with Afghanistan and Iraq.

While responsibility for the war lies with the Trump administration, Congress has a say in what happens next—if it chooses to act.

When the Senate reconvenes after their recess, they will face the question of approving the NDAA. Senators should use their leverage to change the disastrous direction of this administration’s defense policies.

Likewise, Congress can rein in historic levels of military spending and reject proposals to spend billions of dollars on a new generation of nuclear weapons, funded by taxpayers and historic levels of debt. And it can say no to the rapid development and deployment of AI weapons, an especially important step at a time when AI agents are already going rogue.

All it would take is 41 US senators. That is the number needed to stop the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)—a massive bill that sets defense policies and authorities, with a proposed price tag of $1.5 trillion.

The NDAA passed the US House of Representatives on July 22, but it has stalled in the US Senate.

Under Senate rules, 41 senators can filibuster to stop a bill from moving to the Senate floor for a vote, and the Democratic caucus has 47 senators. So, even in the minority, the Democratic senators—along with any Republicans who oppose “forever wars”—could prevent the NDAA from advancing without modifications.

When the Senate reconvenes after their recess, they will face the question of approving the NDAA. Senators should use their leverage to change the disastrous direction of this administration’s defense policies.

What specifically could 41 Senators do?Rein in the spending: Proposed defense spending is at the highest level in real dollars since World War II—a 38% increase over last year’s spending, funded by taxpayers and a national debt that has reached 124% the size of the entire US economy. This spending is unsustainable and unaccountable; the Pentagon just failed its eighth consecutive audit. Congress should restore the inspector general positions the Trump administration eliminated.
End the war in Iran: Require a War Powers Act resolution, with appropriate guardrails to set the terms for an end to the war. Set limits on the use of taxpayer funds for the conflict.
Reset our relationship with Israel. Cut military aid to Israel until it withdraws from Gaza, ends the spreading of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and stops threatening its neighbors with unilateral military action. Strip Section 1217 from the Senate version of the NDAA, which would create a US-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative merging research, development, and deployment of military technologies with the Israeli military.
Work for nuclear safeguards, not new weapons systems: End authorization for a new generation of nuclear weapons that includes the development of intermediate-range systems designed for use in regional conflicts. This risks turning nuclear weapons from a deterrent into a first-strike weapon of aggression. Require robust new arms-control talks aimed at reducing nuclear arsenals; none currently exist since the New START treaty expired on February 5, 2026, leaving the US and Russia with no binding limits on their strategic nuclear arsenals for the first time in decades.
Stop illegal and ill-advised uses of the US military: Enforce the Posse Comitatus Act’s prohibition on using US troops on American soil. End the extrajudicial killings of unidentified people on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, now numbering 227. Prohibit using the military to threaten Canada, Greenland, and other allies as part of efforts to seize their territory.
Put guardrails on AI-controlled weapons: This field is moving faster than Congress can track, and the NDAA is already the battleground. The House and Senate versions each include provisions on autonomous weapons and human oversight. But the same bill also directs the Pentagon to build a department-wide system for deploying agentic AI at speed and scale, pushing adoption forward even as the human-oversight rules meant to contain it remain unsettled. Congress should preserve and strengthen the human-oversight provisions, not let them get traded away in conference, and should require that no lethal-force decision—including nuclear launch decisions—is ever delegated to an algorithm. Three in four Americans agree: Decisions to kill should be made by people, not machines.

In January of this year, President Donald Trump called for raising the US spending on defense to $1.5 trillion, but has been uncharacteristically quiet about this eye-watering level of defense spending ever since.

Perhaps his silence is because he can see how deeply unpopular the US-Israel war against Iran has turned out to be. Sixty eight percent of Americans say it is not worth the costs, according to a July survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a level of unpopularity that parallels Americans’ views of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And there is no end in sight. In spite of President Trump’s bragging about an imminent US victory in Iran, The Wall Street Journal reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has extended Middle East deployments into 2027.

The US already spends more on the military than any other country—more than twice as much as China and five times as much as Russia. The enormous sums devoted to military spending, and the taxes and debt used to finance them, make the priorities of the American people more difficult to achieve.

Instead of ramping up dangerous conflicts and new weapons systems, we should fund an economy that meets the needs of our families, deploys solutions to the climate crisis, and makes healthcare and housing accessible to everyone. Instead of mounting debt, we should invest in prosperity for future generations.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Sarah Van Gelder
Sarah van Gelder writes "How We Rise" on Substack (howwerise.substack.com) and recently completed a zine, “Community As Strategy,” available free at https://open.substack.com/pub/howwerise/p/community-as-strategy-10-ways-to. She is founding editor of YES! Magazine.
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As Netanyahu Threatens Libel Suit, Haaretz ‘Stands By Its Reporting’ on 10/7 Attack

“As always when a story really hits home, Netanyahu threatens to sue,” said one researcher.


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a news conference in Jerusalem on June 15, 2026.
(Photo by Ronen Zvulun/pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Sep 09, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz did not appear alarmed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threat on Wednesday to sue the outlet over its new reporting that Netanyahu was explicitly warned about the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and led to the Israel Defense Forces’ destruction of Gaza.

After Netanyahu sent a “warning letter” saying he would file a libel lawsuit against Haaretz and journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval over their Tuesday report, the newspaper said simply in a post on social media, “Haaretz stands by its reporting.”

The newspaper based its reporting on accounts from three senior foreign sources, reporting that in September 2023, now-deceased Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar had told an intermediary trusted by both Hamas and Israeli intelligence agencies that an “earthquake” would be coming to Israel.

The warning reportedly came after Sinwar had grown frustrated with deadlocked talks over an exchange of Israeli and Palestinian prisoners.

Sinwar told the intermediary to convey a message to the United Arab Emirates, with whom Netanyahu had developed close ties, “that I am preparing the mother of all surprises. A terrifying operation. Something extraordinary.”

UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed then gave a warning to Netanyahu in a 45-minute phone call weeks before the attack, according to Haaretz.

Netanyahu lashed out at the newspaper in a social media post, saying the reporters “fabricated a false story against the prime minister that never happened and was never created.”

“The Prime Minister’s Office, the National Security Council, and the military secretary meticulously reviewed the prime minister’s call log for those days—and found no trace of it whatsoever,” said Netanyahu, who is behind his top opponent, former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, in polls ahead of legislative elections set for October 27.

Netanyahu’s official social media account also confirmed he had instructed his lawyers to file the libel lawsuit. He blamed security officials for failing to alert him to the October 7 attack early enough after it had begun, repeating a recent claim that they feared he would launch an aggressive response to the attack and set off a war.

“If, instead of fearing a miscalculation, they had instructed the IDF, the Shin Bet, and the standby units to preempt the blow, and if they had updated Prime Minister Netanyahu in time, the terrible massacre could have been prevented,” said Netanyahu’s official account.

Netanyahu has been attempting to account for his actions on October 7 recently, releasing his full schedule from the day of the attacks last week. The log showed he did not speak to IDF officials until several hours after the attack began.

Researcher Shaiel Ben-Ephraim compared Netanyahu’s threat to sue Haaretz to his angry response earlier this year to a report by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, which included testimony from 14 Palestinians who said they had been sexually assaulted in Israeli prisons or during attacks by the IDF or Israeli settlers.

Netanyahu claimed the Times’ reporting was “blood libel” as he threatened to take legal action in May. Thus far, he has not followed through on the threat.

“This will likely end up just like the time he threatened to sue The New York Times,” said Ben-Ephraim, “and didn’t because every word was true.”



On Tuesday, four Israeli opposition leaders called for an independent commission to investigate the October 7 attacks, citing a “series” of revelations about Netanyahu’s actions and reported inaction ahead of the assault.

“Netanyahu and his partners in the October 7 government are unfit to continue in office,” they wrote. “We will work in coordination and with the required responsibility to prevent them from leading to another disaster.”

The prime minister has long resisted calls for an independent investigation, agreeing earlier this year only to a proposal in which half of the commission’s members would be selected by Netanyahu’s own government, in violation of Israeli law—a suggestion that one opposition leader, Yair Lapid, called a “shameful farce” that was meant to “help the prime minister duck responsibility.”

 Israeli Documentary ‘NAZA’ Exposes ‘System of Killing’ in Gaza From Eyes of Secret Intelligence Unit

The directors of the film—which premiered at the Venice Film Festival—said they “felt the responsibility” to expose insider testimony about Israel’s systematic mass killing of Palestinians.


NAZA co-directors Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham attend the photo call for their documentary at the 83rd International Venice Film Festival, at Venice Lido on September 10, 2026.
(Photo by Stefano Rellandini/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Sep 10, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

A documentary film that premiered Thursday at the Venice Film Festival offers a rare inside account of Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza, with former members of a secret Israeli intelligence unit describing how they helped transform the mass killing of Palestinian civilians into a routine, bureaucratized affair.

NAZA, directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, is based on interviews with 24 Israeli military and intelligence insiders, several of whom served in a secret unit that reported directly to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We really are looking at... a system of killing, which is mass killing [and] relies on mass surveillance,” Abraham told reporters in Venice on Thursday. “We felt the responsibility as Israelis to use our position... to bring insider testimony into how the system looks like from the inside... And this is the film that we made.”

Szor said that “a lot of these things are also, it’s important to say... known because they’ve been documented by journalists, Palestinian journalists, in Gaza. It’s footage that has been out there.”

“But I think that we felt that there is still some sort of an importance to take those testimonies and put it in a film in a way that, of course, first of all, it’s different to hear,” she added. “The people who designed and operated those systems talk about it in front of a camera.”

According to the film, one former member bluntly said that the unit’s mission was to “thwart peace.”

However, Abraham and Szor said their purpose was not to expose a handful of rogue soldiers, but to examine the machinery and policies behind the violence.

The documentary’s title refers to an Israeli military acronym used to quantify the civilians expected to be killed in an attack—a chilling bureaucratic shorthand for people often referred to as collateral damage, or, in the so-called “War on Terror” still being waged by the United States 25 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, “bugsplat.”

The film’s sources describe artificial intelligence-assisted targeting, mass surveillance, and the hacking of mobile phones to identify alleged Hamas operatives, sometimes despite the known presence of family members and other civilians.

Israeli forces have operated under loosened rules of engagement that effectively permit the killing of an unlimited number of civilians when targeting even a single low-ranking Hamas member. The Israel Defense Forces utilizes cutting-edge AI technology to select targets at a far faster rate than humans alone could, and destroys them with weapons including 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs—many supplied by the US.

The result has been the killing and wounding of more than 250,000 Palestinians since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. Most of the victims have been civilians, including more than 21,500 children killed and tens of thousands more disabled or wounded.

Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation. Israel is facing an ongoing genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice—also in The Hague—and formally supported by nearly 20 nations.

Abraham and Szor are best known internationally for co-directing with two others the film No Other Land, which chronicled ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the illegally occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers and soldiers. The film won the 2025 Academy Award for best documentary feature.

NAZA—which reportedly received a 25-minute standing ovation at its Venice premiere—is the sole documentary among the films competing for the festival’s famed Golden Lion. It joins a growing body of recent films about the Gaza genocide.

American Doctor, directed by Poh Si Teng, follows US physicians working inside Gaza hospitals amid Israel’s deliberate destruction of the strip’s medical and healthcare systems.

Last year’s The Voice of Hind Rajab offered a harrowing mix of acted scenes and the actual 70-minute audio recording of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl’s desperate final phone call to Palestine Red Crescent Society personnel amid an Israeli massacre of her family as they were trapped in a car under tank fire.

Gaza documentary ‘NAZA’ wows Venice and breaks standing ovation record

Copyright AP Photo

By David Mouriquand

Published on 11/09/2026 - EURONEWS

'NAZA', the new documentary by 'No Other Land' filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, earned a record-breaking 24.5-minute standing ovation following its premiere – the longest-ever ovation recorded at the Venice Film Festival.

The only documentary selected to this year's Venice Film Festival main competition premiered yesterday and has emerged as a serious Golden Lion contender.

NAZA, the new film from Israeli No Other Land directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, shows “in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” according to its official synopsis.

The 80-minute hot-button doc, shot in secrecy at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv during the ongoing Gaza war, features interviews with 24 Israeli military intelligence officers, soldiers and whitleblowers. They discuss how Palestinians are targeted – hence the title of the film, a military acronym used offhandedly by Israeli Military Forces referring to the number of civilians expected to be killed in an airstrike in Gaza. It stands for "Nezek Agavi": collateral damage.

The film builds on reporting between 2023 and 2025 published by the Israeli-Palestinian +972 Magazine, the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, and The Guardian.

NAZA earned a record-breaking 24.5-minute standing ovation following its premiere – the longest-ever ovation recorded at the festival.

Previously, the record was held by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s Gaza-set The Voice of Hind Rajab, about the death of a 6-year-old girl killed by Israeli military fire while attempting to flee Gaza City with her family. The film, which premiered last year in Venice and was one of Euronews Culture's Best Movies of 2025, elicited a 22-minute standing ovation.

Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham for the film 'Naza' during the 83rd edition of the Venice Film Festival - 10 September 2026 AP Photo

Relate

Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor's No Other Land was released in 2024 and followed Israeli settler violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary.

Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Abraham said: “We just told these officers and soldiers, please describe to us what you did. Of course there were other questions that arose but the principal question was a question of detail - sketch it for us, we want to know how it worked. And sometimes just asking the question, you get answers.”

In an interview with Variety, Abraham added: “As Israelis, we found ourselves wanting to use the kind of position that we have - the access that we have to people in our own society who went into the military - to look at that system as it carried out what all human rights organizations are saying is a genocide.”

NAZA is produced by The Guardian, as well as James Wilson and Jonathan Glazer - the Oscar-winning team behind the film The Zone of Interest.

Considering Venice comes to an end tomorrow and the raptuous reaction to NAZA, the question remains: Will it become only the third documentary to win the Golden Lion, following 2013's Sacro GRA and 2022's All The Beauty and the Bloodshed?

NAZA will screen in Spain at San Sebastián International Film Festival on 23 September and then at New York Film Festival on 26 September. As of writing, no official theatrical release date has been announed, but French distribution company MK2 Films is handling world sales rights.

This year's Golden Lion winner will be announced on Saturday 12 September.

Israeli-made film about use of AI for mass killing in Gaza gets record ovation at Venice premiere


A film documenting Israel's use of artificial intelligence to facilitate the mass killing of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip received a record 25-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday. "NAZA" details the brutal Israeli bombardment of the Palestinian territory through anonymous interviews with two dozen whistleblowers from the Israeli military or intelligence services.


Issued on:  11/09/2026 
By: FRANCE 24

Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham took nearly three years to make their film "NAZA". © Stefano Rellandini, AFP

A chilling new documentary about Israel's AI-powered mass killing of civilians in Gaza from two Oscar-winning Israeli filmmakers received a 25-minute ovation at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday.

The audience clapped continuously for Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor after the screening, an AFP reporter witnessed, setting what is thought to be a new record in Venice after a 23-minute ovation for another film about Gaza last year.

In their film "NAZA", Abraham and Szor used conversations with 24 different Israeli military or intelligence whistleblowers who spoke on condition that their identities be protected.

"We are letting the soldiers and the officers speak about what they did," Abraham told AFP.

"The goal was very simple: we wanted to hear in as much detail as possible, how the systems of killing in Gaza looked like, how they operated."

WATCH MORE  Understanding how Israel uses 'Gospel' AI system in Gaza bombings

The 80-minute film left many audience members stunned, with interviewees describing how they felt like they worked in a killing "factory" or a lethal video game.

"NAZA" draws its name from a euphemism used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians that are expected to be killed in an air strike.

It was described as an "urgent gut-punch" by film magazine Screen, while The Hollywood Reporter said it inspired "outrage ...indignity as well. Most certainly disgust, on a profound level, for the current Israeli regime".

Israel's bombardment of Gaza has left around 73,500 Palestinians dead and 174,500 wounded since October 2023, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures the United Nations deems reliable.

The pounding of the territory followed an attack on Israel by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023, that resulted in the death of 1,219 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

First-person testimony

The men and women featured in "NAZA", with their voices and faces digitally altered, detail an AI-powered system known as "Lavender" that was used to identify people for assassination.

01:56




"It was done on a mass scale, like a factory," one says, filmed like all of them at night on a roof terrace with an eerily quiet Tel Aviv as the background.

"Lavender" uses data from the mass surveillance of Gaza, where the entire telecommunications network is monitored by Israel, to identify targets based on their phone calls, movements and interactions.

Israel's bombardment of Gaza has left around 73,500 Palestinians dead since October 2023, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry. © Jack Guez, AFP

"The system's parameters are so complex, it's hard to understand," one interviewee, who said he worked on the system, told the filmmakers.

Others describe the systematic destruction of civilian homes, the disregard for war and humanitarian laws, and a "general atmosphere" of "hatred" towards Palestinians.

"We show in our film a targeting system that is, by design, targeting people in civilian spaces, in their ​family homes," Abraham told Reuters. "Sometimes it can be 500 NAZA ... destroying entire villages or entire neighbourhoods."

Intelligence officers described an AI-assisted ‌system that identified targets using data gathered from thousands of hacked mobile phones. They said the phrase "daddy's home" picked up on a child's phone would be enough to trigger an air strike.

"It's like a video game because everything is done remotely," one interviewee involved in identifying targets says at one point.

Another describes it as "insanely fun".

The officers also described the killing of civilians in Israeli-designated no-go zones, including near aid distribution centres. The location of the zones was not disclosed to residents, one officer said: "They ‌have to learn with blood."

The United Nations said last year that more than 400 Palestinians were killed while seeking aid. Israel acknowledged civilians had been harmed at distribution centres and said it had amended its rules of ​engagement.
Gaza films

The result of a nearly three-year investigation, "NAZA" is the only documentary in competition at this year's Venice Film Festival, which wraps up on Saturday.

Ovations can be easily manipulated and are seen as an imperfect measure of a film, but they do give an indication of the impact on festival-goers and critics.

Along with Palestinian peers Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, Abraham and Szor won an Oscar in 2025 for their film "No Other Land" about Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank.
Their latest movie has been produced by Britain's Jim Wilson with help from Jonathan Glazer – the team behind Auschwitz-set Oscar winner "The Zone of Interest" – as well as Britain's Guardian newspaper.

The war in Gaza retains broad Israeli public support, but Abraham and Szor said they hoped it would encourage Western nations to drop their backing for Israel and apply pressure through sanctions.

Israel caused famine-like conditions due its blockade on supplies last year, according to Palestinian journalists and rights groups. © Eyad Baba, AFP

"Those of us inside Israel and Palestine trying to fight for change, need it," Abraham told AFP. "You are weakening the people inside who are supporting human rights and a political solution by refusing to act."

Israel denies deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza, accusing Hamas of hiding among the population of the densely packed and besieged enclave where around two million people lived before the war.

Last year, "The Voice of Hind Rajab", a docu-drama about the killing of a five-year-old Palestinian girl by Israeli forces, picked up second prize at the festival after receiving a 23-minute standing ovation at its premiere.

Foreign journalists have been prevented from reporting from Gaza since the start of the conflict, except under tightly controlled conditions with the Israeli military.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)

‘Serial Killer Empire’: US Kills 3 in Boat Strike, Bringing Trump Murder Count in ‘Make-Believe War’ to 230

“This is neither ‘peace’ nor ‘strength,’” said one policy expert. “It’s gruesome.”


US President Donald Trump hosts a cabinet meeting in Washington, DC,  with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick.

(Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Sep 10, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke publicly for the first time Wednesday about a shift in the Pentagon’s boat bombing operations, in which the US in recent days has begun interdicting suspected refueling vessels for drug boats in Ecuador’s territorial waters—but he made clear that the military is also still killing people aboard boats, as it did Wednesday in the latest bombing in the Caribbean.

US Southern Command announced that Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere—the recently rebranded name of the Trump administration’s expanding military operation that it says is aimed at stopping drug trafficking—had executed its latest “lethal kinetic strike” on a boat operating along known “narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean,” killing three people that the US claimed were “narco-terrorists.

“Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking,” said US Southern Command, releasing no evidence of the boat’s illegal activities.

International legal experts have emphasized that the US is not in an authorized military conflict with drug cartels and that drug trafficking under international law is treated as a crime by law enforcement agencies—not as an act of force that the US can legally respond to with military action.

Officials and military service members involved in the strikes may be liable for war crimes or murder, experts have warned. Some of the at least 230 victims of the boat bombings since last September have been identified, with family members saying they were not even involved in drug trafficking.

Historian Alexander Aviña used the term “serial killer empire” to describe the Trump administration after the latest bombing.

Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America noted that the announcement by US Southern Command Wednesday night was the first in more than a year of attacks in which the strike order was “not attributed to a person.”




Isacson also pointed out that according to Customs and Border Patrol data, there is little, if any, evidence that bombing boats and killing crew members and passengers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean has done anything to stop the flow of drugs into the US.

Outside the US Embassy in Quito, Ecuador, Rubio told reporters Wednesday that as the US also begins conducting joint operations with Ecuador to interdict suspected refueling vessels in the country’s territorial waters, “we have to operate according to their laws.”

In those operations, people aboard the boats have been removed and handed over to Ecuadorian authorities before the US has conducted strikes.

Rubio at one point referred to the lethal boat bombings as operations that took place “earlier, last year,” but also emphasized, “We still blow up ships if need be.”

Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group said the administration is continuing its campaign of “illegal killing in a make-believe war.”

The latest boat bombing also came as Rubio announced that the US was designating Los Tiguerones, an Ecuadorian gang, as a foreign terrorist organization, empowering the administration to freeze the group’s assets in US financial institutions.

The designation does not give the US the legal authority to carry out military strikes against Los Tiguerones or other gangs the administration has designated as terrorist groups—but a key element of Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere’s expansion in Latin America has been joint military operations, including a US-Ecuadorian joint attack on a dairy farm where officials had claimed drug traffickers were operating.

The new designation “is part of [the administration’s] narrative about a new ‘War on Terror’ against the narcos,” said Finucane.

Glaeldys González Calanche, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, told The New York Times that Los Tiguerones has had diminishing power and influence in Ecuador in recent years and expressed surprise at the designation.

Ecuadorian gangs “operate at the lowest links of the chain” of drug trafficking operations in Latin America, González told the Times. “They provide services, like moving cargo from point A to point B. Ecuadorian groups are not decisive, they aren’t major players.”

‘Deaths Will Continue to Mount,’ Scientist Warns After August and Summer 2026 Set US Heat Records

“It’s unconscionable that the federal government is putting specific industry interests, including fossil fuel companies’ profits, ahead of people’s health and safety.”


The rubble of a burned-out residential home smolders in the Balboa neighborhood of Spokane, Washington, on August 2, 2026.
(Photo by Erick Doxey/AFP via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Sep 09, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Under US President Donald Trump’s predecessor, government scientists used the release of data about record-breaking temperatures to warn that “we are facing a climate crisis,” but with the Republican climate denier back in the White House, that commentary now comes from outside experts.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Wednesday that 2026 had the warmest August ever recorded in the contiguous United States. Following a July that broke a Dust Bowl record, August averaged 75.6°F—which was 3.5°F above the 20th-century average—with daytime maximum temperatures averaging 88.6°F.

This year also featured the hottest meteorological summer—June to August—in the 132-year record, with an average temperature of 74.4°F, or 3°F above average, according to NOAA. As CNN reported, “The Dust Bowl summer of 1936 has... long been regarded as the benchmark of hottest summers in the US, but has now been equaled or eclipsed twice in the past five years thanks to the influence of human-caused climate change,” both in 2026 and 2021.

Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, told Agence France-Presse that “it is now time to stop acting surprised that our warming planet keeps getting warmer.”

“This is occurring exactly as forecast by scientists literally decades ago,” he stressed. “The interesting question is not whether we will keep breaking heat records (we will), but whether we’re going to do anything about it or just stand there while the climate train runs us over.”

NOAA said that “record-breaking warmth was widespread across the West, Southwest, southern Rockies, and southwestern Plains, as well as the southern Florida Peninsula. California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado each set records for their warmest August average temperature. California and New Mexico also recorded their warmest average daytime maximum temperatures on record, while average nighttime minimum temperatures were record warm in California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado.”

Beyond the Lower 48, “Alaska’s average temperature during August was 52.4°F, 2.9°F above the 1925-2000 average, ranking in the warmest third of the 102-year record. Alaska’s June-August average temperature was 51.6°F, 1.1°F above average and ranking in the warmest third of the record,” the agency detailed.

“Hawaii’s average temperature during August was 70.8°F, 1.4°F above the 1991-2020 average, ranking as the third-warmest August in the 36-year record,” the agency added. “Hawaii’s June-August average temperature was 69.4°F, 0.8°F above average and ranking in the warmest third of the record. Hawaii’s average temperature during August was 70.8°F, 1.4°F above the 1991-2020 average.”




Marc Alessi, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement that “we now live in a completely different climate than the one that existed 50 years ago. Heat records were shattered in all parts of the globe this summer, from the United States to Europe to Asia.”

Alessi pointed to El Niño, the warm phase of a key pattern in the Pacific Ocean. Recent research suggests fossil fuel-driven global heating has intensified El Niños, and experts have said that the currently developing event “may be stronger than anything since our monitoring began” and make 2027 the hottest year humanity has ever endured.

“While the developing super El Niño undoubtedly impacted the summer’s global temperature and heat records, we must recognize that this El Niño is occurring on top of a changed climate from the burning of fossil fuels,” Alessi said. “In other words, we can expect record-breaking summers for generations to come if nations fail to sharply curtail heat-trapping emissions.”

“What’s equally clear is that policymakers—especially in richer, high-emitting countries like the United States—must act urgently to limit climate change impacts and hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its role in the crisis,” he continued. “Extreme heat and back-to-back heatwaves have taken a deadly toll this summer in the United States and across the world. Without action to reduce global warming emissions and invest in climate resilience measures, heat-related illnesses and deaths will continue to mount.”

Despite the threats currently posed by the global crisis, and expectations that they will only get worse as the world blows past the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, “the Trump administration has attacked and dismantled policies to limit heat-trapping emissions and to prepare for climate disasters,” Alessi noted.

After openly courting Big Oil on the campaign trail, Trump has served fossil fuel industry interests in a range of ways since returning to the White House last year, including by declaring a national energy emergency, waging a war on renewable power projects, and ditching the Paris Agreement, again.

“Failure of the administration and Congress to act has also left workers exposed to killer heat without comprehensive, enforceable heat-health protections,” Alessi said. “It’s unconscionable that the federal government is putting specific industry interests, including fossil fuel companies’ profits, ahead of people’s health and safety.”

NOAA’s new data was released less than two months away from the midterm elections—which which Democrats hope to win back majorities in Congress from Trump’s Republican Party—and as firefighters in Türkiye, host of the next United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31), battled deadly blazes.

“It is not enough merely to respond to the consequences of the climate crisis. We must eliminate the causes that exacerbate it,” Efe Baysal, Türkiye manager at the global advocacy group 350.org, said Wednesday, calling for a phaseout of fossil fuels. “COP31 is an opportunity for Türkiye to demonstrate true leadership in this direction.”