A town grieves loss of children killed by Hezbollah rocket – DW – 08/07/2025
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
DW
21 hours ago
- DW
A town grieves loss of children killed by Hezbollah rocket – DW – 08/07/2025
A year ago, during the fighting between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah, a rocket fell on a playground, killing 12 children. DW's Rama Jarmakani visited the town of Majdal Shams to see how the community has been coping with the tragic loss.
DW
a day ago
- DW
Fact Check: Fake claim of UK officers 'captured' in Ukraine – DW – 08/07/2025
A demonstrably made-up story of British military officers being "captured" during a Russian raid in Ukraine has spread online this week, even being repeated by former British lawmakers. DW takes a look. The AI-generated images resemble cheap cartoons, the floating passport covers are illegible and there is no evidence that their alleged holders even exist. Nevertheless, an entirely fabricated story of three British military officers being "captured" in a Russian raid on a Ukrainian naval base has spread online in the past week – even being shared by two former British members of parliament and gaining traction from Norway to Pakistan. DW takes a look at a narrative which bears all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation and the channels via which such stories spread. Claim: "Russian Spetsnaz RAID and capture senior UK officers in Ochakov!" DW Fact Check: False A story appeared in Russian media last week that three British military officers – supposedly two colonels in the British Army and an officer from British military intelligence (MI6) – were captured in a Russian raid on a Ukrainian naval base in the small southern city of Ochakiv (known in Russian as Ochakov). One of the most prominent social media posts (screenshot above) regurgitating the story has accrued almost 500,000 views on X (formerly Twitter), another has almost 400,000 and another has over 222,000. The "colonels" were named as "psychological ops specialist Edward Blake" and "Richard Carroll – a Ministry of Defence official with Middle East experience" who were captured during a "lightning-fast" nighttime raid by elite (special forces) troops in an operation codenamed "Skat-12." A spectacular military and diplomatic coup were it true – which it's not; it's completely made up. As Craig Langford from the specialist UK Defence Journal (UKDJ) analyzed, there is no trace of "Edward Blake" or "Richard Carroll" in any recent British Armed Forces or Ministry of Defence (MoD) records. "In short, there is no proof these individuals exist, let alone that they were captured," wrote Langford, while a spokesman for the MoD refused to even acknowledge the story when asked by DW. What's more, four different images used to illustrate the story across various media outlets and social media channels don't only depict six different men (who don't exist); they have also demonstrably been generated using artificial intelligence. The AI image detection tool SightEngine puts the probability of the four images being AI-generated at between 91% and 99%, but obvious visual errors suffice: cartoonish faces, oversized limbs, upside-down rifles, illegible passport covers, gibberish documents and an officer's cap missing its peak. "The uniforms worn by the kneeling men also reveal the image as a fake," explained Langford for the UKDJ, referring to one of the main image at the top of this article, which appeared in some of the fake reporting. "While the camouflage superficially resembles British Army patterns, the details are wrong. Military clothing follows strict patterns and standards, especially in operational environments, and these deviations suggest that the uniforms were generated based on visual approximations rather than real references." But this didn't stop the story from appearing in several Russian outlets (here, here and here) before being reproduced in English on the Kremlin-controlled and Serbia's state-owned . DW is banned in Russia but B92 didn't respond to a request for comment on why they ran the story. For Roman Osadchuk, Director of Threat Intelligence at LetsData and Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, the whole story is typical of a Russian disinformation operation. "The Kremlin effectively has sub-contractors such as the Social Design Agency or Storm 15-16 who will have groups of people conceiving stories and drawing up options for dissemination," he tells DW from Kyiv, Ukraine. "The idea is simple: seed it on fringe or fake websites, forward it via Telegram channels until more outlets pick it up and begin to cite each other, a process known as media laundering. Then more mature Telegram channels with more followers will pick it up, and finally mainstream Russian media kick in, and the echo chamber grows. Then, there's a chance that certain foreign actors will pick it up." Indeed, the story soon found mouthpieces in western Europe, including the Norwegian communist and conspiracy theorist Pal Steigan – who later retracted the story after recognizing that it was "poorly fact-checked on our part." In the United Kingdom, the story was amplified by former members of parliament George Galloway – who worked as a presenter on the Russian state-owned RT broadcaster for nine years until 2022 and has blamed NATO and the West for Russia's invasion of Ukraine – and Andrew Bridgen, who was expelled from the center-right Conservative Party in 2023 for tweeting that the use of COVID-19 vaccines was "the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust." While DW approached both Galloway (who has over 825,000 followers on X) and Bridgen (over 300,000) for comment, requests which have gone unanswered, the story even made it as far as Pakistan. According to Osadchuk, the target audience abroad is "disgruntled people who believe that 'the mainstream media won't publish this.'" But he thinks the bigger audience is actually inside Russia itself, "to show Russians how mighty the military is." This is supported by an element of the story which would likely strike a greater chord among Russian readers than elsewhere; the idea of the United Kingdom as a shadowy geopolitical operator. "A key trope of Russian propaganda is that the 'Anglo-Saxons' are puppeteers conducting the war," explains Osadchuk. "It's the trope of the external enemy. It's not Ukraine resisting; the British must be behind it. The British in particular are often considered responsible for military intelligence and covert operations, hence the claim that they captured a 'psychological operations officer' specifically." So, when confronted with intentionally erroneous stories such as this, how best to respond? Is it best to simply ignore them to prevent them spreading? Or does there come a point when some engagement is necessary? "We can ignore disinformation until certain thresholds, which vary according to topic, platform and country," advises Roman Osadchuk. "If it's just a crazy comment beneath a social media post with five views, then just ignore it. But if a story starts to be disseminated on multiple platforms or if, in this case, former members of a country's parliament are sharing it, it starts to become more substantial and should be debunked."
DW
2 days ago
- DW
The hidden cost of peace in northern Nigeria – DW – 08/06/2025
In northern Nigeria, some communities have resorted to 'paying' bandit groups to secure some level of peace. But doing so could put the integrity of the nation at risk, analysts warn. Along the Sokoto-Zamfara state line, close to the Nigeria-Niger border, the villages of Sabon Birni and Isa have been abandoned. To avoid the same fate, some other villages have tried to strike peace deals with local bandit groups. This comes after years of failed efforts from the Nigerian state to stamp out armed non-state actors from terrorizing rural communities in the northern Nigerian states of Zamfara, Sokoto and Katsina. Numerous villagers who spoke to DW told of family members being abducted and killed. Their livelihoods, which primarily consist of farming sorghum, millet, and livestock, and then trading their produce in nearby market towns, have been severely disrupted. Not only are local families facing a growing food shortage due to farms being abandoned or their harvests being looted, but Nigeria's entire northern region — historically the nation's agricultural heartland — can no longer produce enough food. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video "We have been pleading for peace. We want to live and farm in peace. We have no access to our farms. We have to beg before we can feed our families," Suraju Mohammed from Sokoto told DW, adding that nothing is more important than peace. Peacebuilding analyst Dengiyefa Angalapu from the Lagos-based Centre for Democracy and Development describes the hard choices faced by villagers as "the failure of the social contract between the Nigerian government and the Nigerian people." Seeking a peace deal with violent non-state actors becomes "a rational survival calculus," he told DW. "Communities know these actors. They will tell you: "I know his father, I know his mother. This person grew up with us," Angalapu said. Farmers who want to return to their fields to produce food for their families risk abductions or face taxes imposed on them by the violent groups. Bandit territories overlap, so even if a peace deal is reached with one group in exchange for protection fees, fuel, and or food sharing, another group does not necessarily respect this. Recently, armed bandits on motorbikes rode into Zamfara State's Sabongarin Damri, killing 11 people and kidnapping at least 70 others, including women and children. "We want an end to the bloodshed. So, we are in support of the deal," Suraju Mohammed told DW, "We want the killings to stop and live peacefully." Analysts and international observers say there are areas of Nigeria now no longer considered under the government's control. For national security, this has severe implications. "There is now some level of parallel governance," Angalapu told DW. Negotiations with the violent gangs give the gangs some level of legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens, he said, which makes it difficult to stop them recruiting. "They tell communities: 'We are actually fighting for you. This government cannot protect you' — so in the long run it is very disadvantageous for national security." But on a local level, Angalapu says communities have little choice. "It's not as though they want these peace agreements. It's an act of survival. We have to strengthen the state capacity to protect these communities," he told DW. But for some community members like Aisha Tukur from Zamfara State making peace with the bandits is unacceptable: "They killed eight people in Turmi, four in Damne, three in Dauku. So, how do we make peace with that? There would not be any reconciliation between us. They should be prosecuted. They are heartless. They don't listen to our pleas." Local state governments have been battling violent non-state actors for years. But so far, neither mediation efforts, de-radicalization campaigns, nor force through armed patrols and airstrikes from the Nigerian military have brought long-lasting stability. Umaimah Abubakar fled the farming village of Ranganda, about 50 km (31 miles) north of Sokoto city, and now lives in an internally displaced peoples' camp. "The government hasn't really done anything for us except for paying ransoms whenever the bandits demanded. Even after that, the bandits would still come back months later," Abubakar told DW. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Bandit gangs maintain camps in a huge forest straddling Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna and Niger states. The unrest is believed to have started from clashes between herders and farmers over land and resources, but later evolved into a broader conflict fueled by arms trafficking made possible by insecurity in the Sahel region. To make matters worse, the violence is spreading from the northwest, and the gangs are becoming increasingly well-armed and coordinated. Increasing cooperation between the criminal gangs, who are primarily motivated by money, and jihadists — who are waging a separate, 16-year-old-armed insurrection in the northeast — has seen attacks worsen. Western monitors suggest bandits killed more civilians than the jihadists did from 2018 to 2023.
