Exclusive: Coordinated airstrikes on territory held by al-Shabaab are driving the civilian population to find refuge alongside a river where rising water levels are a threat to safety. Is it a deliberate military strategy?

The water was rising rapidly. It had already reached Cayni Ali’s waist. Her home, five metres from the flooded River Juba in southern Somalia, never stood a chance. There was nowhere to go. Ali’s city of Jilib was under attack. Repeated airstrikes, said the mother of six, were pinning its population beside the rising river.

“The drones come all the time,” said the 27-year-old. “We hear them constantly. They kill animals, civilians. The town is big but destruction is everywhere.”

Drawing on dozens of interviews with intelligence and police officers across two continents, a Guardian investigation reveals the murderous cost of our insatiable appetite for cocaine

Read more: Latin American organised crime ‘may operate in 16 European countries’
Explainer: What is state capture and why does it matter?

As abductions go, few have been more brazen. Alan Jalloh was with two friends outside Goodies supermarket, frantic as usual with late afternoon shoppers. Rush hour in downtown Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, was under way with familiar gusto.

A black Toyota Rav4 forced its way through the Peninsula highway traffic. Witnesses describe burly white men leaping out, yanking on balaclavas. Jalloh, 40, seemed to freeze. As did his two friends, one a famous Freetown footballer. All three were dragged into the waiting SUV. None of them have been seen since.

Amid fears of fresh bloodshed, the country is hoping its offer of education and employment can provide a model for other nations to follow

It didn’t matter that he was so frail he could barely walk. Rahmatalla Abdeen knew if they found him he would be shot. For two days, the 65-year-old had clung to the back of a moped as it navigated an area teeming with militia.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had seized this corner of Sudan after crossing the border from Ethiopia. Abdeen was lucky: on 17 May, he became the last known refugee to cross into Ethiopia from Sudan.

Abdiqadir Salah was pierced by shrapnel in a bombing that killed 12 in Somalia. But as the US denies civilians were hurt they face no hope of compensation

Read more: Killed walking home from school: why did Somali children become targets of US drone strikes?

A seven-year-old boy who was riddled with shrapnel during a deadly US airstrike in Somalia faces losing his ability to walk unless he has a £750 emergency operation.

But Abdiqadir Salah’s family cannot afford the surgery and the US – which refuses to admit that any civilians were killed or injured during its attack six months ago – appears unwilling to pay compensation to those affected by airstrikes in Somalia.

Six months ago, at least 12 people, including eight children, died during a US attack. The US has never admitted the civilian deaths. Here, the Guardian pieces together what happened that day

Explainer: Why is the US bombing Somalia – and who are the airstrikes killing?

They had just settled down for breakfast when the noise came. Some paused in the eating of their slow-cooked beans – cambuulo – spooked by the haunting high-pitched hum. Others pressed their faces against windows, scanning skywards. Farmers in nearby maize fields watched the objects circling above Jamaame, a town in southern Somalia.

Shortly after 9am on 15 November 2025, Jamaame shuddered from a series of explosions.

Amazon and Sony among firms that may have sourced coltan, used in phones, from supply chains controlled by the M23 rebels, says Global Witness

Leading global brands including Amazon, Ericsson and Sony are “likely” to have sourced minerals linked to a militia accused of widespread sexual violence, summary executions and torture, a new investigation claims.

The companies allegedly, but unknowingly, acquired coltan smuggled from mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that are occupied by the M23 militia, which has committed myriad atrocities in eastern DRC.

More than 20,000 attacks on markets, farmland and food distribution systems have been recorded since 2018

Hunger is being increasingly exploited as a weapon of war with more than 20,000 documented incidents of “food-related violence” in the past eight years, new analysis reveals.

Attacks include 1,261 strikes on markets used by families for daily groceries and 863 incidents in which food distribution systems were targeted and workers killed.

The RSF leadership, accused of committing genocide, used UAE as a ‘safe haven’ for family members and their wealth, records show

A network linked to the leadership of a militia accused of genocide has amassed a vast property portfolio in Dubai as part of a sprawling “paramilitary-industrial complex” across Africa and the Middle East, an investigation has revealed.

Family members, sanctioned individuals, and entities linked to the leader of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, have acquired more than 20 luxury properties, worth £17.7m, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to the Sentry, a US investigative group.

Research shows natural hazards linked to climate crisis disrupted 23 elections in 18 countries in 2024

Democracy is under mounting threat from the climate crisis, with new analysis documenting how elections are increasingly shaped not only by political forces but also by floods, wildfires and extreme weather.

At least 94 elections and referendums across 52 countries have been disrupted by climate-related impacts over the last two decades, researchers found.

Donors exceed funding target at Berlin conference but prospects for ceasefire remain distant

More than £1bn (€1.15bn) has been pledged for war-ravaged Sudan at a conference in Berlin, eclipsing the funding target organisers had set to help mitigate the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

The financial commitments made on Wednesday will also help offset a chronic humanitarian funding shortfall in a country devastated by three years of conflict, where two-thirds of its population – 34m people – require assistance.

British aid to double as 19m people face acute hunger, but summit unlikely to end conflict amid Saudi-UAE tensions

The British foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, will urge Sudan’s warring parties to “cease bloodshed” during a major conference on Wednesday, which analysts believe is unlikely to deliver a significant step towards peace.

The talks in Berlin – held on the third anniversary of the start of Sudan’s ruinous war – are expected to help address a catastrophic funding shortfall that is compounding the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

A top UN official has criticised lack of global urgency as reports confirm the world’s largest humanitarian crisis is worsening

Efforts to end Sudan’s catastrophic war have been criticised as “unacceptable” by the country’s top UN official as a series of new reports confirm that the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis is worsening.

Speaking to the Guardian on the eve of the third anniversary of the war, Denise Brown expressed her concern over the apparent lack of political urgency to end a conflict that has forced 14 million Sudanese to flee their homes. Tens of thousands of people are missing.

Over two days in October 2025, up to 10,000 people are believed to have been massacred; a further 40,000 civilians from the Sudanese city are still unaccounted for. This is the story of what happened

In the pistachio green Toyota Land Cruiser rattling over the desert plain, Aboud Khater pressed his foot to the floor. Behind, the sun rose above El Fasher. Smoke belched from the stricken city. Khater was driving the last vehicle of the final evacuation convoy from El Fasher.

It was 5:45am on 27 October 2025. He couldn’t have waited any longer. The historic capital of Sudan’s sprawling region of Darfur would capitulate in the next two hours.

In historic speech to mark UN’s 80th anniversary, secretary general makes impassioned plea for multilateralism and international law amid drastic US funding cuts

The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, will warn on Saturday of the peril posed by “powerful forces lining up to undermine global cooperation” in an address to mark the 80th anniversary of the UN’s first major meeting.

Speaking in London’s Methodist Central Hall – the site where eight decades earlier delegates from 51 countries came together for the inaugural session of the general assembly – the UN head will make an impassioned plea for the virtues of multilateralism and international law to prevail during a period of deepening global uncertainty.

Members of Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms network tell Guardian they didn’t mind missing out on the Nobel peace prize because ‘we only want to help’

Doing good gets you killed in Sudan. It was why Amira did not tell her mother when she joined a volunteer group that felt like the only thing stopping her country sliding deeper into dystopia.

Each morningshe secretly crossed the shifting frontline of Sudan’s North Kordofan state. Amira was entering territory held by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), paramilitaries who have committed countless war crimes, including genocide, during the country’s cataclysmic war.

Exclusive Guardian investigation finds companies set up by people sanctioned by US hired Colombian fighters for Rapid Support Forces, widely suspected of war crimes in Sudan

Close to Tottenham Hotspur’s shiny football stadium in London is a squat, nondescript block of flats. It holds a grim secret beyond the unremarkable beige brickwork – a cramped, second-floor apartment in the British capital, linked to murderous atrocities unfolding 3,000 miles south.

The one-bedroom flat off north London’s Creighton Road is, according to UK government records, tied to a transnational network of companies involved in the mass recruitment of mercenaries to fight in Sudan alongside paramilitaries accused of myriad war crimes and genocide.

Senior commanders accused of atrocities against civilians face asset freezes – but no action against key backer UAE

The UK has placed sanctions on four senior commanders of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces suspected of involvement in “heinous” violence against civilians in the city of El Fasher, but decided not to take any action against their key military and diplomatic backer, the United Arab Emirates, or their chief commander.

British officials suggested they preferred to use their leverage with the UAE and the RSF commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, privately, but admitted there was little sign of a ceasefire in Sudan’s near three-year civil war.