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A view of Al Qunaitra, where, over the past year since the fall of the Assad regime, the Israeli army has detained more than 40 people, established nine military bases in and around civilian settlements and strategic hills, and took over approximately 12,000 acres of land in the province in southern Syria on December 17, 2025. [Bakr Al Kasem – Anadolu Agency]
Tensions are rising between Israel and Turkey over the Turkish presence in Syria. Two Western intelligence sources told i24NEWS on Thursday that Turkey has been working in recent weeks to deploy radar systems inside Syrian territory.
The move is expected to significantly limit Israel’s freedom of movement in Syrian airspace. It could also affect Israel’s ability to use Syrian airspace to carry out operations in other areas, including Iran.
According to foreign reports, the deployment of Turkish radars in Syria would allow Turkey to track the movement of Israeli aircraft in Syrian skies, even while they are passing through on their way to missions in Iraq and Iran. This capability could place major restrictions on the operational freedom of the Israeli air force.
An Israeli security source told the website that the possibility of Turkey establishing a military base in Syria represents a “potential threat”. The source added: “If a Turkish air base is established, this would harm Israel’s freedom of action in Syria.”
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Burhanettin Duran in Antalya, Turkiye on April 13, 2025. [Hakan Nural – Anadolu Agency]
Turkey has rejected comments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accusing Ankara of harbouring “imperial ambitions”, describing the remarks as a cheap tactic aimed at diverting attention from Israel’s crimes in the region.
Burhanettin Duran, head of the Turkish presidency’s communications directorate, said on Tuesday that Israel’s “hysterical approach” to Turkey’s growing power and influence was “ridiculous”, adding that Ankara would continue to stand firmly with those seeking peace and stability.
Duran made the comments in a social media post responding to statements by Netanyahu during a summit held in Jerusalem on Monday, attended by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides.
He said Israel’s long-standing hysterical approach, as a destabilizing force in the region, towards Turkey’s influence “can only be described as ridiculous”, adding that under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey has become a guarantor of peace and stability.
Duran strongly criticised Netanyahu’s government, saying it had brought “blood and tears” to the region. He said Israel continues to act as an occupying power in Palestine and Syria, while attempting to conceal “expansionist ambitions under the banner of national security”.
He said Israeli officials’ references to the “imperial ambitions of others” amounted to a glaring contradiction, particularly in light of the perpetration of one of the most horrific genocides in history.
Duran said Israel has launched attacks on seven countries in the Middle East over the past two years, adding that Netanyahu’s government has been “a disaster in every sense of the word”, not only for the region but also for Israeli society.
He accused Israel of trying to divert attention from its actions by attacking Turkey, stressing that Ankara would not be deterred from supporting the Palestinian people.
“We in Turkey will continue to stand firmly with all those who seek peace and stability,” Duran said, adding that such remarks would not prevent Turkey from backing “our Palestinian brothers”.
He concluded by saying that peace would ultimately prevail, despite efforts to undermine it.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Thousands of demonstrators gather at Museumplein demanding firm government action to stop the Israeli attacks on Gaza, in Amsterdam on October 5, 2025. (Photo by Mouneb Taim/Anadolu via Getty Images)
An estimated 250,000 people dressed in red crowded into Museum Square in Amsterdam, demanding that the Dutch government end its support for Israel.
Expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and pressuring Dutch officials to end their longtime support for Israel were the goals of a massive demonstration in Amsterdam Sunday—one of the largest pro-Palestine protests held in Europe over the weekend as the two-year anniversary of Israel’s bombardment of the exclave approached.
“The bloodshed must stop—and we unfortunately have to stand here because we have such an incredibly weak government that doesn’t dare to draw a red line. That’s why we are here, in the hope that it helps,” protester Marieke van Zijl told the Associated Press on Sunday in Museum Square in central Amsterdam, where an estimated 250,000 people gathered.
The protests in Amsterdam and across Europe came as Israel garnered global condemnation for its interception of more than 400 humanitarians from around the world who sailed toward Gaza in recent weeks with the Global Sumud Flotilla with the aim of delivering aid to the besieged territory, where a famine was declared in August due to Israel’s near-total blockade on food, water, fuel, and other necessities entering Gaza.
Wow!
Amsterdam today 🇳🇱
A tsunami of people demanding an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
In Sofia, Bulgaria, citizens carried signs reading, “Gaza: Starvation Is a Weapon of War,” while in Turkey’s capital of Ankara, protesters held up placards condemning Israel’s genocide in Gaza, where more than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023.
Scholars on genocide and the Holocaust have joined leading human rights organizations—including some in Israel—and United Nations experts in declaring that Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is a genocide. The International Court of Justice is also considering an ongoing genocide case brought by South Africa regarding the military assault and starvation policy.
In Amsterdam, most protesters wore red in solidarity with Palestine and many displayed Palestinian flags.
In the Netherlands, the government has long been a staunch supporter of Israel but in recent months has increasingly denounced its attacks on Gaza. In July it banned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir from entering the country because they “repeatedly incited violence against the Palestinian population.”
On Friday, Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel said he was “unlikely” to grant an export license to send F-35 fighter jet components to Israel. The country’s Supreme Court last week ordered the government to review the currently suspended license to determine whether reinstating it would violate international law. The Netherlands is home to one of three regional warehouses for components of the US-made fighter jets.
Marjon Rozema, a spokesperson for Amnesty International, which helped organize the demonstration, called for the Dutch government to use “all economic and diplomatic means to increase pressure on Israel.”
Mass demonstrations were also held over the weekend in countries including Spain and Italy, where demonstrators demanded the release of organizers who had been aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla.
Hundreds of thousands of people marched in Rome, Madrid, and Barcelona, home of former Mayor Ada Colau, who was among those detained by Israel last week.
JUST IN: 300,000 people marched in Barcelona, one of the LARGEST pro-Palestinian protests in the city’s history! pic.twitter.com/fdPVrDNDwd
Organizers in Rome said 1 million people took part in Saturday’s march, which followed Friday’s one-day general strike across Italy.
“Governments, especially the Italians, are not taking action against what is happening in Gaza,” one university teacher told the BBC on Friday at a rally. “We’re here to say that it is time to intervene and solve things.”
Hundreds of thousands fill the streets of Rome in support of Gaza and in protest against the genocide. pic.twitter.com/NNovgFmI69
“The Italian demonstrations for Gaza and the flotilla have been of a rather unprecedented power in recent times,” said scholar Bruno Montesano on Monday. “And they have had a global resonance that is equally surprising. And perhaps its strength derived from a sort of widespread spontaneous humanitarianism, as well as from the clashing contradictions between Western liberal-democratic chatter—certainly weakened even further due to the rise of the far right—and the racist and colonial practice of supporting Israeli fascism.”
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Genocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
A firefighter works to extinguish a wildfire in the village of Vilaza in northwestern Spain on August 12, 2025. (Photo: Miguel Riopa/AFP via Getty Images)
Fire-related deaths were reported in Turkey, Spain, Montenegro, and Albania.
With firefighters in southern Europe battling blazes that have killed people in multiple countries and forced thousands to evacuate, Spain’s environment minister on Wednesday called the wildfires a “clear warning” of the climate emergency driven by the fossil fuel industry.
While authorities have cited a variety of causes for current fires across the continent, from arson to “careless farming practices, improperly maintained power cables, and summer lightning storms,” scientists have long stressed that wildfires are getting worse as humanity heats the planet with fossil fuels.
The Spanish minister, Sara Aagesen, told the radio network Cadena SER that “the fires are one of the parts of the impact of that climate change, which is why we have to do all we can when it comes to prevention.”
“Our country is especially vulnerable to climate change. We have resources now but, given that the scientific evidence and the general expectation point to it having an ever greater impact, we need to work to reinforce and professionalize those resources,” Aagesen added in remarks translated by The Guardian.
Firefighters are struggling to control wildfires blazing across Europe during a severe heatwave. pic.twitter.com/ndHTbNx6RM
The Spanish meteorological agency, AEMET, said on social media Wednesday that “the danger of wildfires continues at very high or extreme levels in most of Spain, despite the likelihood of showers in many areas,” and urged residents to “take extreme precautions!”
The heatwave impacting Spain “peaked on Tuesday with temperatures as high as 45°C (113°F),” according to Reuters. AEMET warned that “starting Thursday, the heat will intensify again,” and is likely to continue through Monday.
The heatwave is also a sign of climate change, Akshay Deoras, a research scientist in the Meteorology Department at the U.K.’s University of Reading, toldAgence France-Presse this week.
“Thanks to climate change, we now live in a significantly warmer world,” Deoras said, adding that “many still underestimate the danger.”
Parts of Europe are once again facing intense heatwaves, with destructive wildfires affecting France, Portugal and Spain.
There have been at least two fire-related deaths in Spain this week: a man working at a horse stable on the outskirts of the Spanish capital Madrid, and a 35-year-old volunteer firefighter trying to make firebreaks near the town of Nogarejas, in the Castile and León region.
Acknowledging the firefighter’s death on social media Tuesday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez sent his “deepest condolences to their family, friends, and colleagues,” and wished “much strength and a speedy recovery to the people injured in that same fire.”
According toThe New York Times, deaths tied to the fires were also reported in Turkey, Montenegro, and Albania. Additionally, The Guardiannoted, “a 4-year-old boy who was found unconscious in his family’s car in Sardinia died in Rome on Monday after suffering irreversible brain damage caused by heatstroke.”
There are also fires in Greece, France, and Portugal, where the mayor of Vila Real, Alexandre Favaios, declared that “we are being cooked alive, this cannot continue.”
🔥Fire danger forecast for 11–17 Aug shows extreme to very extreme FWI anomalies across Europe.
Reuters on Wednesday highlightedGreenpeace estimates that investing €1 billion, or $1.17 billion, annually in forest management could save 9.9 million hectares or 24.5 million acres—an area bigger than Portugal—and tens of billions of euros spent on firefighting and restoration work.
The European fires are raging roughly three months out from the next United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, which is scheduled to begin on November 10 in Belém, Brazil.
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark RichardsGreenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Wildfires have scorched more than 40,000 hectares of land so far this year across the UK – an area more than twice the size of the Scottish city of Glasgow.
This is already a record amount of land burned in a single year, far exceeding the previous high, Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS) data shows.
It is also almost four times the average area burned in wildfires by this stage of the year over 2012-24 – and 50% higher than the previous record amount burned by this time in 2019.
The burned area overtook the previous annual record in April, BBC News reported at the time, and has continued to soar in the months since.
Major wildfires
The chart below shows that UK wildfires in 2025 so far have already burned by far the largest area of land over any calendar year since GWIS records began in 2012. The previous record year was 2019, followed by 2022, while 2024 saw the lowest area size burned.
Annual land area burned by wildfires across the UK from 2012 to 2025 (red), alongside the average area burned each year over 2012-24. Source: Global Wildfire Information System.
Climate change can increase the risk and impact of wildfires. Warmer temperatures and drought can leave land parched and dry out vegetation, which helps fires spread more rapidly. Climate change is making these types of extreme conditions more likely to occur, as well as more severe.
Fire services in England and Wales responded to 564 wildfires from January to June 2025 – an increase from 69 fires in the same period last year, the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) said in a statement in June.
Most wildfires in the UK are caused by human activity, whether accidental or deliberate, according to the NFCC. Some common ignition sources are disposable barbecues, lit cigarettes and campfires.
Jessica Richter, a research analyst at Global Forest Watch, says that, while fires are also a key part of some ecosystems, climate change is the “major driver behind the increasing fire activity around the globe”. She tells Carbon Brief:
“As we see more fires, we’re going to see more carbon being emitted and that’s just going to be, for lack of a better phrasing, adding fuel to the fire.”
Examples of 2025 wildfires around Galloway (1) and Inverness (2) in Scotland, and a wildfire in Powys (3) in Wales. Source: FIRMS, MapTiler, OpenStreetMap contributors.
The UK has also recorded its highest-ever wildfire emissions this year, according to Copernicus, which was “primarily driven” by major wildfires in Scotland from late June to early July.
These were the largest wildfires ever recorded in the country, reported the Scotsman. They “ravaged” land in Moray and the Highlands in the north of the country, the newspaper added.
Scotland experienced an extreme wildfire in Galloway Forest Park in April, which was “so intense it could be seen from space”, the Financial Times said.
Elsewhere, in April, the Belfast News Letter reported that firefighters tackled almost 150 fires on the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland.
More recently, BBC News reported that firefighters in Dorset, England received “non-stop” wildfire calls in the first weekend of August, with one blaze “engulf[ing] an area the size of 30 football pitches”.
Wildfires have also caused devastation across many parts of Europe in recent weeks – including Albania, Cyprus, France, Greece, Spain and Turkey – as well as in the US and Canada.
Words by Orla Dwyer. Analysis by Ho Woo Nam. Charts by Tom Prater.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
