[Rétro] The year 2023 in ten significant events in the world – Conakryinfos.com

From the Israel/Hamas war to the earthquakes that struck Morocco and Turkey, including the Ukrainian counter-offensive and the strike in Hollywood, here are ten notable events of the year 2023 around the world.

Israel/Hamas War

On October 7, commandos from the Islamist movement Hamas infiltrated southern Israel from the Gaza Strip and carried out massacres in border towns and a music festival. Around 1,200 people, mostly civilians – men, women, children – were killed on the Israeli side, according to the latest official figures. An investigation into rape and mutilation of women will later be opened.

The attack, of a scale and violence unprecedented since the creation of Israel in 1948, arouses fear in the country and beyond. Some 240 people, including dozens of children and octogenarians, were taken hostage.

Determined to “annihilate” Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the EU and Israel, the Israeli army responded with massive bombings on Gaza and urged civilians to flee to the south. On October 27, it launched land operations in the north of the territory, of which it gradually took control.

The intensity of the strikes and the extent of the destruction have provoked international criticism and concern about the fate of the Palestinian civilian population, deprived of water, electricity, food and medicine by the total siege imposed by Israel.

In seven weeks of conflict, these bombings on the Gaza Strip have left nearly 15,000 dead, including 6,150 under the age of 18, according to the Hamas government. More than two thirds of its 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced according to the UN.

Humanitarian aid is increasing with the entry into force on November 24 of a four-day truce, extended by 48 hours according to Hamas and Qatar, but remains very insufficient for UN agencies. Fifty hostages were released, in accordance with the truce agreement, in exchange for the planned release of 150 Palestinians detained in Israel.

Ukraine’s arduous counter-offensive

In January, the Russian army, reinforced by 300,000 reservists and supported by the paramilitaries of the Wagner group, went on the attack again, particularly in Donbass, in eastern Ukraine. In May, Moscow claimed the capture of Bakhmut, at the end of the longest and bloodiest battle since the start of the Russian invasion, on February 24, 2022.

kyiv’s counter-offensive, long awaited by its Western allies, was launched at the beginning of June to try to reconquer the territories occupied by Moscow. But it comes up against solid Russian defenses. Despite billions in Western military aid, the Ukrainian army has only managed to retake a handful of villages in the south and east.

On June 24, fighters from the Wagner group, who had entered into rebellion, marched towards Moscow. President Vladimir Putin denounces the “betrayal” of their leader, Yevgeni Prigojine, who finally orders his men to “return” to their camps. The death, two months later, of Wagner’s boss in a plane crash raised questions, with Westerners and Ukraine suspecting Kremlin involvement.

After months of unsuccessful counter-offensive, kyiv claimed in mid-November to have pushed the Russian army back several kilometers to the left bank of the Dnieper River, in the southern region of Kherson.

On November 21, European leaders went to kyiv to renew their support for Ukraine, which fears a lesser commitment from its allies while international attention focuses on the war between Israel and Hamas.

Deadly earthquakes

On the night of February 5 to 6, one of the deadliest earthquakes in 100 years devastated southeastern Turkey and part of Syria. The 7.8 magnitude quake, followed by another nine hours later, left at least 56,000 dead, including nearly 6,000 on the Syrian side.

Powerful images are going around the world: a father shaking the hand of his 15-year-old daughter, buried under rubble in Turkey; or that of a miraculous newborn in Syria, still connected to his dead mother by the umbilical cord.

Another deadly earthquake, in Morocco. It was 11:11 p.m. (10:11 p.m. GMT) this Friday, September 8 when a violent earthquake shook the Marrakech region in the center of the Cherifian kingdom.

With a magnitude of 6.8 to 7, the most powerful to have ever been measured in this country, this earthquake left behind nearly 3,000 dead and more than 5,600 injured.

The earthquake damaged some 60,000 homes in nearly 3,000 villages in the High Atlas and its surrounding areas, which are sometimes very difficult to access.

Rising instability in Africa

Africa has experienced two coups d’état in 2023: in Niger, a Sahel country prey to jihadist violence, soldiers took power on July 26, citing the “deterioration of the security situation”. The ousted president, Mohamed Bazoum, has since been sequestered in his residence.

In Gabon, a military putsch overthrew Ali Bongo Ondimba on August 30, just after a presidential election widely criticized for its irregularities and resulting in him being elected for a third term. Ali Bongo, whose family has ruled this Central African country for more than 55 years, is still in Libreville but free to move.

Since April 15, a war in Sudan between the army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, and the paramilitary forces of his former deputy Mohamed Hamdane Daglo has left more than 10,000 dead, according to an estimate by the NGO Acled , considered largely underestimated.

After Mali and the Central African Republic in 2022, France had to withdraw its troops from two other former colonies, Burkina Faso in February and Niger from October, under pressure from the powers in place and the hostility of public opinion.

Artificial intelligence is shaking up Hollywood

From May, the American screenwriters, joined in mid-July by the actors, went on strike to demand better remuneration and supervision of artificial intelligence (AI).

This movement, unprecedented since 1960 in Hollywood, ends in September on the screenwriter side, with a salary agreement and protections on the use of AI.

The actors, worried that studios would use this technology to clone their voices and images, in order to reuse them in perpetuity without compensation or consent, only returned to filming in November.

In addition to salary advances, the strike made it possible to impose new restrictions on the use of AI. It paralyzed the production of American films and series for six months and cost the American economy at least $6 billion. Several major productions, including the series “Stranger Things,” have been delayed.

The planet is overheating

The months from June to October were the hottest ever recorded in the world, according to the European Copernicus Observatory, for which the year 2023 will exceed with “almost certainty” the annual record of 2016, to be “the hottest in the annals.

These temperatures are accompanied by droughts synonymous with famines, devastating fires or intensified hurricanes.

Canada thus experienced a historic forest fire season this year, with more than 18 million hectares burned and 200,000 people displaced.

Fires in Hawaii in August virtually razed the tourist town of Lahaina on Maui and killed 97 people.

Greece was hit hard by fires during the summer (at least 26 deaths), including the largest ever recorded in the European Union, in Evros (north-east). Floods then devastated the fertile plain of Thessaly (center) in September, killing 17 people.

Violent fires fueled by the heatwave also ravaged the tourist islands of Rhodes and Corfu, and areas of the Mediterranean basin such as Algeria and Sicily.

Return to the Moon

The Moon has found itself at the heart of the space race. On August 23, India managed to land an unmanned rocket, Chandrayaan-3 (“moon ship” in Sanskrit), in an unexplored area near the South Pole, a first.

A few days earlier, the Russian probe Luna-25, Moscow’s first mission to the Moon since 1976, had crashed in the same region, the subject of all attention because there is water there in the form of ice.

Before India, only the United States, the Soviet Union and China had managed to carry out controlled moon landings.

The American NASA is counting on the Starship rocket, developed by SpaceX – Elon Musk’s company – for its Artemis missions returning to the Moon, with the ambition of bringing astronauts back there in 2025, for the first time. times since 1972.

On April 20, Starship took off for the first time in its full configuration, but engine failures forced SpaceX to detonate the rocket after four minutes. On the second test, in November, the upper stage of the immense rocket managed to reach space, before an “anomaly” caused it to explode.

The Japanese start-up ispace, for its part, failed in April to land its Hakuto-R module on the moon, but the Japanese space agency Jaxa launched a new lunar mission at the beginning of September.

Forced kiss in Spanish football

On August 20, a few minutes after Spain’s coronation at the Women’s World Cup in Sydney, Luis Rubiales, then president of the Spanish Football Federation, kissed striker Jenni Hermoso on the mouth by surprise, provoking international indignation.

While Jenni Hermoso denounces a “sexist, inappropriate and without any consent” act on her part, Luis Rubiales maintains for a long time that it is only “a little consensual kiss”, before resigning on September 10. Charged with “sexual assault” by the courts, he was suspended for three years from all football-related activities by Fifa (international federation).

This “#MeToo of Spanish football” had an even stronger impact as women’s football, like this ninth edition of the World Cup, is generating growing enthusiasm.

Blitzkrieg offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh

On September 19, Azerbaijan attacked Nagorno-Karabakh, a separatist territory with an Armenian majority that Baku and Yerevan have disputed for more than three decades.

This mountainous enclave — which unilaterally proclaimed its independence in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union, with the support of Armenia — has already been the scene of two wars between the former Soviet republics of the Caucasus (from 1988 to 1994 and in fall 2020).

In 24 hours, the territorial authorities, abandoned by Yerevan, capitulated and a ceasefire was concluded. After this lightning offensive, which left nearly 600 dead, the majority of the 120,000 inhabitants fled to Armenia, while Nagorno-Karabakh announced its dissolution on January 1, 2024.

In mid-November, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), seized by Yerevan, ordered Baku to allow a “safe” return of the inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh. Talks conducted under international mediation with a view to a peace agreement have so far not been successful.

An ultraliberal at the head of Argentina

The ultraliberal economist Javier Milei, 53, will take office as president of Argentina on December 10, after his large victory on November 19 against the centrist Sergio Massa.

This “anti-system”, slayer of the Peronists and liberals alternately in power for twenty years, promises shock therapy to the third largest economy in Latin America, in the grip of record inflation: all-out privatizations, “chainsaw” cuts. in public spending, and replacement of the Argentine peso by the dollar, with abolition of the Central Bank.

Among his controversial ideas, the deregulation of the sale of arms and a “market solution” for organ donation.

His young party, La Libertad Avanza, being only the third force in the lower house of Parliament, with 38 deputies out of 257, Milei will however have to form alliances to get his projects voted on.

With AFP