According to the Manchester Evening News, the protest drew between 5000 and 6000 participants, based on estimates from the Metropolitan Police.

The rally began at Millbank near Victoria Tower Gardens at noon and was organised by a coalition of activist groups, including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), Stop the War Coalition and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

• READ MORE: 165 massacred schoolgirls in Iran – and the silence that exposes the West’s moral selectivity
• China’s Wang Yi says Iran war should never have happened — calls for immediate  ceasefire
• Suffering in Gaza and occupied West Bank remains acute as the world focuses on the US-Israeli war on Iran
• This illegal US-Israeli attack on Iran is also an assault on the United Nations
• Other US-Israel attack on Iran reports

Protesters marched toward the US Embassy carrying placards reading “Stop Trump’s Wars” and “No War on Iran,” while others waved Iranian and Palestinian flags.

Some demonstrators also carried portraits of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Organisers described the military strikes as “illegal” and warned that escalating conflict could place millions of civilians at risk across the Middle East.

Chris Nineham, vice-chair of the Stop the War Coalition, said the situation represented one of “the most dangerous global moments in decades.”

‘Murder and mayhem’
“[US President Donald] Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu are creating murder and mayhem across the Middle East,” Nineham said in a video posted on social media from the protest.

“They are risking spreading war across the Middle East, and they are creating the conditions of volatility and instability around the world, and what is disgraceful is that our government is allowing British bases to be used to promote this mayhem.”

He added that many people in Britain opposed the war and called for a broad and vocal movement to mobilise against the conflict and advocate for peace.

Tensions in the Middle East have escalated since the US and Israel launched a large-scale attack on Iran on February 28, killing more than 1330 people, including Khamenei and more than 165 schoolgirls, and senior military officials.

Iran has retaliated with sweeping barrages of its own that have targeted US bases, diplomatic facilities, and military personnel across the region, as well as multiple Israeli cities. At least 11 Israelis have been killed.

In an era when images can circle the globe in seconds and newsrooms claim to uphold universal humanitarian principles; one might expect the killing of 165 schoolgirls inside a primary school to dominate international headlines.

One would expect emergency debates, moral outrage, and relentless coverage.

Yet in the southeastern Iranian city of Minab — where Israeli-American strikes obliterated classrooms filled with children — the world’s most influential media institutions have responded with something far more revealing than condemnation: they have responded with silence.

• READ MORE: China’s Wang Yi says Iran war should never have happened — calls for immediate  ceasefire
• Suffering in Gaza and occupied West Bank remains acute as the world focuses on the US-Israeli war on Iran
• This illegal US-Israeli attack on Iran is also an assault on the United Nations
• Other US-Israel attack on Iran reports

These were not combatants. They were not militants. They were children seated at their desks, pens in their hands, notebooks open before them, studying, whispering to classmates, and imagining futures that stretched decades ahead.

In seconds, that ordinary school day turned into a massacre. Desks became splintered wreckage, classrooms collapsed into dust, and rows of coffins replaced rows of pupils.

Yet the names of these girls — 165 lives extinguished before they truly began — barely entered the global conversation.

This omission is not the product of oversight. It reflects something far more structural: the hierarchy of victims that governs much of the contemporary information order.

In theory, modern Western media institutions present themselves as defenders of human rights and guardians of moral accountability. In practice, their editorial priorities often mirror geopolitical interests with striking precision.

Human rights losing integrity
When the deaths of children generate outrage in one context but indifference in another, the moral language surrounding human rights begins to lose its integrity.

When tragedies reinforce established narratives about adversarial states, they are amplified, dramatised, and transformed into global moral spectacles.

But when tragedies expose the human cost of the military actions carried out by Western powers or their closest allies, they are quietly displaced from the front page —if they appear at all.

The massacre in Minab illustrates this logic with devastating clarity.

The deaths of 165 Iranian schoolgirls do not fit comfortably within the dominant geopolitical storyline that portrays Israel and its strategic partners as defenders of stability and order in a turbulent region.

Acknowledging such an atrocity would inevitably raise difficult questions: about the legality of strikes on civilian infrastructure, about the ethics of military escalation, and about the widening humanitarian toll of ongoing Israeli-American attacks across the region.

It is therefore far easier to look away.

Minab not isolated tragedy
But Minab is not an isolated tragedy. Across Lebanon, relentless bombardments have repeatedly struck civilian neighbourhoods, reducing homes and streets to rubble.

Across Palestine, entire communities have endured cycles of destruction that claim the lives of children whose only battlefield was the ground beneath their feet. Hospitals, schools, and residential blocks have all entered the expanding geography of devastation.

These events do not occur in a vacuum. They form part of a broader pattern in which military power operates alongside narrative power. Missiles shape the physical battlefield, while selective reporting shapes the battlefield of perception.

What emerges is not merely a media bias but a form of narrative engineering. Certain victims are elevated as symbols of universal suffering, while others — often far more numerous — are rendered invisible. Compassion itself becomes curated, distributed unevenly according to political convenience.

For Western audiences accustomed to believing in the neutrality of their information systems, this selective visibility should provoke serious reflection. The credibility of humanitarian discourse depends on consistency.

The girls of Minab deserved the same recognition afforded to any victims of violence anywhere in the world. They deserved to have their stories told, their lives acknowledged, and their deaths confronted with the seriousness such an atrocity demands.

Instead, they encountered a second form of erasure.

First came the missiles that ended their lives. Then came the silence that followed.

Selective visibility needs reflection
For Western audiences accustomed to believing in the neutrality of their information systems, this selective visibility should provoke serious reflection.

In the contemporary information age, propaganda rarely announces itself openly. It often operates through absence — through the stories that never reach the front page, the victims whose names remain unspoken, and the tragedies that disappear before the world has time to notice.

The massacre in Minab therefore stands as more than a local catastrophe. It exposes a deeper crisis in the global information order — one in which the value of human life appears disturbingly contingent on political context.

And if the deaths of 165 schoolgirls in their classrooms fail to trigger universal outrage, the question is no longer about geopolitics alone.

It becomes a question about the credibility of the moral system that claims to defend humanity itself.

Dr Hana Saada is an Algerian university lecturer and journalist, and editor-in-chief of the English edition of Dzair Tube. She holds a PhD in media translation and writes on geopolitics, media narratives, and international affairs. This article is republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons.

Dozens of teenage girls were attending their regular training sessions of volleyball, basketball, and gymnastics in the main sports hall in Lamerd, a city near the Persian coast, when a missile slammed into the building at 5pm on Saturday.

Additional strikes hit two nearby residential areas and a hall adjacent to a school, as the US and Israel pounded targets across Iran on the first day of what President Donald Trump declared as a “regime change” war.

According to local officials cited in Iranian state media, the strikes on Lamerd killed at least 18 civilians and wounded scores more.

• READ MORE:  Death toll in Israeli strike on southern Iran school rises to 165
• Trump says Iran attacks to continue until ‘all objectives’ achieved
• World leaders react cautiously to U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran
• Critics say weak NZ response over US-Israel attacks on Iran a ‘disgrace’
• UN’s Guterres condemns US-Israeli strikes, retaliatory attacks by Iran
• Other US-Israel attack on Iran reports

“Within seconds of the missile strike, the windows shattered into thousands of fragments. Sports equipment, balls, tables, barriers flew through the air. Black smoke filled the space,” Mohammed Saed Khorshedy, a 29-year-old worker at the gym who witnessed the attack, told Drop Site News.

“The smell of gunpowder made breathing almost impossible. The screaming began immediately, layered with the sound of debris collapsing and concrete falling from the ceiling.”

The facility sits on the outskirts of Lamerd, a quiet city in Fars province, near the surrounding Zagros mountain range, giving the natural landscape an uneven, rugged character.

Gym building at crossroads
The rectangular building is at a crossroads connecting the city center to Bandar Assaluyeh, an industrial port and energy hub on the Persian Gulf.

The sports hall was poorly maintained, with deteriorating walls surrounded by a low perimeter fence. A high arched metal roof sat atop a reinforced concrete frame and a rubber floor for volleyball and other sports.

The missile struck the middle of the roof, destroying a large part of the building. The main court, small spectator stands, changing rooms, and coach’s office were all reduced to rubble.

Hossein Gholami, a 50-year-old elementary school teacher, was returning from work when he heard the blast. His 16-year-old daughter, Zahra, was training in the hall.

“I noticed a strange gathering of people at the corner of the street leading to the sports hall,” Gholami told Drop Site.

“The screaming was rising from a distance. A colleague ran toward me, waving his arm, and said in a shaken voice: ‘Zahra, the hall, there has been an explosion.’

“I felt as though the ground had split beneath my feet. Everything around me became hazy,” he said. “I ran immediately, and with every step the columns of black smoke rose higher, while the smell of fire and flames entered my nose with force.”

Scene of horror
When he reached the site, he came upon a scene of horror.

“The continuous screaming of the injured mixed with the sounds of secondary explosions. The ground was covered in debris and shattered glass. It was difficult to move with all the rubble. Ambulances arrived after about twenty minutes, but most of the injured were in critical condition,” he said.

“The smell of blood and burns covered everything…the survivors were injured with fractures and burns from the shrapnel.”

Later, he learned that Zahra was among the dead.

“Every time I close my eyes I see her face, her smile, and I hear the sound of the explosion,” Gholami said.

There has been no public statement by the US or Israeli on the Lamerd strikes.

CENTCOM and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

165 killed – many schoolgirls
The bombing of the sports hall in Lamerd came hours after a strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, another small city on the Persian Gulf, further east near the Strait of Hormuz, that, according to the state-run IRNA news agency, killed 165 people, many of them schoolgirls.

Neither the US nor Israel claimed that strike. The Israeli military said it was not aware of strikes in the area of Minab; CENTCOM’s spokesperson said they were “looking into” reports.

Another strike hit an adjacent IRGC naval base and the USS Abraham Lincoln is stationed nearby.

The governor of Lamerd said “The United States and the Zionist regime fired missiles at the sports hall while female students were playing inside,” according to the Fars news agency.

As of Sunday morning, the Iranian Red Crescent and state-linked media have reported preliminary casualty figures of more than 200 people killed and more than 740 injured across Iran, though the actual toll is expected to be significantly higher.

Iran launched retaliatory strikes across nine countries in the region: Israel, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with a total of 18 killed, including three US servicemen, according to a tally by Al Jazeera.

Mir Dehdasht, an administrative officer at Azad university whose 15-year-old daughter Rabab Dehdasht was training at the sports hall, was at home when a neighbour knocked on his door to tell him the facility had been attacked.

‘Their voices were deafening’
“I ran immediately toward the place, and when I arrived, I found burning cars and rubble scattered everywhere,” Dehdasht told Drop Site. “The injured were bleeding heavily, some had lost consciousness on the ground, others were screaming without stopping.

“Their voices were deafening.”

He continued: “Blood and dust covered everything, and the rubble blocked quick access to the building. Rescue teams were working with extreme care to bring out the injured athletes and the bodies of the victims.

“The screaming filled everything,” he said. “Robab did not survive the force of the explosion, while others survived but with life-threatening injuries. I felt complete helplessness.”

Farhad Za’eri, a retired Ministry of Health employee, received the news of the strike by phone. His 16-year-old daughter Elahe, was also there.

“I left immediately with some neighbors. The roads were unusually congested and there was a sense of anxiety throughout the neighborhood,” Za’eri told Drop Site. “When we arrived, the rescue teams were already there and they had begun bringing out the bodies one by one.”

“I did not know what I would see,” he continued, “but when I got close to the place where they were bringing out the victims, I felt a heaviness in my chest.

‘Mark of pain’
“Every body that was lifted carried the mark of pain, and the rescue effort was trying to distinguish between those who could still be saved and those whose lives had ended,” he said.

“There were voices from every direction, everyone was trying to understand what had happened. In that moment, everything inside me was silent, and I was waiting for them to tell me about my daughter Elahe.”

Elahe’s body was eventually brought out. “My daughter’s body was completely destroyed. It appears she was directly hit by the strike. The lower part of her body was completely destroyed,” Za’eri said.

“How can a father describe what he feels when he sees his child like this? All my memories of her, her laugh, her training, her dreams, collapsed before my eyes in a single moment.”

This articles was published first by Drop Site News in collaboration with Egab.

A woman who was part of a group kidnapped in Papua New Guinea in February has spoken out after the kidnapping and reported rape of 17 schoolgirls in the same area of Southern Highlands earlier this month.

Cathy Alex, the New Zealand-born Australian academic Bryce Barker and two female researchers, were taken in the Mt Bosavi region and held for ransom.

They were all released when the Papua New Guinea government paid a ransom of US$28,000 to the kidnappers to secure their release.

• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES: Cathy Alex’s kidnapping story
• Other PNG kidnapping reports

Alex, who heads the Advancing Women’s Leaders’ Network, said that what the 17 abducted girls had gone through prompted her to speak out, after the country, she believed, had done nothing.

A local said family members of the girls negotiated with the captors and were eventually able to secure their release.

The villagers reportedly paid an undisclosed amount of cash and a few pigs as the ransom.

Alex said she and the other women in her group had feared they would be raped when they were kidnapped.

‘My life preserved’
“My life was preserved even though there was a time where the three of us were pushed to go into the jungle so they could do this to us.

“We chose death over being raped. Maybe the men will not understand, but for a woman or a girl rape is far worse than death.”

Alex said they had had received a commitment that they would not be touched, so the revelations about what happened to the teenage girls was horrifying.

She said her experience gave her some insight into the age and temperament of the kidnappers.

“Young boys, 16 and up, a few others. No Tok Pisin, no English. It’s a generation that’s been out there that has had no opportunities. What is happening in Bosavi is a glimpse, a dark glimpse of where our country is heading to.”

The teenage girls from the most recent kidnapping are now safe and being cared for but they cannot return to their village because it is too dangerous.

Need for focus
Cathy Alex said there was a need for a focus on providing services to the rural areas as soon as possible.

She said people were resilient and could change, as long as the right leadership was provided.

Bosavi is one of the remotest areas in PNG, with no roads and few services

It suffered significant damage during earthquake in 2018.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Seventeen Papua New Guinean schoolgirls who were kidnapped, raped and held hostage by armed men in Bosavi, Hela, last Wednesday were released yesterday.

The National’s source said they were released following a payment of 3300 kina (NZ$1500) and nine pigs as ransom to the gunmen.

“The females were released but they are traumatised. Some of them are just girls. It is the first time for them to be exposed to this kind of violence,” said the source.

• READ MORE: Armed gunmen kidnap 17 girls from remote PNG village – freed for ransom
• Two countries, two kidnappings – Port Moresby shows Jakarta how it’s done with 3 PNG hostages freed
• Marape clarifies kidnappers were paid K100,000 for freeing PNG hostages
• Other PNG kidnapping reports

“Meanwhile, the teachers of Walagu Primary School are still on the run, with the school closed since then.

“A female teacher who was seven months pregnant was airlifted by police to Komo in a chopper yesterday.”

Another government worker said: “Last week 40 armed men from Komo to Bosavi had accused the villagers for reporting them to police in the last kidnap incident [in February].

“They went to Komo passing through Walagu village near Mt Sisa.

‘Kidnapped at gunpoint’
“At Walagu, they kidnapped the females at gunpoint saying the villagers had assisted security forces and reported them to have involved in the kidnap of the New Zealand research scientist a few months back.

“They were held hostage at Mt Sisa for three days until their release yesterday.

“We are appealing to the Hela government to stop the smuggling of guns in the province.

“We also appeal to the authorities to arrest the 40 men from Bosavi, as they have raped our children who are between the ages of 13 to 15 and yet they demand a ransom.

“People in authority should meet with all its 24 council wards in Komo-Hulia electorate and arrest youths who have homemade guns in their possessions.”

Police sources also confirmed that the group seemed to be the same one that was involved in the earlier kidnap and ransom in February when the captives included an Australian-based New Zealand academic.

Lack of action ‘serious error’
The lack of follow up action by police and the military was a “serious error of judgement and appears to have emboldened them to continue with this kind of activities an easy money making venture”,  a police source said.

Meanwhile, condemnation of the action and calls for serious government action came from the Member for Koroba-Lake Kopiage, William Bando; the Vanimo Green MP and Chairman of Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, Belden Namah; and the Lutheran Church Head, Dr Jack Urame.

Namah said last night that he was alarmed that the police hierarchy and the ministry had gone silent on a serious issue involving the lives of children.

Majeleen Yanei is a reporter with The National newspaper in Port Moresby. Republished with permission.

RNZ News

In just a few weeks the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated sharply as millions cope without desperately needed international aid, New Zealand journalist Charlotte Bellis says.

Bellis is Al Jazeera’s senior producer in Afghanistan and reported on the turmoil in August as the Taliban took over the government and thousands of people tried to flee.

She has dealt with Taliban leaders for a long time, and has sensed a change in their attitudes since they first ruled the country before being toppled 20 years ago.

• LISTEN: ‘I just can’t believe how quickly everything has deteriorated’ – NZ journalist Charlotte Bellis in Afghanistan (Duration 10′:12″)
• READ MORE: Taliban takeover: Charlotte Bellis faces perils outside ‘enemy territory’ — Pacific Journalism Review

She had to leave the country in mid-September because the network feared for her safety and Bellis noted on Twitter that the Taliban were detaining and beating journalists trying to cover protests.

Now she has returned and told RNZ Sunday Morning that she was not worried about her safety.

“The situation here is pretty dire and there are a lot of stories still to be told and I feel invested in what’s happening here and I also just love the country. It’s a beautiful place to be with amazing people and I genuinely like being here.”

However, the country is facing an uncertain future with its population suffering more than ever now that international aid has been cut off.

UN warns of humanitarian crisis
This week the United Nations warned that Afghanistan is becoming the world’s largest humanitarian crisis and Bellis agrees.

“The Taliban took over about two months ago and I just can’t believe how quickly everything has deteriorated.

“People cannot find food, there’s no money, they can’t pay for things, employers can’t pay their workers because there’s no cash, they can’t get money out even from the ATMs.”

Millions of jobs have disappeared, half of the population does not know where their next meal is coming from and already children are dying from malnutrition, Bellis said.

All the aid agencies are appealing to the world to listen.

23 million need urgent help
She is about to go out with the UN Refugee Agency whose teams are organising some aid distribution as the temperatures drop to 2 degC overnight as winter approaches. They are handing out blankets, food and some cash to thousands of the needy in camps in Kabul.

“But it’s such a Band-Aid. There is no way they can reach the number of people they need to reach — it’s  like 23 million people who need that kind of assistance,” she said.

Neighbouring countries such as Pakistan and Iran were very concerned, in part because they fear a huge influx of refugees. They have closed the borders to try and keep them away.

The process of getting money and food into people’s hands had broken down, she said, with a lot of it due to United States sanctions.

Three quarters of the country ran on foreign donations before the Taliban took over and that has dried up because no countries are recognising the Taliban’s legitimacy to govern.

Bellis has spoken to one senior Taliban official who said that at recent meetings between the Taliban and the US in Doha the Americans would not tell the Taliban what policies they needed to enact to unfreeze billions of dollars in funding.

“They [the Americans] are playing with millions of people’s lives.”

School problem for girls
She believes some Taliban leaders are pragmatic and would be willing to agree to high school girls being educated but are worried they will alienate their conservative base.

In the main, primary school age girls are able to attend their lessons but the problem is at secondary school level.

“If you’re a high school girl in Kabul it’s awful – sitting around thinking how did this happen. It’s really frustrating and really frustrating for everyone to watch and say this doesn’t make sense.”

Bellis said while she feels safe at the moment, the main problem is the terrorist group, ISIS-K, who have made threats against the hotel where she is staying.

The Taliban have said they will protect guests and have placed dozens of extra guards outside.

ISIS-K is believed to only number between 1200 and 1500 yet they are a potent force with their random attacks, such as beheading members of the Taliban, whom they hate.

She believes the Taliban’s biggest worry is that ISIS will appeal to its most fundamentalist members.

ISIS attracting recruits
ISIS is also believed to be trying to attract recruits who would be trained as fighters and be paid $400 a month which is a substantial amount of money in Afghanistan.

Bellis said she feels guilty staying at a hotel with the scale of poverty and deprivation she is witnessing.

“Right outside the door people are desperate,” she said.

She visited a major maternity hospital in Kabul yesterday and the only medication available for women giving birth was paracetamol.

“Imagine going into labour and thinking, OK if anything goes wrong I’ve got paracetamol. It’s just life and death on so many levels.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

For those of you wondering what you can do to help Afghans.. this @WFP project is the gold standard.
You donate meals direct to Afghans – choosing a set number of meals or month at a time. https://t.co/qgmuaTdpfo

— Charlotte Bellis (@CharlotteBellis) October 26, 2021

Two school girls from East Java, Aeshnina Azzahra (alias Nina), 12, and Zahira Zade, 11, have sent hand-written protest letters to US President Donald Trump over the dumping of toxic plastic waste in Indonesia.

The letters were sent through the US Consulate-General in the East Java provincial capital of Surabaya, reports CNN Indonesia.

In an Indoleft translation, Nina is reported as saying that she wrote the letter as a protest against the US which illegally exports plastic waste into Indonesia that is contaminated with toxic and hazardous materials (B3).

READ MORE: Indonesia sends rubbish back to Australia as ‘too contaminated’ to recycle

“This is a letter to Mr President Trump, so that you don’t export anymore waste to Indonesia. Why should we suffer the impact, they should deal with their own rubbish”, said Nina in Surabaya last week.

Nina, who is a class 7 student at the Wringinanom 1 State Junior High School in Gresik, also expressed her regret that advanced countries such as the US are unable to deal with their own rubbish problems.

Instead of helping, the US instead disposes of it in Indonesia.

“We already have a lot of problems in Indonesia because of rubbish. Why is it being added to by America”, she said.

Sad over animal deaths
In her letter, Nina told Trump that she was sad at seeing wild animals dying because of plastic waste. One of which is a whale which was recently found dead with its stomach full of plastic rubbish.

“I’m sad to see whales die, with stomach full of plastic waste. I was sad to see dead seagulls a plastic strangled neck. I’m sad to see turtles die with a plastic stomach”, wrote Nina in English in her letter.

Nina continued by saying that she did not want to see a future in which animals died as a result of plastic rubbish from the country led by Trump.

Speaking in the same vein, Zade, a class 6 Pogar 2 State Primary School student in Bangil, Pasuruan, challenged Trump by asking if the number one person in the country of Uncle Sam would like to suffer the same fate as turtles and whales to die because of plastic waste.

Zade said that in the area around her home many babies suffer from illnesses because of the smoke from burning plastic rubbish imported from the US.

“Do you want to be like the turtle with a plastic in their nose, whale died because their stomach are full of plastic. So many baby around me are sick because of the smoke from burning of plastic waste your country,” wrote Zade in English in her letter.

Other protests
She also asked that Trump take back his plastic rubbish and not turn Indonesia into his country’s rubbish ground.

Aside from Nina and Zade, a six-year-old boy Ramadhani Wardana also took part in a protest against the importation of waste from the US.

Warda, as he is often called, even gave a speech during an action by the Brantas River Coalition to Stop Imported Plastic Trash (Bracsip) at the US Consulate-General in Surabaya on Friday.

“Take back your trash!,, said Warda waving a red-and-white Indonesian flag tied to a bamboo pole.

• Translated by James Balowski of the Indoleft News service. The original title of the article was “Protes Sampah Impor, Anak-anak di Jatim Surati Donald Trump”.