Saturday, 1 November 2025

Massacre After a Siege jn Sudan





More than 2,000 people, mainly women and children, have been executed in the last 48 hours in Sudan after the city of El-Fasher was captured by paramilitaries. 

The western Sudanese city fell to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) after more than 18 months of brutal siege warfare, giving the group control over every state capital in the vast Darfur region.

The RSF 'committed heinous crimes against innocent civilians in El-Fasher, where more than 2,000 unarmed citizens were executed and killed on October 26 and 27, most of them women, children and the elderly'.

Local groups and international NGOs had warned that El-Fasher's fall could trigger mass atrocities, fears that came true.

The monitor, which relies on open source intelligence and satellite imagery, said the city 'appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution'.

This included 'door-to-door clearance operations' in the city.

A video released by local activists and authenticated by AFP shows a fighter known for executing civilians in RSF-controlled areas shooting a group of unarmed civilians sitting on the ground at point-blank range.

The actions of the RSF 'may be consistent with war crimes and crimes against humanity and may rise to the level of genocide'.

More than 2,000 civilians have been reportedly executed in the last 48 hours in Sudan after the city of El-Fasher was captured by paramilitaries

More than 2,000 civilians have been reportedly executed in the last 48 hours in Sudan after the city of El-Fasher was captured by paramilitaries

A video released by local activists and authenticated by AFP shows a fighter known for executing civilians in RSF-controlled areas shooting a group of unarmed civilians sitting on the ground at point-blank range

A video released by local activists and authenticated by AFP shows a fighter known for executing civilians in RSF-controlled areas shooting a group of unarmed civilians sitting on the ground at point-blank range

Screen grab shows a gunman pointing his weapon at unarmed civilians

Screen grab shows a gunman pointing his weapon at unarmed civilians 

The same day, UN rights chief Volker Turk spoke of a growing risk of 'ethnically motivated violations and atrocities' in El-Fasher.

His office said it was 'receiving multiple, alarming reports that the Rapid Support Forces are carrying out atrocities, including summary executions'.

Pro-democracy activists, meanwhile, said El-Fasher residents had endured 'the worst forms of violence and ethnic cleansing' since the RSF claimed control.

The paramilitaries have a track record of atrocities, having killed as many as 15,000 civilians from non-Arab groups in the West Darfur capital of El-Geneina.

The northeast African nation was plunged into a deadly conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions about the future of the country between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the head of the paramilitary rebel group erupted. 

Fighting exploded in the capital Khartoum but rapidly spread, where it is now estimated that at least 150,000 people have been killed, including many civilians.

The civil war has forced more than 14 million people to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine swept parts of the country.

An investigation by Amnesty International suggests that RSF rebels have waged a calculated campaign of sexual violence against defenceless civilians, using rape, murder and torture to terrorise, demoralise and subjugate the population living in areas they seized.

This image grab taken from handout video footage released on Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) Telegram account on October 26, 2025, shows RSF fighters holding weapons and celebrating in the streets of El-Fasher in Sudan's Darfur

This image grab taken from handout video footage released on Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) Telegram account on October 26, 2025, shows RSF fighters holding weapons and celebrating in the streets of El-Fasher in Sudan's Darfur

The paramilitaries have a track record of atrocities, having killed as many as 15,000 civilians from non-Arab groups in the West Darfur capital of El-Geneina

The paramilitaries have a track record of atrocities, having killed as many as 15,000 civilians from non-Arab groups in the West Darfur capital of El-Geneina

In this satellite photo provided by Planet Labs PBC, the area around the headquarters of the Sudanese military's 6th Division in el-Fasher, Sudan, is seen Sunday, Oct. 26, 2025

In this satellite photo provided by Planet Labs PBC, the area around the headquarters of the Sudanese military's 6th Division in el-Fasher, Sudan, is seen

The army, which has been fighting the RSF for two-and-a-half years, has also been accused of war crimes.

More than a year and a half of siege warfare made El-Fasher one of the grimmest places in a war that the UN has labelled among the world's worst humanitarian crises.

Displacement camps outside the city were officially declared to be in famine, while inside it, people turned to animal fodder for food.

The UN warned before the city's fall that 260,000 people remained trapped there without aid, half of them children.

The African Union's chairman Mahmoud Ali Youssouf on Tuesday expressed 'deep concern over the escalating violence and reported atrocities', and condemned 'alleged war crimes and ethnically targeted killings of civilians'.

The Sudanese army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said on Monday that his forces had withdrawn from El-Fasher 'to a safer location', acknowledging the loss of the strategic city.

He pledged to fight 'until this land is purified', but analysts said that Sudan was now effectively partitioned along an east-west axis, with the RSF having already set up a parallel government.

Alan Boswell, project director for the Horn of Africa at the International Crisis Group, told AFP: 'The longer this war drags on, this division will likely only grow more concrete and harder to unwind.'

Anwar Gargash, an adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates, called the city's capture a 'turning point' that showed 'the political path is the only option to end the civil war'.

Screen grab shows unarmed civilians running away as they are chased by paramilitaries

Screen grab shows unarmed civilians running away as they are chased by paramilitaries 

The UAE has been accused by the UN of supplying the RSF with weapons, a charge it denies. It is also a member of the so-called Quad - alongside the United States, Saudi Arabia and Egypt - which is working for a negotiated peace.

The group has proposed a ceasefire and a transitional civilian government that excludes both the army and the RSF from power.

Talks last week in Washington involving the Quad made no progress.

The army has its own foreign backers in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey, observers have reported. They too have denied the claims.

In March, the army retook full control of the Sudanese capital Khartoum, but with both sides now having achieved significant gains neither appears willing to compromise in negotiations.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15234329/civilians-women-children-executed-Sudanese-city-paramilitary-group.html

Maternity hospital massacre leaves 460 dead: Fresh horror in Sudan as patients and staff are butchered, after 2,000 civilians were executed in two days

A maternity hospital massacre in Sudan has left 460 people dead just days after a 48-hour killing spree saw more than 2,000 civilians executed by paramilitary rebels.

The World Health Organisation said the Saudi Maternity Hospital in El Fasher, the city's last remaining hospital, was on Sunday 'attacked for the fourth time in a month, killing one nurse and injuring three other health workers'.

Two days later, 'six health workers, four doctors, a nurse and a pharmacist, were abducted' and 'more than 460 patients and their companions were reportedly shot and killed in the hospital,' by Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries, the organisation said.

Footage purportedly capturing the aftermath of the hospital massacre showed bodies scattered across the floor among debris and broken equipment.

'I was performing surgery in the hospital when heavy shelling occurred. A mortar hit the hospital. I was so worried because the woman's wounds were open, and everyone was running around me,' Dr Suhiba, a gynaecologist, told UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. 

The northeast African nation was plunged into a deadly conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions about the future of the country between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the head of the paramilitary rebel group erupted. 

Following the most recent incident, allies of the army, the Joint Forces, said on Tuesday that the RSF 'committed heinous crimes against innocent civilians, where more than 2,000 unarmed citizens were executed and killed on October 26 and 27, most of them women, children and the elderly'. 

The World Health Organisation said the Saudi Maternity Hospital in El Fasher, the city's last remaining hospital, was on Sunday 'attacked for the fourth time in a month, killing one nurse and injuring three other health workers'

Footage purportedly showing the aftermath of the massacre captured bodies scattered across the floor amid debris 

The total death toll could not immediately be confirmed, but shocking satellite images taken after the fall of El Fasher showed evidence of the mass killings. 

Body-sized objects were seen in satellite images clustered around vehicles and nearby an RSF sand berm built around the city. There were reports of civilians being gunned down as they attempted to break out and flee the bloodshed. 

Analysis by the Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), which has been tracking the siege using open source images and satellite imagery, found clusters of objects 'consistent with the size of human bodies' and 'reddish ground discolouration' thought to be either blood or disturbed soil.

A video released by local activists and authenticated by AFP on Tuesday showed a fighter known for executing civilians in RSF-controlled areas shooting a group of unarmed civilians sitting on the ground at point-blank range. 

Another video purportedly showed a child soldier murdering a grown man in cold blood, while one other clip showed RSF fighters executing civilians just moments after pretending to release them.

A report published on Monday said the actions of the RSF 'may be consistent with war crimes and crimes against humanity and may rise to the level of genocide'.   

Mohammad Hamdan Daglo, the head of the RSF has vowed the country would be unified by 'peace or through war'.

The capture of El-Fasher, the last army holdout in the vast western region of Darfur, comes after more than 18 months of brutal siege, sparking fears of a return to the ethnically targeted atrocities of 20 years ago. 

UN chief Antonio Guterres called for an immediate end to military escalation in Sudan on Thursday after reports of the maternity hospital atrocity.

Guterres said in a statement he was 'gravely concerned by the recent military escalation' in El-Fasher, calling for 'an immediate end to the siege & hostilities'.

International powers have struggled for months to mediate an end to the fighting between the paramilitaries and the regular army, raging since April 2023.

Daglo's paramilitaries now control most of western Sudan, Africa's third-largest country, while the regular army under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan dominates the north, east and centre.

Bodies and blood: The sand around the western city of El Fasher is now stained red with pools of blood so thick they can be seen from space

Bodies and blood: The sand around the western city of El Fasher is now stained red with pools of blood so thick they can be seen from space

While the army regained full control over the capital Khartoum in March, the RSF has set up a parallel administration in the southwestern city of Nyala.

Analysts warn that the country is now de facto partitioned and may prove very hard to piece back together.

Daglo said in a speech Wednesday that he was 'sorry for the inhabitants of El-Fasher for the disaster that has befallen them' and that civilians were off limits.

The RSF - descended from Janjaweed militias that attacked non-Arab communities in Darfur two decades ago - has again been accused of carrying out ethnic genocide against civilians, with graphic videos circulating on social media.

Sudanese Arabs are the dominant ethnic group in the country, but the majority in Darfur are from non-Arab communities such as the Fur people.

The seizing of El-Fasher has left the RSF in control of a third of Sudan, with fighting now concentrated in the central Kordofan region.

On Tuesday, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies reported five Sudanese volunteers killed and three missing in Bara, a city in Kordofan captured by the RSF last week.

More than 33,000 people have fled El-Fasher since Sunday for the town of Tawila, about 40 miles to the west, which has already welcomed more than 650,000 displaced people.

AFP images from Tawila showed displaced people, some of them with bandages, carrying their belongings and setting up temporary shelters.

Around 177,000 people remain in El-Fasher, which had a population of more than one million before the war.

Access routes to El-Fasher and satellite-based communications in the city remain cut off - though not for the RSF, which controls the Starlink network there.

Sudan's war has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and triggered the world's largest displacement and hunger crisis.

Fighting exploded in the capital Khartoum but rapidly spread, where it is now estimated that at least 150,000 people have been killed, including many civilians.

The civil war has forced more than 14 million people to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine swept parts of the country.

An investigation by Amnesty International suggests that RSF rebels have waged a calculated campaign of sexual violence against defenceless civilians, using rape, murder and torture to terrorise, demoralise and subjugate the population living in areas they seized.

The army, which has been fighting the RSF for two-and-a-half years, has also been accused of war crimes.

The so-called Quad group - comprising the United States, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia - held talks over several months towards securing a truce.

But those talks have reached an impasse, an official close to the negotiations said, with 'continued obstructionism' from the army-aligned government.

While diplomats have preached peace, outside powers, including Quad members, have been accused of interfering in the conflict.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15241379/Maternity-hospital-massacre-leaves-460-dead-Fresh-horror-Sudan-patients-staff-butchered-2-000-civilians-executed-two-days.html

Pool of blood: There have been reports of civilians being gunned down as they attempted to break out and flee the bloodshed

Pool of blood: Civilians were gunned down as they attempted to break out and flee the bloodshed

The paramilitaries have a track record of atrocities, having killed as many as 15,000 civilians from non-Arab groups in the West Darfur capital of El-Geneina

The paramilitaries have a track record of atrocities, having killed as many as 15,000 civilians from non-Arab groups in the West Darfur capital of El-Geneina

Screen grab shows unarmed civilians running away as they are chased by paramilitaries

Unarmed civilians running away as they are chased by paramilitaries 

Displaced Sudanese sit next to a bullet-riddled wall, taking shelter in a school after being evacuated by the Sudanese army

Displaced Sudanese sit next to a bullet-riddled wall

Local residents cheer as soldiers arrive to the Allafah market, in an area recently recaptured by Sudan's army from the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, in the Al Kalalah district, 40km south of Khartoum, Syria Thursday March 27, 2025

Local residents cheer as soldiers arrive

Sudan's army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan gestures to soldiers inside the presidential palace after the Sudanese army said it had taken control of the building, in the capital Khartoum, Sudan March 26, 2025

Sudan's army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan

Acting Minister of Justice of Sudan, Muawia Osman Mohamed Khair (L), and Ambassador Omaima Alsharief (R) of Sudan attend public hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the Netherlands, 10 April 2025

Acting Minister of Justice of Sudan, Muawia Osman Mohamed Khair (L), and Ambassador Omaima Alsharief (R) of Sudan attend public hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the Netherlands

Yunis Ali Ishag, 60 from Geneina in West Sudan whose leg was amputated after he was shot by RSF soldiers, poses for a portrait on April 20, 2024

Yunis Ali Ishag, 60 from Geneina in West Sudan whose leg was amputated after he was shot by RSF soldiers

Abdel Azim Khater, 32, who said he was shot multiple times as he tried to make his way on foot from El Geneina to Chad in mid-June, shows one of his wounds, in Adre, Chad July 29, 2023

Abdel Azim Khater, 32, who was shot multiple times as he tried to make his way on foot from El Geneina to Chad, shows one of his wounds


The Sudanese insurgent militia known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) overran the city of al-Fashir and raided its last functioning hospital this week, reportedly killing hundreds of people and displacing thousands of others.

The civilian transitional government of Sudan was overthrown in a 2021 coup led by Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

The RSF is a paramilitary group descended from the infamously brutal Janjaweed militia, which began as gangs of Arabic-speaking nomads that were armed and turned into shock troops by former dictator Omar al-Bashir. The U.S. government accused the Janjaweed of committing genocide in 2004.

Burhan and Dagalo turned against each other in 2023, launching an incredibly brutal civil war marked by atrocities against civilians from both sides. Over 40,000 people have been killed in the war so far, by the most conservative estimate, and some 12 million have been driven from their homes. The United Nations considers Sudan to be one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

The city of al-Fashir was the last stronghold of the SAF in the Darfur region. It was under siege from RSF forces for over 500 days before it was overrun by Dagalo’s militia, which many local residents still refer to as the Janjaweed.

“The Janjaweed showed no mercy for anyone,” one local resident said of the slaughter that began on Sunday.

“It was like a killing field,” said another. “Bodies everywhere, and people bleeding, and no one to help them.”

Eyewitnesses reported RSF fighters went house-to-house after they took control of al-Fashir, beating and shooting civilians, including women and children. Some of the victims died in the streets from their wounds. Eyewitnesses also reported cases of torture and sexual assault.

The invading force soon converged on the Saudi Maternity Hospital, the last functioning hospital in al-Fashir, and began attacking staff and patients.

The Sudan Doctors Network said the RSF “cold-bloodedly killed everyone they found inside the Saudi Hospital, including patients, their companions, and anyone else present in the wards.”

The World Health Organization condemned the attack on Thursday, reporting that at least 460 patients and their companions were killed, along with numerous health workers who were either killed or kidnapped.

W.H.O. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “appalled and deeply shocked” by the attack on the hospital.

“Prior to this latest attack, WHO has verified 185 attacks on health care in Sudan with 1204 deaths and 416 injuries of health workers and patients since the start of the conflict in April 2023. Forty-nine of these attacks occurred this year alone, killing 966 people,” he noted.

W.H.O. called for “an immediate end to hostilities in al-Fashir and all of Sudan,” plus protection for civilian and humanitarian workers, and unimpeded access to humanitarian aid. According to the U.N. organization, some 200,000 people are trapped in occupied al-Fashir and dealing with an outbreak of cholera, while supplies of food and medicine are dwindling.

“With fighters pushing further into the city and escape routes cut off, hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped and terrified — shelled, starving, and without access to food, healthcare or safety,” said U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher.

The Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) at the Yale School of Public Health published a report on Monday that said mass executions in al-Fashir were visible in satellite photographs. The photos also revealed large portions of the city were “carpet-bombed” by the SAF during their struggle to retain control.

“Al-Fashir appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution,” the HRL said.

“The actions by RSF presented in this report may be consistent with war crimes and crimes against humanity (CAH) and may rise to the level of genocide,” the report concluded.

At a press briefing in Geneva on Friday, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) estimated that hundreds of civilians have been killed or taken captive since the RSF overran al-Fashir.

“Witnesses confirm RSF personnel selected women and girls and raped them at gunpoint, forcing the remaining displaced persons — around 100 families — to leave the location amid shooting and intimidation of older residents,” said OHCHR spokesman Seif Magango.

The U.N. Security Council (UNSC) issued a statement on Thursday condemning the RSF assault on al-Fashir and demanding immediate “de-escalation.”

UNSC “condemned reported atrocities being perpetrated by the RSF against the civilian population, including summary executions and arbitrary detentions, and expressed grave concern at the heightened risk of large-scale atrocities, including ethnically motivated atrocities.”

Gen. Mohamed Dagalo, the RSF commander commonly known by his nickname “Hemedti,” issued a brief statement on Thursday amid growing international outrage at the actions of his forces. 

Dagalo said he felt “sorry” for the suffering inflicted on al-Fashir, and said “violations” by his soldiers would be “investigated” by a committee that just arrived in the conquered city. Skeptical observers noted that Dagalo has promised to “investigate” RSF atrocities before but has never made good on those promises. Meanwhile, other RSF spokesmen denied that a slaughter was perpetrated at the Saudi Maternity Hospital.

https://www.breitbart.com/africa/2025/10/31/hundreds-killed-as-sudanese-militia-overrun-last-hospital-in-darfur/

A screen grab showing members of the RFS celebrating in the street after the fall of El Fasher earlier this week

Members of the RFS celebrating in the street 


Friday, 31 October 2025

How Hungary Stands Against the Anti-Israel Tide in Europe


How Hungary stands against the anti-Israel tide in Europe

Miklós Szánthó, Director General of the Center for Fundamental Rights in Hungary, spoke to Arutz Sheva - Israel National News at the International Pro-Israel Summit in Budapest about Hungary's continued pro-Israel stance in an increasingly anti-Israel EU.


Miklós Szánthó, Director General of the Center for Fundamental Rights in Hungary, spoke to Arutz Sheva - Israel National News at the International Pro-Israel Summit in Budapest about Hungary's continued pro-Israel stance even as other European countries turn against the Jewish State.

Szánthó said that he believes that "Hungary is the last remaining ally within the European Union of Israel, and Hungary, Budapest, is a safe haven, an island of freedom for Jews and for [all] people, for [all] commonsense people here in Hungary. What we do experience and what we do see here from a European perspective is that Western European political leaders, the globalists, including leaders of Brussels, began to wage an anti-Zionist, antisemitic campaign against Israel and against the Jewish cause, and they are targeting Hungary as well, because Prime Minister Viktor Orban stands shoulder to shoulder with Prime Minister Netanyahu and with President Donald Trump if it comes to peace and security in our regions."

He added that 'what we are doing here in Hungary is to back the cause of Israel. That's why we block and stop every and each initiative in the UN or within the EU that would harm the interests of Israel."

When asked if there is any hope of changing the anti-Israel cimate in Europe, Szánthó said that he would "try to stay politically correct," because "the situation is extremely complicated, because while Hungary defends its borders and we are trying to [protect] our country from mass illegal migration, Western European countries decided to bring hundreds of thousands or even millions of migrants to their countries, to France, to Germany, to Italy, to Spain, with a Muslim background."

He noted that this has resulted in the strengthening of the so-called red-green alliance, "an alliance of the Islamist forces and neo-Marxist progressive forces all around Western Europe, because those leftist or progressive parties, they think that they can harvest or gain the votes of those migrants. They handle them as a potential pool of voters to keep them to keep those parties in power. The problem is that what we are already witnessing in Germany, in the Netherlands, in Austria as well, that after a time, those politicians or political forces with a migration background, they will establish their very own political parties."

He stated that the situation is extremely difficult because "left-wing progressive liberal parties are trying to do gestures to the pro-Palestinian, terrorist, anti-Israeli movements in order to gain the votes of their citizens with a migration background. But the real problem will come when those ones will establish their own ethnic or religious parties in France, in Germany, in Israel, and that will pose a real threat to the Western European political system."

The Hungarian government supports US President Donald Trump's Gaza peace plan, which facilitated the return of all of the living hostages who remained captive in Gaza after two years. "Hungary has always stood for peace, and that is why it's fantastic news that there is Donald Trump in the White House, because his efforts are focused on bringing a ceasefire and peace to the Middle East, and to bring ceasefire and peace to Ukraine, what is very important for us, for Hungarians," Szánthó said.

Despite the Trump Administration's efforts, Szánthó sees Europe as playing a counterproductive role in efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East. "The problem is that the globalist forces, for example, the European Union leaders, Brussels, while they are supporting and escalating the war in Ukraine, they are the ones who are trying to defend the terrorists and supporting terrorists that are fighting a war against Israel. So the problem is that there is a leader, a new leader in the White House who tries to bring peace to every and each conflict globally, all around the world, including, of course, the Middle East. And he tries to stop the terror against Israel. And he also tries to bring peace to Ukraine. But there are other political forces, mostly progressive and left-wing neo-Marxist forces that are trying to sabotage those peace efforts. But our hope is that Trump, together with leaders like Prime Minister Netanyahu, or Prime Minister Viktor Orban, they will be able to bring peace and security to those nations."

"So I do not have any trust if it comes to Brussels, but I do have trust if it comes to Donald Trump," he said.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/417071


Thursday, 30 October 2025

Iron Age Divination: Druid priests used Human Sacrifice to Predict Future Events


How Iron Age Britons performed human sacrifices to tell the future

Ancient Greek and Roman authors wrote of Iron Age human sacrifices, in which victims were stabbed and fortunes were told from the way their blood gushed out. 

Now actual physical proof of such barbaric ritual killings has been discovered in a field in Dorset, an Iron Age site that is just over 2,000 years old - part of an excavation that is offering new insights into early Britons before, during and after the Roman invasion.

Archaeologists have unearthed the skeletal remains of a young adult woman, lying face down, having been thrown on to an artificially-constructed platform, with her throat cut in an apparent public performance.

The excavation, at Winterborne Kingston, near Bere Regis, is headed by Dr Miles Russell, principal academic in Prehistoric and Roman Archaeology at Bournemouth University in Dorset, who told the Daily Mail: 'We're seeing some individual who's been executed in front of an audience. It's been done in a very theatrical way.'

The woman's brutal death echoes a report on such sacrifices by Diodorus Siculus, the Greek historian, who wrote in the 1st century BC: 'They have philosophers and theologians who are held in much honour and are called Druids… When they attempt divination upon important matters they practice a strange and incredible custom, for they kill a man by a knife-stab in the region above the midriff, and after his fall they foretell the future by the convulsions of his limbs and the pouring of his blood, a form of divination in which they have full confidence, as it is of old tradition.'

Dr Russell said: 'The Romans also wrote of such human sacrifice. They disapproved of it. They were more than happy to do it for entertainment in the arena, but they didn't like it for religious purposes - fantastically hypocritical, really.

'In the past, we've sometimes looked at these ancient texts and thought this is negative propaganda, the Romans trying to demonise their enemy. 

'It's quite clear that there is actual evidence of human sacrifice. Here we're seeing some individual who's been executed in front of an audience, thrown into a pit and then left to die.'

The excavation took place at Winterborne Kingston, near Bere Regis, in Dorset

The excavation took place at Winterborne Kingston, near Bere Regis, in Dorset

The woman had had 'a very hard life', he said. 'Her ribs had been broken about a month before she was killed. She was about 25 to 30 years old. 

'It's difficult to know the conditions under which these people were killed. Was it a time of bad harvest? Was it a time of political danger?'

Finding one human sacrifice victim is 'spectacular', he said, but the archaeologists have realised that another woman and a man, whose remains were unearthed at the site in earlier excavations, had died in similarly brutal ways, suggesting that they too were sacrificed victims.

Dr Russell added: 'It's exactly the same kind of conditions, the same variables, the same kind of injuries. 

'They died violently, thrown down on to an artificially-constructed platform. We've got a whole series of animal bones, collected together to create a flat platform at the bottom of the pit - and then the bodies have been thrown on top of that…

'Finding three [human sacrifices] within a small area of investigation makes you think how many there [might be here]. 

'The Romans may actually have been right, that human sacrifice is something that Britons did on quite a regular basis. It's not negative propaganda after all…

'We know a lot about life in Britain after the Roman invasion. But we do not have anything written about life before, the answers to how they lived coming solely from what we find in the ground. So these discoveries are all the more significant.'

Two of the skeletons have so far been dated to between 100BC and 50 BC.

The site was originally enclosed by a ditch and rampart, a type of settlement known as a 'banjo enclosure' due to its distinctive shape.

Over five weeks, a team of staff and students from Bournemouth University excavated the site with local volunteers.

All the human remains will undergo further testing at Bournemouth and Dublin universities, to help learn more about life in early Roman Dorset.

The team will return to the site next summer to carry out further excavations of the land nearby.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15223289/How-Iron-Age-Britons-performed-human-sacrifices-tell-future-Unearthed-2-000-year-old-body-woman-25-throat-slashed-druids-rewrites-history-books.html

Human sacrifice was once widespread in Austronesian cultures, across Asia, Oceana and Africa. It was used as the ultimate punishment, for funerals and to consecrate new boats. A study of 93 cultures suggests sacrifices legitimised class-based systems. An illustration of an 18th century sacrifice in Tahiti is shown

Human sacrifice was once widespread in Austronesian cultures, across Asia, Oceana and Africa. An illustration of an 18th century sacrifice in Tahiti is shown

'In Austronesian cultures human sacrifice was used to punish taboo violations, demoralise underclasses, mark class boundaries, and instill fear of social elites proving a wide range of potential mechanisms for building social control,' the study said. A luakini heiau or human sacrifice temple in Hawaii is shown

A luakini heiau or human sacrifice temple in Hawaii

Aztec Skull Rack, containing skulls of sacrificial victims

A stone  Tzompantli (skull rack) found during the excavations of Templo Mayor (Great Temple) in Tenochtitlan. New research has found the 'skull towers' which used real human heads were just a small part of a massive display of skulls known as Huey Tzompantli.

A stone Tzompantli (skull rack) found during the excavations of Templo Mayor (Great Temple) in Tenochtitlan. The 'skull towers' used real human heads and were just a small part of a massive display of skulls known as Huey Tzompantli


Wednesday, 29 October 2025

IDF "Big Data" Unit


Inside the IDF unit that extended big data to the Iran war


The IDF intelligence, programming, cyber, communications, and data unit known as “Matzpen” (“Compass”) has had a broad reach on many fronts for the IDF for a long time.

But The Jerusalem Post has learned that it extended the full breadth of its big data capabilities over 1,500 km. away to Iran during Operation Rising Lion in June.

This was especially true for the dramatic “opening shot” by Israel, which sent Tehran reeling in the early hours of the war and both delayed and mitigated the ayatollahs’ response.

If, normally, it is challenging for Matzpen to figure out ways to get its new programs and applications to maximize the effectiveness of IDF operations in enemy territory, even as close geographically as Gaza, doing so in the Islamic Republic at such an extreme distance represented an all-new kind of challenge.

Changes in the air

Although computer programs and data reside mainly in the digital universe, which ignores geographic borders, there are still various kinds of physical infrastructure needed to facilitate those programs and data traveling to other areas.
 IDF Chief-of-Staff Eyal Zamir speaks to Air Force personnel amid Israeli strikes on Iran, June 14, 2025 (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)
IDF Chief-of-Staff Eyal Zamir speaks to Air Force personnel amid Israeli strikes on Iran, June 14, 2025 (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)
Israel had never tried to carry out a massive and extended operation with constant updates about where the last Israeli bomb dropped and where the last Iranian ballistic missile was fired from in a country as far away as Iran.

But new techniques and programs that Matzpen developed for more extended warfare in close enemy territory were reverse-engineered to apply them to countries at much farther distances.

Of course, senior IDF sources have indicated to the Post that each program and data stream may need unique algorithms and solutions to function, whether in Gaza, Lebanon, or Iran.

Matzpen could be working on a couple of dozen new applications at a time to improve the IDF’s offensive and defensive capacities.

If developing complex new applications to confront new challenges could take months or years, now the IDF can develop such new programs at much faster rates.

But the bottom line for Matzpen’s commanders is that IDF field commanders should feel like they are dealing with a familiar technological world that is user-friendly and empowers them to better carry out the war’s strategy and tactics. This is as opposed to slowing them down with having to learn too many new technological interactions.

These field commanders should have no idea how hard Matzpen’s commanders and their soldiers are working behind the scenes to produce new applications to analyze and collate big data intelligence collection campaigns from the full spectrum of new IDF data clouds, many of which have distinctive purposes and interactions.

Likewise, when the IDF shares intelligence with the Mossad and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), and vice versa, Matzpen wants to make sure that its programming is so flawless and seamless that different agencies and their spies will barely spend time thinking about how a mountain of data arrived at their fingertips.

Changes in the field

A major point of Matzpen’s applications is to stream data fast to all the different higher and lower field commander levels regarding the precise location of enemy forces.

This has been a growing trend even before the current war, but the sheer number of Gazans, both fighters and civilians, who were constantly moving around during different stages of the Gaza invasion, was a whole new challenge.

The IDF was using drones on a large scale for both surveillance and attacks before October 7, but still nowhere near the volume and scale it has used them during the current war.

Managing the spike of additional warnings from enemy attacks and quickly matching the location of the enemy attack with an appropriate IDF drone or other platform for counterattacking with almost no delay has been an all-new challenge.

This means constantly sending incredible amounts of data from new sensors to drone teams and other platforms to help them “hunt” down enemy fighters at much faster speeds than was ever possible in prior wars.

This issue is strategic and not only tactical because when the IDF has counter-struck Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iranian rocket and missile teams at much faster speeds, it has helped “convince” other teams not to bother firing to stay alive.

Another issue that Matzpen’s big data and programming abilities have helped with is reducing friendly fire incidents.

At this point, Matzpen’s applications help map out friendly forces to such a precise extent that – while friendly fire accidents still happen – it is usually not because soldiers don’t know where other units are during routine maneuvers.

Rather, it is generally only in cases where some soldiers are pinned down so badly that they cannot even physically interface properly with whatever data might be available.

These same big data capabilities are also used by the IDF to provide commanders with rapid access to multiple possible military plans for achieving a mission goal.

Matzpen also provides data to the IDF Home Front Command to help decide how to respond to various ballistic missile, drone, and rocket threats, and to develop new capabilities for maximizing when and how to use Israel’s varying multi-layer defense capabilities.

Besides the military, Matzpen’s applications are sometimes also used for the general public. This can mean to better gather and analyze open-source intelligence (OSINT) or to provide more data and faster to average citizens about aerial threats.

IDF's ChatGPT goes operational

Moreover, Matzpen has developed the IDF’s own version of ChatGPT and chatbots, which IDF personnel can speak to verbally to interact with and to achieve new goals.

This IDF ChatGPT is uniquely sensitive to military terms and culture, both in terms of inputs and in its responses, to maximize clarity and efficiency for field commanders.

The IDF chatbot has also significantly advanced how much IDF field commanders can move around and interact with evolving data during mobile operations, as opposed to only being able to connect with their data sources when in a more stationary headquarters area.

Matzpen also makes sure that its applications cannot be easily hacked or accessed by outside actors and will keep certain references to intelligence sources in coded terms, the same way that humans might interact using codes to refer to their sources.

Producing all of these distinct applications requires huge time, resources, and monetary investments for Matzpen to always be developing many new applications.

In addition, the IDF’s operational chat connects to a form of Google Drive, but also has digital and physical adjustments to vet and secure data, which are super robust and can be carried out at scale.

Satellite data

Regarding satellite and other surveillance data, the Post has learned that there is a special digital architecture that passes around data from satellites and surveillance photos taken from aircraft.

There is a platform called MAPIT, which connects to other platforms to make the photos appear realistic, and it can achieve the mapping out of certain areas on a regularly updated basis.

Previously, the Defense Ministry revealed that Israel was able to surveil hundreds of thousands of square kilometers in Iran per day.

Providing updates on this data is carried out in three dimensions and is then integrated with other tactical operating systems.

Matzpen has helped streamline the process of providing this visual intelligence data to field commanders in real time.

 IDF Intelligence Directorate head Maj.-Gen. Shlomi Binder addressing an operations room amid Israel's strikes on Iran as part of Operation ''Rising Lion,'' June 13, 2025. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)
IDF Intelligence Directorate head Maj.-Gen. Shlomi Binder addressing an operations room amid Israel's strikes on Iran as part of Operation ''Rising Lion,'' June 13, 2025. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

More on defense

The war finally brought the drone surveillance capabilities to a different level of maturity. When an organization connects them to supremacy in digital infrastructure, a critical mass of sensors, and all of the history of those who previously used the drones, it achieves startling, cutting-edge new operational capabilities.

In that vein, Matzpen programs now help provide incredible amounts of prior history on tactics that were used to defend a previous area. The digital data storage directory records all warnings in real time, from any drone and any other flying platform, and relays the warning to the forces who need it in real time.

On the “active defense” side, Matzpen programs are tracking the placement and finding of improvised explosives (IEDs) with much greater precision than any military has ever done before.

Providing exact coordinates – a few meters one way or another – for where IEDs are located or for areas that have been cleared by bulldozers or other units as not having IEDs, can mean the difference between life and death for troop personnel carriers and tanks maneuvering into a new battle space.

In the cyber defense arena, Matzpen provides some of the applications and infrastructure that other divisions of the IDF use to keep the military from getting hacked, though they spend more time facilitating IDF attack capabilities.

As the IDF prepares to move from wartime into peacetime, one can only guess what new kinds of challenges will be thrown at Matzpen for addressing different security threats based on their particular nuances.

But whatever challenges will be thrown at it, Matzpen’s team of programmers has shown they are ready to tackle just about any new challenge.

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-871733