Uganda has agreed to take in nationals from third countries who may not get asylum in the United States but do not wish to return to their countries of origin, Kampala’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. 
 
The ministry said on Thursday that the agreement is based on the conditions that those seeking asylum do not have criminal records and that they are not unaccompanied minors, adding that details of the deal are still being worked out. 
  

A car bomb and a separate attack on a police helicopter in Colombia killed at least 17 people Thursday, according to authorities. President Gustavo Petro attributed both attacks to dissidents of the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, commonly known as FARC.
 
At least 12 police officers died in the attack on a helicopter that according to authorities was transporting personnel to an area in Antioquia in northern Colombia, to eradicate coca leaf crops. 

At least 81 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli attacks and forced starvation since dawn as the Israeli military said it had begun the first stages of its planned assault to seize the enclave’s largest urban centre, Gaza City, where close to a million people remain in perilous conditions. 

Three other Palestinians starved to death in the besieged enclave on Wednesday, bringing the total count of hunger-related deaths to 269, including 112 children. 

The mothers of some fighters in the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) called on Wednesday for an amnesty for their children and an end to decades of death, before a Turkish parliamentary commission overseeing the group’s disarmament. 

“We mothers do not want to cry anymore. Let us bury weapons, not our children,” Nezahat Teke, a Kurdish mother speaking in broken Turkish, told lawmakers on behalf of a group called the “Peace Mothers”. 

A notorious paramilitary group ambushed a village in south-central Sudan, looting and burning several houses, a medical group said Wednesday. At least seven people, including two children, were killed, it said. 

Tuesday’s attack by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on the village of al-Ghabshan al-Maramrah, an agricultural community in North Kordofan province, also wounded 13 others, said the Sudan Doctors Network, a group of medical professionals tracking the Sudanese civil war. 

Myanmar ‘s military has regained control of a strategic town in eastern Kayah state from the opposition’s armed forces after nearly two years, state media reported Wednesday. 

The recapture of Demoso in Kayah state—also known as Karenni—came as the military has stepped up activity in recent months, on the ground and with airstrikes, to retake areas controlled by the resistance ahead of elections it has promised to hold on Dec. 28. 

This year, Colombia commemorates the 20th anniversary of Law 975, which established the country’s first transitional justice process, called Justicia y Paz (or Justice and Peace). With this anniversary top on mind, and as the current government engages with eight of the remaining armed groups in pursuit of its “Total Peace” strategy, ICTJ recently teamed up with podcast producers Sillón Estudios to create a four-part series that delves into the peace process with the AUC and considers key lessons learned.  

As diplomatic efforts to end the grinding war in Ukraine accelerate in Washington, there has been no let-up in the fighting as Russia launched 270 drones and 10 missiles in an overnight attack on the country, the Ukrainian air force said. 

Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said Russia had targeted energy facilities in the central Poltava region, home to Ukraine’s only oil refinery, causing large fires on Tuesday.

Israel has said it will deliver its response to international mediators by Friday over a new Gaza ceasefire plan accepted by Hamas amid mounting pressure for a truce in a war that has claimed more than 62,000 Palestinian lives. 

After mass protests in Israel demanding a deal to secure the release of the remaining 20 living Israeli hostages held in Gaza, it appeared that Hamas had reduced its demands over a prisoners-for-hostages exchange as well as over the scope of an Israeli-demanded “security buffer zone”.