Portal:Current events/2014 August 22

Current events of August 22, 2014 (2014-08-22) (Friday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Syrian Civil War
  • The United Nations estimates that the death toll in Syria has doubled to at least 191,000 in the past year. (Bloomberg via Business Week)
• 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict
  • At least 18 people, including two women, are executed in public by Hamas after being accused of "collaborating" with Israel. Al Majd, a Hamas website, warns that future suspects will be dealt with "in the field" rather than the courts. (AP),(NY Times)
  • A 4-year-old boy is killed in a mortar attack on a southern Israeli village near the Gaza border; Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu vows that military operations will "intensify" because of his death. The IDF claims the mortar was fired from a school used as a shelter by Hamas. (BBC)(Times of Israel)

• War in Donbass:
  • Russian aid convoys enter eastern Ukraine without permission from the Ukrainian government, sparking condemnation from the US, the EU, and NATO, and prompting the UN to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the action. No other country sent humanitarian aid to the region. (BBC)
• Iraqi insurgency (2011–present):
  • A suicide bomber and multiple gunmen, suspected to be Shia militiamen, attack a Sunni mosque in the Diyala province, killing at least 65 people. (BBC)

Disasters and accidents

• The death toll from landslides in Japan's Hiroshima prefecture rises to 39 with 26 missing. (Boston.com) (Bloomberg)
• Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
  • The bodies and ashes of twenty Malaysian victims who died when the flight was shot down over the Ukraine in July have been returned to Kuala Lumpur. (AP)
• 44 people are killed and 41 injured after two buses crash in the south of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. (Al-Ahram)(RT) (BBC)

Law and crime

• The murder conviction of David Eastman for allegedly killing former Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Colin Winchester is quashed after Eastman has served a 19-year prison sentence. (Brisbane Times)