World roundup: October 20 2025

Stories from India, Mali, El Salvador, and elsewhere

Happy Diwali to those who are celebrating!

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Apologies for the double posting tonight. The first message was sent prematurely.

PROGRAMMING NOTE 2: I am losing my voice, so I’m going to have to ask you to bear with me as I take a few days off from the voiceover feature. As always, those who require a voiceover for accessibility reasons can use the Substack app’s text-to-voice feature.

TODAY IN HISTORY

October 20, 1448: The Second Battle of Kosovo ends with the Ottomans victorious over a Hungarian army under regent John Hunyadi. The Hungarians nearly won an unlikely victory but ultimately couldn’t overcome the Ottomans’ advantage in numbers and their field fortifications. The Ottoman victory shored up the empire’s position in the Balkans and allowed Sultan Murad II to turn his attention to the east and expand the Ottoman domains in Anatolia.

October 20, 1962: Chinese forces attack India in two disputed border regions—Ladakh in the west and the Tibet-Arunachal Pradesh region in the east—beginning the month-long Sino-Indian War. The conflict ended with a decisive Chinese victory that stabilized the still poorly defined Chinese-Indian border on Beijing’s terms.

October 20, 2011: With the tide of Libya’s civil war having turned decisively against him, thanks in no small measure to NATO’s intervention, a fleeing Muammar Gaddafi is captured by rebels west of the city of Sirte and summarily executed. Gaddafi’s death definitely marked the end of an era but it did not mark the end of Libya’s internal conflict, which in many respects remains ongoing.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

One day after killing dozens of people across Gaza, the Israeli military (IDF) killed just four on Monday in two instances along the “yellow line” demarcating the current Israeli security perimeter within the territory. Officials in Gaza’s civil defense authority said that all four were civilians attempting to return to the remains of their homes, while Israeli officials characterized them as “fighters” who were threatening IDF soldiers. My assumption is that the IDF has been ordered to regard anyone who approaches or crosses the “yellow line” as an enemy combatant regardless of their actual disposition.

Sunday’s death toll is still somewhat nebulous but it was over 40—Gaza’s health officials said that they catalogued 57 bodies on Monday but it’s not a given that all of them were killed the previous day. US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Israel on Monday to try to advance the process of negotiating the “second phase” of Donald Trump’s ceasefire framework, though given the events of the previous day their mission likely had more of a damage control element to it than previously anticipated. Their primary focus at this point seems to be standing up a non-Hamas governing authority in Gaza and manifesting the “international security force” that’s supposed to supplant Hamas as the IDF withdraws from parts of the territory. On the humanitarian front the IDF appears to be letting aid trucks into Gaza again after having suspended shipments during the previous day’s violence, but the director of Gaza’s government media office has accused them of failing to hit the ceasefire’s 600 truck per day target and that was prior to Sunday’s events.