World roundup: August 12 2024

Stories from Israel-Palestine, Sudan, Russia, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

August 12, 1099: In the final, anticlimactic battle of the First Crusade, the Crusader army routs a Fatimid army at Ascalon. The victory sparked a Fatimid retreat that secured the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem, but the exhausted and constantly bickering knights failed to take Ascalon itself.

August 12, 1121: Georgian King David IV defeats a much larger army sent by the Seljuk Sultanate at the Battle of Didgori. The Georgian victory helped secure a measure of independence from the Seljuks.

August 12, 1687: The retreating Ottomans suffer a decisive defeat to the pursuing Habsburgs at the (second) Battle of Mohács in what is today southern Hungary. Just as the first Battle of Mohács, in 1526, led to the Ottoman conquest of much of Hungary, this battle signaled their departure from central Europe altogether. The Habsburg victory allowed them to reconstitute Hungary under their rule and to push into the Balkans and parts of modern Romania.

The Battle of Mohács in 1687, painted in 1837 by Hungarian artist József Borsos (Wikimedia Commons)

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Hamas revealed on Monday that one Israeli hostage has been killed and two others seriously wounded in two incidents involving the people who were supposed to be guarding them. The chief spokesperson for Hamas’s Qassam Brigades wing, who goes by the name “Abu Ubaydah,” characterized the incidents as isolated outbursts motivated by anger over recent Israeli military (IDF) attacks that have killed Palestinian civilians, and said that Hamas had opened investigations into the exact circumstances. There is of course no way to verify any of this. It’s possible Hamas is trying to pressure the Israeli government into agreeing to a ceasefire but it seems unlikely the group would invent a story like this whole cloth because it would likely be discovered in the event of a prisoner exchange deal. It would also be taking a risk that the announcement could push the Israeli government away from the negotiating table.