World roundup: July 29 2024

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

TODAY IN HISTORY

July 29, 1014: A Byzantine army under Emperor Basil II defeats a Bulgarian force under Tsar Samuel at the Battle of Kleidion. Samuel deployed what was effectively his entire army in an attempt to bring an end to annual Byzantine raids, but Basil was able to exploit the terrain to surround and virtually wipe out the Bulgarians. Compounding the Bulgarian defeat, Samuel died in early October and a succession dispute ensued. Still, it took the Byzantines another four years to finally force the Bulgarian Empire (the first of two) to surrender.

July 29, 1148: The ill-fated Second Crusade reaches its ignominious end with the failure of the Crusaders’ Siege of Damascus. Initially organized as a response to the loss of Edessa to the rising power in the Levant, the Zengid dynasty, the expedition saw open warfare between Crusaders and the Byzantine army, the destruction of two German armies by the Seljuk Turks, and the aforementioned siege of Damascus even though Damascus was a Crusader ally. After badly mismanaging the siege, the Crusaders were forced to flee back to Jerusalem before they could be trapped by an oncoming Zengid relief army.

July 29, 1588: The English fleet puts the final nail in the Spanish Armada’s coffin at the Battle of Gravelines. After harassing the armada for the previous nine days, forcing it to regroup in the Spanish Netherlands, the English fleet used its superior mobility to inflict a serious defeat on its Spanish counterpart, sinking five ships and killing some 600 people. The Spanish fleet was forced to beat a hasty and badly managed retreat north, and by the time it had circled back around Ireland and returned home it had lost about a third of its ships and thousands of men.

British painter Philip James de Loutherbourg’s 1796 Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 8 August 1588 (Wikimedia Commons)

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Displaced Palestinians are reportedly packing into the central Gazan city of Deir al-Balah to escape the Israeli military’s (IDF) ongoing assault on Khan Younis and its new assault on al-Bureij refugee camp. Deir al-Balah is perhaps the one Gazan population center that hasn’t experienced at least one full blown IDF ground assault, which probably means it’s up next but at least for now it’s the closest thing to a refuge many of these people have. According to United Nations Relief and Works Agency director Philippe Lazzarini, only 14 percent of Gaza’s territory has not yet been placed under at least one evacuation order since October 7.