From the Israel-Hamas war to African coup contagion: events that defined the world in 2023

From the Israel-Hamas war and the spate of coups that rocked francophone Africa in 2023, here are nine events that marked a tumultuous 2023:

Israel-Hamas war 

Israelis and Palestinians end a dark year on Sunday, with no end in sight to the deadliest military offensive on Gaza, triggered by Hamas' bloodiest attack on Israel.

There has been no respite from Israel's air raids, artillery fire or ground fighting with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, to the despair of Palestinians surviving the onslaught.

"We were hoping that 2024 would arrive under better auspices and that we would be able to celebrate the New Year at home with our families," said Mahmoud Abou Shahma in a camp for displaced people in Rafah, on the Egyptian border.

Palestinians wait to collect food at a donation point in a refugee camp in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on December 23, 2023. (Photo by Saher Alghorra/Middle East Images via AFP)

"We hope that the war will end and that we will be able to return to our homes and live in peace", said the 33-year-old from southern Khan Yunis, an epicentre of the conflict.

Gaza's health ministry says the Israeli military campaign has killed at least 21,672 people, mostly women and children.

The fighting began with Hamas's October 7 attacks, which left about 1,140 people dead in Israel.

The UN says more than 85 per cent of Gaza's 2.4 million people have fled their homes.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel's war against Hamas will last for "many months" -- until the Palestinian militant group has been eliminated.

Coup contagion 

The spate of coups that have marked a brutal democratic backsliding in francophone Africa continues in 2023, with Niger and Gabon the latest countries to overthrow an elected president.

An unpopular France is forced to withdraw both its ambassador and counter-terrorism troops from Niger -- the third time its forces are sent packing by a former African colony in under two years.

People wave and take pictures with men in uniform, moments after the swearing-in ceremony of Brice Oligui Nguema, inaugurated as Gabon's interim President, in Libreville on September 4, 2023. (Photo by AFP)

In August, meanwhile, Gabon's president Ali Bongo Ondimba, heir to a dynasty that ruled for 55 years, is deposed after a presidential election that the army and opposition declared fraudulent.

Faltering fightback

Sixteen months after Russia invaded its neighbour, Kyiv launched a highly anticipated counteroffensive after amassing billions in powerful Western-made weapons and training new recruits.

But the pushback fails to make much of a dent in Russia's deep defensive lines, disappointing Kyiv's allies.

As winter sets in and the world's attention pivots to the Israel-Hamas war, Ukraine struggles to secure further pledges of long-term military backing from the United States and European Union.

There is rare good news for President Volodymyr Zelensky in mid-December when EU leaders agree to open membership talks with Kyiv, but Russia ally Hungary promptly dampens the euphoria by vetoing a 50-billion-euro ($54.5 billion) Ukraine aid package.

Devastating quake

In the early hours of February 6, one of the deadliest earthquakes in a century flattened entire cities in southeast Turkey, killing more than 50,000 people, with nearly 6,000 others killed across the border in Syria

A man walks among the rubble of collapsed buildings in Hatay on March 6, 2023, one month after a massive earthquake struck southeastern Turkey. (Photo by OZAN KOSE / AFP)

Two images come to define the devastating 7.8-magnitude tremor: that of a father holding the hand of his dead 15-year-old daughter, protruding from under a collapsed building in Kahramanmaras, the epicentre, and that of a newborn baby rescued from the rubble while still umbilically attached to her dead mother.

Hollywood on strike 

The existential dread caused by generative AI in the creative economy spreads to Hollywood in 2023, where writers go on strike in May to demand curbs on the use of technology in films as well as a pay rise.

Hollywood actors join the biggest work stoppage in Tinseltown since the 1960s in July, partly due to fears that AI could be used to clone their voices and likenesses.

The strike delayed hundreds of popular shows and films before the studios and actors agreed a deal in November, two months after the writers went back to work.

Global boiling 

The year goes out with a sizzle, with the European Union's climate monitor predicting 2023 to be the hottest on record.

Drought made worse by climate change is cited as one of the factors behind the deadliest wildfire in the United States in a century that claimed at least 115 lives on the Hawaiian island of Maui in August.

At a landmark UN climate summit in Dubai in December, around 200 countries agree to "transition away" from fossil fuels.

COP28 president Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber (C) applauds among other officials before a plenary session during the United Nations climate summit in Dubai on December 13, 2023. (Photo by Giuseppe CACACE / AFP)

Moon race

The space race heats up in 2023, with rising star India becoming the first nation to successfully land an unmanned craft on the Moon's south pole in August, just days after a Russian lunar vehicle crashed into its surface.

Over half a century after US astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon, several countries are jostling to return humans to the celestial body.

Caucasus exodus

The breakaway republic of Nagorno-Karabakh winds up its three-decade push for independence in September after being recaptured by Azerbaijan in a lightning offensive that empties the mountainous region of most of its ethnic Armenian population.

Karabakh residents flee to Armenia, fearing violence and not wanting to be ruled by Turkic-speaking Azerbaijanis with whom ethnic Armenian separatists fought two wars over the territory since the 1990s.

Argentina shocker

In November, Argentina takes a leap into the unknown with the election of libertarian wild card candidate, Javier Milei, known for his foul-mouthed rants against the political "caste".

Milei, who rides a wave of fury over decades of economic decline and double-digit inflation under the long-dominant Peronists (centre-left), devalues the local peso by over 50 per cent against the dollar as part of his prescribed economic "shock therapy".

Story by AFP