War Glance
Alexandra Bravo, the prosecutor assigned to investigate U.S. strikes on three Ecuadorian boats and the 36 survivors’ subsequent accounts of torture and kidnapping, was shot dead in the coastal city of Manta last month. According to police, on June 14 a hitman aboard a black motorcycle opened fire on Bravo as she and her sister were leaving a café at about 11 a.m. Bravo’s sister, who jumped to protect her, was also killed in the attack.
Upon arriving at the crime scene, officers say they found five 9mm shell casings and Bravo’s injured driver, but no sign of the police detail that had been assigned to protect her. The Police Directorate, which operates entirely under the executive branch, has launched a probe to determine if there’d been an internal security breach.
Bravo is the 26th member of Ecuador’s justice system to be assassinated since 2020 and the second individual investigating state crimes murdered that week. Besides her usual caseload of homicide and organized crime, Bravo had been working the Fiorella, Negra Francisca, and Don Maca cases—a series of drone attacks on civilian fishing ships exposed by Drop Site in April. Two of the boat’s crews returned home and reported being abducted, blindfolded, and starved for eight days by American gunmen in U.S. military uniforms aboard a U.S.-flagged patrol ship, before being abandoned in El Salvador.
The UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances endorsed the calls for an investigation, demanding that the U.S. provide information on the whereabouts of the eight still-missing men and any involvement in the matter by April 27. To date, the United States has not responded.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) struck a tanker in the Black Sea, a Russian pontoon crossing and a concentration of Russian personnel as part of broader efforts to weaken Mosconotw’s military and economic capabilities.
The confirmed U.S. military death toll in the war with Iran rose to 17 after two American soldiers were killed in Jordan, the Pentagon announced July 19.
The United States launched a new round of airstrikes against Iran on July 18, escalating an already widening military campaign across the Middle East after 
Major General Mohsen Rezaee, a senior Iranian military adviser, has warned that if the US continues bombing Iran over the coming days, Tehran will launch “full-scale offensive operations”, according to state-controlled news agency IRIB.
