“We’ve put a stop to it and there won’t be any more safaris,” the officer was told, according to Ansa news agency. Within two to three months the trips had stopped.

Ezio Gavazzeni, who usually writes about terrorism and the mafia, first read about the sniper tours to Sarajevo three decades ago when Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported the story, but without firm evidence.

He returned to the topic after seeing “Sarajevo Safari”, a documentary film from 2022 by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic which alleges that those involved in the killings came from several countries, including the US and Russia as well as Italy.

Gavazzeni began to dig further and in February handed prosecutors his findings, said to amount to a 17-page file including a report by former Sarajevo mayor Benjamina Karic.

An investigation in Bosnia itself appears to have stalled.

Speaking to Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper, Gavazzeni alleges that “many” took part in the practice, “at least a hundred” in all, with Italians paying “a lot of money” to do so, up to €100,000 (£88,000) in today’s terms.

In 1992, late Russian nationalist writer and politician Eduard Limonov was filmed firing multiple rounds into Sarajevo from a heavy machine gun.

He was being given a tour of hillside positions by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who was later convicted of genocide by an international tribunal in the Hague.

Limonov didn’t pay for his war tourism, though. He was there as an admirer of Karadzic, telling him: “We Russians should take example from you.”

Italian prosecutors and police are said to have identified a list of witnesses as they try to establish who might have been involved.

However, members of the British forces who served in Sarajevo in the 1990s have told the BBC that they never heard of any so-called “sniper tourism” during the Bosnian conflict.

They indicated that any attempts to bring in people from third countries who had paid to shoot at civilians in Sarajevo would have been “logistically difficult to accomplish”, due to the proliferation of checkpoints.

British forces served both inside Sarajevo and in the areas surrounding the city, where Serb forces were stationed and they saw nothing at the time to suggest that “sniper tourism” was taking place.

One soldier described the allegations that foreigners had paid to shoot at civilians as an “urban myth”.

The head of internal security in Damascus province, Brig-Gen Osama Atkeh, was cited by the state-run Sana news agency as saying that security forces were investigating the theft, which he said had targeted several “archaeological statues and rare collectibles”.

He added that guards at the museum and other individuals were being questioned.

The National Museum, which was established in 1919, houses the most important archaeological collection in Syria.

It includes clay cuneiform tablets dating back to the 14th Century BC from Ugarit, where evidence of the oldest known complete alphabet was discovered; 1st and 2nd Century AD Greco-Roman sculptures from Palmyra, one of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world; and a 3rd Century AD synagogue that was built at Dura Europos.

The museum was forced to close in 2012, one year after the start of the devastating civil war. Most of the collection was evacuated and kept at secret locations to protect them.

It opened partially in 2018 and resumed full operations in January 2025, a month after rebel forces overthrew President Bashar al-Assad.

All six of Syria’s Unesco World Heritages sites were damaged or partially destroyed during the civil war.

The Islamic State group blew up several temples and other structures at Palmyra, claiming that they were idolatrous. Unesco condemned the destruction as a war crime.

Many artefacts were also destroyed or looted from archaeological sites and museums.

[BBC]

In a statement, the US Navy said that the strike group entered the area of responsibility of US Southern Command – which oversees Latin America and the Caribbean – on November 11.

The force includes the USS Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier, which itself includes more than 4,000 sailors and dozens of aircraft. The strike force also includes guided-missile destroyers and various other vessels.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said that the force will “bolster US capacity to detect, monitor and disrupt illicit actors and activities that disrupt the safety and prosperity” of the US and will help “disrupt narcotics trafficking” and criminal groups in the region.

The carrier group is joining substantial military forces already deployed in the region, including thousands of troops, a nuclear-powered submarine and military aircraft based in Puerto Rico.

Collectively, they form the largest US presence arrayed in and around Latin America in decades.

The US has continued to launch strikes on alleged drug boats in the region. The Trump administration says the attacks are necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the US.

Earlier this week, the US announced it had conducted two additional strikes in the Pacific, killing six people.

The boat strikes have caused tensions to rise with the governments of Colombia and Venezuela, and led to concerns from some observers about violations of human rights and due process.

Earlier in November, Trump downplayed suggestions he was planning to topple the Venezuelan government or start a war.

In an interview with CBS – the BBC’s US news partner – Trump said that “every single boat that you see that’s shot down kills 25,000 on drugs and destroys families all over our country.”

Pushed on whether the US was planning any strikes on land, Trump refused to rule it out, saying: “I wouldn’t be inclined to say that I would do that… I’m not gonna tell you what I’m gonna do with Venezuela, if I was gonna do it or if I wasn’t going to do it.”

[BBC]