The Rest of the World Report | September 28, 2026 — Evening Edition

The View From Everywhere Else

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THE HORMUZ MARINES

An Iranian anti-ship cruise missile struck a vessel carrying US Marines in the Strait of Hormuz on September 14. Eight Marines were injured, one officer and seven enlisted. They suffered smoke inhalation and concussion-like symptoms. All returned to duty within days.

The vessel was not a US Navy ship. Pentagon officials declined to say what it was.

The Pentagon never announced it. NBC News broke the story Sunday night, citing three US officials. The injuries were quietly logged into the Defense Casualty Analysis System roughly ten days after the attack, with no public statement attached.

The Marines were not the only addition. The Pentagon also added 29 sailors from a separate incident to the same database this month. The combined US military wounded total since February 28 now stands at 861, according to figures Al Jazeera obtained from Pentagon data.

Iran is not hiding its role. Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said this week that “whenever they have taken that risk, they have suffered harm.” He predicted American forces would eventually abandon the Arabian Sea entirely. Iranian state media went further, casting the quiet DCAS update itself as proof that Washington is undercounting its own losses in the strait.

Oil traffic has not stopped, but officials disagree sharply on how much is still moving. The Treasury Secretary put current flow at 15 to 22 million barrels a day, close to the roughly 20 million that moved before the war. The Energy Secretary gave a lower figure, near 13 million. Neither matches September’s own tracked average of 7.4 million barrels a day, well under half the pre-war rate. Nineteen tankers transited the strait in the week ending September 27, 17 of them large crude carriers. That shipping count fits the lower tracked figure far better than either official’s claim.

Some of the gap is by design. Certain tankers run a workaround. They turn off their tracking transponders near Oman’s coast and transfer cargo ship-to-ship, then re-enter the strait to reload. The point is avoiding the high war-risk insurance premiums a tracked transit would trigger. Part of the real flow isn’t visible in any of these counts, official or tracked.

The disclosure landed alongside a second, disputed claim from the same waterway. IRGC spokesperson Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi said Iran had captured a second American underwater vessel at the entrance to the strait. He called it “not just a hunt” but “an intelligence windfall.” The US denied it. Iran made a similar claim on September 8, when the IRGC released photos of what it said was a captured unmanned US submersible. Neither claim has been independently verified. Both are being used by Tehran to project control over the waterway, at the same moment American casualties there are surfacing without a Pentagon announcement.

🌍 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: Regional coverage of this story is not treating the injuries as an embarrassment for Iran. It is treating them as proof the campaign is working. Al Jazeera pairs the casualty figures with Khamenei’s own prediction that American forces will eventually abandon the Arabian Sea. Iran’s Press TV goes further, calling the US presence in the Gulf an “illegal US-Israeli military aggression” and presenting the delayed Pentagon disclosure as evidence that Washington itself doesn’t want the American public to see the cost. Where US coverage treats the story as a transparency failure, the regional framing treats it as a battlefield result.

🇺🇸 WHAT AMERICAN READERS NEED TO KNOW: American readers are only now learning that eight Marines were hurt in an attack that happened two weeks ago, because the Pentagon never announced it. ROTWR has tracked this same pattern since earlier this year: a disputed casualty count tied to a strike near Minab, and the removal of a senior Defense Intelligence Agency official amid disagreements over how battlefield assessments were being characterized. Whether this month’s quiet database update reflects that same dynamic has not been established.

KYIV STRIKES

Russian drones struck central Kyiv on Monday, killing one person and injuring 24, including three children. The strike set the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences building ablaze and damaged the Education and Science Ministry next door. The private Dobrobut medical center also caught fire. Additional strikes hit the Obolonskyi, Darnytskyi and Shevchenkivskyi districts.

As flames spread through part of the Academy of Sciences building, staff and researchers climbed out onto window ledges rather than wait inside for rescue. Firefighters worked ladders up to the windows to bring people down. Zelenskyy said a search was underway for anyone still trapped inside. Ukrainian journalist Andrii Tsaplienko called the footage “reminiscent of 11 September at the World Trade Center.”

An aide to former National Security and Defense Council Secretary Volodymyr Horbulin was killed at the Academy of Sciences. Horbulin himself was injured. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported the toll. President Zelenskyy confirmed the strike on the medical center.

A RIFT WITH SEOUL

The bombardment landed in the middle of a widening rift with an ally. At the UN General Assembly last week, Zelenskyy disclosed that Ukraine had transferred two captured North Korean soldiers to South Korea. Ukraine captured the pair in Russia’s Kursk region in January 2025. They were the first North Korean troops taken alive since Pyongyang began supplying soldiers to Russia’s war in 2024. Zelenskyy said both had been difficult to take alive; one attempted suicide upon capture.

Seoul says it agreed to receive the soldiers only on condition the transfer stay confidential. It cites safety concerns for the men’s families still inside North Korea. Ukraine’s disclosure broke that understanding, according to South Korean officials, who summoned Kyiv’s ambassador and demanded a formal apology. President Lee Jae-myung called the disclosure “very disappointing.” Ukrainian presidential adviser Dmytro Lytvyn denied any confidentiality agreement existed at all.

🌍 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: South Korean coverage treats this as a breach of trust, not a miscommunication. The Korea Times gives space to domestic critics of Seoul’s own government over the episode, not just to the dispute with Kyiv. One opposition lawmaker asked why South Korea could not “independently disclose the repatriation of prisoners” without weighing North Korea’s reaction first, arguing that a country unable to do that isn’t fully sovereign. Ukrainian coverage runs in the opposite direction. Kyiv Independent and Ukrainska Pravda folded Monday’s strike into the daily tally of a capital under near-constant bombardment rather than treating it as an isolated event, a framing that leaves little room in Ukrainian coverage for the diplomatic fallout in Seoul.

🇺🇸 WHAT AMERICAN READERS NEED TO KNOW: An estimated 14,000 to 15,000 North Korean troops are currently supporting Russia’s war effort. The prisoner dispute is a reminder that Ukraine’s alliances extend well past Washington and Brussels, into a part of the world with its own stakes in how this war ends.

BAR V. NETANYAHU

Israel’s former Shin Bet chief says he will sue Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for defamation, three years after Hamas’s October 7 attack.

Netanyahu accused Ronen Bar of knowing about the coming assault the night before it happened and sitting on the information. Bar “decided not to call and update the prime minister,” Netanyahu said. He added that Bar never alerted civilian security squads or IDF forces in the field, and never ordered the Nova festival evacuated.

Bar rejected the accusation outright and announced plans to file suit. He is demanding the release of classified documents and the summoning of Netanyahu’s own staff as witnesses. “Netanyahu’s campaign blaming Bar has no basis in reality,” Bar said. He accused the prime minister of selectively releasing documents to manipulate public opinion, after three years of refusing to acknowledge responsibility himself.

The two men have been at odds for a year and a half. Netanyahu first moved to fire Bar in March 2025, saying he had lost trust in him. Bar said at the time that the dismissal push had nothing to do with October 7. He said Netanyahu’s demand for personal loyalty ran counter to the public interest. Israel’s attorney general called the attempted firing unprecedented and questioned its legality. Bar was excluded from security cabinet meetings and Gaza ceasefire negotiations in the aftermath. His term was set to expire in October 2026, weeks after this week’s accusation.

🌍 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: Israeli coverage treats this as the latest round in a longer fight over who bears responsibility for October 7, not as a new dispute between two men. The Times of Israel and Haaretz both place it inside that longer arc, one that has already cost Netanyahu politically. Haaretz goes further, framing Bar’s threatened lawsuit as an attempt to force disclosure that Netanyahu has resisted for three years, rather than as a personal grievance.

🇺🇸 WHAT AMERICAN READERS NEED TO KNOW: Israel has never held a full independent inquiry into the government’s failures on October 7, the kind Washington convened after September 11. This lawsuit is the closest thing to public accountability the country has produced so far, and it is happening through a defamation claim between two men rather than a formal commission.

Sources: Times of Israel | Haaretz | Gulf News

SOUTH AFRICA SHOOTINGS

At least 45 people have been killed in a spree of mass shootings across South Africa over the past week, spanning three provinces. No arrests have been announced in any of the incidents.

The spree began September 22 near Durban, in KwaZulu-Natal, where 11 people were killed. Five days later, in Wedela, southwest of Johannesburg, gunmen armed with AK-47 rifles opened fire on patrons outside a tavern around 9:30 p.m. Saturday, then moved inside and kept shooting. They robbed victims of their phones and burned two vehicles before fleeing. Eighteen people died, including one who succumbed in hospital after the initial toll of 17. Police say eight suspects are being sought.

Hours later and roughly 1,400 kilometers away, three more shootings struck Cape Town the same night. Gunmen killed 10 and wounded 11 at a venue in Lwandle. Four people were shot on Mthuma Street in Khayelitsha. Two more were killed in the Joe Slovo informal settlement.

Police are chasing two working theories for the deadliest attacks. Provincial police commissioner Tommy Mthombeni said the Wedela shooting may be tied to a “turf war” over illegal gold mining in the area. It may also be retaliation for a tavern shooting roughly a month earlier. At Lwandle, police are examining a commercial dispute: patrons had been buying alcohol elsewhere and drinking it at the venue, cutting into its sales. No motive has been established for the Khayelitsha or Joe Slovo shootings.

President Cyril Ramaphosa called the violence an urgent national crisis. “This cannot go on like this,” he said, pledging that security forces would use tracking technology to find the Wedela gunmen. Crime analyst Yusuf Abramjee said authorities need to look at the “wider networks behind the violence,” pointing to South Africa’s illegal firearms problem.

🇺🇸 WHAT AMERICAN READERS NEED TO KNOW: Forty-five people dead in a week, across five separate shootings in three provinces, with real investigative leads police are chasing, has drawn almost no coverage in the US press. No international outlet’s framing is needed to explain why it belongs here.

Sources: Al Jazeera | NPR | CP24 | Mail & Guardian | TBS News (AP wire)

BRIEFS

DRC: The Ebola outbreak centered in North Kivu has passed 8,067 confirmed cases and 3,901 deaths, a fatality rate above 48 percent. The vaccine-resistant Bundibugyo strain has no approved vaccine or treatment. The WHO says the outbreak is “far from over” and on pace to surpass the 2014-2016 West Africa epidemic that killed more than 11,000 people. The US has released $267 million in additional funding as international donors work toward a $2 billion response. Al Jazeera | AP via ABC News

Sudan: Sudan’s army and an allied coalition of Darfur armed movements recaptured Sodari in North Kordofan over the weekend, a town the Rapid Support Forces had held since April 2023. It is the latest gain in a westward offensive that began in late July. Retreating RSF fighters looted and wrecked the town’s main hospital before withdrawing. That cut off healthcare access for more than 50,000 people, continuing a pattern seen in other towns the RSF has abandoned across Kordofan. Guardian Nigeria

NUMBERS AT PUBLICATION

🇮🇷 Iran: 3,684 killed
🇱🇧 Lebanon: 8,953 killed, 30,643 wounded
🇮🇱 Israel: 1,200+ killed, ~5,400 wounded
🇺🇸 US military: 23 killed, 861 wounded
🇵🇸 Gaza: 74,105+ killed (total war), 4,916 wounded (since ceasefire)
🇵🇸 West Bank: 322 killed (incl. 74 children), 5,927 wounded (incl. 946 children) since January 2025
🛢️Brent crude: $106.10 | ⛽️Gas (US avg): $4.48 | Sources: oilprice.com, AAA

“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789