Trump triumph, Assad fall, Taylor Swift mania... key events in 2024

Donald Trump's US presidential election win, the fall of Bashar Al Assad in Syria, and the Russia-Ukraine conflict were among the news events that marked 2024.

AFP looks back at the major stories that made the headlines:

Mideast war spreads

After the unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, Israel continued its offensive against the Palestinian armed group in Gaza, killing several of its chiefs, and extending its campaign into Lebanon.

In September Israel launched a huge air strike against Iran-backed Hamas ally Hezbollah, then a ground offensive in southern Lebanon against its strongholds.

In early October Iran then responded to the killings of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh -- in a strike on Tehran in July blamed on Israel -- and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, by launching 200 missiles at Israel. Israel riposted by hitting Iranian military sites.

After two months of open war, a fragile truce came into force on November 27 in Lebanon.

The war has killed at least 4,000 people in Lebanon since October 2023, according to the health ministry.

In Hamas-run Gaza, more than 45,000 people, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in the war unleashed, according to the health ministry there. The United Nations considers the figures reliable.

Gaza, where 62 people listed as alive are still held hostage, has been plunged into a humanitarian disaster.

Fall of Bashar Al Assad

In Syria, president Bashar Al Assad fled the country to Moscow after an 11-day lightning offensive launched on November 27 by Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

One of the emblematic moments of the fall of Damascus was the freeing of inmates from the infamous Sednaya prison.

That jail north of the capital was a symbol of the torture and executions under the 50-year rule of the Assad clan, especially since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011.

The country's Islamist-led government has sought to reassure minorities at home and governments abroad that they will protect all Syrians.

Since Assad's ousting Israel has conducted hundreds of strikes on Syria's military sites, wanting to prevent the country's weapons from falling into the hands of the interim government. It has also seized the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights.

Russia-Ukraine conflict escalates

After a failed counteroffensive in 2023, following Russia's February 24, 2022 invasion, Ukraine in August launched a surprise incursion into Russia's Kursk region.

However, it has failed in its goal of diverting Moscow's forces from fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Russia responded with deadly strikes and Kyiv's outgunned and outmanned troops have struggled to hold back steady advances from Russian forces, notably in the eastern Donbas region.

The West, Ukraine and South Korea say thousands of North Korean soldiers are reinforcing Russia's war effort.

In November Ukraine for the first time used Western-supplied long-range missiles against Russian territory, after getting US and British clearance.

Russia responded by hitting Ukraine with a hypersonic Oreshnik missile without a nuclear warhead, vowing to continue such attacks if Kyiv continued its attacks with Western weapons.

President Vladimir Putin has also threatened to attack countries providing the weapons to the Ukrainians.

In late November Russia launched a massive attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

In recent weeks it has intensified strikes on southern Ukraine, reinforcing fears of a new Russian offensive in the area.

Trump is back

Donald Trump once again stunned the world, and wrong-footed pollsters who had projected a very tight race, to win the US presidential election.

He won all seven swing states on November 5, keeping control of the House and winning back the Senate. He also became the first Republican president in 20 years to win the popular vote.

He beat his Democrat rival Kamala Harris, who had been parachuted into the process just 100 days before the election after the 81-year-old outgoing President Joe Biden pulled out.

That was just one twist in a particularly tumultuous campaign that also included two failed assassination attempts on Trump, 78, who faced four indictments and a criminal conviction.

He returns to the White House on January 20, 2025. Among the personalities he has chosen for his team are billionaire Elon Musk, who helped finance his campaign.

Russia tightens grip

Vladimir Putin began his fifth term as Russian president in May after winning an election that the West slammed as a sham.

His nemesis Alexei Navalny died in February in murky circumstances in the Arctic prison where he had been serving a 19-year sentence for leading an "extremist" organisation.

In August Moscow negotiated the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the end of the Cold War, releasing 16 Westerners and Russians including US journalist Evan Gershkovich, in exchange for 10 Russians.

Moscow has since continued a crackdown on opposition voices to the Ukraine war, staging trials and handing out heavy sentences for "sabotage" "treason" and "terrorism".

Social media scrutiny

In 2024 social media titans faced growing scrutiny.

In France in August, the Russian-born founder of the controversial Telegram app, Pavel Durov, was arrested and charged with failing to curb extremist and illegal content on his network, which has 900 million users.

In August, US billionaire Musk's X, formerly Twitter, was banned for 40 days in Brazil -- its largest Latin American market -- in a legal tussle over disinformation.

Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes branded X a danger to democracy.

The platform became available again in October after it agreed to pay some $5.2 million in fines for flouting court decisions.

Another heavyweight platform, TikTok, was ordered by the United States to divest from Bytedance, its Chinese owner, by January 19 or be banned.

But the three concerts scheduled in Vienna were cancelled after authorities arrested a man in connection with an Islamist attack plot.