They came forward in small groups at first. And then they spoke out in waves.

Over the past two years, dozens of people, mostly men in their 50s and 60s, have reported being sexually abused at schools run by Catholic orders in Ireland.

Their accounts only hint at the magnitude of a national scandal, experts say. In September, a preliminary government inquiry identified almost 2,400 allegations of sexual abuse in religious schools between the 1960s and the 1990s, and 884 alleged abusers. Norma Foley, Ireland’s minister for education, said the scale of abuse was “truly shocking,” and has ordered a full government investigation.

While Ireland has long grappled with the legacy of abuse within Catholic church institutions, the latest revelations shed light on how dozens of schools allegedly harbored serial abusers for decades.

The fight for accountability has been led by a cohort of older men who are challenging taboos around sexual abuse, masculinity and shame.

“Their numbers are so big, and the ripple effect of harm must bring some impact on broader Irish society,” said Tim Chapman, an academic and a practitioner of “restorative justice,” a process that helps people harmed by a crime to communicate with those responsible and to find some resolution.

The reckoning began in 2021 when several former students from two private boys’ schools, Willow Park School and Blackrock College, began discussing their experiences of abuse in a Facebook alumni group. The following year, Ireland’s national broadcaster RTÉ aired a documentary called “Blackrock Boys” that featured the harrowing testimony of two brothers abused for years at the college.

Both Willow Park and Blackrock are run by a Roman Catholic order called the Spiritans. In November 2022, the leader of the Spiritans then, Father Martin Kelly, issued a formal apology to the victims at Blackrock, in which he said, “What was done to you as innocent children was cruel and indefensible.”

Since then, accounts have poured in from alumni of schools run by other Catholic orders in Ireland.

Mr. Chapman was first contacted by Blackrock survivors in 2021 and then was hired by the Spiritans to facilitate dialogue between the religious order and the survivors and victims of abuse. “As I often put it to these men, you can stand up for the child inside you,” he said. “Now, they can tell their story.”

John Coulter, 63

John Coulter attended Willow Park School and Blackrock College in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He has visceral memories of two priests, he said: one who molested students as he taught music, and another, a math teacher, who leaned students over the desks in class and rubbed himself on them. Mr. Coulter still remembers the smell of one man and the way spit would cling to the corners of his mouth.

Mr. Coulter was in the alumni Facebook group in 2021, when friends began recounting their experiences of abuse. “In our time alone, there are 10 people that we now know were molesting, abusing, raping boys,” he said.

As the scale of abuse became clear, the men decided they wanted to act. They established a nonprofit advocacy group, Restore Together, to collectively demand accountability. As a result, the Spiritans are now funding counseling for survivors and are currently formalizing a financial reparations program.

“You get to your 60s or late 50s and maybe you’ve got a little bit more capacity for dealing with this,” Mr. Coulter said.

Corry McMahon, 65

Corry McMahon was on the train between Dublin and its affluent southern suburbs when he saw an email with the Spiritans’ official apology to victims. He wept.

The setting was particularly meaningful: It was the same train route, hugging the scenic coast of Dublin Bay, that he used to take as a child heading to Willow Park and then Blackrock College, which share a campus. “I think about it more on this train,” he said, speaking of the abuse he and his classmates endured.

He said he was abused at 12 by two priests and a lay teacher. As a member of Restore Together, he and three classmates held a news conference in November 2022 to encourage others to come forward, helping break the taboo around speaking out.

“Picture a 12-year-old child that you know. That was the shape of us,” he said then, his voice breaking.

While he welcomes the government’s pledge to investigate, he worries that the full inquiry will be too slow. “There are guys that we know that need things to be done now,” he said. “This is the time to deal with it, not in 10 years when a number of them are dead.”

Ireland’s Department of Education said in a statement that it was “keenly aware of the importance of immediate action on the issue of historical sexual abuse to survivors,” and that it would establish the terms of its inquiry “in the shortest possible time frame.”

Michael O’Keeffe, 65

Michael O’Keeffe, who was born with a visual impairment, was 8 years old when he was sent to St. Joseph’s School for the Visually Impaired in Dublin. At the time, the residential school was run by the Rosminians Catholic religious order.

He says he endured sexual and physical violence there, including being beaten by one cleric, Louis Summerling, who has since died but who was the subject of previous sexual abuse allegations by another former student.

Mr. O’Keeffe said he was forced to remove his trousers and bend over the cleric’s knee while he was beaten with a hairbrush.

“I remember the shame and humiliation experienced as a young boy, possibly aged only 11, from this so-called man of God,” he said, adding: “We just felt we didn’t have the power to stand up to these people.”

He reported the violence to the police 15 years ago, he said, but an investigation went nowhere.

The Association of Leaders of Missionaries and Religious of Ireland, or AMRI, which oversees the work of the Rosminians in Ireland, as well as dozens of other Catholic religious orders, said in a statement it was “deeply sorry” for the abuse in religious-run schools.

Mr. O’Keeffe, a retired assistant professor who used to teach at Dublin City University, decided to share his story with The Irish Times after the abuse at Blackrock made national headlines and the government’s preliminary inquiry was released.

“In Ireland, we just didn’t talk about these things,” he said. “In some ways, we didn’t have the language to do it until now. So this is giving people permission.”

Mark Vincent Healy, 64

Mark Vincent Healy attended St. Mary’s College in Dublin, also run by the Spiritans. Between 1969, when he was 9, and 1973, he says he was sexually abused by two priests.

“I felt simply that I was destroyed by it, by the reality of my childhood,” he said.

He had a breakdown as an adult before becoming an advocate for victims. While there is often a focus on the crimes that were committed, “what isn’t always told is how your life is entirely ripped apart,” Mr. Healy said. “Economically, socially — all of your relationships are impacted.”

Mr. Healy is one of the few victims to succeed with a criminal case against one of the priests, Henry Maloney. Mr. Maloney, who has since died, pleaded guilty in 2009 to abusing Mr. Healy and another boy when they were pupils at St. Mary’s College.

Mr. Healy wants more than a government inquiry, including more robust mental health support for survivors. “If you don’t learn those lessons of the past, you are certainly not protecting the children of the present,” he said.

Hazem Isleem, a Palestinian truck driver, was passing through the ruins of southern Gaza last month with a truckload of aid when armed looters ambushed his convoy.

One of the gunmen broke into his truck, forcing him to drive to a nearby field and unload thousands of pounds of flour intended for hungry Palestinians, he said by phone from Gaza. By the next morning, the gang had stripped virtually all of the supplies from the convoy of about 100 trucks of United Nations aid, enough to feed tens of thousands of people, in what the United Nations described as one of the worst such episodes of the war.

“It was terrifying,” said Mr. Isleem, 47, whom the looters held for 13 hours while they pillaged the flour. “But the worst part was we weren’t able to deliver the food to the people.”

Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Gaza in response to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack last year has unleashed a humanitarian crisis in the enclave, with more than 45,000 people dead, according to local health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Hunger is widespread, and Israel has placed restrictions on the entry of aid into Gaza and blocked movement of aid trucks between the north and south.

Though Hamas has been routed in much of the territory, Israel has not put an alternative government in place. In parts of southern Gaza, armed gangs have filled the resulting power vacuum, leaving aid groups unwilling to risk delivering supplies.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said this month that it would no longer deliver aid through Kerem Shalom, the main border crossing between Israel and southern Gaza, because of the breakdown in law and order.

Hundreds of truckloads of relief are piling up at the crossing in part because aid groups fear they will be looted.

What began as smaller-scale attempts to seize aid early in the year — often by hungry Gazans — has now become “systematic, tactical, armed, crime-syndicate looting” by organized groups, said Georgios Petropoulos, a senior U.N. official based in the southern city of Rafah. “This is just larceny writ large,” he said.

This article is based on more than 20 interviews with Israeli and U.N. officials, aid workers, Gaza residents and Palestinian businessmen. The New York Times also reviewed internal U.N. memos in which officials discussed the looting and its consequences.

The situation in Gaza deteriorated after the Israeli military invaded Rafah in May, seeking to oust Hamas from one of its final strongholds. Hamas’s security forces fled, and organized gangs — with no one stopping them — began intercepting aid trucks as they headed from the main border crossing into southern Gaza. They are stealing flour, oil and other commodities and selling them at astronomical prices, aid groups and residents say.

In southern Gaza, the price of a 55-pound sack of flour has risen to as much as $220. In northern Gaza, where there are fewer aid disruptions, the same sack can cost as little as $10.

International aid workers have accused Israel of ignoring the problem and allowing looters to act with impunity. The United Nations does not allow Israeli soldiers to protect aid convoys, fearing that would compromise its neutrality, and its officials have called on Israel to allow the Gaza police, which are under Hamas’s authority, to secure their convoys.

Israel, which seeks to uproot Hamas, accuses the group of stealing international aid and says that the police are just another arm of the militant group. They have repeatedly targeted Hamas’s police force, severely weakening it, and police officers are rarely seen in much of Gaza, residents say.

Over the past two weeks, Israel has allowed some aid trucks to travel along Gaza’s border with Egypt, a new route fully controlled by the Israeli military. U.N. agencies have been able to avoid looters and deliver some relief.

But that has not done enough to address the shortfall in aid, aid groups and residents say. The high prices of goods sold by looters have contributed to desperate scenes among ordinary Gazans fighting for what little affordable food is available.

In late November, crowds had already gathered at Zadna bakery in the central city of Deir al Balah hours before it opened, hoping to buy a 20-piece bag of bread for the U.N.-subsidized price of $1. Suddenly, mayhem broke loose as ordinary people in the crowd — some brandishing knives — pushed to reach the front of the line, said Abdelhalim Awad, the bakery’s owner.

During the commotion, gunshots rang out. Two women were killed and others were injured, he said, and a third later died of her wounds.

With unrest rising, all of the U.N.-backed bakeries in southern and central Gaza have closed their doors for now.

“Today, the ordinary Gazan’s dream, his aspiration, is to obtain a piece of bread,” Mr. Awad said. “I can’t say anything sadder than that.”

Gazan transportation company owners, truck drivers and aid groups say multiple gangs have participated in looting recently. But many people involved in aid delivery named Yasser Abu Shabab, 35, as the man who runs the most sophisticated operation.

They say Mr. Abu Shabab’s gang dominates much of the Nasr neighborhood in eastern Rafah, which the war has transformed into a wasteland. Mr. Petropoulos, the U.N. official, called him “the self-styled power broker of east Rafah.”

Mr. Isleem, the truck driver who was ambushed in Rafah, said the looters who captured him told him that Mr. Abu Shabab was their boss. Awad Abid, a displaced Gazan who said he had tried to buy flour from Mr. Abu Shabab’s gang in Rafah, said he had seen gunmen guarding warehouses containing stolen cartons of U.N.-marked aid.

“I asked one of them for a sack of flour to feed my children,” Mr. Abid said, “and he raised a pistol at me.”

Mr. Abu Shabab denied looting aid trucks on a large scale, although he conceded that his men — armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles — had raided half a dozen or so since the start of the war.

“We are taking trucks so we can eat, not so we can sell,” he said in a phone interview, claiming he was feeding his family and neighbors. “Every hungry person is taking aid.” He accused Hamas of being primarily responsible for stealing the aid, a claim that Hamas has denied.

The looters’ chokehold on supplies and soaring prices are undermining Hamas in the areas that it still controls. On Nov. 25, Hamas’s security forces raided Mr. Abu Shabab’s neighborhood, killing more than 20 people, including his brother, Mr. Abu Shabab said.

Official Hamas media reported at the time that its forces had killed 20 members of “gangs of thieves who were stealing aid.”

As looters have run rampant in areas nominally controlled by the Israeli military, truck drivers and aid workers have suggested the Israeli military mostly turns a blind eye.

“There is continued tolerance by the Israel Defense Forces of unacceptable amounts of looting of areas that are ostensibly and de facto under their military control,” Mr. Petropoulos said.

At times, Israeli tanks have deployed along main roads where aid trucks travel. And Israeli ministers have said they debated authorizing private security contractors to protect international aid convoys inside Gaza.

Until recently, Israeli forces largely did not target the looters unless they were affiliated with Hamas or other militant groups, according to U.N. officials. But that appears to have changed in recent weeks.

In Israeli military drone footage viewed by The Times, looters can be seen confiscating white sacks of aid from cars in southern Gaza in November. Minutes later, an Israeli airstrike killed them, the footage appears to show.

Shani Sasson, a spokeswoman for the Israeli military agency that regulates aid to Gaza, said Israeli forces were targeting armed looters who attacked convoys, not just those affiliated with Hamas. She denied that Israel was providing any immunity to criminal gangs stealing aid.

In late November, Israeli forces opened fire on looters waiting to waylay trucks in Rafah, forcing them to retreat, according to an internal U.N. memo. With the path cleared, U.N. aid trucks rushed toward central Gaza.

But the gangs were far from deterred.

The looters soon regrouped and hijacked them on the road, the U.N. memo said. The trucks were stripped bare.

Abu Bakr Bashir and Bilal Shbair contributed reporting from Deir al Balah, Gaza.

Top Arab diplomats visited the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Monday, the latest in a string of diplomatic overtures by the international community as Syria emerges from years of isolation under President Bashar al-Assad.

The visits by ministers from Jordan and Qatar, just two weeks after Mr. al-Assad’s fall, suggest that Arab nations are eager for better relations with a country that had been a pariah and a source of instability in the region.

Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Shara, held “extensive talks” with Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, in Damascus on Monday, according to a statement from the Jordanian foreign ministry. Hours later, Qatar’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, arrived in Syria and met with its new leadership, according to the Qatari foreign ministry.

They were among the first high-ranking Arab diplomats to visit Syria since Mr. al-Assad was toppled two weeks ago by the rebel coalition led by Mr. al-Shara. Top Arab diplomats vowed at a meeting in Jordan this month to “support a peaceful transition process” in Syria.

Most Arab nations cut ties with Mr. al-Assad’s government because of his ruthless crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 2011 during the Arab Spring, which ignited a civil war. But after years of financing anti-Assad militias, several of Mr. al-Assad’s detractors had reversed their stance in recent years, hoping that increased engagement might bring more stability to the region.

Last year, the Saudi government in Riyadh invited Mr. al-Assad to the Arab League summit, more than a decade after the league suspended Syria’s membership. But the strategy didn’t pay off, said Julien Barnes-Dacey, Middle East and North Africa program director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. And Mr. al-Assad continued with his heavy-handed tactics. Now, Arab nations are jumping at the chance to start again with new leadership in Syria.

“The Arab states see more opportunity now than they did after a year of engagement with Assad that delivered absolutely nothing,” Mr. Barnes-Dacey said.

Initially there was trepidation given Mr. al-Shara’s former links to Al Qaeda, which is as much a destabilizing factor in the Arab world as it is in the West, Mr. Barnes-Dacey said. But Mr. al-Shara’s repeated pronouncements that his government would be pragmatic, inclusive and respectful of the country’s many religious and ethnic groups have been well received.

“Regional states are going to be happy to jump on that,” he said.

The influx of Arab delegations reflects the potential for a profound shift in regional alliances, said Paul Salem, vice president for international engagement at the Middle East Institute in Washington. Even though like most Arab nations, Syria is a majority Sunni Muslim country, the Assad regime long played a key role in supporting the regional influence of Iran, which is largely Shiite. Arab states see an opportunity to change that dynamic.

“Arab countries have been trying to get Syria back into the Arab fold for the last 45 years, since the Iran-Iraq War,” said Mr. Salem. It is not surprising, he added, that Qatar is taking the lead.

Qatar was one of the few Arab countries that refused to reconcile with Mr. al-Assad, so the visit by Mr. Al-Khulaifi, one of the country’s top-ranking diplomats, was a strong signal of support for the new government. In a news conference after their meeting, Mr. Al-Khulaifi said that “Syria and its people need support during this crucial phase.”

Mr. al-Shara highlighted Qatar’s continued assistance for the Syrian people throughout the war, and thanked Qatar for what he described as its readiness to invest in Syria’s energy sector, ports and airports.

The Qatari delegation was accompanied by a technical team from Qatar Airways that planned to assess whether the international airport in Damascus was ready to restart operations after it was shut down amid the rebel offensive, according to the foreign ministry.

Jordan’s foreign minister, Mr. Safadi, said in remarks after his meeting with Mr. al-Shara that his country’s goal was to “support and assist the Syrian people.” But he also brought up issues of direct concern to Jordan, including the presence of nearly 620,000 registered Syrian refugees in his country, emphasizing that their return must be “voluntary and safe.” Mr. Safadi also brought up issues of terrorism, arms smuggling and drug trafficking, “which we in Jordan have suffered from.”

The foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, spoke with Asaad Hassan al-Shibani, Syria’s newly appointed foreign minister. In the call, Mr. bin Zayed stressed his country’s “supportive stance” for a “comprehensive and inclusive transitional phase.” The United Arab Emirates has long been suspicious of the rebel movement’s Islamist bent, said Mr. Barnes-Dacey, and was the first among Arab nations to re-establish ties with the Assad government, in 2018.

For his meetings with both the Jordanian and Qatari delegations on Monday, Mr. Al-Shara donned a suit and tie rather than his typical military fatigues, part of the new leader’s effort to polish his image and mend ties between Syria and the international community.

On Sunday Mr. Al-Shara met with the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, and also met a prominent Lebanese Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt. Like his visitors on Monday, the Turkish and Lebanese representatives had their laundry list of needs, couched in offers of support.

Turkey, host to 3.6 million Syrian refugees, also wants to see a return to stability so that they can eventually go home. But it is also seeking to build a Syria more closely aligned with its regional interests. Many of the rebel groups that helped push Mr. al-Assad out of power were financed by Turkey, and while Mr. al-Shara’s group was not, Turkey will still seek to use their presence to push for greater influence, Mr. Barnes-Dacey said.

As a Lebanese politician as well as the leader of the Druze religious minority, which has about a million members scattered across Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan, Mr. Jumblatt wasn’t seeking influence as much as reassurances.

The Assad regime, which was founded by Mr. al-Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad in 1971, had a long history of interfering in Lebanese politics, and it was implicated in the assassination of Mr. Jumblatt’s father, as well as the killings of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri and several other prominent Lebanese politicians over the past 50 years.

In his meeting with the Lebanese delegation, Mr. al-Shara acknowledged that Syria under the Assads had long been a “source of fear and anxiety” for Lebanon, and he vowed to end his country’s “negative interference.”

Ismaeel Naar contributed reporting from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Days after an attacker driving an S.U.V. killed five people at a Christmas market in eastern Germany, calls for solidarity have given way to political sniping, as questions grew on Monday about the authorities’ inability to prevent the deaths.

The police are holding a Saudi refugee, a 50-year-old doctor, who they say carried out the attack. He had been living in Germany for nearly two decades.

Still, the killings, in the eastern city of Magdeburg, brought concerns about immigration and security back to the fore, with political leaders on Monday looking to position themselves on those hot-button issues ahead of snap elections scheduled for February.

Despite calls not to use the attack for political purposes, criticism of the German government — including from Elon Musk — has cropped up from all sides. The fallout looks likely to supercharge what was already shaping up to be a brief, intense campaign following the collapse of the government after Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in Parliament last week.

The hard-right Alternative for Germany party held a demonstration on Monday in Magdeburg. Hundreds of people attended the event in the city center, chanting “If you don’t love Germany, leave it,” and “Deport!”

Ahead of the demonstration, the party’s candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, made it clear that the event would also be used for political purposes.

“Magdeburg would not have been possible without uncontrolled immigration,” said Ms. Weidel, whose party has been polling in second place in recent months, behind the conservative Christian Democrats. She also called for “a restrictive migration policy and consistent deportations!”

Hundreds of others heeded the call of local civic organizations to attend a counter-demonstration calling for peace and solidarity, also held in the city center. Magdeburg police said both events remained peaceful.

The attacker in Magdeburg plowed an S.U.V. into the city’s main Christmas market on Friday, killing a 9-year-old boy and four women, the police said, and wounding more than 200 others. As more indications have emerged that the authorities had been alerted to the erratic behavior of the suspect, demands have also increased for answers to why the warnings were not taken more seriously.

In the state of Saxony-Anhalt, of which Magdeburg is the capital, lawmakers called an emergency session on Monday to examine those questions, as well as how, despite extensive security measures, the attack was possible. Members of the center-left Social Democrats, Mr. Scholz’s party, have said that they will grill the state’s interior minister, Tamara Zieschang, a member of the Christian Democrats, who control Saxony-Anhalt. Each side has blamed the other for weaknesses in the system that led to the attack.

At the national level, Germany’s top security official, Nancy Faeser, who is also a Social Democrat, called for opposition parties to support bills proposed before the government collapsed, which she said would strengthen the federal police and allow for increased observation of foreigners.

“All of this proposed legislation could be passed if the conservatives and the Free Democrats would stop blocking,” Ms Faeser said in an interview with Der Spiegel, a German newsmagazine, referring to rival parties.

But the Christian Democrats blamed Mr. Scholz and his party for what they saw as a decline in trust in the police over the three years he has been in office.

The Social Democrat-led government “has unfortunately contributed to sowing mistrust against our security forces instead of strengthening our officers,” Thorsten Frei, a Christian Democratic lawmaker, told the German newspaper Rheinische Post.

Security officials in Germany have acknowledged receiving alerts about the suspect before the market attack, including tipoffs from Saudi Arabia about his extreme views. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees said it had also received a prior warning about the suspect, though it did not specify where the alert came from, and the German branch of the Atheist Refugee Relief, an activist organization, said that it had taken him to court in Cologne over what it called a “defamation campaign” involving “aggressive” accusations against the group.

Lars Castellucci, a Social Democrat and head of the internal affairs committee in the German Parliament, said on Monday that he would call security service chiefs to an extraordinary meeting next week to try to understand why the suspect, who has been identified only as Taleb A. in keeping with German privacy laws, was not under closer observation.

“He was in no way unknown to officials,” Mr. Castellucci said. “We have to minutely retrace why we were not vigilant enough.”

Marco Buschmann, a leader of the Free Democrats, which quit Mr. Scholz’s government last month, leading to its collapse, called for Germany’s security systems to be examined and reorganized. But he also appealed to political rivals not to use the attack to gain ground in the election campaign.

“Our task is to stand by the victims and their families,” he said.

Elon Musk, who has already provoked the ire of German leaders by wading into their country’s politics with social media posts, wrote another message hours after the attack, calling Mr. Scholz an “incompetent fool” who should resign immediately. The remark was the latest in series of postings that the billionaire has made about German politics, including expressing support for the Alternative for Germany party.

While members of Mr. Scholz’s party have expressed outrage and concern about Mr. Musk’s interfering in the German election, the chancellor has taken a different tack.

“We have freedom of opinion” in Germany, Mr. Scholz told reporters on Friday. “This also applies to multibillionaires.”

Protesters set fires on the streets across the southern African nation of Mozambique on Monday after the country’s highest court upheld the results of a contested presidential election in which the candidate from the governing party was declared the winner.

This is the latest round of unrest since the October election in Mozambique, where more than 100 people have been killed in protests that broke out after there were allegations of widespread voting irregularities.

The court’s ruling cleared the way to the presidency for Daniel Chapo, the candidate for Frelimo, the party that has governed the nation since its independence from Portugal in 1975.

The top opposition candidate, Venâncio Mondlane, had vowed to dispute the result and called on Mozambicans to protest against what he sees as the governing party clinging to power through fraud.

“There will be hard days, but from those hard days, good things will come,” Mr. Mondlane said in a video posted to Facebook after the decision.

Frelimo officials have denied any wrongdoing. But several independent election observers issued reports after the voting in October stating that they had witnessed irregularities in the process including “unjustified alteration of election results,” according to a statement by the European Union’s observer mission.

Mozambique, a country of 33 million people, is one of the poorest in the world and has also been coping with the effects of the climate crisis. Cyclone Chido, which struck last week, killed at least 94 in the country’s north.

That region is also struggling to contain an Islamic State-backed insurgency. The conflict has led lucrative natural gas projects to be placed on hold — projects that could be a boon amid an economic crisis that has left many people jobless.

The electoral commission in October declared that Mr. Chapo won 71 percent of the vote compared with 20 percent for Mr. Mondlane. Two other candidates split the rest of the vote.

The court on Monday largely upheld the result, but adjusted Mr. Chapo’s final vote tally down slightly, to 65 percent, and increased Mr. Mondlane’s share to 24 percent. The court said it had adjusted the vote totals after a recount based on submissions from the parties.

Speaking from the court in the capital, Maputo, where the ruling was announced, Veronica Macamo, a representative of Frelimo, said that all Mozambicans should unite and move forward now.

“We must respect the rules set for elections and the results,” she said.

In the capital, which is typically bustling ahead of Christmas, shops were closed on Monday in anticipation of the court ruling, public transportation was out of service and some roads were blocked by the police.

Soon after the court issued its decision, residents began burning tires and blocking roads around Maputo, according to videos posted on Telegram by Zitamar, a news outlet that covers Mozambique.

Immediately after the election, Mr. Mondlane, who ran as an independent candidate supported by a small party, had declared himself the winner and called on supporters to take to the streets.

Tensions spiked in October as Mr. Mondlane was preparing to challenge the results in court when two of his aides were fatally shot in a hail of bullets while riding in a car in Maputo.

Weeks of demonstrations since have resulted in violent confrontations between the police and protesters. At least 110 people have been killed, according to a Mozambican election monitoring organization.

The current president, Filipe Nyusi, has tried unsuccessfully to mediate a resolution to the political crisis with Mr. Mondlane. Mr. Nyusi said in a nationally televised address for Christmas and New Year’s last week that he had spoken by phone with Mr. Mondlane, and that while the discussion was calm, he did not offer specifics.

Mr. Nyusi assured Mozambicans that he would leave office as scheduled next month, when Mr. Chapo is set to take over.

But Mr. Mondlane has shown no signs of relenting in his challenge to the results. He posted a testament on his Facebook page last week that started by saying, “If these are my last words.”

Mr. Mondlane, who is in self-imposed exile, saying he has faced threats, lamented that his situation paled compared to Mozambicans who have been killed in the chaos following the election.

“Even if it is my last word, I will shout: WE WANT TRUTH.”

Armando Tivane contributed reporting from Beira, Mozambique, and Amelia Nierenberg from London.

Europe’s efforts to keep a united front against Russia over the war in Ukraine suffered a new blow with a surprise visit to Moscow by Robert Fico, the leader of Slovakia, for talks with President Vladimir V. Putin on natural gas supplies and the conflict in Ukraine.

Following in the footsteps of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, who visited Moscow in July, Mr. Fico broke with the European Union’s policy of isolating Mr. Putin by meeting with the Russian president late Sunday in Russia’s capital.

In a briefing to reporters Monday in Moscow, Mr. Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, praised Mr. Fico for his independence.

“Like Orban, Robert Fico has proved himself an independent, thoughtful politician who prioritizes the interests of his country,” Mr. Ushakov said.

The two leaders, he added, had agreed on “the importance and even necessity of restoring traditionally mutually beneficial ties between the two countries.”

Mr. Fico, a fixture of Slovak politics for decades who started out on the left and later drifted steadily to the populist right, returned to power for a third stint as prime minister after eking out a narrow win in a 2023 election. He quickly reversed the previous centrist government’s strong support for Ukraine and its hostility toward Russia.

Like Mr. Orban, Mr. Fico has denounced European Union sanctions on Russia and the bloc’s military aid to Ukraine, though he has allowed Slovak weapons manufacturers to keep selling to Kyiv.

Severely wounded in an assassination attempt in May, he returned to work over the summer, more determined than ever to defy mainstream European opinion on the war in Ukraine and other issues. The opposition in Slovakia on Monday denounced the prime minister’s Moscow trip as a “disgrace.”

In a statement posted on Facebook, Mr. Fico said he had on Friday informed European Union officials about his Russia trip. He described the visit as a response to what he said were threats by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to cut off supplies of Russian gas through a pipeline between Ukraine and Slovakia.

Mr. Putin, he said, promised him that Russia would keep supplying gas to Slovakia and Europe in general, despite that being “practically impossible after Jan. 1, 2025, given the stance of Ukrainian president.”

President Zelensky said last week that Ukraine could consider extending a deal allowing the transit of Russian gas through the pipeline, but only on condition that Moscow did not receive payment until after the war. Mr. Putin promptly shot down that idea.

The pipeline connecting Ukraine and eastern Slovakia, first built during the Soviet era to export Soviet gas to Europe, carries the bulk of Russian natural gas still consumed by Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Balkan nations that are not members of the European Union, including Serbia.

The European Union has sharply reduced its dependency on Russian gas since Mr. Putin started a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But it has failed to entirely wean itself off Russian supplies as Ukraine and its more ardent European supporters would like to see happen.

While in Russia, Mr. Fico reaffirmed a previous pledge to accept an invitation from Mr. Putin to attend Victory Day celebrations in Moscow on May 9, marking the Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. European Union leaders, who used to regularly take part in the celebrations, have all boycotted them since 2022.

Alina Lobzina contributed reporting from London.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said Monday that “progress” was being made toward a deal with Hamas to release hostages held captive in Gaza for more than a year, but dismissed pressure to act faster.

“We are taking significant actions on all levels to secure our loved ones’ release,” Mr. Netanyahu said at a hearing called by opposition lawmakers in Israel’s Parliament that he was obligated to attend. “I would like to tell you, with caution: There is some progress.”

But he added, “I don’t know how long it will take.”

Mr. Netanyahu did not provide any details about the negotiations to secure the release of about 100 people who remain captive in Gaza — about a third of whom are believed to be dead, according to the Israeli authorities. In exchange for their release, a number of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel would be freed, according to the outlines of the deal.

The Israeli leader gave three primary reasons for the progress he cited, a list that essentially served as a defense of his leadership and his prosecution of the war after more than a year of fighting in the Gaza Strip.

“First, Yahya Sinwar is no longer with us,” he said, referring to the Hamas leader who orchestrated the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel and who was killed in Gaza this past October. Second, Mr. Netanyahu said, Hamas has been unable to get the help it expected from its sponsor, Iran, and an ally, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, because “they are busy licking their wounds” after Israeli attacks. Finally, he said, Hamas was weakened by Israel’s “unrelenting military pressure in Gaza.”

The prime minister’s pledge to secure the hostages’ release by any means necessary did little to quell the anger of opposition lawmakers, many of whom shouted over him and some of whom were ejected from Parliament during the address. Yorai Lahav-Hertzanu, a lawmaker from the centrist Yesh Atid party, was ushered out as he shouted that Mr. Netanyahu had betrayed the hostages.

At times, Mr. Netanyahu himself grew angry and dismissed the criticisms. “Don’t lecture me,” he warned lawmakers in the audience, saying, “Reality is greater than your contempt and mockery.”

He recalled that critics had doubted him throughout the war and had pressured him to make deals both with Hamas and Hezbollah before he deemed the timing and conditions right. Ultimately, Mr. Netanyahu said, he refused to cave in to those pressures, a decision he insisted had made a “huge difference” in creating the conditions for Israeli military victories and security, along with the hostages’ ultimate release.

Mr. Netanyahu defended his approach as one that had created “opportunities to expand the circle of peace” in the Middle East, and said that Israel’s military actions had been helping drive “tectonic changes” in the region.

The prime minister also alluded to Israeli strikes in Yemen targeting the Houthis in retaliation for a missile strike in Tel Aviv by the militants on Saturday morning. He said there would be more such actions to come from Israel. Shortly afterward, Defense Minister Israel Katz issued a similar statement saying that Israel would continue to hit strategic Houthi infrastructure and pledging to “behead its leaders.”

Mr. Katz’s statement also appeared to claim Israeli responsibility for the assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, Iran’s capital, in July, while hinting that a similar fate may await Houthi leaders.

“Just as we have done with Haniyeh, Sinwar and Nasrallah in Tehran, Gaza and Lebanon,” Mr. Katz said — referring to the slain Hamas leaders, as well as Hezbollah’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated in Lebanon in late September — “so we will do in Hudaydah and Sanaa,” two cities in Yemen.

Early Tuesday, after sirens sounded in several areas of central Israel, the military said it had intercepted a projectile launched from Yemen before it hit Israeli territory.

Israeli leaders’ threats to act in Yemen come as the devastating Israeli military campaign in Gaza has drawn intense criticism from around the world and fueled debate in Israel over Mr. Netanyahu’s approach.

More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began last year, according to the local health authorities, who don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. The enclave’s infrastructure has been destroyed; lawlessness is rampant; medicine, shelter and basics are in severely short supply; and many Palestinians have faced hunger and disease amid repeated displacement and bombings over more than a year.

Some of the hostages, including three soldiers, have most likely been mistakenly killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, the Israeli military said. And the military said this month that six hostages found dead in a Hamas tunnel in Gaza over the summer had most likely been shot by their captors in February, around the time that an Israeli airstrike hit near the tunnel where they were being held.

Relatives of the captives argue that every day that passes lessens the chances that those who are still alive will survive, and many have pushed for a cease-fire deal. Negotiations gained steam this month, mediators say, but it seems there will be no holiday miracles when it comes to a cease-fire and the release of hostages.

Mr. Netanyahu acknowledged that the hostages’ plight cast a shadow on Israelis’ celebrations ahead of Hanukkah, a festival of lights, even as he spoke of the country’s “tremendous” achievements.

“Those still held in the darkness, in Hamas’s dungeons,” he said, “the mission of their release stands at the forefront of our concerns.”

Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.

President Emmanuel Macron of France on Monday appointed a new cabinet less than three weeks after the previous government collapsed over a bitter budgetary stalemate.

It was unclear how long the government might last or whether it would be able to assuage broader concerns about political instability in Europe at a time when the region faces significant security and economic challenges.

The center-right orientation of the new French government roughly mirrors that of the previous one, which lasted less than three months after coming under attack from the left and the far right in Parliament. It demonstrates that Mr. Macron and his new prime minister, François Bayrou, remain committed to the idea that France can be governed from the center, even amid a period of intense political polarization. But choosing another government with a rightward slant may make it hard to bring left-leaning lawmakers in on a much-needed deal to fund the government next year.

At the very least, the announcement of new ministers gives France a functioning government at a time when Germany, another cornerstone of the European Union, remains adrift. The German government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz collapsed this month, and new elections are likely to be held in late February.

The political turmoil in the two heavyweight countries of Europe comes at a particularly perilous time for the continent. The election of Donald J. Trump as U.S. president for a second time has spurred concerns about whether the United States will continue to support Ukraine in the war against Russia and about whether Mr. Trump might upend NATO.

There are also growing worries about anemic economic growth in Europe compared to the United States and about the prospect of Mr. Trump’s following through on threats to impose tariffs that could set off a trade war.

France, which is struggling with high debt and a widening deficit, has been stuck in neutral as its politicians have proven incapable of agreeing on a budget for the coming year.

The previous prime minister, Michel Barnier, a conservative, proposed a series of tax increases and spending cuts to curb the ballooning public debt. But those efforts went down in flames as powerful forces from both the left and the far right in the fractious lower house of Parliament refused to go along. Mr. Barnier resigned this month after a no-confidence vote.

It remains unclear how Mr. Bayrou, a seasoned centrist who was appointed on Dec. 13, might change course and solve the budget impasse.

The government continues to operate in the absence of a 2025 budget under special legislation passed on Dec. 16 that avoids disruption of public services. But every day without a true budget adds to the country’s debt problems.

“France needs a budget,” Mr. Bayrou said recently on social media. “We should adopt one very quickly, with the objective of mid-February.”

One significant holdover from the last government is Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, a conservative who supports crackdowns on illegal immigration and the drug trade. The appointment of another tough-talking politician, Gérald Darmanin, as justice minister signals that the new government will continue to emphasize law and order, in an effort to outflank the far right on that issue. Mr. Darmanin previously served as interior minister under Mr. Macron.

Élisabeth Borne, a member of Mr. Macron’s party, Renaissance, was named to the cabinet and given a wide brief, including education and research. Ms. Borne served as prime minister of France from May 2022 to January 2024, when she resigned amid a cabinet shake-up.

A left-leaning technocrat, Ms. Borne presided over an unpopular law that raised the retirement age and an immigration law that was supported by the right but that upset some of her own ministers.

Two other key members from the previous government, Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu and Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, were kept on in an apparent effort to project stability in foreign policy at a time of international tension and war.

Mr. Bayrou is a founder and leader of the Mouvement Démocrate, a centrist party that is part of a coalition alongside Renaissance.

“I am very proud of the team presented tonight,” Mr. Bayrou wrote on social media on Monday night. “A collective of experience to reconcile and renew trust with all of the French people.”

In a television interview on Monday night, Mr. Bayrou spoke of “the most difficult” situation that France has faced since World War II, with a budget crisis, no clear political majority, and a time when “a large number of French people think they have been left aside.”

Solving these problems, he said, requires “personalities of moderate sensibilities, balanced, and who believe in the rule of law.”

Under the French Constitution, the president chooses the prime minister and appoints cabinet members on the prime minister’s recommendation.

Mr. Macron remains unpopular in France and has for the most part stayed out of the budget debate, which is the prerogative of the prime minister and cabinet. Even if Mr. Bayrou is able to find a compromise on the spending plan, it may do little to restore the president’s flagging reputation.

As expected, no cabinet posts were offered to — or demanded by — either the leftist France Unbowed party or the hard-right National Rally, which joined a leftist coalition in the vote that sealed Mr. Barnier’s fate this month.

In the days before the new government was announced, Marine Le Pen, one of the leaders of the National Rally, seemed to indicate some willingness to work with Mr. Bayrou, noting that in a recent meeting, he had seemed to listen when she discussed her voters’ concerns about their spending power and immigration issues.

On Monday night on social media, Ms. Le Pen said the new government suffers from a “clear lack of legitimacy,” and must now, “change its methods, listen and understand the opposition to construct a budget that takes into account the choices expressed at the ballot box.”

On Monday, Pierre Jouvet, the secretary general of the Socialist Party, said that his party would not enter into any agreement to tolerate the new administration unless Mr. Bayrou’s government agreed to suspend the 2023 law raising the retirement age in France, according to the French newspaper Le Monde. The law, which was pushed through by Mr. Macron over fierce protest, raised the retirement age in France to 64, from 62.

In elections this summer, Ms. Le Pen’s party and its allies claimed 142 seats in the 577-member lower house of Parliament. Mr. Macron’s centrist party and its allies won 165 seats. The biggest victor was a left-wing alliance that included France Unbowed and the Socialist Party. It won 193 seats, fueled in part by voters’ concerns about the rising political power of the hard right.

Those numbers have changed slightly since then through by-elections and resignations, but the essential power structure remains the same.

Many on the left said they felt angry and betrayed when Mr. Macron went on to choose the conservative Mr. Barnier and his short-lived cabinet that tilted the country rightward. That anger is likely to persist.

In an interview with Le Parisien newspaper published on Friday, the founder of France Unbowed, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, accused Mr. Macron of failing to recognize the left’s gains in the elections and of continuing to support policies that favored the rich.

Mr. Mélenchon predicted more of the same from the new government. And that, he said, would seal the fate of the new prime minister and his administration.

“François Bayrou,” he said, “will not make it through the winter.”