Declan Walsh

An immense honor to be awarded the @PulitzerPrizes for our work on Sudan. pulitzer.org/node/declan-wa…

Deeply saddened to hear of the passing of John F. Burns, the legendary foreign correspondent of The New York Times. He hired me for the Times in 2002. I had just graduated from university with a degree in International Relations and knew almost nothing about journalism. Burns took me on anyway. In doing so he became, in many ways, my first real teacher in the craft. The Islamabad bureau in late 2001 operated temporarily out of a guesthouse before moving to a larger house the following year. Burns had a reputation for planting bureaus in difficult places and making them work. Watching him build one from the ground up was itself an education. My work at the start was to assist Burns and the other journalists at the bureau. Pull wire reports. Do research. Track down interesting articles. Stack them neatly on his desk. Burns spent most of the day out in the city meeting officials or holding long conversations with sources, mostly over coffee in a hotel lounge. The real work began late at night. He wrote deep into the evening at a desk set up in one corner of the newsroom. I would sit nearby, ready to pass him a document or run a quick search as he shaped his copy. Stories went out in the small hours. One evening, worn down by the long hours, I complained to a colleague, Remy Gerstein. His reply was blunt and memorable, a lesson in itself. "Your time is important. But it is not as important as John's." Burns was meticulous about his work, even his notebooks. He wrote only on one half of each page, leaving the other half blank so he could return later, sometimes years later, to add a thought or a detail. His appearance rarely changed. White shirt. Khakis or pale blue jeans. A green fleece. He insisted on dependable, top-notch equipment and worked on a Sony laptop at a time when Apple machines had not yet broken into the market. He was a wonderful raconteur. Over lunch or dinner he would hold a table for hours with stories about the people and places he had covered. My first reporting trip was with him, to Muridke near Lahore, where a banned militant organization had its headquarters. For someone just entering the profession it felt like stepping straight into the deep current of reporting. His wife, Jane Scott-Long, managed the bureau and kept the operation running with precision. The two soon moved on to set up the Kabul bureau before leaving for Baghdad when the Iraq war began in 2003. His passing comes at a time when the world already feels unsettled. Perhaps that is why the loss feels heavier. Looking back, I realize how fortunate I was to begin my career around journalists of that caliber. The newsroom had an unspoken but palpable competitive energy. Everyone wanted to be the one to win the Pulitzer for their coverage. That tension sharpened the work. John gave me my first break and showed what serious reporting looked like. That early apprenticeship has stayed with me ever since. Rest in peace, John.

@YousraElbagir has been named television journalist of the year at the Royal Television Society awards. Yousra has reported extensively on the war in Sudan over the last year, including an investigation into the "killing fields" where thousands have been targeted.

Ach. The peerless John F. Burns has left us. nytimes.com/2026/03/13/wor…

All of us at UNICEF are devastated and outraged by the killing of our colleague Karine Buisset in a reported drone attack in Goma, DRC. My immediate thoughts are with the family, loved ones & colleagues across UNICEF. Civilians, including aid workers, must never be targeted.

“For decades, vague & overbroad definitions of #terrorism have led to countless human rights violations,” warns independent expert @profbensaul.“These include unlawful killings, arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture, unfair trials, privacy breaches, refoulement.”

Watch the moment a drone struck Dubai International Airport’s runway, forcing the suspension of all flights on Saturday.

Brave, straightforward reporting from @fpleitgenCNN in Tehran. No armchair in sight.

@ASDylanJohnson I bought the coffee.

Official statements placing U.S. forces in the area – along w/ analysis of social posts, videos, sat. images – suggest U.S. forces bombed a school in Minab, Iran during strikes targeting an IRGC base. Over 150 were killed, Iranian officials say. nytimes.com/2026/03/05/wor…

I reported this story and have been working around the clock since Saturday to cover the deaths and obtain definitive evidence so that we can confidently assign responsibility. We've been reviewing photos of the dust covered bodies of children and verifying their names against the names scrawled on little coffins. We've been debunking false claims about the attack and that the harrowing cemetery photo isn't real. And while it appeared obvious to many early on that the U.S. or Israel hit the school, it takes days to sift through, pinpoint and analyze the evidence. It took four days before a new satellite image we ordered came through so we could confidently assess the damage and the types of weapons used. All that reporting and cross checking and the production of the visuals showing it takes time. But it ultimately allows us to more confidently assert U.S. responsibility, explain our rationale and add to the body of reporting that officials should be challenged with. It's easy to critique a headline, and I agree language matters, but you diminish the reporting. We're not justifying anything, we're stating where the reporting points responsibility, and quoting legal experts on the laws of armed conflict. Here's a gift link nytimes.com/2026/03/05/wor…

Sorry. Phone died. What did I miss? In the meantime, I wrote a book

UK interior minister Mahmood cancelled all Sudanese student visas yesterday, because she thought that too many Sudanese students with UK visas have applied for asylum in 2025 (120 applications). Scholarship-winning Sudanese students are posting rejection letters online.

Congrats Yelda, so deserved.

Richly deserved. Congratulations!

The United States is sanctioning the Rwandan Defense Force (RDF) and four senior RDF officials for supporting M23 and perpetuating the conflict in eastern DRC in violation of the Washington Accords. The United States is resolved to uphold the Washington Accords and ensure all parties deliver on the promises of this historic agreement.

Trump is basically calling up every journalist in his phone to workshop different timelines and goals for his war. In the past two days: @washingtonpost: the aim is "freedom for the people" of Iran @axios: maybe we can "end it in two or three days" with a deal @nytimes: might be "four to five weeks", I have "three very good choices" who might take control in Iran @abc: actually, nevermind, we killed those choices He doesn't sound convinced by any of it. He's throwing spaghetti at the wall. Ultimately I suspect he just wants to say he "solved" a problem that has vexed every American president since Jimmy Carter. But there's no clear idea what that looks like and no plan for how to get there. And there are plenty of possible scenarios in which Trump declares victory and leaves the region with an absolute mess

Powerful appeal from foreign reporters barred from entering Gaza. "Let us in."

Let us in. For more than two years, we’ve been barred from entering Gaza to report freely. It’s long past time for Israel to lift this ban and #LetUsIn. Join us. Share this post. And sign the FPA’s petition: c.org/BfXbQdXjd9

After U.N. experts said the attack on El Fasher bore the "hallmarks of genocide," the U.S. announced sanctions against three R.S.F. commanders involved in the assault. Buried in the detail of that announcement, there was also an intriguing detail. home.treasury.gov/news/press-rel…