(New York) The world’s major capitals celebrated the transition to 2024 with dazzling fireworks, but at the same time Hamas was firing rockets at Tel Aviv, Israel was shelling Gaza, Russia was hitting Ukraine and earthquakes shook Japan.
The world’s population – now over eight billion – begins the new year with hopes of ending the high cost of living and global conflict.
In New York, thousands of onlookers witnessed the traditional descent of the famous crystal ball in Times Square, all lit up, while merchants sold vuvuzelas and hats stamped 2024.
The police, deployed in the center of Manhattan, towed suspicious cars, set up a steel barrier to filter the crowd and monitored pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
PHOTO YUKI IWAMURA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
The crowd gathered in Times Square, New York.
In a television appearance before the New York celebrations, Democratic President Joe Biden expressed his optimism for the American economy, recalled his taste for chocolate chip ice cream and praised his country’s resilience.
A few hours earlier, in Sydney, self-proclaimed “New Year’s capital of the world”, more than a million revelers invaded the harbor foreshore.
The population gathered at all the city’s emblematic sites, despite an unusually humid climate, to admire Sydney Bay under the multicolored fireworks.
The pyrotechnics also lit up the skies of Auckland, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta and even Rio de Janeiro.
PHOTO PETER PARKS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Fireworks in Hong Kong.
More than a million people gathered on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. A fireworks display above the Arc de Triomphe was the high point of the celebration, placed under the sign of the Olympic Games that the city will host next summer.
Surprise abdication in Denmark
In Denmark, during her traditional televised New Year’s speech, Queen Margrethe II, aged 83 and holder of the longevity record for a monarch in Europe, created a surprise by announcing her upcoming abdication in favor of her son, Prince Frederik.
In Italy, firecrackers and gunshots traditionally fired to celebrate the New Year left one dead and 274 injured, while in Berlin incidents led to more than 230 arrests.
Bars and restaurants on one of the busiest streets in Tel Aviv, Israel, were celebrating the New Year when sirens sounded, announcing rockets fired from the Gaza Strip at the city and its surroundings as well. than in southern Israel.
“I was terrified, it was the first time I saw missiles, it’s terrifying, this is the life we live, it’s crazy,” said Gabriel Zemelman, 26, outside a bar in Tel- Aviv.
The year 2023 will be marked by the unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7 – and by Israel’s relentless reprisals.
PHOTO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The sun sets for one last time in 2023 on the Egyptian Gaza border.
The United Nations estimates that nearly two million Gaza residents have been displaced since the start of the siege imposed by Israel, or around 85% of the population.
“It was a dark year full of tragedy,” said Abed Akkawi, who fled the city with his wife and three children.
This 37-year-old man, who now lives in a United Nations camp in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, says he lost his brother, but he clings to meager hopes for 2024.
In Japan, the year began with powerful earthquakes which struck the center of the country on Monday, causing tsunami waves one meter high. The authorities ordered the population to take refuge on the heights.
Over the past 12 months, the world has been overcome by the pink wave of “Barbie mania,” experienced an unprecedented proliferation of artificial intelligence tools and the world’s first entire eye transplant.
“Ravage” the Russian forces
India has become the most populous country in the world, taking the title from China. It was also the first country to land a spacecraft in the unexplored South Pole region of the Moon.
The year 2023 was also the hottest year since records began in 1880, with a series of climate disasters hitting the planet, from Pakistan to the Horn of Africa to the Amazon basin.
In Ukraine, where the Russian invasion is approaching its second anniversary, Volodymyr Zelensky promised in his New Year’s greetings to “ravage” the Russian forces that invaded his country.
“Next year, the enemy will suffer the ravages of our domestic production,” said the Ukrainian president, assuring that his country would have one million drones in its arsenal by 2024.
PHOTO VALENTYN OGIRENKO, REUTERS
People gather in front of Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv.
The Air Force said Monday that it faced a “record” attack of 90 drones fired by Russia during the night, which notably targeted Lviv and Odessa, killing at least one person.
Some in Vladimir Putin’s Russia are tired of the conflict. “In the new year, I would like the war to end, there to be a new president and a return to normal life,” says Zoya Karpova, a 55-year-old theater designer and resident of Moscow.
Russia ‘will never back down’
But Vladimir Putin remained defiant during his New Year’s Eve speech, vowing that Russia “will never back down”, praising frontline troops.
He is the longest-serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin, and his name will once again appear on the ballot in March’s elections.
Few believe in the vote being completely free and fair, or expect him to lose.
In Rome, Pope Francis prayed for the victims of conflicts around the world, citing the Ukrainians, Palestinians and Israelis, the people of Sudan and the “Rohingya martyrs” in Burma.
“At the end of the year, have the courage to ask yourself how many lives have been torn apart in armed conflicts, how many deaths,” declared the sovereign pontiff, aged 87, after the Angelus prayer on St. Peter’s Square.
In addition to the Russian elections, more than four billion people in total will be called to the polls, notably in the United Kingdom, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, Venezuela and of course the States -United, where Joe Biden, 81, and Republican Donald Trump, 77, intend to face each other again next November.