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LONDON: Britain is seeing more violent threats to kill or harm young women and girls aged 16-25, with incidents of strangulation and suffocation also increasing, leading domestic abuse charity Refuge said on Wednesday.
Refuge, one of the largest specialist domestic abuse organizations in Britain, said 525 young women and girls receiving long-term support from the charity reported experiencing physical violence between April 2024 and March 2025. Around half of them were subjected to strangulation or suffocation — a 9 percent rise from a year earlier.
Nearly half of those reporting psychological abuse — about 615 individuals — said their perpetrator had threatened to harm them, marking a 4 percent increase. Additionally, 35 percent said they had been threatened with death.
“Domestic abuse often goes unnoticed, yet these new figures reveal the harrowing reality: many young lives are being devastated by this horrific crime,” said Refuge CEO Gemma Sherrington.
“To actively tackle domestic abuse, there must be a major societal shift toward improved education that shines a light on the many red flags of abuse.”
Refuge said many young victims were experiencing coercive control, a pattern of behavior designed to isolate, manipulate, and intimidate.
Survivors quoted in Refuge’s report described how abuse often began with subtle controlling behaviors and escalated over time. Such behaviors can often be overlooked by authorities as markers of domestic abuse.
Reuters reported on Wednesday that Britain would reassess a tool widely used by the police and domestic abuse specialist services to gauge the level of risk faced by victims following criticism that, among other issues, it downplays patterns of coercive and controlling behavior.
Refuge has called for domestic abuse education to be more deeply embedded in schools and for the government’s upcoming strategy on violence against women and girls to strengthen support for young people.

KHAR: A mortar struck a home and killed two children and their mother in a northwestern Pakistani region where security forces are carrying out a “targeted operation ” against the Pakistani Taliban, residents and a hospital official said Wednesday.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the overnight civilian casualties in Mamund, a town in the Bajaur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan.
Naseeb Gul, a medical doctor at a local hospital, said the dead were two children and their mother. Two people were also wounded Tuesday when another mortar hit their home, he said.
Angered by the deaths, hundreds of demonstrators were refusing to bury the bodies and demanding an investigation, according to local villager Mohammad Khalid.
There was no immediate comment from the government or the military.
The latest development came days after security forces launched an offensive in Bajaur to target militant hideouts. The provincial government said the “targeted operation” was launched after tribal elders failed to evict insurgents from the region.
Government officials said the ongoing offensive against the Pakistani Taliban has displaced 25,000 families or an estimated 100,000 people in Bajaur, where authorities eased a curfew on Wednesday, allowing residents to buy essential items.
Thousands of displaced people are currently residing in government buildings, and many other have gone to other safer areas to live with relatives.
The Bajaur offensive is the second operation there since 2009, when the military launched a large-scale campaign against the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The TTP is a separate but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
Many TTP leaders and fighters have found sanctuary in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover and have been living there openly. Some have crossed the border back into Bajaur to carry out attacks.