At least 109 migrants died, including 15 children, and some 116 went missing when a boat sank off the shores of Djibouti on the night of 8-9 October, a UN agency said Sunday. More than 80 people survived the shipwreck, all Ethiopian nationals.

Survivors said the vessel – which was carrying 305 people from Djibouti to Yemen – capsized north of the Djibouti town of Obock, according to a statement from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

“This is a devastating loss of life. Our thoughts are with the survivors and the families who have lost loved ones or remain without news of their relatives,” said Alexandre Coissac, IOM chief of mission in Djibouti, in the statement.

He said IOM teams were on the ground alongside Djiboutian authorities to provide emergency aid.

“This tragedy is a stark reminder of the dangers faced by migrants along this migration corridor as they seek economic opportunities” by trying to cross the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to Yemen and then reach Gulf countries.

Among the 109 bodies recovered were 52 men, 42 women and 15 children – nine girls and six boys – the statement said.

More than 80 people survived the shipwreck, all Ethiopian nationals.

“Poverty, insecurity and the growing impacts of climate change drive many to undertake this journey, despite mounting instability across the Middle East,” the IOM said.

Yemen is stricken by fighting between the Saudi-backed government and Tehran-backed Houthi rebels, who have joined in the regional conflict involving the US and its allies against Iran.

The IOM said it was assisting 64 survivors at a migrant centre in Obock.

“Djiboutian authorities are continuing search and rescue operations as fears grow for those still missing.”

The IOM said that 178,000 people had arrived in Djibouti from Ethiopia from January to October this year.

In 2025, more than 900 migrants died or went missing along the sea route to Yemen and the number attempting the journey increased by 18 percent, it said.

A shipwreck in March 2026 left nine people dead and 45 missing.

IOM spokesman Kennedy Omondi Okoth told French news agency AFP this week that most of the people attempting the journey were from Ethiopia or Somalia.

He said many of them were ending up stuck in Djibouti.

The IOM urged “donors and partners to strengthen support for Djibouti’s response, including search and rescue operations and life-saving assistance”.

(with AFP)

Ceuta (Spain) (AFP) – Police on Sunday cleared the last major migrant encampment in Ceuta, two days before a visit by Spain’s king and queen, AFP reporters at the scene and the interior ministry said.

The camp sprang up after a mass influx of more than 70,000 people into the Spanish territory from neighbouring Morocco on July 30 and 31.

Although most returned to Morocco within days, thousands remained in Ceuta, sleeping rough in the streets or on beaches and straining the small city’s resources.

The sudden influx, during which scores of people died, sparked alarm across the European Union and triggered a political crisis in Madrid.

Police backed by soldiers arrived shortly after 8:00 am on Sunday at the El Guano esplanade, where hundreds of migrants had been camping in makeshift shelters following earlier clearances of settlements on nearby beaches, an AFP reporter saw.

Migrants were put on buses and taken to reception centres for police processing, while cleaning crews moved in to clear the esplanade and beach.

Some migrants fled into nearby hills to avoid being put on buses.

Over 350 police officers from various units were involved, the interior ministry said in a statement, adding it was the fifth such operation in Ceuta in recent weeks “aimed at clearing public areas of the city”.

King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia are scheduled to visit Ceuta on Tuesday, on a trip coordinated with the government.

Morocco claims sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s two North African enclaves.

The royal visit to Ceuta, followed by a trip to Melilla on October 14, will be the first by a Spanish monarch to the two cities since King Juan Carlos travelled there in November 2007, sparking a diplomatic crisis with Morocco.

The opposition has accused Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government of reacting too slowly to the migrant crisis in Ceuta.

Islamabad (Pakistan) (AFP) – Pakistan placed a northern province under emergency rule on Sunday, the president’s office said, following anti-government demonstrations by supporters of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan and militant violence in the northwest.

Thousands of Khan’s supporters have been marching in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province to demand his release and airing anti-government criticism fuelled by harsh economic conditions.

Shortly after the measures were announced, a lawmaker from Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, Junaid Akbar, said on X that the province’s chief minister Sohail Afridi had been arrested along with the provincial president.

PTI chairman Gohar Ali Khan called the emergency declaration “an extremely alarming and grave political mistake and an undemocratic measure”.

“The people will never accept such actions against their rights,” he posted on X.

The declaration, invoked under two articles of Pakistan’s constitution dealing with security, grants the federal government sweeping administrative powers over the province.

President Asif Ali Zardari signed the order after cabinet recommendations “regarding the law and order situation, and the failure of negotiations with government delegations”, his office said.

An image issued by Zardari’s office showed his signature affirming the measures.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office said earlier the decision had been taken over the “deteriorating law and order situation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and… from the provincial government’s deliberate indifference in the war against terrorism”.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is a stronghold for Khan’s party, and the PTI-led government there will be sidelined under Sunday’s extraordinary constitutional measures.

A government spokesperson did not immediately respond to request for comment on the PTI provincial leader detentions.

…

Moscow (AFP) – Ukraine has no business interfering in the International Olympic Committee’s decision to permit Russia’s return as an officially recognised nation after years in the wilderness, Russian Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyarev has told AFP.

A Russian team of 13 athletes and 10 coaches will parade with their national flag at the Youth Olympics in Dakar at the end of this month, and the Russian national anthem will be played.

Indeed it is 10 years since a victorious Russian athlete has heard the national anthem ring out at a senior Olympics.

A state-sponsored doping programme implemented, according to the World Anti-Doping Agency, at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, and the assault on Ukraine launched by President Vladimir Putin in 2022 resulted in Russians competing in various guises, most recently as Individual Neutral Athletes.

However, on July 7 Russia came in from the cold when the IOC eased restrictions on Russian athletes and opened a pathway for them to compete in qualifying events for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

A furious Ukraine filed an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) requesting that the IOC decision be annulled.

“The IOC’s decision is not something Ukraine should concern itself with, as they are not involved in any related dispute,” Degtyarev said in an interview with AFP.

“So there can only be one outcome: the claim should be dismissed, as the claimant lacks proper standing in the case,” added the 45-year-old.

The competition in Senegal will be the first time that Russia’s national symbols have been permitted since the 2020 Youth Olympics in Lausanne.

The IOC did defer a decision on whether the flag and the anthem would be reintroduced for the LA Games.

Ukraine claim the IOC’s decision contradicted the provisions of the Olympic Charter, was taken prematurely and failed to “take into account the factual circumstances that served as the basis for the suspension.”

Degtyarev’s Ukrainian counterpart Matviy Bidnyi told AFP Russia was fooling the IOC over their claims to have ceased sports activities on Ukrainian land annexed during the ongoing special military operation.

…

Seoul (AFP) – A South Korean container ship returned on Sunday from a trial voyage through the Arctic, testing an alternative route opened by melting sea ice as conflict in the Middle East disrupts global shipping.

The “PanStar Acro” made the round trip to Europe in less time than the conventional route through the Suez Canal, officials said, but the initiative has drawn concerns that increased traffic could accelerate Arctic ice loss.

The Arctic route could also expose operators to sanctions-related risks because it runs along Russia’s northern coast.

“The ‘PanStar Acro’, which embarked on a trial voyage along the Arctic shipping route on August 22, docked at Jaseongdae Pier in Busan Port,” the South Korean oceans and fisheries ministry said in a statement to AFP.

The vessel sailed through the Arctic’s Northern Sea Route before making port calls at Felixstowe in Britain, Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Gdansk in Poland, and returning via the same route.

President Lee Jae Myung hailed the successful voyage, saying it “shortened the one-way sailing time by 10 days compared with the conventional route via the Suez Canal”.

“It also allowed us to gain valuable experience operating a South Korean container ship in polar waters and to collect navigational data,” Lee said on X.

The Middle East conflict, sparked by US-Israeli strikes on Iran in February, has roiled global shipping, prompting governments and operators to explore alternative routes.

Environmental advocates, however, warn that expanded commercial shipping along the Northern Sea Route could threaten the fragile Arctic ecosystem.

Major shipping companies, including CMA-CGM, MSC and Hapag-Lloyd, have pledged to avoid Arctic routes, citing environmental concerns.

The Northern Sea Route is generally more accessible during the warmer months, when reduced sea ice makes navigation easier, although ice conditions remain unpredictable and some vessels still require icebreaker assistance.

Without making any reference to the the environmental concerns, Lee said the successful trial mission would help his country “prepare for the era of Arctic shipping routes”.

“We will transform Busan and the southeastern region into a ‘southern maritime capital region’ and ensure that this new sea route becomes a new engine of growth,” he said.

Kenya’s first imported case of Ebola – in which the patient travelled from Democratic Republic of Congo via Uganda – has exposed failings in border screening processes. Now Kenyan health officials are racing against the clock to prevent one infection from becoming an outbreak.

By: Anne Macharia in Nairobi

By the time Kenya confirmed its first Ebola case, the patient had already travelled across three countries.

The Kenyan man at the centre of the country’s first confirmed case had lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for seven years. He fell ill there and received treatment at several hospitals before beginning his journey home to Kenya.

On 2 October, he travelled by road from Beni in the DRC to Kampala, Uganda. The following day, he boarded a flight to Nairobi, arriving at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. He was taken to Nairobi Hospital, isolated and assessed.

His symptoms included fever, chills, fatigue, muscle pain, painful swallowing, sore throat and bleeding beneath the skin. Samples taken from the patient tested positive for Bundibugyo Ebola at Kenya’s National Virology Reference Laboratory and the Kenya Medical Research Institute.

He died on the night of 5 October. The following day, Kenya notified the World Health Organization (WHO).

Now the race is on for the country’s health authorities to trace everyone who may have been exposed.

Health authorities have so far identified 57 contacts, 10 of whom have been quarantined at the National Police Service Hospital.

…

The United Nations on Friday raised the alarm about a displacement crisis in the central Sahel where nearly four million people have been forced to flee their homes in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

The number is more than double that of six years ago, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said, before a wave of coups in a region bedevilled by instability and violence.

It includes 818,000 refugees and asylum seekers, it added.

“The crisis is being compounded by continued attacks affecting civilians, climate-related shocks and severe humanitarian funding shortfalls,” the UNHCR said in a statement.

In 2020, the UNHCR said the region had counted more than 1.7 million internally displaced people and 365,000 refugees.

“Together, these pressures are forcing more families to flee, eroding livelihoods and limiting opportunities for displaced people to rebuild their lives, contributing to further movements within and beyond the region,” said Abdouraouf Gnon-Konde, UNHCR’s regional director for west and central Africa.

“Unfortunately, the international attention is receding,” he added in Geneva, following a visit to the region.

Gnon-Konde added that the instability was ramping up pressure on the asylum system as affected countries struggle with weak public services.

In Mali, most refugees come from neighbouring Burkina Faso.

According to the UNHCR, Koro, in the central Bandiagara region of Mali near the border with Burkina Faso, hosted some 86,000 Burkinabe refugees – including more than 14,000 children – in July, after several recent influxes.

The UN agency said the number of refugees in the area was now nearly equal to that of the local host community, heaping pressure on already limited land and water resources and overwhelming health services.

It warned the crisis was increasingly spreading beyond the central Sahel, with hundreds of thousands of people displaced to coastal west Africa, including Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo.

But the UNHCR faces a severe funding shortfall.

In September, it estimated it had only received 27 percent of the funding necessary to cover its work in the Sahel.

(with AFP)

New Delhi (AFP) – The founder of India’s youth-led online “cockroach” movement and two other leaders were released on Sunday, their lawyer said, a day after they were detained to thwart a major protest against the election commissioner.

The group said thousands of protesters were detained before Saturday’s planned demonstration in New Delhi, the culmination of weeks of opposition mobilisation following allegations of misconduct during a nationwide voter roll revision.

Abhijeet Dipke and two other Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) leaders were detained before they could disembark from their flight after arriving in the capital from Mumbai.

Ratna Singh, the CJP’s head lawyer, said in a social media post that Dipke and the others had been released by an executive magistrate’s court.

She said they had been released on the condition that they made “no breach of peace for one year”.

Dipke, wearing a white shirt, was driven away in a black vehicle soon after walking out of the court, AFP reporters saw.

Authorities mounted a sweeping security operation across the capital on Saturday, detaining thousands to prevent protesters from gathering at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar protest site, the CJP and Indian media reports said.

The protest was organised to demand the resignation of the head of the Election Commission of India (ECI) over the nationwide voter-roll revision.

Media reports said the revision resulted in more than 133 million names being removed from electoral lists.

Election authorities say the exercise was aimed at eliminating duplicate, deceased and fraudulent entries.

Critics say the process has disproportionately affected minorities, particularly Muslims, potentially benefiting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

The ECI has rejected allegations of wrongdoing.

Saturday’s detentions triggered sharp criticism from opposition leaders, who accused Modi’s government of stifling dissent, and others.

In Geneva, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights called for the immediate and unconditional release of all those “arbitrarily detained” in New Delhi.

Both the CJP and opposition leader Rahul Gandhi have vowed to press ahead with protests despite the crackdown.

Gandhi said his Congress party “… and the youth of the country will once again take to the streets in large numbers” on Monday.

“The more Modi and his government crack down, the more the anger of Gen Z and students will grow,” he said.

Moscow (AFP) – A drone attack damaged a Russian Yandex data centre east of the capital and disrupted operations at the facility, the technology giant said Sunday.

Yandex, often dubbed “Russia’s Google”, runs the country’s most popular search engine, as well as a food-ordering and taxi app used by tens of millions.

The attack, the third reported attack within a week, could signal the start of a new retaliatory campaign from Kyiv targeting Russia’s internet infrastructure – weeks after Moscow started hitting data centres in Ukraine.

“As a result of a UAV attack, infrastructure at the Yandex data centre in Vladimir was damaged,” the company said in a service alert on Telegram.

No one was injured in the attack, Yandex said, adding that emergency services were at the site and the company was evaluating ways to restore operations.

“Operations at the data centre have been completely suspended,” it added, advising users to activate disaster-recovery plans as the platform operated in emergency mode.

“The remaining resource configuration is considered unstable,” the company said, warning that technical support communications could also be disrupted as teams assessed the damage.

On Friday, Yandex said a drone attack had damaged a data centre in the Kaluga region, putting several modules out of service and causing disruptions to some services.

A night before, an attack sparked a fire at a Yandex facility in the Ryazan region, causing major outages that affected transport and e-commerce platforms.

Naha (Japan) (AFP) – A week after a US marine was arrested on suspicion of murdering a Japanese woman in Okinawa, resident Takako Kakazu is clear what she wants: American soldiers to leave.

The case has prompted public outrage, caused Japan’s premier to slam the “heinous crime” and reignited controversy over the heavy US military presence on the southern island.

“I just can’t accept this anymore. How many more women in Okinawa have to suffer like this? Everyone is angry,” she told AFP.

“I know America says they’ll protect us if there’s a war, but all we ever get is suffering… Please leave,” said the 55-year-old housewife, who has one daughter.

On a busy, sunny weekend close to Okinawa’s capital Naha, life seemed normal as tourists and Americans who appeared to be from the military packed beaches and shopping streets.

But residents on Okinawa, where any crimes involving US forces have long inflamed criticism of the troops’ presence, told AFP of their frustration and anger in the wake of another alleged incident.

According to police, a US marine stationed on Okinawa was arrested on suspicion of killing a 39-year-old woman at a hotel in Naha and stealing her wallet.

Local media reported she was choked to death and that the Marine is denying the allegations.

“Honestly, my first reaction was: ‘Not again’,” said Airi Hiane, a 23-year-old cafe worker.

“If they’re going to maintain that presence here, they need to follow the rules. Otherwise, it’s hard to feel like we can move forward together.”

But Hiane acknowledged it “difficult to demand that it (the US military) be removed entirely”, and other residents also said that Americans were important to many local businesses.

Military base-related income accounts for around five percent of the region’s annual total, and some argue that the bases create jobs.

Japan – which has a pacificist constitution – also relies on US military might as a deterrent against any potential attack, and has emphasised the importance of American soldiers being garrisoned, trained and on standby 24/7.

For Americans living on the island, there were fears that the latest incident would create tensions within the community.

Stephen Butler, a bar owner in Naha, acknowledged that “it does not look good for the rest of us that are here, that want to be here peacefully and enjoy the culture”.

His bar “Sidelines” was also suffering after US forces were barred on Wednesday from drinking alcohol for 48 hours in the wake of the murder.

But he also said that “relationships are good” between locals and foreigners on the island.

“I’ve been here a very long time, and I know all the other owners in the area… There’s always a lot of respect.”

For resident Kakazu, her problem is with the US forces specifically.

“It’s terrifying,” she said, before adding in an apparent plea to authorities: “Please, I’m begging you, do something to stop this.”

Bayeux (France) (AFP) – Palestinian freelancer Mahmoud Abu Hamda on Saturday won the photography category in the prestigious Bayeux award for war correspondents for his work from Gaza.

The Washington Post, NPR (National Public Radio, US) and CNN won the top prizes in the print, radio and television categories for reports from Ukraine, Gaza and the West Bank respectively.

As well as the top prize, Hamda, based in the Gaza Strip, also won the Public’s Choice award for his reportage “What War Leaves Behind”.

He was not at the ceremony in Bayeux, northwest France, but sent a video message to the event.

“My greatest honour is that these photos have been able to leave the borders of Gaza,” he said.

Hamda sent his unpublished reportage to the Bayeux jury himself. It illustrates life in the Gaza Strip and the hardship its inhabitants are enduring after Israel launched its offensive there […].

The Washington Post team was honoured for telling the story of a Ukrainian soldier trapped in a combat zone for 177 days.

Palestinian journalist Anas Baba of NPR won the radio award for a report on the recovery of victims’ bodies in Gaza.

CNN journalists won both the television prize and video image award for their report on Israeli soldiers serving settlers in the West Bank.

Associated Press photographer Jehad Alshrafi took the Young Reporter photography prize for his series “Endless War and Devastation in Gaza”.

One of Alshrafi’s photos, showing footballers playing on a pitch surrounded by rubble in Gaza, sparked controversy in France in August.

It was removed from a sports photography festival in the northern French town of Deauville before a court ordered it reinstated.

Veteran BBC war correspondent Lyse Doucet was the president of the Bayeux awards jury.

Ramallah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday postponed legislative elections to September next year, official media said, confirming widespread speculation that they would be delayed once again.

The first legislative elections since 2006, which the international community has strongly advocated for, had been scheduled for November 28, with a presidential election expected in early 2027.

But both elections will now be held on September 11, 2027, Abbas said in a decree, blaming Israeli “obstacles”, according to the Palestinian official news agency Wafa.

Israel, which will hold its own elections on October 27, had blasted Abbas as a “corrupt dictator” over the postponement.

Abbas’s office, in a statement published by Wafa, blamed the delay on “obstacles imposed by Israeli measures… as well as the need to create appropriate political, security and on-the-ground conditions”.

Abu Amin Joudeh, a displaced man living in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah, said Palestinians wanted to vote for their representatives.

“We know things are difficult here because of the war and all the destruction, but how long will the elections continue to be postponed?” said the 40-year-old.

This week, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority said Israel refused to allow Palestinian election officials access to east Jerusalem or Gaza ahead of the legislative elections.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Friday had denied Israel was obstructing the process.

“(Abbas’s) attempt to drag Israel into this, falsely claiming that Israel imposed obstacles to holding elections, is yet another ridiculous lie designed to evade responsibility and accountability,” Saar said on X.

Palestinian factions including Abbas’s Fatah party and its longtime Islamist rival Hamas had agreed to recommend the elections be postponed at a meeting in Cairo on Wednesday, a source who was present told AFP.

Mohammed Dahlan, head of a splinter group from Abbas’s Fatah party, called the delay a “crime against democracy”.

“Abbas and the circle of self-serving beneficiaries around him have turned the institutions of the Palestinian Authority into a private fiefdom,” Dahlan, a Gaza native based in the United Arab Emirates, said in a statement.

…

London (AFP) – Thousands of people on Saturday joined pro-Palestinian marches in London, Berlin and Dublin calling for an end to Israeli strikes on Gaza, […].

Several thousand marchers in London carried placards reading “End the genocide” and “Free Palestine” as they made their way along the route near the British parliament.

“We are here today to mark three years of the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” Aimee Shalan, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, told AFP.

Western sanctions over settler violence did not go far enough, she said, calling for “full sanctions on Israel”.

A ceasefire began a year ago and although Israel has reduced its level of attacks it has kept striking Gaza on a near-daily basis.

Strikes have killed some 1,450 Palestinians since the ceasefire, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

London police said they had arrested 20 people including a man and a woman with placards supporting the organisation Palestine Action, banned under UK law.

Recent graduate Hibo Hassan, 23, said she was there to show her solidarity.

“Although it is happening in the Middle East, it affects us here now,” she said.

“It’s extremely dystopian and that is something we should be all scared about,” she added.

Another protester, a 32-year-old Kosovar immigrant who gave his name as Kobe, said his own experience of war made him want to “stand up today and not let history repeat” itself.

A small counter-demonstration was organised by Stop The Hate UK, a Jewish-led, pro-Israel campaign group.

Ahead of the protest, organised by the Palestine Coalition, London’s Metropolitan Police said it would be using powers under public order legislation to require anyone wearing a face covering to hide their identity to remove it.

“We will take a zero-tolerance approach to hate crime and other offending,” said senior Met officer Carl Galvin.

…

Kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that Russia was expressing its “thanks” for a diesel deal agreed with the United States by attacking Ukraine, after fresh Russian attacks killed 15 people, according to authorities.

The deal, which US President Donald Trump announced on Friday after a call with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, would see Moscow release large amounts of diesel onto global markets in exchange for sanctions relief.

Zelensky told reporters on Friday that the deal was “unworthy of our partners” and described it as a “weak decision”.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Saturday that lifting sanctions on Russian diesel would help fuel the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.

“This is not the time to ease pressure on Russia, and Europe won’t,” she wrote online.

Germany also said it would continue to push for new EU sanctions on Russia, despite the agreement.

Moscow has intensified its deadly bombardment of Ukraine in recent months, sending civilian casualties soaring, while US-led efforts to broker an end to the more than four-and-a-half year conflict remain deadlocked.

Early Saturday, Russia targeted residential neighbourhoods in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia with “five guided aerial bombs”, according to Ukraine’s national police service.

At least 15 people were killed, among them three children, Ukraine’s state rescue service said.

“>Today, Russia expressed its thanks for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia,” Zelensky said in a post on X.

An AFP correspondent at the scene saw people being pulled from the rubble by Ukrainian emergency services.

“We saw people under the rubble – a woman, her husband and a child,” one rescuer, Daniil Pishkin, told AFP.

He added that he saw two people rescued from the wreckage but “unfortunately there was a little girl who died”.

A resident of one of the buildings that was hit, who identified herself as Iryna, 69, said she just had time to seek refuge in the toilets after receiving an air raid warning.

She said her two neighbours were killed.

“They were 75 years old. They were simply thrown out there, onto the street. They didn’t make it to the hospital,” she told AFP.

Ukraine’s capital Kyiv meanwhile suffered “large-scale power outages” on Saturday due to Russian strikes, the country’s largest private energy provider, DTEK, said.

AFP reporters heard booms over the capital earlier Saturday, as the city’s mayor reported that a restaurant had been hit.

…

Moscow (AFP) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has told Donald Trump about Iran’s position on a possible Mideast peace deal, the Kremlin said Saturday.

The Kremlin said Tehran’s stance was relayed in a phone call held between the two leaders on Friday. It did not say how Trump responded, nor elaborate on Iran’s position.

Diplomatic efforts to end the more-than-seven-month-long Iran conflict, which began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran in February, have been at an impasse since the summer.

Putin met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of a summit in Turkmenistan earlier this week, where the Russian leader expressed an interest in helping broker peace.

“In coordination with the Iranian president, Putin conveyed the Iranian side’s views on a possible resolution to the conflict to Trump,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Saturday, according to Russia’s state RIA news agency.

The United States and Iran agreed a memorandum of understanding in June that spelled out a framework for ending their conflict, but Iranian attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz prompted a resumption of US military operations.

Recent indirect talks between Washington and Tehran on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly failed to produce a breakthrough.

Brussels (Belgium) (AFP) – Ireland, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, suggested Saturday slashing the bloc’s next proposed budget by 140 billion euros ($155 billion), in a quest to bridge deep division and reach a deal by the end of the year.

European Union countries have been wrangling over the size of the next budget, with Germany spearheading calls for deep cuts to an earlier proposal of nearly two trillion euros by Brussels.

Leaders from the 27-nation bloc will meet in Brussels next week to discuss the plan as they seek to reach an agreement on the 2028-2034 budget by Christmas.

The EU fears that any delay would push talks into a fraught election year in 2027 with worries about what eurosceptic victories in France and elsewhere would mean for future dealmaking.

But the bloc is deeply divided. Germany leads a pack with Austria, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden, which want cuts of several hundred billion euros.

Meanwhile France, the second-biggest European economy and a net contributor to the budget, argues the continent needs sufficient means to match the rising challenges the 27-country bloc faces.

Ireland said its new draft – which used 2025 prices – foresaw an overall cut on the earlier proposal of 141 billion euros, or 8 percent overall.

The new budget would still far outstrip the EU’s last one, which was worth around 1.2 trillion euros.

“I certainly hope that there will be a deal by Christmas,” Ireland’s Europe minister Thomas Byrne said.

“Nobody’s going to get everything that they wanted in any proposal, but we think that there is something there for all of the member states.”

But immediate reactions weren’t promising.

“The overall volume must come down significantly,” said Sweden’s Europe minister Jessica Rosencrantz.

“The numbers that have been put on the table still present a wildly unaffordable increase and we are therefore nowhere near an agreement.”

Meanwhile lawmakers at the European parliament said the cuts went too far and the new draft “cannot be the starting point for an agreement.”

…

Kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) – Russian strikes on Ukraine’s southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia on Saturday killed at least 11 people, including three children, according to regional authorities.

Ukrainian national police said Russia had targeted residential neighbourhoods in the city with “five guided aerial bombs” early Saturday morning, hitting two residential buildings.

The strikes came a day after Ukrainian and European officials met in Miami in a renewed diplomatic push to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“The toll from the air strikes on Zaporizhzhia continues to rise. At present, 11 civilians have been killed. Among them are three children,” said Mykhailo Semikin, head of Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration.

He said rescuers were continuing their search for people under the rubble.

An AFP correspondent at the scene saw people being pulled from the rubble by Ukrainian emergency services.

“We saw people under the rubble – a woman, her husband and a child,” one volunteer rescuer, Daniil Pishkin, told AFP.

He added that he saw two people rescued from the wreckage but “unfortunately there was a little girl who died”.

A resident of one of the buildings that was hit, who identified herself as Iryna, 69, said she just had time to seek refuge in the toilets after receiving an air raid warning.

She said her two neighbours were killed.

“They were 75 years old. They were simply thrown out there, onto the street. They didn’t make it to the hospital,” she told AFP.

The Zaporizhzhia region, located just a few dozen kilometres from the front line, and its capital by the same name have been the target of frequent strikes.

Russia has intensified its strikes on Ukrainian territory in recent months, causing a growing number of civilian casualties.

Diplomatic efforts mediated by the United States to end the war more than four years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have so far yielded no results.

New Delhi (AFP) – Indian police detained the head of the satirical “cockroach” online movement on Saturday as hundreds of protesters demanding the election commissioner’s resignation gathered in New Delhi despite a heavy security crackdown.

The demonstration is the culmination of weeks of opposition mobilisation following allegations of misconduct during a nationwide voter-roll revision by the Election Commission of India (ECI).

Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke and two other leaders were detained before disembarking from a flight in the capital, the group said.

It said in a statement they had been taken to “an undisclosed location”.

“They’re being denied access to their lawyers and cut off from all contact with others,” the statement said.

Opposition parties and other critics say the voter-roll revision could disenfranchise millions of voters and benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

The ECI has rejected allegations of impropriety, saying the revision was intended to remove duplicate and ineligible voters.

Delhi has been under a strict security clampdown since Friday, with tens of thousands of police and paramilitary personnel deployed to stop those seeking to reach the main protest site in the heart of the city.

Authorities have closed dozens of metro stations, cancelled several trains coming to Delhi and temporarily shut down mobile internet around the protest site.

Dozens of protesters were taken away in police vehicles after they tried to march to the Jantar Mantar protest site in central Delhi, shouting anti-government slogans, AFP reporters saw.

The Hindu newspaper said as many as 3,000 protesters had been detained, although it was not immediately possible to verify that number.

…

Khan Yunis (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – Every day, Gazan mother Niyaha al-Masri spends six exhausting hours or more queueing at a community kitchen in the hope of getting some food for her family.

It has been a year since a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel was supposed to allow food to flood into the ruined territory, yet widespread hunger persists there.

Masri has little choice. Without the kitchen run by humanitarian groups, she and her eight children would have “nothing at all”, the 35-year-old told AFP.

Each day she sets out early in the morning and returns in the afternoon, this time bringing four containers of rice, lentils and a little chicken, which the family throws itself at.

Among them is her husband, wounded in both legs by an airstrike, meaning he “cannot go and fight with the others” to get food.

This will be the only meal of the day for the family of 10, living in a tent in Khan Yunis. There was no breakfast and they will have no dinner.

What little flour they have, Masri explained, has to be rationed.

In August 2025, a United Nations-backed body, the IPC, declared a state of famine in Gaza, though Israel quickly denounced it as a lie.

By December, the UN had lifted that declaration, saying that the ceasefire had allowed in enough supplies over the course of two months to ease conditions.

COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry organisation responsible for civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, told AFP that the humanitarian situation in Gaza was stable.

But Shaun Hughes, of the UN’s World Food Programme, was less sanguine.

The food security situation, he said, “is still extremely serious”.

The most recent figures, from July, show that “1.4 million out of the population of about 2.1 million people are acutely food insecure”, he said, with 200,000 of them “just one step below famine”.

While some food is getting in, a lack of sufficient nutritional variety continues to pose a health threat.

“Dietary diversity is a major food security issue in Gaza,” said Hughes.

“You cannot survive on dry goods and wheat flour and bread alone. Particularly children, particularly pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, they need the micronutrients that come with high protein foods, fresh vegetables, fresh fruits,” he explained.

Masri said that her children, aged between three and 14, “dream of eating fruit” but the family doesn’t have the means to buy any.

She said one of her sons suffered from malnutrition during the 2025 famine, although “little by little, his condition is improving”.

Malnutrition isn’t only caused by a lack of food, but also essential nutrients. It weakens the immune system of children, making them vulnerable to illnesses and stunting their growth.

“Repeated bouts of acute malnutrition amongst children is something that human beings just don’t recover from,” said Hughes.

Cognitive and physical impairments “continue into later life”, he added.

At Khan Yunis’s Nasser hospital, the head of the malnutrition unit, Israa al-Najjar, told AFP she had “observed an increase in syndromes and conditions” linked to malnutrition that affect the immune system.

In a report published on Thursday, […] Medecins du Monde published a study that found 93 percent of pregnant or breastfeeding women had symptoms of anaemia, which is closely linked to malnutrition.

Just 17 percent had a sufficiently varied diet to meet their nutritional needs, the group found.

All the while, Masri has kept visiting the community kitchen, despite asthma leaving her exhausted.

Her children spend their days collecting “pieces of nylon, bits of cardboard and chunks of foam” to try and reinforce their tent, which is in a poor state.

She said it was “shameful” that her children had to do so.

“I swear to God, this isn’t normal.”