Analysis

Black Sea shipping attacks hit 317 merchant and other vessels between May and October — more than four times the previous half-year, Ambrey Analytics told Reuters — as strikes on cargo ships off NATO members Romania and Bulgaria sank vessels in their exclusive economic zones, cut Ukraine's September port exports to 0.81 million tonnes from 2.1 million a year earlier, and left analysts saying Russia is testing NATO's red lines.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced in Moscow on Wednesday that Ethiopia has taken delivery of 12 Russian-made Su-35 fighter jets — a year ahead of schedule, he said — with four S-400 air defence batteries to follow, in a milestone for an air force that has relied on Russian aircraft since the 1990s. The deal, experts told Al Jazeera, strengthens Moscow's foothold in the Horn of Africa while Addis Ababa fights a renewed war in Tigray and accuses Eritrea of backing the rebels.

The Iran war cost to the United States has passed $47 billion, more than 25 percent above the Defense Department's July estimate of $37.5 billion, according to Pentagon data obtained by Reuters — and the total still does not clearly count the cost of repairing US bases damaged by Iranian missile and drone attacks. More than $29 billion of the projected bill is replacing expended munitions, and more than $6 billion is replacing equipment and lost aircraft, including many drones.

Ukrainian forces have liberated Perebudova, Komar and Fedorivka in the Oleksandrivka direction and forced Russia to redeploy elite naval infantry and tank elements meant for other offensives, the Institute for the Study of War assessed on October 25, 2026, citing Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets. The same assessment found Ukraine's interception rate against Russian jet-powered drones slipped only from 77 percent to about 74 percent during the mid-October Starshield restrictions — and that holding it will depend on cheap interceptor drones like the roughly $7,000 F-Jet 80, against air-to-air missiles costing an estimated $1 million each.

Long before this month's throttling of Ukraine's military satellite access, the Biden and Trump administrations repeatedly asked SpaceX to turn Starlink on or off in different countries — to cut off Houthi and Hezbollah terminals, to open service inside Iran, and to expand it for Ukraine's military — six former senior US officials told Reuters. Ukrainian officials said on Friday the speed caps disrupting drones above 160 km/h were still in place, despite President Trump's assurance that access had been restored.

Sudan's famine risk is growing as an El Niño-driven drought — the driest peak rainy season in more than three decades — compounds more than three years of civil war, the UN-backed IPC hunger monitor warned on October 12. Rainfall from July to September was the lowest since 1984 in North Darfur, the IPC said 5.1 million people already faced severe hunger in June, and the World Food Programme forecasts 350,000 more people in severe hunger by the end of 2026 and 1.2 million more by August 2027, Reuters reported after interviewing farmers, traders and aid officials across the country.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, told Reuters in Jakarta on Thursday that Indonesia should reconsider its role in Donald Trump's Board of Peace for Gaza, because the plan is being shaped by Israel and the United States and includes no Palestinian representative. Indonesia's Foreign Ministry said Board of Peace discussions remained on hold.

Mali's armed forces and their Russian Africa Corps backers carried out 47 drone strikes that killed 94 civilians between April and August, ACLED data cited by Human Rights Watch shows — more than double the strikes and deaths of a year earlier. HRW's Monday report documented 'apparent indiscriminate' strikes including a cattle market in Bandiagara region that killed six men and a health centre in Kidal region. Mali's army did not respond; Mali has previously denied killing civilians.

Russia's territorial gains in Ukraine in 2026 amount to a net 144.5 square kilometres, the Institute for the Study of War assessed — about 45 times smaller than the 6,500 square kilometres President Vladimir Putin claimed on October 16. Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov claimed more than 1,800 square kilometres taken since September 1; ISW assessed a net Russian loss of 122 square kilometres over the same period. Ukraine's General Staff dismissed the claims as an 'illusion'.

Drones caused roughly 1,100 of the 1,400 civilian deaths recorded in Sudan in the first half of 2026, UN figures presented to the Security Council showed, as the UN's political chief told ambassadors on Friday that neither the army nor the RSF is moving toward dialogue and both believe they can gain on the battlefield. Twenty million people face acute hunger, a drone strike near the Ethiopian border killed 41 displaced people on October 10, and the Council's arms embargo remains confined to Darfur.

Ali Hassan Yusor al-Bazzari, 44, was killed on October 7 while harvesting olives near Burqa — by fire that the Israeli military admits came from both soldiers and settlers. A week later, settlers burned the mosque in Mikhmas hours after the village announced a lawsuit in the United States, and the military's investigation found no suspects. In September alone, the UN counted more than 2,000 attacks on West Bank Palestinians. B'Tselem's new 'Elimination Project' report argues these are not separate abuses but one strategy.

Two of Israel's leading human rights groups have documented 22 cases of inmates shot by prison guards with rubber bullets — 21 of them Palestinian, nearly all since last autumn, some at point-blank range inside their cells. One man's testicle was 'completely crushed' and removed. The Associated Press reviewed the groups' files, including medical reports, and interviewed former inmates who said they had been shot. The same rights movement has documented at least 94 Palestinian deaths in Israeli custody since October 2023 — more than three times the toll of the entire previous decade.

The police report on the Al-Khair school collapse records a chain of warnings that went nowhere: substandard materials, a dilapidated building, earlier complaints about deteriorating walls and roofs that management allegedly ignored — and concerns raised by the children themselves. Peshawar's police chief called it 'gross negligence'. The collapse was the latest in a year of Pakistani buildings falling on the people inside them, in a country where, as CNN puts it, construction standards are often poorly enforced.

More than 21,000 of the 74,000-plus Palestinians killed in Gaza since October 2023 were children, on health ministry figures reported this week by The New Humanitarian and Human Rights Watch — and at least 327 children are among those killed since the October 2025 ceasefire alone, over 100 aid organisations report. UN officials describe Gaza's child amputees as the largest such cohort in modern history, UNICEF estimated at least 17,000 children unaccompanied or separated from their families, and the IPC confirmed famine in Gaza City in August 2025. Every figure is attributed to the body that produced it. This is the documented record.

NATO's €1 billion Innovation Fund is expanding into Poland and hunting for direct investments in counter-drone systems and space-based surveillance, its president told Reuters on Tuesday, in the clearest sign yet that lessons from Ukraine's war are resetting the alliance's technology priorities. The fund, backed by 24 NATO nations, will open a presence in Warsaw and look beyond traditional defence contractors.

Saudi Arabia has ruled out any ceasefire with the Houthis until the Yemeni government retakes territory lost in recent weeks, AFP reports. Riyadh's return to full-scale war follows a chain of miscalculations — a shattered alliance with the UAE, a Houthi offensive nobody was ready for, and an American ally that declined to intervene.

A year after the October 2025 Gaza ceasefire, Israel occupies around two-thirds of the enclave, Hamas has not disarmed, the international stabilization force has yet to deploy, and reconstruction has not begun — a Reuters one-year assessment of where the 20-point plan stands.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan agreed on October 5, 2026 to activate their Mecca Joint Defence Agreement for the first time, beginning rapid deployment of military forces to the kingdom after an emergency Riyadh meeting on escalating Houthi attacks.

Sudan's army says it captured the strategic town of al-Mazroub in North Kordofan on Friday and dealt a 'knockout blow' to the RSF and SPLM-N in Blue Nile state on Saturday. The RSF still controls almost all of Darfur, and the humanitarian catastrophe — 19.5 million facing acute hunger — is deepening regardless of who holds the map.

Drones now cause most casualties in Ukraine, and a 'kill zone' up to 10 kilometers deep has made moving on the battlefield nearly suicidal. How cheap FPV drones rewrote the grammar of war.

Drone attacks attributed to the RSF have shut down hospitals, water stations and power in El Obeid — while military sources report an unprecedented buildup of fighters from Darfur and West Kordofan ahead of a possible ground offensive.

Within 48 hours, the Philippines accused China of obstructing a resupply mission to Second Thomas Shoal — and China's military announced a naval and air exercise around Scarborough Shoal.

Russia struck the head office of Ukraine's largest mobile provider Kyivstar and a Vodafone data centre on Sunday — the latest and most symbolically significant escalation of its week-long bombardment of Ukrainian communications infrastructure.

The Rapid Support Forces have stepped up drone strikes on government-held towns in North Kordofan — including a courtroom and a college — as fears grow that El Obeid could face the fate of El Fasher.