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South Korea will expand its Cheonghae unit anti-piracy mission from the Gulf of Aden to waters south of Oman, about 650 kilometres from the Strait of Hormuz, adding a P-8A patrol aircraft, an explosive ordnance disposal team and 75 personnel — a strictly noncombat step, officials stressed, that also prepares Seoul for postwar mine-clearing in the strait if hostilities end.

The Komyshuvakha death toll has reached 42, Ukrainian police said on Thursday, with up to 33 people still buried under the rubble of Monday's bombing of an aid distribution point in the Zaporizhzhia region — and bodycam footage from a police officer who was killed, verified by Reuters, has recorded the moments before a second strike destroyed the shelter where residents were hiding.

Kirill Dmitriev, President Vladimir Putin's special envoy, will attend a White House event hosted by First Lady Melania Trump on Thursday and meet US administration officials — the first in-person contact between Russian and US officials since midterm elections in which Democrats secured control of both the Senate and the House, five days before trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi.

The Algerian War (1954–1962), explained: the National Liberation Front (FLN) launched its uprising on 1 November 1954 against a French Algeria that Paris insisted was not a colony but France itself — three departments, legally integral to the Republic since 1848, home to about a million European settlers. France sent an army that peaked at some 470,000–500,000 troops, drafted about two million conscripts over the war, dismantled the FLN's Algiers network in the Battle of Algiers and, under the Challe Plan of 1959, regained military control of most of the country — and still lost. The war destroyed the Fourth Republic, brought Charles de Gaulle to power, and ended with the Évian Accords of 18 March 1962 and a referendum in which some six million Algerians voted for independence and only about 16,000 against. How many Algerians died is still disputed: historians' estimates put total deaths at 400,000–700,000, Alistair Horne put Algerian casualties at around one million, and the FLN and the Algerian government have claimed 1.5 million.

Sudan drone strikes on energy and fuel infrastructure have stranded hundreds of aid trucks, stopped dialysis treatment for 25 people at a hospital outside Khartoum and left fuel queues kilometres long in the capital, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Denise Brown told UN News, describing an intense pattern of attacks over the past couple of weeks that appears to target civilian infrastructure systematically.

North Korea missiles fired from the Sondok area toward the sea off the east coast on Wednesday were Pyongyang's fourth weapons launch in a month, South Korea's Defence Ministry said — hours after Kim Yo Jong, the sister of Kim Jong Un, ruled out dialogue with Washington until the US abandons what she called its hostile policy, and denied the FBI's accusation over the theft of more than $6 billion in crypto assets from Binance.

The Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901), explained: the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists — the 'Boxers' — rose in drought-hit Shandong against missionaries, Chinese Christians and the foreign privileges built up since the Opium Wars; the Qing court under Empress Dowager Cixi backed them, declared war on the treaty powers on 21 June 1900, and besieged Beijing's legations for 55 days. An Eight-Nation Alliance relief force took Beijing on 14 August 1900, the court fled to Xi'an, and the Boxer Protocol of 7 September 1901 imposed an indemnity of 450 million taels of silver — about one tael for every person in China, more than the government's annual tax revenue — payable over 39 years at 4 per cent interest, for a total of 982,238,150 taels with interest included. Death tolls have varied widely: Britannica puts the total at up to 100,000 or more, the great majority civilians, while a compiled tabulation records 32,000 Chinese Christians and 200 Western missionaries killed in northern China.

The death toll from Monday's Russian bombing of a school used as a humanitarian aid centre in the village of Komyshuvakha has risen to at least 31, officials said on Tuesday, with nearly 50 people still missing under the rubble. The UN humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine condemned the strikes, which he said killed at least 29 civilians and, in follow-up strikes, two rescuers and four police staff. CNN reported a higher confirmed toll of 33. All figures are Ukrainian officials' figures carried by independent outlets; they have not been independently verified, and no Russian statement on the Komyshuvakha strikes appeared in the reporting opened on Tuesday.

The Second Opium War (1856–1860), explained: Britain and France, seeking wider trade, resident envoys in Beijing and the legalisation of opium that the Treaty of Nanking had left unsettled, used the seizure of the lorcha Arrow at Canton in October 1856 — and France the execution of a missionary — to renew war on Qing China. Allied forces took Canton, imposed the Treaties of Tianjin in June 1858, were repulsed at the Dagu forts in 1859, then returned in 1860, defeated the Qing army at Palikao, looted and burned the Old Summer Palace, and imposed the Convention of Peking (24 October 1860): Tianjin ratified, Kowloon ceded, indemnities raised to 8 million taels each for Britain and France, and the opium trade legalised. Recorded casualties are strikingly one-sided — a compiled tabulation gives 134 British and at least 25 French killed against 2,100–2,801 Qing killed or wounded — but no separate agreed Qing death toll exists.

Russia's massive overnight strike on Ukraine's power grid inflicted severe damage on energy facilities in 10 regions, Ukraine's Deputy Energy Minister Artem Nekrasov said on Tuesday, leaving more than 180,000 customers in the Zhytomyr region without power, heavily damaging a DTEK facility in Odesa region, and injuring at least 73 people in Kharkiv, according to updated figures from regional authorities reported by the Kyiv Post.

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.

The United States will bring together delegations from Ukraine and Russia in Abu Dhabi on November 10-11 to discuss ending Moscow's war against Ukraine, post-war security agreements and de-escalation, US envoy Steve Witkoff said on Monday. It would be the first US-mediated trilateral round since February, before the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran. Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to the new round after meeting Witkoff in St Petersburg two weeks ago, a senior US official told Reuters, while cautioning that Ukraine and Russia remain far apart on the terms of any peace deal.

The United States struck Iran's Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, US officials told the Wall Street Journal, in what the Journal described as the latest in a series of limited strikes Washington has carried out in recent weeks without public announcement. Iran's state news agency IRNA reported several explosions on the island, and Al Jazeera reported five explosions heard on Qeshm with further blasts in Bandar Lengeh. US Central Command did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the strike attribution rests on the Journal's account of US officials' statements, published here with that limitation stated.

At least 26 people were killed on Monday when Russian aerial bombs hit a school in the village of Komyshuvakha in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region while it was being used to distribute humanitarian aid, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, with a repeat strike hitting the shelter where people had gathered. The toll rose through the day from an initial 18, and Ukraine's emergencies service said its confirmed count of 24 included two rescuers and four police officers. All figures come from Ukrainian officials; the Russian military has not publicly commented, and the toll and the attribution have not been independently verified.

Ukraine's General Staff said on Monday that Russian forces used last week's six-day Oleshky ceasefire — the longest local pause since 2022, which evacuated nearly 800 people — to rotate units, fortify positions and bring in ammunition, a claim the Kremlin answered by assuming Ukraine had regrouped too, as Russian forces shelled 16 settlements across Kherson region in the 24 hours to 0400 GMT on Monday.

Sudan said late Sunday it had filed complaints against Ethiopia with the UN Security Council and the African Union's Peace and Security Council, after a Sudanese report alleged 70 RSF drone attacks launched from Ethiopian territory since February — attacks Khartoum says killed or wounded 484 civilians — an allegation Ethiopia has denied.

Israeli strikes killed at least three Palestinians in Gaza on Monday — two in Khan Younis and one in Al-Mussadar — a day after eight were killed, taking the toll since the year-old ceasefire to at least 1,580, according to Gaza's health officials, while Israel still controls about two-thirds of the territory and its more than 2 million residents crowd into the remaining third among the ruins.

The First Opium War (1839–1842), explained: Britain bought Chinese tea with silver, then with Indian opium; when Commissioner Lin Zexu destroyed more than 20,000 chests of opium at Canton in 1839, Britain sent an expedition that Qing forces could not stop. The Treaty of Nanking (29 August 1842) ceded Hong Kong Island in perpetuity, opened five treaty ports, abolished the Cohong monopoly and imposed a $21 million indemnity that included $6 million for the destroyed opium, while leaving the trade itself neither legalised nor prohibited. Casualty totals still dispute: one compiled count gives about 3,100 Qing killed, while broader estimates cited from Julia Lovell run to 20,000–25,000 Chinese deaths.

Ukraine's public air raid alert app was hacked on Sunday night and briefly sent false nuclear, chemical and street-fighting warnings, the Air Force said — and hours later Russia's emergencies ministry said its own mobile app had been hit by a massive cyberattack that spread false information. Neither side's attribution is independently confirmed, and Reuters reported it was not immediately clear whether the two incidents were linked.

A UN staff member dies in Houthi custody: Mohammad el Shami, of the UN Human Rights Office in Yemen, had been held since June 6, 2024, and his family was told of his death only recently, more than a month after it happened, with no explanation of the cause. UN rights chief Volker Turk demanded an urgent, independent investigation and the release of the more than 70 UN employees Yemen's prime minister said remain detained.

Ukraine power outages left hundreds of thousands of households without electricity on Sunday after Russia hit power infrastructure in four regions overnight, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said — while in Russia, the governor of Nizhny Novgorod region said a massive drone attack caused significant damage to an industrial facility in the Kstovo district, amid reports the target was a refinery thought to be one of Russia's largest.

The Mexican-American War (1846–1848), explained: the United States annexed Texas in 1845, disputed whether its border was the Nueces River or the Rio Grande, and fought Mexico across the north, California and the road to Mexico City. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (2 February 1848) ceded some 525,000 square miles to the United States — 55 percent of Mexico's pre-war territory on the U.S. Office of the Historian's reckoning — for $15 million. The standard U.S. tabulation counts 13,283 American dead, most from disease; historians estimate about 25,000 Mexican dead.

Ethiopia drone strikes killed at least 25 civilians in two days this week, witnesses and a medical source told AFP: repeated strikes on a displacement camp in Amhara, and a second strike in Rama, Tigray, on people collecting grain spilled from a lorry hit the night before. Addis Standard's own reporting put the Rama toll at 12 — a resident told AFP 13 — and the camp toll at 16, and the Ethiopian army did not respond to requests for comment.

The Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864), explained: Hong Xiuquan, a failed examination candidate who believed he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, built the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in southern China, took Nanjing in 1853 and held it for eleven years. The Qing survived only by handing armies and taxes to provincial leaders such as Zeng Guofan. Britannica puts the dead at an estimated 20 million; Meyer-Fong's conventionally cited totals run to 20–30 million, and ChinaKnowledge gives 20–50 million.

Senior Rapid Support Forces commander Siddiq Ander has defected from Sudan's paramilitary group, Al Jazeera reported on Friday, accusing relatives of RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, of tightly controlling the group's finances, weapons, troop movements and military promotions. Ander's accusations are published here as his own claims, in his own words; his exit is the latest in a string of senior RSF defections this year, several of them made alongside hundreds of fighters.

Qatari mediators held more than 12 hours of talks in Tehran on Friday to secure reciprocal steps that could restart direct negotiations between Washington and Tehran, Axios reported — a marathon session, coordinated with the United States, that follows Sunday's Qatari draft, which a senior Iranian official dismissed as unacceptable. A diplomatic source said there had been 'positive progress' but talks were ongoing, with discussions expected to continue in Doha on Saturday.

Oman's navy evacuated all 25 crew members from the Panama-flagged crude tanker RITI after the ship was targeted and caught fire near the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, Oman's Maritime Security Centre said — while Iran's Revolutionary Guards said three oil tankers had been halted after incidents on a route Tehran calls unauthorised, and the US commander in the region said the strait's main transit routes had been cleared of Iranian sea mines. It is not clear whether the RITI was one of the vessels in the Iranian account.

A series of drone strikes hit the Jari 2 camp for displaced civilians near Hayk in Ethiopia's Amhara region on Friday, killing at least 15 people — five of them children — according to rescue sources cited by Reuters, while Addis Standard put the toll at 16 killed from its own reporting among camp residents. Who carried out the strikes is not known, and Ethiopia's government had not commented.

Ukraine struck Rosneft's Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery in Russia's Samara region early on Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported, ending a two-week pause in refinery attacks that had held under heavy pressure from the Trump administration. Fires broke out at the plant, which makes jet fuel for Russia's air force; the region's governor confirmed a major drone attack on the region but did not name the refinery, and the extent of the damage is not yet known.

Attackers in a small boat attached two explosive devices directly to the hull of an outbound tanker in the Strait of Hormuz late on Thursday, sparking an engine-room fire that temporarily disabled the vessel 25 nautical miles northeast of Khasab, Oman, the UK Maritime Trade Operations centre said in a verified report carried by Reuters. The crew were safe, the fire was extinguished and the tanker resumed its voyage — but Seatrade Maritime said the close-approach tactic marks a change in method in a campaign that, on IMO figures, produced 34 confirmed attacks on vessels in the month to October 27.

The war impact on markets this week was a fourth straight weekly oil rally: December Brent settled up 2.40% at $117.64 on Friday, up 1.5% on the week and about 15% in October, and WTI settled up 1.98% at $104.12 as UKMTO counted 43 Gulf shipping incidents in October — the most since the war began — and Houthi attacks on Saudi refineries kept the risk premium in place. Gold futures fell 3.7% on Friday to $3,883, below $4,000 for the first time in over a year, wheat fell for a ninth straight week, and the S&P 500 closed at 7,580.07, down 0.57% on the week. Figures checked Friday, October 30, 2026, 4:20 PM Central Time.

Yemen's third-largest city, Taiz, is in famine rather than on its brink, its governor said in a front-line briefing, as Human Rights Watch reported on Thursday that Houthi forces had fully encircled the city in October, blocking and attacking its last major supply route — a deprivation of food, water and medicine that may amount to the war crime of using starvation as a method of warfare. The World Food Programme says it cannot reach more than 600,000 people in Taiz who depend on humanitarian assistance, and wheat flour stocks are nearly exhausted.

The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), explained: when Charles II of Spain died childless, his will left a global empire to Louis XIV's grandson Philip — and the Grand Alliance of Britain, the Dutch Republic and the Emperor fought France and Spain for thirteen years to stop a Bourbon superstate. Philip kept Spain but renounced France, Spain lost its European empire, Britain took Gibraltar, Minorca and the asiento slave-trade contract, and compiled death estimates range from about 400,000 to more than 1.2 million.

Officials from both warring sides said humanitarian aid was entering the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky in southern Ukraine on Friday, and residents who wish to leave were offered buses to Ukraine or to Russia — the culmination of a US-brokered local ceasefire that has held for more than three days. Ukraine's prime minister retracted an early figure of 527 evacuees, saying the number planning to leave was still being determined as the rescue operation continued.

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.

A Russian jet-powered drone struck a crowded platform at Dnipro's main railway station on Thursday morning as a commuter train prepared to depart for Zaporizhzhia, killing at least 14 people, Reuters and CNN reported. Daytime strikes on two other Ukrainian cities killed five more people the same day — two teenagers on a central street in Chernihiv and three people in an apartment building in Kremenchuk — bringing Thursday's reported toll to at least 19, even as the US-brokered humanitarian ceasefire around Oleshky in the Kherson region held for a third day.

Twenty-seven Ugandans enlisted to fight for Russia's army in Ukraine have been killed or are presumed dead, a letter from Uganda's embassy in Moscow to its foreign ministry showed on Thursday: 11 confirmed dead, and 16 whose bodies could not be located anywhere, including among prisoners of war. The letter, whose authenticity a Ugandan foreign ministry official confirmed, follows a UN-backed inquiry's finding this week that Russia recruited men from 29 countries into its armed forces through deception or coercion — Uganda among them.

Up to 50,000 people have crossed from Ethiopia into Kenya since last Thursday to escape clashes between Oromia and Somali regional forces around the divided border town of Moyale, the UN refugee agency said on Wednesday, up from 36,000 a day earlier. Many of those fleeing are women and children, food is the most urgent need, and UNHCR has deployed an emergency team to Moyale — while the figure remains an estimate from local authorities, still subject to verification as people continue to arrive.

The Liberian-flagged container ship Contship Jet sank during the night after three maritime drones struck it off Bulgaria's Black Sea coast on Wednesday, Bulgarian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Kiril Mihaylov said — after all 18 crew members, 14 Filipinos and four Ukrainians, were rescued uninjured and taken to Varna. Twenty of the ship's 421 containers fell overboard and are drifting, some carrying hazardous cargo; the navy says it does not know where the drones came from, and no one has claimed the attack.

The Chaco War (1932–1935), explained: landlocked Bolivia and Paraguay fought over the Chaco Boreal, a waterless wilderness of about 100,000 square miles thought to hold oil. About 100,000 men died, Paraguay won three-quarters of the disputed land in the 1938 settlement, and historians still argue over whether oil caused the war at all — the best archival work finds no known deposits in the disputed Chaco and no hard evidence the oil companies started it.

A midafternoon Israeli strike beside a Red Cross field hospital in Rafah killed three Palestinians and wounded 15, five of them seriously, health officials at Nasser Hospital told the Associated Press on Wednesday. Gaza's civil defence put the day's toll at five: its spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the Rafah hospital received three bodies and 15 injured, one of whom later died, and that a separate attack in Khan Yunis killed another person, AFP reported. The Israeli military told AFP it had 'struck terrorists' and would provide further information later; it did not respond to AP's request for comment. More than 1,550 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the October 2025 ceasefire.

Yemen's Houthis attacked Aden international airport on Wednesday after warning everyone inside to evacuate, Yemeni government officials told Reuters. An Associated Press reporter in Aden witnessed explosions that shattered windows at the airport building and nearby homes; the airport was left completely deserted, flights from Cairo and Mumbai were diverted to Seiyun and a flight to Cairo was cancelled. The strike came as fighting escalated across Yemen: Houthi authorities said Saudi-led airstrikes killed 14 people at a market in al-Jawf, and government officials said the Houthis had tightened their siege of Taiz, cutting the city off from a well field that supplied about 3 million litres of water.

The United States has told several Gulf Arab countries to be prepared for a short, intense military campaign against Iran after the November 3 midterm elections, people briefed on the conversations told The Wall Street Journal, as Washington sends an additional Patriot system from Texas to Israel, restocks munitions and prepares bombers and fighters for possible strikes. President Donald Trump has not decided to go ahead, the Journal reported, but is leaning toward a large post-election attack on Iranian infrastructure and nuclear sites; Reuters separately reported that the Pentagon has been planning to restart heavy fighting if ordered.

A senior Iranian official involved in the talks has dismissed the draft deal Qatari mediators presented in Tehran on Sunday, telling Reuters that Doha had put forward only 'unacceptable ideas and not an offer' and that Tehran's policy of showing no flexibility over the nuclear issue remains unchanged. The pushback, added to Reuters' updated October 28 report, is the first Iranian response to a seven-day draft that an official briefed on the negotiations had described hours earlier as a possible path to ending the war early next week.

A drone strike on a busy market in Nyala, the capital of Sudan's South Darfur, at about 8 p.m. on Monday killed more than 100 people and injured 113, Emergency Lawyers, a Sudanese rights group tracking violence in the war, said in a statement on Tuesday, blaming the Sudanese military. The toll is not reconciled: the MSF-supported Nyala Teaching Hospital received 36 bodies — 21 of them in civilian clothing — and saw more than 150 wounded, while a medic told AFP 21 people were killed and more than 40 injured. No Sudanese Armed Forces response appears in the reporting opened.

The localised ceasefire that began around Russian-occupied Oleshky on Tuesday has been expanded across the whole Kherson region and was holding with no breaches reported, officials on both sides said — US first lady Melania Trump announced the expansion 'beyond Oleshky, within the Kherson Region' for the humanitarian convoys, Ukraine's ombudsman's office confirmed it was in effect throughout the region, and Russia's human rights commissioner said no violations had been recorded on either side. The truce is due to run until 22:59 Kyiv time on Sunday, November 1, with mine-clearing under way, aid deliveries expected Thursday and evacuations planned for Friday.

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.

Qatari mediators presented Iran with a new draft deal on Sunday to end the war with the United States and Israel, built around a seven-day timeline of daily confidence-building steps, and Tehran is expected to respond by the end of the week, an official briefed on the negotiations told Reuters on Wednesday. The timeline could begin early next week, with several countries acting as guarantors — but the same reporting records fresh strike threats on both sides and the wreckage of June's interim agreement, which unravelled within weeks.

The Paraguayan War (1864–1870), explained: Paraguay under Francisco Solano López fought the Triple Alliance of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay in the bloodiest interstate war in Latin American history. It claimed some 200,000 lives, cost Paraguay about 40 percent of its territory, and left historians arguing ever since over whether Paraguay lost a fifth of its people — or two-thirds of them.

Iran has made no identified attempt to repair or reconstruct the Iran nuclear facilities damaged in US and Israeli strikes in 2025 and 2026, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog told the Security Council on Tuesday — but his agency still cannot verify Iran's previously declared stockpile of 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, cannot confirm that no safeguarded material has been diverted, and has had no normal inspection access since its inspectors were withdrawn in June 2025, Rafael Grossi and the Associated Press reported.

Syria on Tuesday condemned Jordan's Monday-evening airstrikes on its south as an 'unacceptable violation' of its airspace carried out 'without any prior coordination', closed the main Nassib border crossing with Jordan in both directions, and said the strikes killed seven people including three children — while Jordan said its jets killed more than 20 Islamic State fighters in retaliation for Friday's church funeral attack in Karak, expressed regret for civilian casualties, and insisted the operation had been coordinated with Damascus. AFP called it the worst crisis between the neighbours since the ouster of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

Finland's President Alexander Stubb and Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre phoned Russian President Vladimir Putin for about 90 minutes on Tuesday to urge him to end the war in Ukraine, breaking with Western European leaders' longstanding practice of shunning direct contact with the Kremlin, Reuters reported. The two leaders linked the initiative to planned peace discussions between Russian, Ukrainian and US officials in Abu Dhabi next month, then spoke to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy — while the Kremlin's readout showed no softening of Putin's position, and Denmark's prime minister criticised the move.

More than 3,000 Palestinians have been forced from their homes by Israel's military operation in Hebron in the occupied West Bank, the United Nations said on Monday — a toll that has more than doubled since Saturday — and on Tuesday Israeli troops fired a stun grenade to disperse residents protesting against the operation, Reuters reported. The military says it will carry out demolitions in the neighbourhoods it has emptied, and says its searches of the houses located no weapons. UN human rights chief Volker Türk called the operation collective punishment and said the threats to erase entire neighbourhoods raise serious concerns of ethnic cleansing.

At least 60 people were killed in two attacks in Ethiopia's conflict-hit Oromiya region in the past week — 14 in Merti district on October 20 and 46 in Sherka district on October 24 — the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church's Holy Synod said in a statement issued on Monday, Reuters reported. Residents and church officials in Sherka described a dawn attack on villages and a mass burial at a church in Chole. The regional government and a source linked to a rebel alliance traded blame; neither claim was independently verified.

New Russian strikes early on Tuesday, October 27, 2026 hit Kyiv's Southern Bridge and the subway infrastructure carried on it, forcing a suspension of traffic across one of the capital's main Dnipro crossings, city officials said, Reuters reported. The second wave of the barrage lifted the toll in Kyiv since Monday evening to at least one person killed and 15 injured, including students at a university dormitory. The strikes began minutes after a localised ceasefire took effect around the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky, hundreds of kilometres to the south.

Ukraine has been waiting for almost a month for US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to sign off on critical Patriot and NASAMS missile supplies, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday, October 26, 2026, as Russia stepped up attacks on energy and civilian infrastructure ahead of winter, Reuters reported. The missiles are bought by NATO allies under the PURL programme; Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged last week that a batch of interceptors may not have been delivered, but said the delay was not for political reasons.

Top officials from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan met Iranian officials in Tehran on Monday, October 26, 2026 in the first high-level contact between Iran and the three Mecca defence-pact states since the war began, and agreed to continue talks on peace and security, Reuters reported. The diplomacy ran in parallel with the fighting: early on Tuesday the Saudi-led coalition said it had intercepted three Houthi ballistic missiles aimed at Saudi Arabia's Eastern Region and four drones aimed at its Southern Region.

The Suez Crisis, explained: on 26 July 1956 Egypt's President Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal; Britain, France and Israel secretly colluded to invade, won the fighting in nine days — and were forced to withdraw by American financial pressure, Soviet threats and the United Nations. Egyptian military deaths are estimated at 1,650–3,000, plus some 1,000 civilians; the crisis ended Britain's career as an independent great power and invented modern UN peacekeeping.

The Patriot air defence system, explained: a mobile Raytheon-built shield whose radar tracks up to 100 targets beyond 150 km, whose PAC-3 interceptors destroy ballistic missiles by colliding with them at $4 million to $5 million per shot, and whose global stocks have been depleted by simultaneous wars in Ukraine and the Middle East — about 65 percent of US interceptors were expended between February and July, CSIS estimates cited by Reuters say, leaving fewer than 850 on hand.

Russia and Ukraine began a localised ceasefire around the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky at 01:00 GMT on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, both sides confirmed — Russia's defence ministry said it stopped shelling towards Kherson from 4 a.m. Moscow time, and Ukraine's negotiating-team head Dmytro Lubinets confirmed Ukraine was honouring its commitments. The pause opens the humanitarian operation for a front-line town suffering acute shortages of food and medicine, even as a Russian missile attack on Kyiv late on Monday killed at least one person and injured 10, including students at a dormitory, Reuters reported, citing Ukrainian officials.

Russian authorities committed war crimes and crimes against humanity through continuous attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure carried out as a state policy to deprive civilians of essential services, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine said in a report submitted to the UN General Assembly on Monday, October 26, 2026. The commission, which based its findings on 255 people who endured the winter of 2025-2026 across nine Ukrainian regions, also found compelling evidence that Russian authorities trafficked men from 29 countries, through deception and coercion, into the Russian armed forces.

Israel continued to commit genocide in Gaza after last October's US-brokered ceasefire, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry said in a report published on Monday, October 26, 2026 — finding that Israeli forces kept using heavy munitions in populated areas during the truce, that the 'Yellow Line' ceasefire demarcation has become a de facto border as Israeli control grew from 53% to at least 60% of Gaza, and that at least 196 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire across the advancing front during the ceasefire period. Israel dismissed the report as part of a 'misinformation campaign'.

Egypt's parliament on Monday, October 26, 2026 authorised the country's military to provide support to defend Saudi Arabia if Riyadh requests it, parliamentarians said and local media reported via Reuters — completing the authorisation President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi first requested on October 17 and that was postponed twice. No deployment was announced and no formal Saudi request had been reported. Sisi's letter to Riyadh last week said Egyptian support would be limited to defending Saudi territory and borders rather than attacking Yemen, Reuters reported.

Yemen's Houthis said on Monday, October 26, 2026 that they had attacked Saudi Arabia's East-West crude oil pumping stations and Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport — which had resumed flights at two terminals only on Sunday — while the Saudi-led coalition said its air defences intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile launched toward Riyadh and that its forces had destroyed ballistic missile launchers, tunnels and a missile storage facility in Yemen, Reuters and AFP reported. There was no Saudi confirmation of the claimed attacks on the airport or the pumping stations, and no confirmation of damage or casualties from them.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview aired on Sunday that Ukraine would halt its strikes on Russian oil refineries if Moscow stopped hitting Ukrainian power infrastructure — or, alternatively, if the United States allowed Starshield to be used over Russia to detect missile launch sites or supplied Patriot missiles — after Washington pressed Kyiv to suspend the refinery campaign over high energy prices, Reuters reported on Monday, October 26, 2026. Overnight, Russian strikes injured six people in Zaporizhzhia and the Chernihiv region, Ukrainian officials said.

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.

The United Kingdom on Monday, October 26, 2026 sanctioned 15 senior commanders from both the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for suspected atrocities, including conflict-related sexual violence, during and after the fall of El Fasher, and announced £5 million for survivors of sexual violence and £10 million in humanitarian funding. The announcement, made one year after El Fasher fell following an eighteen-month siege, follows UK-funded Centre for Information Resilience reporting that the siege tactics used there — systematic starvation, sexual violence, drone attacks on civilian infrastructure and obstruction of aid — are still being deployed across Sudan by both sides.

The Afghanistan War, explained: from 7 October 2001 to 30 August 2021, a US-led coalition toppled the Taliban for sheltering al-Qaeda after the September 11 attacks — then spent twenty years fighting the Taliban's insurgency and trying to build an Afghan state that collapsed in days in August 2021. Direct deaths are estimated at about 176,000 by Brown University's Costs of War project and 212,191 by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program; the US cost is put at $2.26–2.31 trillion.

Israeli strikes hit the Islamic University of Gaza in Gaza City twice within a few hours on Sunday, October 25, 2026: an earlier drone strike injured seven female students, and a second strike killed three university staff — administrative staff, two university sources told AFP; security guards, Al Jazeera reported — while students were present for classes, AFP and Al Jazeera reported. Al Shifa hospital received three bodies and treated eight wounded. Four more Palestinians were killed elsewhere in Gaza on Sunday, for a total of seven. The Israeli military first told AFP it was looking into the reports, then said it had targeted a Hamas military-wing operative, diverted a munition after seeing uninvolved people, and put the incident under review.

An overnight Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian city of Belgorod killed two people and injured 13, and another person was killed near Shebekino, Reuters reported on Sunday, citing local authorities — a toll of three killed and 14 injured across the Belgorod region. Governor Alexander Shuvayev said the attack damaged 30 blocks of flats, 35 cars, four houses, three administrative buildings, eight commercial premises and three social facilities. Italy's ANSA news agency, reporting earlier on Sunday, had put the Belgorod death toll at one. The attack followed a Russian drone strike on a residential building in Ukraine's Synelnykove district on Saturday that killed three civilians, the Kyiv Independent reported.

President Donald Trump said on Saturday, after voting in Florida, that the United States could attack Iran as soon as Sunday — 'maybe tomorrow' — or instead reach what he called a 'nice, big, beautiful agreement,' ANI and Al Jazeera reported. Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, blamed Washington for the failure of an interim deal but said Tehran should still conclude one, Reuters reported, while Iran's Tasnim news agency denied reports that Tehran had made a new offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz through Pakistani mediators.

Flights resumed at Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport on Sunday, October 25, after operations were halted on October 10 following a Houthi-claimed attack that killed 13 people and wounded more than 300, Reuters and AFP reported. Terminal 1 is designated for domestic flights and Terminal 2 for international flights by national carriers, while Houthi spokesperson Yahya Saree renewed a warning that the airport remains a military target, and AFP reported the Saudi-led coalition shot down two drones in the Riyadh area early Sunday.

Nine people were killed and 40 injured when gunmen opened fire at St George's Greek Orthodox Church in Hmoud, Karak, during a funeral on Friday, CNN and Xinhua reported. Jordan's Public Security Directorate said on Saturday that two critically injured victims had died, raising the toll from seven, King Abdullah chaired a National Security Council meeting, and no group had claimed responsibility and no arrests had been announced.

The Iraq War, explained: from 20 March 2003 to December 2011, a US-led coalition invaded Iraq on the claim that Saddam Hussein held weapons of mass destruction, toppled his regime in three weeks — and then fought an eight-year insurgency and sectarian civil war. No WMD stockpiles were ever found. Iraqi death estimates run from about 150,000 documented or surveyed violent deaths to more than 600,000 excess deaths, some 4.5 million Iraqis were displaced at the peak, and the war's long-term cost to the United States is put at $2.2 trillion and rising.

One year after the Rapid Support Forces captured El Fasher, fewer than 70,000 people remain in a city whose pre-war population was more than one million, Amnesty International said in new testimony from 25 civilians interviewed in August and September 2026. A BBC investigation documented at least 43 attacks on hospitals and health sites between May 2024 and October 2025, and 55 medical workers killed.

Elon Musk said on Saturday that SpaceX had throttled the Starlink satellite service in Ukraine, saying Ukraine's military had violated the civilian service's terms by using it for offensive drone strikes — an admission, reported by the Associated Press, that came hours after President Volodymyr Zelensky said Starlink and Starshield speeds had been restored. A Ukrainian presidential adviser disputed the accusation, and Kyiv said it had received no communication from SpaceX about any alleged violation.

Yemen's Houthis said on Saturday they had attacked Saudi oil facilities and airports, the Saudi-led coalition said it downed missiles fired toward the kingdom, and Yemen's Saudi-backed government said three ballistic missiles struck coast guard sites in Aden, Reuters reported. The Associated Press reported strikes killing 11 people in Sanaa, according to the Houthi-run Health Ministry, and at least four in Hodeida — figures the AP said it could not independently verify and Saudi Arabia did not respond to.

Ukraine's defence ministry said on Saturday its monitoring systems were recording Starlink and Starshield connections stable at speeds exceeding 400 km/h, and President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the services had resumed at pre-restriction speeds — reversing Friday's position, when Ukrainian officials said the 160 km/h caps disrupting drone operations were still in place despite President Trump's assurance.

Israeli forces forced about 1,200 Palestinians from their homes in Hebron on Saturday as the large-scale operation ordered after Friday's checkpoint shooting began in the Al-Jaladah and Ein Deir Baha neighbourhoods, Hebron's municipal head told Reuters. The Associated Press reported all gates into and out of the city closed to vehicles, and Reuters reported entrances blocked to most West Bank cities and towns.

A US strike on Iran could come as soon as this weekend — 'Absolutely,' Ambassador Tom Barrack told a podcast on Friday — even as foreign ministers from eight countries meeting in Istanbul the same day agreed that a new attack would expand the war and that diplomacy was the only way to end it, Reuters reported. President Trump, asked about his envoy's remark in Florida, said: 'If that's the case, I don't know anything about it.' Oil settled at its highest since April.

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.

The Kosovo War, explained: from 28 February 1998 to 11 June 1999, the Kosovo Liberation Army fought the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for Kosovo's independence, and NATO — acting without UN Security Council authorisation — bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days to force its forces out. About 13,500 people were killed or went missing, some 850,000 Kosovo Albanians were expelled, and Kosovo passed under UN administration — the war that produced the formula 'illegal but legitimate' and, nine years later, a declaration of independence Serbia still rejects.

The Bosnian War, explained: from 6 April 1992 to 21 November 1995, Bosnia and Herzegovina's Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats — backed in turn by Serbia, Croatia and the Yugoslav army — fought the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945. About 100,000 people were killed and more than 2.2 million displaced. The war brought the term ethnic cleansing into common use, saw the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica genocide, and ended only after NATO air strikes and the Dayton Accords divided the country 51 to 49.

Russia and Ukraine confirmed on Friday that a localized ceasefire in the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky, brokered through US first lady Melania Trump, will take effect at 01:00 GMT on October 27 — two days earlier than the White House first announced — to allow aid deliveries, demining and a civilian evacuation. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said trilateral technical talks will follow in the first half of November.

President Donald Trump told a rally in Florida on Friday that Washington may carry out 'another little Epic Fury' against Iran, hours after telling reporters the US could end the war quickly but might instead let it 'wither' — reversing his earlier-October position that there would be no attack before the November 3 midterms. The same day, two senior Iranian security officials told Reuters Tehran has drawn up detailed plans to target undersea communications cables in the Gulf, and to prevent their repair, if the US and Israel attack again. Brent crude settled at $116.72 a barrel on Friday, its highest close since April.

Israeli forces began demolishing buildings in Hebron's Farsh al-Hawa area and forcing residents to evacuate on Friday afternoon, hours after two Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded three others in a 20-minute firefight at a checkpoint near Yehuda Junction. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first ordered a full closure of the West Bank, then said hours later he would consider a cordon around Hebron and Halhul, while vowing a house-to-house operation modelled on the 2025 refugee-camp campaigns that displaced thousands. Local residents told Reuters the buildings targeted had no connection to the attackers.

The Comoros-flagged cargo ship Khoryv sank on Friday after a drone strike 13 nautical miles off Romania's port of Constanta, just outside Romanian territorial waters, the Romanian Naval Authority said. Nine of its 13 Ukrainian and Azerbaijani crew were rescued, one body was recovered and three sailors were still missing. President Nicusor Dan called the sinking part of Russia's escalation against NATO's eastern flank, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen condemned it as another Russian escalation in the Black Sea. No Russian response had been reported in the coverage opened for this article.

The war impact on markets this week was an oil rally to five-month highs: December Brent settled up 3.1% at $116.72 on Friday, up 6.2% on the week, and WTI rose 3.8% to $103.27 as Houthi attacks on Saudi airports and an oil field, Saudi Aramco's headquarters evacuation and warnings of renewed US-Iran strikes lifted the risk premium — even though total Gulf oil flows ran above pre-war levels. Gold fell 4% on the week to a three-month low, wheat fell sharply on Ukraine peace-talk momentum, and the S&P 500 slipped 0.52% on Friday. Figures checked Friday, October 23, 2026, 4:20 PM Central Time.

A massive Russian attack on a DTEK thermal power station on Thursday caused serious damage and forced the plant to stop generating electricity, Ukraine's largest private energy company said on Friday — the latest blow in an energy campaign that since mid-August has struck thermal, combined heat-and-power and hydroelectric plants, and in October spread to previously untargeted western regions. No staff were injured, DTEK said, and it is not disclosing the plant's location. The UN says September's civilian casualties were 85 percent higher than a year earlier, and its migration agency warns millions face the hardest winter since the full-scale invasion began.

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.

The Bangladesh Liberation War, explained: from 26 March to 16 December 1971, East Pakistan fought — and, from December, India fought beside it — to break away from Pakistan. The war created Bangladesh, cost Pakistan more than half its population, drove some 10 million refugees into India, and left a death toll historians still dispute across an extraordinary range, from 26,000 in Pakistan's official inquiry to 3 million in Bangladesh's official accounting.

Saudi Aramco has told staff to evacuate its headquarters in Dhahran and work remotely — the first evacuation of the headquarters since the start of the Iran war — six people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, as fighting between the world's largest crude exporter and Yemen's Houthis intensifies. The building, which hosts the operations centre overseeing Aramco's rigs, refineries and export terminals, was extensively damaged when the Houthis struck it earlier this month. Oil rose for a third week on Friday, with Brent at $114.47 a barrel.

President Donald Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday night that the United States is not negotiating with Iran and that 'something one way or another will happen, fairly soon,' adding that most people seem to think it will come after the November 3 midterm elections — a statement reported by The Times of Israel that directly contradicts Iran's foreign minister, who said the same day that indirect talks over Tehran's seven-day ceasefire proposal were continuing through Pakistani and Qatari mediators. The Associated Press reported on Thursday that both sides have acknowledged indirect discussions have continued. Brent crude rose above $112 a barrel on Thursday.

Russian ballistic missiles and drones struck Kyiv overnight into Thursday, killing one person and wounding 22, Ukrainian authorities said, in a third wave of strikes on the capital since Wednesday evening — while Moscow's mayor said 630 Ukrainian drones targeted the Moscow region overnight, most of them downed. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia used 21 ballistic missiles and attacked 12 regions; AFP reported seven people killed in four regions outside the capital. The counts published by the wires and by the president had not been reconciled.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy said on Thursday that four vessels involved in oil transfers in the northern Persian Gulf were hit simultaneously and caught fire, and that three more vessels struck mines west of the Strait of Hormuz — a claim reported by Reuters for which no independent confirmation from maritime authorities, the US military or shipowners was available in the reporting opened for this article. The IRGC warned the US military that continued provocations could bring a wider response against its regional bases. Oil rose more than $2 a barrel in Thursday trade, which Reuters tied to the attacks in Saudi Arabia and broader escalation concerns.

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.

Turkey's foreign minister Hakan Fidan will host his counterparts from Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Britain, France and Germany in Istanbul on Friday for the first meeting in this seven-country format, a Turkish diplomatic source told Reuters. The Israeli-Palestinian issue, the Strait of Hormuz, Yemen and efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war are all on the agenda.

The Second Boer War, explained: from 11 October 1899 to 31 May 1902 Britain fought the South African Republic and the Orange Free State over supremacy in southern Africa and control of the Witwatersrand goldfields. Britain won with nearly 500,000 troops against some 88,000 Boers, at a cost of more than £200 million and around 75,000 lives — most of them civilians who died of disease in concentration camps.

The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, explained in one line: Russia, leading a coalition with Romania, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgarian volunteers, defeated the Ottoman Empire in ten months, broke almost five centuries of Ottoman rule in Bulgaria, and won independence for three Balkan states — only for the Congress of Berlin to cut the peace settlement down and sow grievances that fed the Balkan Wars and the First World War.

Russian forces attacked Kyiv with ballistic missiles on Wednesday evening, injuring six people and damaging homes, a petrol station and transport equipment in districts east of the Dnipro River, Ukrainian officials said — and missiles struck the capital again in the early hours of Thursday, a Reuters witness reported. The two waves came hours after Russia said it was willing in principle to resume trilateral peace talks with Ukraine and the United States, and as Ukraine's air force warned of more ballistic missiles heading for the capital.

An attack on King Fahd International Airport in Dammam on Wednesday evening killed two people and injured eight others, Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation said in a follow-up statement on Thursday, raising its initial toll of one dead. The dead are a Saudi citizen and an Indian resident. The authority did not say what struck the airport or who carried out the attack; it said airport operations have resumed and air traffic has returned to normal.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday that Ukraine supports a US proposal for three-way talks with Russia and the United States at the level of negotiators, to be held as soon as possible and preferably no later than early November. Speaking to journalists as he returned to Kyiv from Norway, Zelenskiy said Kyiv had received feedback that Russia supports a trilateral meeting of the negotiating teams — matching the Kremlin's statement earlier on Wednesday that President Putin is willing in principle to resume the talks next month. Zelenskiy said Ukraine supports any proposals for a ceasefire, including an energy ceasefire and humanitarian initiatives.

The US State Department on Wednesday issued an ordered departure for non-emergency US government employees and their family members in Saudi Arabia, citing increasingly intense Houthi hostilities against the kingdom's airports and critical infrastructure. The same day, Saudi Arabia's Energy Ministry said debris from an intercepted drone killed two workers — a Filipino and a Nepali national — and injured two others at the Aramco-operated Shaybah oil field in the southeast. The ministry did not say who launched the drone, and the Houthis had earlier denied conducting any operations towards Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.

Turkey will submit to parliament a mandate allowing military personnel to be deployed to Saudi Arabia under the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, a lawmaker from the ruling AK Party told Reuters on Wednesday. The mandate will follow approval of the ratification bill Turkey submitted on Tuesday for the August pact, under which an armed attack on one member is considered an attack on all. The lawmaker said technical personnel and experts would be sent initially to help with air defences and electronic warfare, and that no personnel deployed under the pact would take part in offensive operations. On the same day, Turkey, Qatar, Pakistan and Indonesia signed a separate defence-cooperation accord in Doha.

President Vladimir Putin told US special envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg on Wednesday that Moscow is willing in principle to resume talks next month with Ukraine and the United States on ending the war, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said — a format that has not met since February. Ushakov said the talks should focus on building a security system for Russia and Ukraine after the conflict ends. In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the same day that he supports a ceasefire and trilateral talks, and that a freeze of the fighting along the current front line is the minimum Ukraine needs from Russia.

Russia has expanded its strikes on Ukraine's energy sector from the east and centre to power plants and transmission systems in previously untargeted western regions, causing waves of blackouts, Ukrainian energy officials said on Tuesday. Deputy Energy Minister Artem Nekrasov said facilities were struck in the western Zhytomyr, Lviv, Rivne, Ternopil and Khmelnytskyi regions as well as in central Kirovohrad and southern Odesa, where an overnight attack on three DTEK facilities left 32,700 families without electricity. The widening campaign continued overnight into Wednesday, when drones killed two people near Kharkiv and a strike hit a high-rise apartment building in Kyiv.

President Vladimir Putin hosted US special envoy Steve Witkoff at the Constantine Palace in St Petersburg on Wednesday for their ninth in-person meeting on ending the war in Ukraine, and opened the talks by announcing the release of Stephen Hubbard, the 74-year-old retired American teacher held in Russia since 2022. Witkoff said there was a basis for a ceasefire and that he hoped Putin would consider resuming three-way talks between Russia, the United States and Ukraine. No agreement was announced.

Oil prices gained more than $1 on Wednesday as escalating Middle East tensions fuelled fears of supply disruption and falling US inventories lent support. Brent crude rose $1.59, or 1.5 percent, to $110.38 a barrel as of 0350 GMT, and US West Texas Intermediate gained $1.36, or 1.4 percent, to $99.18. Traders weighed Iran's statement that there will be no talks with Washington until its demands are met, Kpler's count of at least 18 vessel attacks in two weeks, and LSEG's warning that tanker targeting is reaching into the Gulf of Oman.

Yemen's Houthis said on Wednesday that they had not launched any drones towards the Saudi holy city of Medina and had not conducted any military operations towards Saudi Arabia, denying earlier comments from the Saudi-led coalition, which said it had intercepted drones over Medina and the Eastern region. The denial came as Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Tehran had received no response from Saudi Arabia or the Houthis to its offer to help broker talks to end the fighting between them — an offer made as the Houthis intensified strikes on Saudi Arabia earlier this month.

The Greco-Turkish War explained: from the Greek landing at Smyrna on 15 May 1919 to the Turkish Great Offensive of August 1922, the war destroyed the Greek presence in Anatolia, ended the Megali Idea, and produced the Treaty of Lausanne and a compulsory population exchange. Military deaths are given by the official-history figures in the standard summary — 19,362 Greek and 9,167 Turkish soldiers killed — while civilian tolls, above all for the burning of Smyrna, remain disputed across a very wide range.

The death toll from Monday's drone strike on Amiet market in the disputed Abyei region has risen to at least 153, the region's caretaker information minister told the Associated Press and Reuters on Tuesday — more than double the 73 he reported earlier. The figures remain unreconciled: AFP, citing Abyei authorities, reported 53 killed, and the United Nations said at least 28 civilians were killed at the market and in Todach, with many people unaccounted for. A senior Sudanese military officer told the AP the army had struck fuel tankers he said were bound for the RSF; the AP could not verify his account.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in Oslo on Tuesday that Kyiv is once again receiving early warnings of Russian ballistic missile attacks, after a week in which he said Ukraine got no warning of strikes on the capital. He credited talks with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and meetings with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Rubio, speaking in India, said US policy had never changed and denied any deliberate decision to withhold support. Russian attacks on Tuesday killed at least nine people across Ukraine and cut power in 12 regions, officials said.

Iran's president, parliament speaker and security chief each told Pakistan's army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, in Tehran on Tuesday that there will be no talks with Washington until Tehran's demands are met, Iranian media reported — a hardening of Iran's stance delivered to its chief mediator. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said the US must first fulfil the seven conditions Iran set for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and security chief Mohsen Rezaei said all enriched uranium will remain in Iran. Senior Iranian officials told Reuters separately that Tehran has deliberately prolonged the talks to weaken President Trump ahead of the US midterm elections.

Britain announced on Tuesday that Royal Air Force Typhoon jets will fly defensive counter-air missions over Saudi Arabia to protect its cities and critical infrastructure from Houthi drone and missile attacks, alongside an Atlas A400M transport aircraft and military advisers. The Ministry of Defence said the jets will operate only defensively and will not strike targets in Yemen, in a significant expansion of the support London began with a refuelling aircraft in September.

Drone strikes in Sudan's West Kordofan state on Sunday evening killed 150 people — 145 of them when a truck carrying mourners to a funeral was hit at Al-Dabab — sources told the Sudan War Observatory, the BBC reported on Tuesday, a toll nearly double the count reported for the same town a day earlier. Together with the 73 killed at Abyei's Amiet market on Monday, the reported deaths pass 200. The BBC's figures conflict in both toll and detail with the AFP-based reporting published on Monday, and neither count has been independently verified.

At least 73 people were killed and 19 wounded when drones struck Amiet market in the disputed Abyei region on Monday, Abyei's caretaker information minister told Reuters on Tuesday, accusing Sudan's army of the attack. The minister provided no evidence for the accusation, no independent verification of the death toll was available, and Médecins Sans Frontières said it was treating more than 20 wounded people at a nearby hospital.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy flew to Oslo on Tuesday to meet US special envoy Steve Witkoff, trying to repair ties with Washington that have deteriorated sharply over two weeks as President Donald Trump has courted Moscow. Trump said on Monday that Russia has been 'fine' on Ukraine and that Kyiv should find 'somebody else to negotiate', while Zelenskiy says US decisions slowing support are 'hard to explain between friends'.

The Spanish-American War explained: from the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbour on 15 February 1898 to the Treaty of Paris on 10 December 1898, the United States destroyed Spain's fleets at Manila Bay and Santiago, took Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, and set Cuba up as a protectorate. Only 385 Americans were killed in action — disease killed more than five times as many — while the Cuban war that caused it all had already killed at least 170,000 civilians in Spain's reconcentration camps.

Most Gulf stock markets fell in early trade on Tuesday after Yemen's Houthis claimed attacks on Saudi energy, airport and military targets on Monday — claims Saudi authorities did not confirm and Reuters could not independently verify. Saudi Arabia's benchmark index dropped 1.1%, Qatar's index hit its lowest level in over six years, and Brent crude climbed to $110.07 a barrel, near a five-month high, as traders priced in a geopolitical risk premium. More than 45% of departures from Saudi airports have been cancelled since October 8, Cirium says.

The Yellow Line is the demarcation Israel withdrew to under the first phase of the October 2025 ceasefire — a line of yellow concrete blocks that was meant to be temporary. A year on, the blocks have repeatedly been moved west: Israel initially held 53% of Gaza, and access restrictions now cover about 65%, leaving 2.1 million people in roughly 128 square kilometres. This explainer sets out what the line is, how it moved, and why approaching it can be deadly.

Israeli attacks on Gaza over the weekend killed at least six Palestinians, including children, despite a year-old ceasefire agreement, the United Nations said on Monday — and five more, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed on Monday, local health officials told Reuters. In the occupied West Bank, five Palestinians were killed and more than 240 injured by Israeli forces or settlers in two weeks, with 200 olive harvest-related attacks documented since the start of September. Israel said it would resume commercial goods shipments into Gaza after a days-long halt.

A wave of drone strikes across Sudan has killed more than 160 people since Friday, according to medics and rights groups reporting on Monday — 80 of them in a single Sunday-evening strike on a transport hub near a market in Al-Dibab, West Kordofan, and three children in a Monday strike on a house near Khartoum's airport. The United Nations condemned the attacks on Monday, saying drones are killing civilians, including children, and disrupting essential services.

A Russian drone struck the central park of Nova Vodolaha in Ukraine's Kharkiv region on Monday afternoon, killing six people — children among them — and injuring at least 15, Ukrainian officials said. The drone hit a park near a café where families were playing with children, the interior minister said, and prosecutors opened a pre-trial investigation into a possible war crime.

Houthi forces fired three ballistic missiles at the al-Alam training camp in Yemen's Shabwa province on Monday, killing 53 people and injuring 200, the local authority said — one of the deadliest single attacks since fighting resurged this summer. The victims were new recruits training for the internal security forces, and the Houthis confirmed they had targeted the camp.

Russia attacked Kyiv overnight into Monday with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and 269 drones in successive waves, killing one person and injuring eight, Ukrainian authorities said. Ukraine's Air Force said strikes were recorded at 25 locations. Two left-bank metro stations were damaged and closed, and Russia's Defence Ministry said it carried out a 'massive strike' on military-industrial targets in the capital and its region — and on a bulk carrier at sea southwest of Odesa.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Samarkand on Monday that there had been 'no pause' in intelligence sharing with Ukraine, directly contradicting President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who told NBC a day earlier that sharing had been interrupted and then 'de-blocked.' Rubio also declined to confirm a proposed Trump-Putin-Xi summit on Ukraine and warned of the war's risk of spreading into a neighbouring country.

North Korea is considering deploying additional tactical weapons and restarting loudspeaker broadcasts near the border with South Korea, Kim Yo Jong said in a KCNA statement on Monday, calling the southern border situation 'very unstable' and accusing Seoul's military of threatening North Korean personnel with warning shots. South Korea's military said this month the North has deployed as many as 7,000 workers this year to install mines and fences along the fortified border.

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.

Lithuania will increase security around critical infrastructure sites, Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius said on Monday, a day after an attempted arson attack on a SpaceX Starlink base station on the outskirts of Vilnius that the government's crisis chief called a Russia-linked act of sabotage aimed at undermining Ukraine's military capacity. Moscow says such accusations are baseless.

Israeli police arrested 10 suspects in a pre-dawn operation on Monday over the weekend settler attacks that hospitalised Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine at a Palestinian olive harvest and targeted European diplomats near Taybeh. The arrests, under an operation police called 'Olive Leaf', followed US pressure to crack down on settler violence — prosecutions of settlers are rare, and the prime minister had spent the weekend casting doubt on attacks recorded on video.

The First Sino-Japanese War explained: from the sinking of the Kowshing on 25 July 1894 to the Treaty of Shimonoseki on 17 April 1895, Japan defeated Qing China on land and at sea, took Korea out of China's orbit, and seized Taiwan and the Penghu Islands. China counted 35,000 killed or wounded; Japan counted 17,069 casualties, most of them to disease. The 200 million tael indemnity then paid for Japan's gold standard — and exposed the Qing reforms as a shell.

President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky 'doesn't want to end this war, and probably never did,' defending his decision to waive sanctions and tariffs on Russia a day after Ukraine's 1,015-drone attack on Russian oil sites. The Wall Street Journal reported that President Vladimir Putin has proposed a three-way summit with Trump and China's Xi Jinping on the sidelines of next month's APEC meeting — a format that would discuss Ukraine's future without Ukraine at the table.

The Gulf Cooperation Council's foreign ministers, meeting in Manama on Sunday, condemned repeated Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, invoked the bloc's joint defence agreement — an attack on any member affects all six — and backed the kingdom's right to defend itself. Hours earlier, Saudi Civil Defense said a projectile launched by the Houthis had struck a residential area in the border city of Najran, wounding six citizens and damaging three houses and three vehicles.

The Saudi-led coalition said on Sunday that two pilots were killed when an AH-6i reconnaissance helicopter crashed in the Najran region near the Yemen border, blaming a 'technical malfunction' — the coalition's first fatalities since hostilities with the Houthis restarted in July, AFP reported. The Houthis claimed they shot the aircraft down. In Riyadh, the Kingdom Centre skyscraper ordered its office tenants to work remotely until further notice after repeated Houthi attacks.

Egypt's presidency said on Sunday it will provide Saudi Arabia with 'all necessary and possible forms of support' to defend its security against escalating Houthi attacks, after President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi asked parliament to authorise the military to help defend the kingdom if Riyadh requests it. A vote expected on Sunday was carried into Monday, two lawmakers said, and no formal Saudi request had been announced.

Russia has attacked Ukraine's energy, oil and gas sectors 76 times in the week since President Donald Trump announced a halt to energy strikes, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday, with the latest overnight strikes hitting substations in four regions. Ukraine's Air Force said Russia launched 180 drones and a ballistic missile overnight. The same morning, Poland scrambled aircraft and searched for a possible crashed object, Lithuania sent residents to shelters and closed Kaunas airport, and Latvia issued an air warning.

A Ukrainian drone attack on St Petersburg killed one person and injured five, the city's governor said on Sunday, with fires at the St Petersburg oil terminal, an oil depot and industrial warehouses. Russia's Defence Ministry said air defences downed 1,015 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions overnight, and Moscow's mayor said 195 drones heading for the capital were destroyed.

The siege of Taiz, Yemen's third-largest city, has displaced 121,530 people in the city alone and left 12 hospitals with about four days of fuel, UN agency spokespeople told reporters — as Houthi forces, having cut the main road south to Aden, fight in districts where the city's main referral hospitals stand. Across Yemen's renewed war, 233,077 people have been displaced, and front-line hospitals have admitted more than 700 casualties in a single week, the Red Cross said.

The Second Sino-Japanese War explained: from the Marco Polo Bridge incident on 7 July 1937 to Japan's surrender in September 1945, China fought Japan for eight years, lost its coastal cities and capital, moved its government to Chongqing, and held down hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops. Total Chinese deaths are put at 14 million to 22 million in the estimates historians cite, and the war exhausted the Nationalists who had led the resistance — setting up the Communist victory of 1949.

A Pakistan-Afghanistan border clash in the Kurram sector on Saturday saw Pakistani forces and Afghan Taliban personnel exchange fire at several locations along the northwestern border, the Associated Press reported. Pakistani security officials and state-run media said troops backed by artillery destroyed Taliban posts, targeted the Topser post and Shipola base camp in Upper Kurram, and killed several Taliban personnel — claims the Taliban had not publicly answered in the reports opened, in the latest round of a border conflict that has flared since the Moscow talks failed on October 5.

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'.

Iran has a new defence minister: parliament on Sunday approved Mehrdad Akhlaqi Ketabchi, a former head of the Aerospace Industries Organisation who is under US and EU sanctions, ending months of interim leadership since his predecessor was killed in US-Israeli strikes in February. In his programme to lawmakers, Akhlaqi pledged to rebuild Iran's military-industrial infrastructure and warned Washington against renewed strikes.

Israeli drone attacks killed at least six Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Saturday — near Jabalia, in Gaza City's Tuffah neighbourhood and eastern districts, in Deir el-Balah and in Rafah's al-Mawasi area — according to Palestinian medical and emergency workers reported by Al Jazeera. Among the dead was a 14-year-old boy killed on his school journey in Deir el-Balah. Gaza's Health Ministry said six people were killed and 43 injured in the preceding 48 hours, raising the toll since the October 2025 ceasefire to 1,511 killed.

Masked Israeli settlers attacked a delegation of European diplomats, Catholic representatives and Palestinians in the Palestinian Christian village of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, Belgium's foreign minister said. A French mayor was assaulted, a Belgian consulate vehicle was damaged, and Israeli police opened an investigation — the second day in a row that settlers have attacked foreigners accompanying Palestinians at the olive harvest.

Romanian F-16 fighter jets shot down two drones over Romania's territorial waters in the Black Sea on Saturday, minutes after each entered Romanian airspace near Sulina, the defence ministry said. The ministry did not specify the drones' origin. The interceptions came days after two chemical tankers were hit by drones near Romania's Black Sea coast, leaving seven crew members missing.

A tanker was struck by an unknown projectile off Saudi Arabia's Jubail on Friday and a second tanker was attacked by a rocket-propelled grenade from a small boat in the same area, the UKMTO said on Saturday, with all crew members safe. Separately, Iran's Revolutionary Guards Navy said two oil tankers carrying about 2 million barrels of crude each had caught fire after hitting naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz — a claim Reuters said had no independent confirmation.

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he is waiving many of the sanctions, restrictions and duties due to take effect under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, the law he signed last month, certifying to Congress that the waiver is in the national interests of the United States. The law would have imposed tariffs of up to 100% on goods from the five largest importers of Russian crude oil and gas. The move drew bipartisan criticism in Washington and praise from the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, and it came a week after a Russian diesel deal that Ukraine's president said left him feeling betrayed.

Russia launched 332 drones at Ukraine overnight into Saturday, of which Ukraine's Air Force said 289 were shot down, while ballistic missiles struck 22 locations and energy attacks cut power in Vinnytsia. Russia's defence ministry said the barrage hit Ukraine's largest steelworks at Kryvyi Rih, a Zhytomyr power substation, a Zaporizhzhia steel plant and a Black Sea cargo vessel — claims Reuters said it could not independently confirm. Regional authorities put the past day's toll at seven people killed and around 90 injured.

The Winter War explained: from 30 November 1939 to 13 March 1940, the Soviet Union invaded Finland to move the border away from Leningrad. Finland, outnumbered roughly three to one in men and a hundred to one in tanks, held for 105 days, inflicted Soviet dead put at 126,875 to 167,976 in later Russian archival work, then ceded 9 percent of its territory in the Moscow Peace Treaty — and kept its independence.

Millions of Ukrainians face a winter of hardship that could be the most difficult since the full-scale war began, the UN migration agency warned on Friday, as Russian strikes on energy infrastructure, damaged housing and rising living costs threaten to force more people from their homes. Nearly 3.6 million people remain internally displaced and 3.8 million have returned to often damaged homes, the International Organization for Migration said.

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.

More than 340 children have been reported killed in Gaza in the year since the ceasefire was announced, UNICEF said on Friday, including five boys and two girls killed in the last two weeks alone. Some 800,000 children remain displaced in tents and bombed-out buildings, an estimated 60,000 have lost one or both parents, and the agency warned that winter rains could flood residential areas with contaminated water from a half-full sewage basin it cannot get permission to drain.

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has named a caretaker government to stabilise the northern Tigray region and prepare for an election within six months, his office said, weeks after federal forces and allied militia retook the regional capital Mekelle from the TPLF-led rebel alliance. The temporary administration is also tasked with repairing damaged infrastructure and helping displaced people return home, in a region where some 750,000 people were still displaced as of February.

Two missiles landed inside Aden International Airport on Friday as a Yemenia Airways flight prepared to take off for Cairo, the Aden Security Department said — the second attack on the airport in less than a week — while the Saudi-led coalition said it had intercepted a ballistic missile headed for Yanbu, Saudi Arabia's Red Sea oil-export hub, and destroyed two cruise missiles and three drones. No casualties were reported at Aden. Brent crude briefly touched $110 a barrel on Friday for the first time since May.

President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia is establishing a 660-kilometre 'security zone' inside Ukraine along their border and will not make it a subject of peace negotiations, while in Brussels President Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned the US diesel deal with Russia before EU leaders and called Moscow's stance a 'parody' of peace talks. The Kremlin also said Putin had agreed in a call with Pope Leo to cooperate on getting supplies into the occupied town of Oleshky.

Russian attacks struck nine Ukrainian regions on Friday, causing emergency power outages for hundreds of thousands of households and wounding at least 15 people, officials told AP, while Reuters reported at least three people killed and around 370,000 people cut off in the northwest. The strikes landed the same day the UN human rights office in Kyiv reported at least 328 civilians killed and 2,105 wounded in September — 85% more than a year earlier — and called the first two weeks of October among the deadliest periods for civilians in years.

Dozens of masked Israeli settlers, some carrying gas canisters, attacked Palestinian villagers harvesting olives at Abu Falah in the occupied West Bank on Friday, burning trees, hurling rocks from slings and injuring at least two people, including Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine, Reuters witnesses reported. The attack continued after Israeli soldiers arrived and fired tear gas toward the Palestinians, a Reuters photographer saw at least one armed settler fire a gun, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It was the second harvest attack of the morning, after settlers burned three cars at Turmus Ayya.

The order to slow SpaceX's Starshield service for Ukraine's military came from inside the White House, two US officials and a Western official told Reuters — a claim a senior US official answered by saying no such request was ever made by the president. The reporting landed as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy arrived at an EU summit in Brussels on Friday seeking winter energy, air-defence and funding support, a day after President Donald Trump called Ukraine's resumed strikes on Russian refineries a 'disgrace' in a Newsmax interview.

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.

More than 4,300 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon since March 2, according to the Lebanese health ministry — a figure Reuters carried again on October 13. A US-brokered ceasefire was agreed in June. It did not stop the strikes: Israel kept bombing the south near-daily, occupied a self-declared 'security zone', and this month killed non-combatants in Bint Jbeil district and wounded a four-year-old in Haddatha. Two 'ceasefires', two running counts, one ledger.

BBC Verify combed through more than 60,000 news reports and found 300 unique incidents in which the Israel Defense Forces said it was investigating alleged killings or injuries in Gaza, Lebanon and the occupied West Bank. Outcomes have been published for 28. For 254 there is no public outcome at all, and for 18 more it is not even clear whether the investigation has ended — some have been 'under review' for nearly three years. This explainer sets out how the system works, what the published outcomes show, and which cases are still waiting.

At least 33 people — 32 children and a female teacher, according to Lady Reading Hospital — were killed on Thursday when the roof of the Al-Khair Education Center in Peshawar's Dir Colony collapsed through the classrooms below during morning lessons, and more than 50 people were injured. Police arrested the school's owner and called the collapse a case of 'gross negligence'; the province's governor ordered a safety audit of schools across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

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.

Amnesty International, the UN Commission of Inquiry and the International Association of Genocide Scholars have each concluded, on the documented record, that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Israel, the United States and a body of dissenting scholars reject the characterisation as baseless. The ICJ — the only body whose answer binds states — has issued provisional measures but has not ruled on the merits. This explainer sets out who concluded what, on what legal test, and where the disagreement actually sits: the specific intent the 1948 Genocide Convention requires. War Info Hub stands with the victims of this war, and reports the findings as what they are: findings.

A Gaza airstrike on an apartment block in Gaza City's al-Rimal neighbourhood early on Wednesday killed Reem Asaad Awad, 33, and set the flat ablaze, according to hospital officials cited by Al Jazeera. Her young daughter Maryam Ahmed Ghanem was pulled from a burning bed by rescuers and is being treated at al-Shifa Hospital for second- and third-degree burns, her grandfather told Middle East Eye. Israel claims it targeted a Hamas member, without providing evidence, and says it is investigating.

In August 2026 Israel's prime minister and defence minister ordered the military to treat paper kites flown from Gaza as a lethal weapon and to strike launchers and launch sites — after the military's own inspection found nothing dangerous on the kites that triggered it. Within hours, strikes killed at least three people including a four-year-old, Al Jazeera reported. Le Monde found parents and camp committees confiscating children's kites, and noted there is no evidence linking two children's deaths that week to kites. In October, Palestinian reporting said a second four-year-old had died of wounds from a strike on al-Zawaida.

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.

One year into the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire, Palestinians are still being killed almost daily: Reuters documented five dead in strikes on Saturday, three in a Mawasi tent on Sunday night and two more on Monday, and Gaza's health ministry now puts the toll since the ceasefire at 1,501 killed and 5,323 wounded. More than 100 aid and rights organisations say the ceasefire exists only on paper. Israel claims each strike targets militants; the documented record is the dead.

The commercial trucks that stock Gaza's markets stopped entering from Israel on Thursday. COGAT, the Israeli military body that oversees the crossings, blames a 10,000-shekel per-truck payment it calls a Hamas-imposed fee; Hamas calls the same payment a voluntary contribution to a national fund for widows and orphans. Aid trucks still entered, Gaza's transport union said — but total daily entries could fall by half, to around 300, for a population a global hunger monitor warns could mostly face acute hunger by year's end.

The war impact on markets this week was a Friday oil surge: front-month WTI settled up 3.5% at $101.41 — its first close above $100 in a month — and Brent gained 3.7% to $109.86 as Ukraine renewed attacks on Russian refineries while Hormuz flows ran a third below baseline. Defense stocks rallied 3.7–4.1% on Friday even as the S&P 500 fell 1.95% on the week. Figures checked Friday, October 16, 2026, 4:20 PM Central Time.

The Houthis are hitting Riyadh's airport and Saudi Aramco's headquarters because Iran spent more than a decade teaching them to build their own missiles and drones rather than merely supplying finished weapons, weapons and regional experts told Reuters. Locally trained specialists, commercial parts sourced beyond Iran, and regional air defences stretched by a year of war explain how a movement in northwestern Yemen now strikes deep inside the kingdom.

The European Union will probably have to provide a new loan to Ukraine to cover a budget gap of more than $70 billion for next year, Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal told Reuters on Friday. EU leaders agreed a 90 billion euro loan last December for 2026 and 2027, but Kyiv says it now faces a further gap for defence and regular spending, and a plan to use frozen Russian assets remains blocked by Belgium and other member states.

Bulgaria has formally asked NATO to deploy combat aircraft and anti-drone systems on its territory, Defence Minister Dimitar Stoyanov said on Friday, after a week in which drones sank a cargo ship off the Bulgarian coast, left 11 sailors missing, and set two more ships ablaze off Romania. Sofia has also proposed a moratorium on attacks on civilian ships and expects to join a NATO anti-drone initiative by October 30.

The American Revolutionary War explained: from 19 April 1775 to 3 September 1783, the Thirteen Colonies fought Britain for independence, won French and Spanish help after Saratoga, forced Cornwallis to surrender at Yorktown, and gained recognition in the Treaty of Paris — at a cost historians still count in ranges, because disease killed far more soldiers than battle did.

NATO's North Atlantic Council will hold a dedicated session on the wave of drone attacks on commercial ships in the Black Sea, Romanian President Nicusor Dan said on Thursday after meeting NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev in Brussels. NATO sources told Europa Press the issue will be on the agenda of next week's regular ambassador-level meeting. Neither Romania nor Bulgaria has invoked Article 4 consultations, and Bulgaria's leader said his country would not accuse any party without clear evidence.

Yemen's Houthis fired missiles at the al-Maashiq presidential palace complex in Aden on Thursday, killing five people and wounding 16, Yemen's health minister said, in the first attack on the seat of the internationally recognised government in the current conflict. The prime minister and cabinet were safe. The same day, the Saudi-led coalition said Houthi attacks this month on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport alone had killed 17 people and wounded 333, and the Houthi military spokesperson renewed a warning that Saudi airspace and airports were unsafe, excluding the holy cities.

The Saudi-led coalition said on Thursday that it had intercepted and destroyed a cruise missile over Saudi Arabia's Medina region, home to one of Islam's holiest cities, but it did not assign blame, the Associated Press and AFP reported. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree denied that the group had carried out any operation targeting Saudi territory on Thursday. Saudi Arabia also said it destroyed a drone over its Eastern Province, a major oil-producing region, earlier on Thursday.

Two chemical tankers caught fire overnight near the mouth of the Danube's Sulina Canal off Romania, and rescuers were searching on Thursday for seven missing crew from the San Marino-flagged Wine Trader, Romanian officials said. President Nicusor Dan said in Brussels that two air drones had hit the ships, but declined to say whether they were Russian. The BBC reported that Romanian officials had not said what caused the Wine Trader's fire. Reporting on the missing-crew tally differed between updates as the rescue effort continued.

A large Ukrainian drone attack set a fire at an oil refinery in Russia's Ryazan region on Thursday, the regional governor said, the first Ukrainian strike on a Russian energy facility since US President Donald Trump announced an energy ceasefire on Sunday. Separately, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the Financial Times that Ukraine would resume strikes on Russian refineries after a pause of several days, saying the block on attacking refineries was over.

More than 360 drones struck Ukraine's central Kirovohrad region overnight into Thursday, in what Governor Andriy Raikovych called the largest attack on the region during the war, killing three people and wounding six, according to Reuters. Ukraine's air force said 580 drones attacked the country overnight and that 536 were shot down. The Kyiv Independent reported the same toll for Kropyvnytskyi, the regional capital, and said five of the wounded were hospitalised.

The Yom Kippur War explained: from 6 to 25 October 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on Yom Kippur, during Ramadan, to recover the Sinai and the Golan Heights lost in 1967. Surprise succeeded, Israel counter-attacked, the superpowers went on nuclear alert, oil prices quadrupled — and the road to the first Arab-Israeli peace treaty opened.

The future of UNIFIL in Lebanon is undecided with its mandate set to expire at the end of 2026: UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix urged the Security Council on Wednesday to start negotiations soon, Lebanon is campaigning for an extension, diplomats say the United States is not supportive, and the EU agreed on Monday to a separate three-year mission to train Lebanese forces.

Kenya fuel prices rose sharply for the October 15 to November 14 period after the energy regulator cited higher import costs linked to the conflict in the Middle East: in Nairobi, petrol rose about 6% to 226.96 shillings a litre, diesel rose about 4.5% to 227.76 shillings, and kerosene jumped to 219.87 shillings, Reuters reported. Kenya relies on the Middle East for nearly all of its fuel and imports all of it in refined form.

Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has launched a new political-military coalition, the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation (FRN), headed by Kabila with M23 rebel leaders as deputies, replacing the AFC-M23 alliance in eastern Congo, Reuters and Al Jazeera reported. A day later the United States urged Rwanda at the Security Council to withdraw its troops from Congo and cease all support to M23.

Bulgaria expects to join a NATO anti-drone initiative by October 30, Defence Minister Dimitar Stoyanov told a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday, a day after a drone attack sank the cargo vessel HS Dignity off Bulgaria's Black Sea coast and left 11 sailors missing. Bulgaria's transport ministry said the search for the missing sailors resumed on Wednesday after bad weather and darkness forced a suspension on Tuesday evening.

Elon Musk said on Wednesday that Starshield, the military satellite service Ukrainian forces use, is owned and controlled by the US government and that any limits on its speed or use are decided by the US military and ultimately the president. Ukraine's defence ministry said connectivity had improved for speeds up to 160 km/h by Wednesday evening but that SpaceX was still maintaining a 161 km/h cap, while a senior US official told Axios the Trump administration was not responsible for the restrictions.

Saudi Aramco's headquarters complex in Dhahran suffered extensive damage in Tuesday night's strike, with a fire spreading across several floors and the top three floors severely damaged, people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Wednesday — a sharply different picture from the Energy Ministry's account of a limited fire. Two regional officials gave the Associated Press the same top-three-floors account. The Houthis vowed on Wednesday to press on with attacks on Saudi airports and oil facilities, and the Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted another ballistic missile fired toward Riyadh, while AP reported a much larger Wednesday salvo and one person injured by debris in the capital.

Singapore's Maritime and Port Authority said on Wednesday that two Singapore-registered container vessels were struck by unknown projectiles while transiting the Strait of Hormuz: the GFS Pride, hit on October 13, caught fire and later sank, with all 21 crew safely evacuated, while the GFS Giselle was hit on October 14, sustained hull damage and reached a safe anchorage with all 22 crew safe. Maritime security sources told Reuters the sinking was also reported in a Pakistani navigational warning, and a third vessel damaged in September, the bulk carrier Cape Dao, was reported to be sinking.

Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that SpaceX had restricted its military-grade Starlink services without warning, cutting the connection of fast-moving terminals used to guide drones and disrupting several missions. Presidential adviser Serhiy Beskrestnov said Ukraine's defence forces received no warning of the limitation. SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters or CNN.

Russian missile and drone strikes overnight into Wednesday killed three people in Kyiv and damaged 30 energy facilities, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, leaving at least 600,000 people without power in an attack on Kyiv and Kharkiv. Russia's defence ministry said it struck four power plants in and around Kyiv and two in Kharkiv. Zelenskyy said the attack targeted infrastructure covered by the energy ceasefire announced by US President Donald Trump on Sunday, which neither Moscow nor Kyiv had confirmed as agreed.

Saudi Arabia's Energy Ministry said on Wednesday that an administrative building belonging to Saudi Aramco in the eastern city of Dhahran was hit, causing a limited fire, with no injuries reported at the building. Reuters and Bloomberg reported the same ministry account, and CNN reported it was not clear whether the building took a direct hit or was struck by falling debris. Debris from intercepted missiles injured four people in Riyadh, Saudi authorities said.

The Six-Day War explained: from 5 to 10 June 1967, Israel fought Egypt, Jordan and Syria and captured the Sinai, Gaza Strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem and Golan Heights. Between about 11,500 and 18,500 soldiers died, the Suez Canal closed for eight years, and UN Resolution 242 set the land-for-peace formula that still frames diplomacy.

The Nord Stream trial opened in Hamburg on Wednesday, with former Ukrainian military officer Serhii K. accused of organising the September 2022 explosions that ruptured three of the four Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. He denies any involvement, Kyiv denies ordering the attack, and the hearing — the first public test of the evidence — is expected to run into February.

Iran is deploying new tactics against ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz — including unarmed spotters in small boats and a faster attack tempo — in a strategy two senior Iranian officials told Reuters is meant to keep oil prices high ahead of the US midterm elections. At least five incidents involving commercial ships were recorded around Hormuz in 48 hours, and the US Navy-led JMIC still rates the threat to merchant shipping as severe.

One year after the Gaza ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025, its status is stalled: the agreement halted major operations and freed all remaining hostages, but Hamas has not disarmed, the promised Palestinian administration and international force have not arrived, Israel controls a growing share of the territory, and more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in strikes since the truce began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry figures reported by AP, Human Rights Watch and a joint statement by more than 100 organisations.

Ethiopian government troops advanced on Tuesday to Zalambessa, a town of about 15,000 on the border with Eritrea that Tigrayan rebels previously controlled, six sources told Reuters. Witnesses and a conflict monitor said Eritrean troops had crossed into the town last week in support of the rebels — an incursion Eritrea denies. Both countries have written to the UN Security Council, and its members were due to meet behind closed doors on Tuesday.

The Saudi-led coalition said on Tuesday evening that it had attacked the al-Sabahah fuel station in Sanaa and other sites in Sanaa, Hodeidah and Dhamar, hours after ordering civilians to evacuate the station. Al Jazeera's team in Sanaa reported explosions at the station and strikes on oil storage at Ras Isa port. Yemen's oil company said the Sanaa facility held no fuel stocks. No casualty figures were reported, and the Houthis renewed warnings against Saudi Aramco facilities.

The Saudi-led coalition on Tuesday urged civilians to evacuate the Yemen Oil Company's al-Sabahah central station in Sanaa ahead of a planned military operation, hours after it said three drones had been destroyed north of Riyadh. The Houthis answered that any strike on Sanaa would bring a harsh response in Riyadh and warned workers and civilians to stay away from Saudi Aramco oil facilities, which they called legitimate targets.

Drones hit two merchant ships off Bulgaria's Black Sea coast overnight, sinking one vessel east of Krapets and leaving 11 of its 16 crew missing, Bulgarian officials said on Tuesday. All 15 crew of the second ship, the Ukrainian-owned Chelsea 3, were rescued and taken to Varna. Prime Minister Rumen Radev said there was no conclusive evidence of who carried out the attacks, but he summoned Russia's ambassador and informed NATO and the EU.

The Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted a ballistic missile fired toward Riyadh and two more toward Khamis Mushait late on Monday, as the Houthis claimed hits on the capital's airport and King Khalid Air Base. The Houthis also reported overnight airstrikes on Kamaran Island, the Hodeida coast and al-Jawf, and warned the United States of a painful response if it joins the Saudi campaign.

The risk of famine is growing across Sudan's Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan as war, displacement and an El Niño drought combine, the UN-backed IPC hunger monitor warned on Monday. Thirteen of 17 nutrition surveys in Greater Darfur since January found critical malnutrition, more than 300,000 people have fled Greater Kordofan since October 2025, and less than half of Sudan's humanitarian appeal was funded as of October 8.

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.

Russia's government is discussing the problems facing Yandex after Ukrainian strikes took three of its data centres out of action in less than a week, the Kremlin said on Tuesday. Yandex has said its Vladimir data centre shut down completely on Sunday, following earlier strikes in the Kaluga region and at Sasovo, where two of the supercomputers used to develop its AI model are housed.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that contacts about the Russia-Ukraine energy ceasefire announced by President Donald Trump on Sunday are continuing, but offered no details, no scope and no confirmation that Moscow has agreed to anything. Ukraine says Russia has already violated the announcement, the EU has imposed new sanctions, and Russia's Defence Ministry says its overnight strikes hit no Ukrainian energy targets.

The Falklands War explained: from 2 April to 14 June 1982, Argentina and the United Kingdom fought a 74-day undeclared war over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. Argentina invaded; a British task force sailed 8,000 miles to retake them. 907 people died, Argentina's junta fell, and the sovereignty dispute remains unresolved.

Saudi Arabia's public early-warning system issued no alerts before the four Riyadh attacks of the past week, which Reuters put at at least 18 killed and more than 300 wounded, and the government has not explained the silence. Civil defence issued its first threat alerts since September 29 on Monday, as the coalition reported destroying another ballistic missile fired toward the capital.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham told parliament on Monday that the suspected plot against RAF Fairford, the Gloucestershire base used by US bombers for strikes on Iran, was highly likely coordinated in Iran and almost certainly directed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran's ambassador rejected any connection, and all seven arrested men have been released on bail without charge.

Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport will stay closed until 2100 GMT on October 17 under a Notice to Air Missions issued Monday, Reuters reported, as Delta Air Lines pushed its planned Atlanta–Riyadh launch to March 2027 and the FAA advised US carriers to exercise caution over Saudi Arabia after the weekend Houthi attacks.

India's foreign ministry said two Indian seafarers were missing after a drone struck the tanker MT Petro Dolphin in the Strait of Hormuz area on Sunday, while a second tanker, MT Valthera, was hit by an unknown projectile and caught fire with all 11 Indian crew reported safe. India condemned the attacks; no attacker has been identified, and one maritime-safety account differed on whether the Petro Dolphin's crew were all safe.

Saudi state media said Saudi forces responded on Monday to a drone and cruise missile attack from Yemen, while Houthi-run authorities said airstrikes on Sanaa and the northern province of al-Jawf killed 10 people and wounded 19 — figures and blame that rest on Houthi sources, with no Saudi comment on the Yemen strikes in the reporting. Reuters separately reported a new barrage of incoming fire on Saudi Arabia and intensified Saudi airstrikes.

The skies over Riyadh were largely empty on Monday after the weekend Houthi attacks on King Khalid International Airport, Reuters reported, with about 78% of the airport's flights estimated cancelled for the day, 99.7% cancelled on Sunday, and Lufthansa and Air France-KLM extending suspensions. More than a third of flights across Saudi Arabia were not expected to operate.

North Korea launched multiple ballistic missiles toward the sea off its east coast on Monday morning, South Korea's military said — its fourth launch in a month, days after South Korea test-fired a hypersonic missile. One type flew more than 900 km, and Seoul convened an emergency security meeting and condemned the launches as violations of UN Security Council resolutions.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia on Monday of violating the energy ceasefire announced by Donald Trump, pointing to a strike on a Kharkiv thermal power plant, as EU ministers approved nearly 1,600 new sanctions listings and the Kremlin rejected Zelenskiy's offer of a 60-day ceasefire to hold elections.

Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia — the R4 group — condemned the Houthi attacks on Riyadh's airport as a dangerous escalation and backed Saudi countermeasures, while the Saudi-led coalition said on Monday it had intercepted a drone in the Eastern Province and a ballistic missile fired toward Khamis Mushait.

The Peloponnesian War explained: from 431 to 404 BC, Athens and its Delian League allies fought Sparta and the Peloponnesian League for hegemony over Greece. Plague, the disastrous Sicilian Expedition, and Persian money decided a war that ended Athens' empire and its golden age.

An Israeli strike killed at least two Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday and a strike on a tent in the Mawasi area killed three people late on Sunday, medics told Reuters, as Israel said it was targeting militants and Hamas denied rearming under the year-old US-brokered ceasefire.

An energy ceasefire is a limited deal to stop attacks on each other's energy infrastructure — power plants, grids, refineries and fuel depots — while the wider war continues. This explainer sets out how the Ukraine-Russia version announced by Donald Trump is supposed to work, why the two sides define it differently, and why previous announcements unravelled.

Russian attacks killed six people in two Ukrainian cities on Sunday, including three at a grocery store near Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said — the same day President Trump announced an energy ceasefire that Moscow has not confirmed. Britain, France, Canada and the EU backed the ceasefire call, while Canada's prime minister renewed criticism of the US-Russia diesel deal.

Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority said in an early-Monday update that Sunday's strike on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport killed a Pakistani resident and injured 11 people — and the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers spoke for the first time since the Houthi attacks intensified, with Tehran offering to help facilitate dialogue between Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that Russian forces kept striking Ukrainian energy targets after President Donald Trump announced an 'energy ceasefire' — including a strike on a combined heating and power plant in Kharkiv during his nightly address. Kyiv says it supports the ceasefire and is awaiting details from Washington; Moscow has not reacted.

A projectile hit Terminal 4 at Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport on Sunday, starting a fire and injuring an unspecified number of people, a day after a strike there killed 13 — and Saudi authorities later confirmed Dammam's King Fahd International Airport had also been struck. The Houthis claimed responsibility for both days' attacks, including strikes on two Saudi Aramco facilities.

President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that Russia and Ukraine have agreed an 'energy ceasefire' taking effect immediately, writing on Truth Social that 'both parties have agreed.' Reuters reported there was no immediate confirmation from Kyiv or Moscow, while President Volodymyr Zelensky said the announcement was 'news' to him but that Ukraine would agree 'if Russians agree.'

The death toll from Saturday's Russian glide-bomb strike on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia rose to 20, including three children, President Zelensky said — with CNN later reporting 23 killed including four children. The attack, which Zelensky tied to the US-Russia diesel deal, was the third mass-casualty strike on Ukraine this week.

A senior Ukrainian official told the Financial Times that Kyiv will keep attacking Russia's oil refineries — 'We will burn [Russian] refineries' — despite Donald Trump's deal with Vladimir Putin to release Russian diesel onto world markets. The vow deepens a rift that has Trump suggesting Ukraine needs 'a new leader' and Kyiv warning the diesel deal is an 'investment in a war that must be ended.'

Yemen's Houthis on Sunday renewed their warning to airlines, airport workers and travellers against using Saudi airports — and Saudi airspace — a day after a missile strike on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport killed 12 people and wounded 309. The kingdom's civil aviation body extended the airport's closure as condemnations poured in and Trump weighed US strikes.

At least 627 flights were cancelled on Sunday and King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh is expected to stay closed until 9 p.m. local time after Saturday's deadly attack, while the UN envoy for Yemen called it 'a grave escalation' and President Trump said he will speak with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as Washington weighs joining strikes on the Houthis.

Yandex said on Sunday that a drone attack damaged its data centre in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow, forcing a complete shutdown with no injuries. The Associated Press reported it as a Ukrainian drone attack — the third Yandex facility hit in four days, after Sasovo on Thursday and Kaluga on Friday.

From 264 to 146 BC the Roman Republic and Carthage fought three wars — 43 years of actual fighting — for the western Mediterranean. Hannibal's march over the Alps and the slaughter at Cannae are the famous episodes; the endpoint was the siege and razing of Carthage and Rome's emergence as an imperial power.

President Donald Trump told reporters on Saturday it was 'time for Ukraine to get a new president,' blaming Volodymyr Zelensky for the war's continuation and for Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries that he says drive up global diesel prices. The remarks mark the lowest point in the two leaders' relationship since last year's Oval Office clash.

Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority says at least 12 people were killed and 309 wounded in Saturday's attack on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh — including one American citizen, confirmed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. A Saudi-led coalition vowed to respond, and President Donald Trump said Washington 'may' join strikes on the Houthis.

A drone strike on Friday in Sudan's southeastern Blue Nile state killed at least 30 displaced people — 26 women and four children — the provincial governor told Al Jazeera, blaming the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. A rights group put the toll at 41, as the United Nations condemned the attack on a displacement camp near the Ethiopian border.

A missile struck King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on Saturday, hitting Terminals 3 and 4 and wounding dozens of people, Saudi officials said. President Donald Trump said the United States 'may' join Saudi strikes on Yemen's Houthis — the most direct US signal of potential intervention since the airport attacks began this week.

Russian missiles struck Kyiv on Saturday afternoon, targeting energy facilities, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said — hours after the Zaporizhzhia death toll rose to 12, including three children. The attacks came as US-Ukrainian talks in Miami ended ahead of schedule amid a dispute over Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries.

More than 100 civilians were killed and at least 429 injured across Ukraine this week, the UN told the Security Council on Friday, as Russian strikes hit cities, power infrastructure, and — in a Saturday morning attack on Zaporizhzhia — residential buildings. In occupied Oleshky, civilians are surviving 'desperate conditions' with no water, electricity, or gas.

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.

President Trump announced a Russian diesel-supply deal after a call with Vladimir Putin, with the US Treasury issuing a temporary sanctions license. Hours later, a reported drone attack set a fuel-loading terminal in Russia's Rostov region ablaze, and Zelenskyy condemned the deal as an investment in Russia's war.

At least seven people, including three children, were killed and 10 or more wounded when Russian aerial bombs struck residential areas of Zaporizhzhia in the early hours of Saturday, Ukrainian officials said, continuing a four-day bombardment that officials say has killed more than 55 people.

The Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) was an intermittent 116-year struggle between England and France over the French throne and English lands in France. Opening English victories at Crécy and Poitiers gave way to a French recovery crowned by Joan of Arc — and a final French victory that reshaped warfare, taxation, and the modern state.

A fully laden crude supertanker was struck by an unknown projectile off the UAE coast on Friday, UKMTO said, as Iran claimed it hit a gas carrier in the Strait of Hormuz and warned it would punish vessels using routes it has not authorized anywhere in the region.

Ukraine's military said on Friday that it hit three facilities involved in missile production across Russia overnight, including a factory in the Tver region that makes missile components and a centre in the Nizhny Novgorod region for disassembling intercontinental ballistic missiles. Russian regional governors confirmed drone attacks at both sites, with one serviceman reported killed.

The UN Security Council met on Friday amid a warning that Yemen has fallen back into full-scale war, with more than 200,000 people displaced and fighting intensifying around Taiz. On the same day, Europe's aviation regulator widened its Saudi airspace alert and a major flight-safety group told airlines to avoid Saudi Arabia entirely after Houthi missile strikes on Riyadh's airport killed three people.

Hezbollah has received $200 million from Iran to help Lebanese displaced by this year's war with Israel, two people with direct knowledge of the transfer told Reuters — the first significant aid from the group to supporters who bore the brunt of the conflict. The United States disputes the claim, saying the money 'is not there.'

Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority said on Friday that three Saudi nationals were killed and several people were injured in two attacks on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport on Thursday. The national carrier Saudia identified one of the dead as its pilot, Captain Hamoud Ali Al-Kalthami, as Lufthansa and Indian airlines suspended Riyadh services and the Houthi leader warned of a long conflict.

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner meet Ukrainian representatives in Miami on Friday to try to produce a unified proposal for ending the war. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the conflict a 'dangerous stalemate' — an assessment the Kremlin said it agreed with — as both sides escalate strikes on each other's economies.

The war impact on markets this week ran through crude oil: Brent surged about 5% Thursday after a tanker was struck deep inside the Persian Gulf, then eased Friday as President Trump ruled out an Iran strike before the US midterms. Brent closed the week near $102.90, up roughly 3.5% on the week. Figures checked Friday, October 9, 2026, 4:30 PM Central Time.

Sudan's civil war, which erupted in Khartoum in April 2023, pits the Sudanese Armed Forces against the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary. Three and a half years on, the war has displaced 14 million people, split the country east to west, and turned the Kordofan region into its central battleground — while the army chief vows to retake 'every inch' of territory.

The Austro-Prussian War of 1866 — the Seven Weeks' War — was Bismarck's deliberately staged showdown for the leadership of Germany. Prussia crushed Austria at Königgrätz on 3 July, dissolved the German Confederation, created the North German Confederation, and settled the 'German question' on Prussian terms. Austria lost no territory but was expelled from German affairs; Italy gained Venetia.

Ukraine's General Staff said on Thursday that its forces struck the Gazpromneft refinery in Omsk, Russia's largest refinery, some 2,500 km from Ukraine — the second attack on the plant since a July drone strike halted its operations. The Omsk region governor said an industrial zone was hit by a drone, without giving details.

President Trump said Thursday the U.S. will not attack Iran before the November 3 midterms, after Axios reported the Pentagon ordered CENTCOM to finish preparations for a possible resumption of major combat operations. Separately, Reuters reported Iran warned regional states it would treat any new unauthorized oil-export routes as hostile — and a chemical tanker was hit by projectiles off Qatar.

Yemen's Houthis said Thursday they had attacked two Saudi airports and an air base for a third straight day, while their leader warned Riyadh to prepare for a lengthy conflict. Lufthansa and Air India suspended Riyadh flights, Saudi Arabia said debris from intercepted missiles damaged a kindergarten and a clinic, and the coalition said it hit 82 Houthi targets.

At least 33 people were killed and 18 wounded in a Russian bomb strike on a Kramatorsk street where two city buses were operating on October 8, 2026 — the deadliest single strike in Ukraine this year, according to AFP and CNN, far above the toll reported in the morning's first accounts.

The Bab al-Mandeb — the narrow 'Gate of Tears' between Yemen and the Horn of Africa — links the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal. With Houthi forces seizing control of its shores and Gulf states counterattacking, here is why this strait matters to the world economy.

Top US and Russian officials — including special envoy Jared Kushner and Putin adviser Kirill Dmitriev — have held talks about bringing a US investor into the Nord Stream pipelines, Reuters reported on October 8, 2026. The White House downplayed the report.

A Russian bomb attack on a street in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk killed at least 12 people and wounded 14 on Thursday, October 8, 2026, Ukrainian authorities said, hitting two city buses and a bus stop.

Pakistan's military has confirmed its forces are stationed in Saudi Arabia, days after the two countries and Turkey activated the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement — as Houthi missile attacks on Saudi airports killed three people this week.

Gulf stock markets fell in early trade on Thursday, October 8, 2026, as attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz reached their highest levels of the war, Reuters reported. The latest strike came Wednesday, when a tanker was hit by multiple projectiles 51 nautical miles north of Qatar, causing casualties, the UK Maritime Trade Operations said.

Yemen's Houthi movement said on Thursday it had attacked King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh with a ballistic missile, Reuters reported — a fresh claim hours after Saudi Arabia said a midweek strike on the same airport killed one person. Separately, Pakistan's military confirmed on Wednesday that Pakistani forces are stationed in Saudi Arabia under the new Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani mutual defense pact.

The War of 1812 (1812–1815) began with British seizures of American ships and sailors and ended in a draw the treaty barely mentioned. Fought mainly over neutral trading rights, it failed to conquer Canada, burned Washington, killed some 37,000 people across three nations — and left the United States, Canada, and Britain's relationship permanently changed.

Houthi missile strikes on Saudi Arabia's King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and Abha International Airport killed three people and wounded 36 on October 6–7, 2026, Saudi aviation authorities said — the first reported Houthi attack on Riyadh's main airport in this phase of the Yemen war.

Syria is considering providing military assistance to Saudi Arabia — from defensive aid to a possible troop deployment against the Houthis in Yemen — Reuters reported on October 7, 2026, citing a US official and a Syrian military official, after President al-Sharaa's visit to Riyadh.

The UN migration agency says more than 200,000 people have fled their homes since fighting in Yemen reignited in early September, while the World Food Programme warns food insecurity is steeply increasing — with wheat flour prices up 10% in two weeks in parts of Ta'iz.

The Liberia-flagged crude tanker Aframax Rio caught fire in the Black Sea off Sochi on October 6 after an attack by an unmanned vessel, Russia's transport ministry said; all 23 crew members were rescued. The incident extends a sharp escalation in strikes on commercial shipping in the Black Sea.

The UN World Food Programme condemned an aerial attack that killed a driver of two clearly marked aid trucks in Sudan's South Kordofan, calling for a prompt investigation. The incident lands as a senior U.S. envoy met Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Egypt — while Burhan publicly vows to keep fighting the RSF.

Two missiles targeted Aden's international airport early Wednesday, officials said, as fighting intensifies between the Houthis and Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces along the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. The strikes follow Houthi attacks on two Saudi airports and a government counteroffensive to retake the Red Sea coast.

Russia launched a large overnight barrage of drones and missiles at Ukraine on October 7, 2026, killing at least eight people, Ukrainian officials said. Moscow claimed a 'massive strike' on military-industrial sites including the Fire Point company that builds Ukraine's Flamingo cruise missiles.

The Strait of Hormuz is the world's most important energy chokepoint — roughly a fifth of global petroleum liquids moved through it before the 2026 conflict, per EIA data. This explainer covers where it is, why it matters, what happens when it is disrupted, and how the current Iran conflict has reshaped flows.

In less than a year, two Balkan wars stripped the Ottoman Empire of almost all its European territory, doubled Serbia and Greece, and lit the fuse of 1914. Why the wars started, what they cost, and why historian Richard C. Hall calls them the first phase of the First World War.

Two Houthi missiles targeted Aden's international airport early Wednesday, Reuters reported — the first strike on the Yemeni government's seat of power in the current escalation, hours after Saudi Arabia's coalition said it intercepted a Houthi missile heading for Khamis Mushait.

Two merchant vessels were hit by air and sea drones in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone on October 6, 2026 — the first such attack in NATO-member waters. The Togo-flagged Alfa Watan sank and its crew is missing; 18 crew members of the Palau-flagged Able were rescued. Responsibility is unclaimed and disputed.

The Azawad Liberation Front said on Tuesday it was leaving the strategic northern town of Kidal — which it seized with al-Qaeda-linked fighters in April — in response to airstrikes by Mali's military backed by Russian fighters.

Saudi Arabia's aviation authority said airports in Jazan and Najran were hit on Monday evening, injuring three people, as Saudi-backed Yemeni forces press a major offensive against the Houthis near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

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.

A Turkish-owned grain ship carrying corn caught fire and sank in Romania's exclusive economic zone on October 5, 2026, killing two crew members. Ukraine's president blamed Russian drones; Romanian authorities have not named a cause, and Russia has not responded.

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.

Yemen's government announced Operation 'Dawn of Yemen' on October 5, 2026, and claimed on Monday to have retaken key positions around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, backed by 100 Saudi coalition fighter jets. The Houthis deny the advances; neither claim has been independently verified.

Russian officials said more than 650 Ukrainian drones targeted Moscow and the surrounding region overnight on October 5–6, 2026, with the Volodarsk oil depot near the capital reported as one of the targets. Moscow region Governor Andrei Vorobyov said two people were killed and nine injured.

Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait triggered a UN-authorized coalition and a lightning campaign that ended in decisive victory — and left Saddam Hussein in power. The Gulf War was the first major crisis of the post-Cold War era, and its unfinished business led straight to 2003.

Russian bombs struck a residential area of Kharkiv on Monday, October 5, 2026, killing at least five people and injuring more than 50, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said — hours after spillover from a Russian attack on Ukraine injured a Moldovan border guard at the Palanca crossing with Moldova.

Yemeni government forces backed by heavy Saudi air power reached the outskirts of the Red Sea port city of Mokha late on Monday, October 5, 2026, four government sources told Reuters — the second day of 'Operation Dawn of Yemen.' The Defense Ministry said the city had fallen; Reuters could not independently verify the extent of the gains, and the Houthis called the claims baseless.

Overnight into Monday, October 5, 2026, airstrikes and artillery fire struck northern Tigray, aid sources told Reuters — killing at least 17 people around Adwa and Sheraro, northwest of the capital Mekelle, which federal forces seized over the weekend. The toll has not been independently verified.

Israel struck Beirut's southern suburbs on Sunday, October 4, 2026, after saying it intercepted two projectiles launched by Hezbollah, and ordered most of the southern city of Tyre to evacuate. Strikes continued across south Lebanon into Monday, further straining a ceasefire AFP says was never fully respected.

Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces claimed on Monday, October 5, 2026, to have seized large parts of the Dhubab district overlooking the Bab el-Mandeb strait in the 'Dawn of Yemen' offensive, with a Saudi-led air campaign flying 100 jets. Houthi-aligned media denied any advances; neither claim has been independently verified.

Airstrikes on camps for internally displaced people in Rakhine State's Ponnagyun township killed eight people and injured 13 over Sunday and Monday, the Arakan Army and the Ponnagyun Youth Association said on October 5, 2026. The figures have not been independently verified; Myanmar's government did not comment.

Fighting has returned to Ethiopia's Tigray region in 2026 after the 2022 Pretoria peace deal broke down: a seven-group rebel alliance attacked on September 23, Ethiopian forces retook the capital Mekelle on October 4, and Addis Ababa has severed ties with Eritrea. Analysts warn the conflict could spread across the Horn of Africa.

Ukraine is navigating its biggest budget crisis since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022: the war costs about $190 million a day, tax revenue is falling, Russian strikes have shut steel plants and cut grain exports by more than a third, and Kyiv needs $56 billion to plug this year's funding gap.

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.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on October 4 that the United States is pressing for technical-level trilateral talks with Russia by the end of October, with Kyiv ready to take part in the UAE or another US-proposed venue. The push coincides with India's expanded mediation effort, focused on Black Sea shipping, grain and energy.

Russia carried out massive air strikes on industrial and port infrastructure in Ukraine's Odesa region early Monday, October 5, with Kyiv reporting one person killed and six injured in a separate strike on Kharkiv. Moscow says it hit ports, fuel depots and cargo vessels it claims serve military purposes; neither side's claims have been independently verified.

The Seven Years' War, explained: fought from 1756 to 1763 across Europe, North America, India, the Caribbean, and West Africa, it was the first truly global war — a conflict Winston Churchill's chapter on it calls 'The First World War.' It ended with Britain dominant, France's colonial empire destroyed, and Prussia confirmed as a great power.

The Pentagon confirmed Sunday that all twelve B-1 bombers stationed at RAF Fairford have been redeployed to the United States, a week after British police arrested six people over a suspected plot targeting the base — the airfield the US has used for strikes against Iran. Britain says there are 'strong indications' of Iranian involvement; Tehran denies it.

Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council head Rashad al-Alimi announced Sunday the start of a major military campaign to recapture all territory held by the Houthis, with the Saudi-led coalition pledging full operational support — escalating the Yemen conflict to its most intense phase since the 2022 truce.

Yemen's Houthis said Saturday they hit an Aramco oil facility near the Saudi capital with ballistic missiles and drones; an AFP journalist saw flames, smoke and firefighters at the refinery, while the Saudi-led coalition called the claim 'misleading' and Saudi authorities did not confirm the cause of the fire.

President Volodymyr Zelensky told Reuters on October 3 that Ukraine will double down on attacks against Russian oil refineries in response to what he described as a new Russian doctrine of airstrikes meant to force civilians to abandon Kyiv — even as a Russian drone struck the capital's North Bridge during German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's unannounced visit on October 4.

Saudi Arabia is preparing a military offensive against the Houthis in Yemen — led by Yemeni ground forces with Saudi air support and expected in the coming weeks — aimed at reversing Houthi gains and retaking the Bab el-Mandeb strait, six people with knowledge of the preparations told Reuters on October 2.

Ethiopian government forces and allied militias regained control of Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region, three sources told Reuters on Sunday — a major blow the TPLF-led opposition alliance publicly acknowledged in a statement announcing its retreat.

Yemen's internationally recognized government's armed forces said they are striking 'vital targets' of the Houthi movement in the capital Sanaa and the Saada stronghold, after the Houthis claimed a missile-and-drone attack on Aramco facilities in Riyadh — a day that also saw at least 13 airstrikes on Sanaa City, per CTP-ISW.

Two members of Iran's UN General Assembly delegation were expelled from the United States after ignoring a State Department order to leave, as President Donald Trump said Saturday he will soon make a decision on Iran — 'either the easy way or the hard way' — and his defense secretary called the Strait of Hormuz blockade 'ironclad.'

Saudi authorities said falling debris from an intercepted Houthi ballistic missile injured a resident in the Asir region, while a separate projectile struck a school in Najran, as the Saudi-led coalition reported intercepting three ballistic missiles and four drones over Khamis Mushayt on Friday.

The Sudan Doctors Network said a drone strike attributed to the RSF killed at least 24 people, including eight children, when a vehicle carrying displaced families was hit near Rahad in North Kordofan on Saturday — a day after a separate drone attack on a WFP aid convoy killed one and wounded several, according to the UN's humanitarian coordinator in Sudan.

Ukraine's sea ports administration said a Liberian-flagged cargo ship was attacked at a Black Sea port in the Odesa region on Saturday, killing one person and injuring three, with 13 other crew members evacuated to safety, Reuters reported. Ukrainian authorities attributed the strike to Russia.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said Saturday it would continue systematic strikes on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities and urged foreign nationals, including diplomats, to leave the capital, warning that 'responsibility for any adverse consequences lies entirely with those who ignore this warning.'

The pro-government Tigray Peace Forces militia said on Friday it had recaptured Alula Aba Nega Airport in Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia's Tigray region, and was clearing the city. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the claim, and the TPLF could not be reached for comment.

Speaking at the Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow on October 1, Vladimir Putin said Russia would put "all weapons" in its arsenal — including nuclear weapons — on the agenda if its Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad were attacked. It was his personal endorsement of a warning Moscow first issued to NATO in a diplomatic note earlier this week.

An Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in Gaza City's Remal neighborhood early Saturday killed at least five Palestinians and seriously injured at least six others, according to Gaza health officials and medical staff at al-Shifa Hospital. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

A Russian strike damaged Kyiv's Northern Bridge early Saturday, suspending traffic for a third straight day as Moscow's campaign against the capital's Dnipro crossings continues. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the strike hit the road surface and trolleybus cables; there were no casualties reported.

The Sudanese Armed Forces announced on October 2 that they had taken al-Mazroub, the administrative capital of West Bara Locality, in their monthslong North Kordofan offensive. Geolocated video reviewed by the Sudan War Monitor confirms army and allied units inside the town; the RSF has not publicly responded.

Kyiv says it intercepted a Russian operational plan for a winter campaign of up to 1,000 strikes on Ukraine's energy system, including the switchyards linking its three operating nuclear plants to the grid. The New York Times obtained a copy; neither it nor The Times has independently authenticated the document.

The Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) was the longest conventional war of the 20th century: Iraq's invasion of post-revolutionary Iran became a trench-warfare stalemate with chemical weapons, the Tanker War, and total casualties estimated at one to two million. It ended with the borders unchanged.

Six officials told Reuters that Riyadh is preparing an offensive against the Iran-backed Houthis — a coastal push toward the Bab el-Mandeb Strait or a multi-front campaign mobilizing over 100,000 Yemeni troops — while the U.S. has declined a Saudi request for direct airstrikes, according to Axios.

A Kuwaiti supertanker was struck by an unidentified projectile in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday — the fifth UKMTO-reported tanker strike since September 28 — while a separate projectile hit Saudi Arabia's Yanbu oil export terminal on the Red Sea, briefly suspending loading at the kingdom's key Hormuz-bypass outlet.

Ukraine's Third Army Corps says more than 250 Russian troops surrendered during the third phase of Operation Vivaldi near Lyman in northern Donetsk — a claim international monitors have not independently verified but which the Institute for the Study of War says is consistent with confirmed Ukrainian territorial gains in the sector.

Ethiopian government forces and allied militiamen closed to within striking distance of the Tigray regional capital Mekelle on Friday, residents and a diplomat told Reuters, in the worst escalation since the 2020–2022 civil war. TPLF chairperson Debretsion Gebremichael acknowledged his forces had lost ground and threatened a counter-attack.

The Pentagon is dispatching the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group and the Makin Island amphibious group to the Middle East, adding up to 10,000 sailors and Marines to a force already above 50,000, AP and the Wall Street Journal reported. The buildup could bring the region to three carrier strike groups for the first time since April, days after Trump rejected Iran's latest truce proposal.

Ethiopia closed its embassy in Asmara and expelled 10 Eritrean diplomats on Thursday; Eritrea responded by severing all diplomatic ties. The rupture — the biggest Horn-of-Africa escalation since the 2020–2022 war — came hours after overnight explosions were heard in Addis Ababa, which an opposition-linked source claimed were drone strikes, a claim Reuters could not independently verify.

Warplanes carried out 20 strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen's Taiz province on Friday, the Yemeni government's military said, in what Reuters described as the most serious escalation between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis since the 2022 truce. The escalation follows the Saudi-led coalition's accusation that the Houthis struck a power station in Medina supplying the Prophet's Mosque — a claim the Houthis deny.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on Thursday that Ukraine has used its domestically built FP-7 tactical ballistic missile in combat for the first time — a milestone for Kyiv's indigenous long-range strike program. Neither the target nor the location was disclosed, and the claim has not been independently verified.

Russian drones struck Kyiv's Southern Bridge for a second day on Friday, forcing the closure of the Southern and Paton bridges across the Dnipro, city authorities said — one person was killed and two injured in the capital. Hours earlier, Ukrainian drones hit industrial facilities in Volgograd, home to a major Russian oil refinery.

The first War & Markets weekly briefing: Brent crude swung around $100 a barrel as G7 stockpile releases collided with US carrier deployments, gold held above $4,180 an ounce, and US defense stocks slipped even as escalation headlines multiplied. Figures checked October 2, 2026, 7:00 PM CT.

From the Defenestration of Prague in 1618 to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, a Bohemian revolt over religion mutated into a continental power struggle that killed an estimated 4.5–8 million people, redrew the map of Europe, and laid the foundations of the modern state system.

South Sudan conflict explained: the world's youngest country is sliding back toward civil war as President Salva Kiir prepares December 22 elections — the first since independence — while his rival Riek Machar sits under house arrest on trial for treason. A guide to the Kiir–Machar rivalry, the collapsed 2018 peace deal, and where the crisis stands.

Counter-terrorism police arrested a 25-year-old British-Iranian dual national in London on Thursday, the sixth arrest in the probe of a suspected plot near RAF Fairford — the base US B-1 bombers have been using for strikes against Iran. PM Andy Burnham said there are 'strong indications' Iran played a part; Tehran denies any involvement.

Pakistani aircraft struck two locations in Afghanistan's Kunar and Helmand provinces overnight, killing at least 10 civilians, most of them children, UNAMA confirmed. Islamabad says 22 militants were killed; the Taliban government condemned the strikes as 'an act of aggression.'

Britain announced 31 new sanctions on October 1 aimed at Russia's war economy: LNG shadow-fleet vessels, Kremlin disinformation networks, and individuals accused of torturing Ukrainian civilians and militarizing deported Ukrainian children. The package comes as Russia's air campaign against Ukraine intensifies ahead of winter.

The US military announced on September 30 that all American troops had left Iraq, completing an orderly departure from Erbil Air Base and formally ending Operation Inherent Resolve's mission in the country. The move closes a 23-year chapter of American military presence that began with the 2003 invasion — but leaves Kurdish allies anxious and Iran-backed militias celebrating.

Hans Grundberg met the Houthis' chief negotiator in Muscat to explore halting an escalation that has killed at least 838 people and displaced 145,000. The offensive, aided by Iranian experts per AP, captured Mokha and Red Sea islands — ending the 2022 ceasefire.

From July 1936 to April 1939, Spain tore itself apart between a Republican government backed by the Soviet Union and international volunteers, and Nationalist rebels armed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Around 500,000 people died — and the world watched a preview of the coming global war.

Russia launched nearly 190 drones and ballistic missiles at Ukraine on the night of September 29–30, targeting Kyiv's energy infrastructure in what ISW assesses is the opening of a winter-long campaign to degrade Ukraine's energy security and force capitulation.

More than 120 armed groups operate in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The M23 rebellion — 30,000 to 40,000 fighters strong, widely reported to be backed by Rwanda — is the most powerful of them. Peace deals signed in late 2025 have not stopped the fighting. Here is the conflict, explained.

Israeli strikes hit a passenger van in Gaza City's Tel al-Hawa neighborhood and a residential apartment on September 30, killing at least five people. Gaza's health officials say more than 1,400 Palestinians have now been killed since the October 2025 ceasefire — a ceasefire that survives in name only.

Britain's maritime security agency issued three delayed warnings on Wednesday covering tanker strikes from the day before — with one crude-oil tanker hit on its port side — adding to a growing backlog of late-reported attacks in the strait.

Russia sent NATO an informal document warning it would be ready to use its 'entire arsenal,' including nuclear weapons, if the alliance attempted to isolate the Kaliningrad exclave. Reuters reviewed the document; the Kremlin publicly confirmed sending it on September 30, and NATO denounced the 'irresponsible nuclear rhetoric.'

Russia launched a large combined ballistic-missile and drone attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight, killing at least three people including a child, damaging energy infrastructure, and sending a drone into Moldovan airspace — Reuters and EA WorldView reported.

The Treasury and State departments announced designations against 13 individuals and entities in Russia, China, Hong Kong, and Pakistan accused of feeding Iran's defense ministry — including a Russian aircraft maker and a Russian shipping firm.

Kyiv's public disclosure of a quiet handover of two North Korean prisoners of war has sparked a rare diplomatic clash with Seoul — which demanded an explanation and apology, while Ukraine says no secrecy deal ever existed.

The Sudanese army chief refused Washington's reported condition — a 90-day ceasefire in exchange for a UN visa — and told a Khartoum rally his goal is to 'eliminate this militia, no matter the cost.'

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 destroyed the Second French Empire, killed an estimated 180,000–200,000 soldiers, cost France five billion francs and Alsace-Lorraine, and created a unified German Empire — the power shift that shaped Europe until 1945.

At least 30 men have been executed since August 23 in eastern Libya after what Amnesty calls 'grossly unfair, torture-tainted' secret military trials — ending a 15-year de facto moratorium, with 50 more at imminent risk.

The last U.S. troops are scheduled to leave their remaining bases in Iraq by September 30, ending a 23-year military presence agreed off in 2024 — carried out by the Trump administration even as the U.S.-Iran war rages. Iraq, Iran's allies, and a nervous Kurdistan are watching what comes next.

Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev met US officials in Washington on Monday to discuss ending the war in Ukraine and possible postwar US–Russia energy initiatives, a US official said Tuesday — the latest step in a fast-moving diplomatic sequence that includes a proposed energy-infrastructure ceasefire.

Russian glide bombs struck a school and homes in the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy on Tuesday, killing two people and injuring six — including three children — after teachers evacuated about 100 people into a shelter, Reuters reported.

More than 100 Israeli settlers set two homes ablaze in the West Bank village of Jalud, blocking a Palestinian family's military-escorted return and injuring three Israeli officers in clashes, Reuters reported.

President Trump says he offered Iran 'nothing' to end the seven-month war, rejecting reports of a sanctions-relief deal — even as US and Iranian officials held separate talks with mediators on Monday, Reuters reports.

An Israeli airstrike in Gaza City's Nasr neighbourhood killed Izz al-Din Al-Beik, head of Hamas' armed wing in the northern Gaza Strip — confirmed by Israeli officials, medics, and Hamas sources, according to Reuters.

Yemen's war has killed an estimated 377,000 people, left 19.5 million needing aid — and in September 2026 it exploded back onto the world stage as the Houthis seized the Red Sea coast and threatened the Bab el-Mandeb strait. Here is how the forgotten front works.

World War II (1939–1945) killed an estimated 40–50 million people, making it the deadliest war in history. This explainer covers the causes of World War II, its casualties, economic aftermath, and the institutions — from the UN to the Marshall Plan — it left behind.

World War I (1914–1918) killed millions, toppled four empires, and redrew the map of Europe. This explainer covers the causes of World War I, its casualty figures, economic fallout, and lasting legacy.

Nearly two years after Bashar al-Assad's fall, Syria's interim government controls most of the country — including Damascus and Aleppo — after a January 2026 deal integrated Kurdish forces. But the transition is disputed, violence continues, and the Islamic State remains active. Here is who holds what, and why it matters.

Ceasefires are only words on paper until someone watches them hold. From UN peacekeepers to the OSCE's unarmed observers in Ukraine, this is how ceasefire monitoring actually works — and why it so often fails.

The Vietnam War killed millions and reshaped American institutions, Southeast Asia's borders, and Cold War politics — this explainer covers the causes, the casualty ranges, the economic costs, and the global consequences.

The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt left San Diego on September 27 bound for the Middle East, replacing the Japan-based USS George Washington. The deployment sustains the Navy's continuous carrier presence into the seventh month of the U.S.-Iran war — and may run longer than normal.

The Ukraine frontline is 'static' after months of near-zero advances, ISW assesses — but Moscow is betting on a massive winter strike campaign to force Kyiv's surrender before spring 2027. Here is where the war stands.

China's gray-zone pressure on Taiwan mixes live-fire drills, daily military incursions, cyberattacks and even sand dredgers to exhaust the island without starting a war. Here is how the coercion campaign works — and what it is meant to achieve.

More than three years into Sudan's civil war, nearly 20 million people face acute hunger, 14 million are displaced, and aid funding is running dry. Here is the anatomy of the Sudan humanitarian crisis.

The Soviet-Afghan War (1979–1989) trapped a superpower in a grinding counterinsurgency, killed around 15,000 Soviet troops, displaced a third of Afghanistan's people, and ended with the withdrawal completed on February 15, 1989.

Al-Shabaab has retaken ground across southern and central Somalia just as Washington moves to wind down the UN logistics keeping the African Union mission alive. Here is the state of the fight — and what could replace nearly two decades of multilateral security.

In 1904–05, Japan — barely a generation removed from feudal rule — fought Russia to a standstill and won. It was the first modern victory of an Asian state over a European great power, and its shockwaves ran from Tokyo's bond markets to the streets of St. Petersburg.

A new Saudi-led Red Sea naval coalition joined the fight in 2026 after Houthi attacks on oil tankers — the third multinational force trying to secure the Bab el-Mandeb strait. Here is how the Red Sea naval coalition works, and why warships alone have not reopened the waterway.

North Korea's missile program has moved from pariah-state posturing to a live combat laboratory: Pyongyang is testing AI-guided missiles at home while supplying Russia with ballistic missiles for Ukraine. Here is how the arsenal works — and what Moscow gets in return.

The nine-dash line is the U-shaped mark on Chinese maps claiming most of the South China Sea — a claim an international tribunal ruled has no legal basis in 2016. Here is where the line came from, what the law says, and why the dispute keeps escalating.

More than 50 members of Niger's security forces were killed in two attacks in the west of the country last week, sources told Reuters — the latest blow to a junta that seized power in 2023 and is losing ground to jihadist groups. The Islamic State Sahel Province has claimed responsibility.

Nine multinational battlegroups, a new German brigade in Lithuania, a German-Dutch corps taking command in the Baltics — NATO's eastern flank has become the alliance's biggest reinforcement in a generation. Here is how the buildup works.

From about 1800 to 1815, Napoleonic France fought shifting alliances across the continent, ending at Waterloo. The wars cost hundreds of thousands of lives, strained treasuries to breaking point, and redrew Europe's map at the Congress of Vienna.

The death toll from a Myanmar military airstrike on the town of Kyauktaw in Rakhine State rose to 50 on Tuesday, per the Arakan Army and a local aid worker — the deadliest such attack in the state since December. Here is what is known, and the wider war it belongs to.

Myanmar's civil war has killed more than 100,000 people since the 2021 coup — and a September 2026 airstrike on a Rakhine market that killed at least 33 shows how the junta's air campaign now punishes civilians far from any front line. Here is who is fighting, and why.

Fifteen years after Gaddafi's fall, Libya remains split between rival governments in Tripoli and the east — and its oil wealth keeps the war frozen rather than finished. Here is how the Libya frozen conflict works.

The Lebanon ceasefire has collapsed and been renegotiated twice: a 2024 truce that never held, and a June 2026 framework tying Israeli withdrawal to Hezbollah's disarmament. With UN peacekeepers leaving by year's end, here is what holds the border together.

The Korean War (1950–1953) killed millions, ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty, and left the peninsula divided to this day. Here is why it started, what it cost, and why it still matters.

The Kashmir flashpoint put two nuclear-armed rivals through four days of missile, drone and fighter-jet combat in May 2025 — the worst fighting since 1999. Here is why Kashmir keeps pulling India and Pakistan back to the brink.

Eight U.S. Marines — seven enlisted troops and one officer — were injured when an Iranian anti-ship cruise missile struck the vessel they were aboard in the Strait of Hormuz on September 14. NBC News, citing three U.S. officials, reported the incident on September 28 — the first public disclosure, two weeks after the attack.

Iran's nuclear program is now the world's most closely watched blind spot: the IAEA says it has been 'completely blind' for over a year, 440 kg of 60%-enriched uranium is unaccounted for, and the Security Council has the file for the first time in 20 years.

Wartime sanctions on Russia hinge on a $44.10 oil price cap, a shadow fleet of aging tankers, and a cat-and-mouse game of evasion. How the sanctions machine works — and why enforcement keeps lagging behind.

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.

Gaza reconstruction will need $71.5 billion, the UN says — but almost a year after the ceasefire, Israel occupies 60% of the strip, Hamas has not disarmed, and not a single reconstruction project has begun. Here is what the plans say, and what is blocking them.

The Fano insurgency began in April 2023 when a militia that fought beside Ethiopia's army turned its guns on the government. Now Fano has allied with its old enemy the TPLF, and the Amhara conflict is pushing the country toward renewed civil war. Here is what is happening and why.

Kinshasa and the M23 rebels have signed a Doha framework deal and agreed a prisoner exchange, yet both sides keep trading ceasefire-violation claims in North and South Kivu. This M23 ceasefire update tracks what the deals say — and why fighting persists.

Fought from 1853 to 1856 between Russia and an alliance of Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia, the Crimean War introduced rifled guns, the war correspondent, and the telegraph — and its fallout reshaped Europe.

Pakistan's military said this weekend it killed more than 71 militants in operations across Balochistan — the latest chapter in a 20-year separatist insurgency that escalated sharply this year. Here is who is fighting, what they want, and why it is getting worse.

The American Civil War (1861–1865) killed between 620,000 and 850,000 soldiers, ended slavery, and redefined the United States. Here is what caused the war, what it cost, and how it reshaped America.

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.

Al-Qaeda's Sahel branch, JNIM, has killed hundreds of soldiers, strangled Mali's capital with a fuel blockade, and pushed three military juntas into a Russian-backed alliance. Here is how the Sahel conflict works — and why it matters.

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.

A 130-kilometre-wide waterway, the world's most important chip factories, an informal median line that no longer holds, and a US policy of deliberate ambiguity — the Strait is where geography, economics, and great-power politics collide.

A no-fly zone is not a line on a map. It is a military operation: fighters on patrol, enemy air defences destroyed first, and a legal mandate behind it all. Here is how they work, where they have been tried, and why leaders hesitate.

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.

Russian strikes hit the Kyiv headquarters of Kyivstar, Ukraine's largest mobile provider, on September 27 — part of a week-long campaign against data centres — while Ukraine struck refineries deep inside Russia.

Since November 2023, Houthi attacks on commercial shipping have turned the Bab el-Mandeb strait — a chokepoint carrying a tenth of seaborne oil — into one of the world's most dangerous waterways.

Before analysts trust a video from a war zone, they check four things: where it was filmed, when it was filmed, whether the file is authentic, and whether it already existed online. Here are the methods.

Gaza's Health Ministry says 74,016 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire holds in name, but its next steps — disarmament, a new government, reconstruction — have barely begun.