Author: Daily Sabah With Reuters

Ukraine has carried out a drone attack on Moscow before a visit of Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) Secretary General to the Russian capital on Tuesday, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. “This is not the first time that a visit to Moscow by a high-ranking foreign delegation has been accompanied by an attack by Ukrainian armed forces drones,” Zakharova wrote in a post on the Telegram messaging app. “Overnight, too, the Kyiv regime has sent drones into the capital when the OSCE Secretary General is visiting it.” The OSCE is the world’s largest regional security…

Syria’s interim President Ahmed Sharaa said mass killings of members of ousted regime leader Bashar al-Assad’s minority sect were a threat to his mission to unite the country, and promised to punish those responsible, including his own allies if necessary. In his first interview to a global news agency, held after hundreds died in four days of clashes between Alawite Muslims and Syria’s new Sunni Muslim authorities, Sharaa blamed pro-Assad groups backed by foreigners for triggering the bloodshed but acknowledged that revenge killings had followed. “Syria is a state of law. The law will take its course on all,” he…

The Kremlin said on Monday that long-standing Western accusations that Russia commits sabotage in the U.S. and Europe are “empty and ephemeral” and have not been proven. It made the comments when asked to comment on reports that the U.S. had suspended certain measures to counter such alleged Russian sabotage campaigns. “No confirmation of the existence of sabotage campaigns has been established even in the course of special proceedings that have been attempted in the United States and in European capitals,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Peskov said that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump was merely trying to…

Israel’s suspension of goods entering Gaza has begun to take a toll on the Palestinian enclave, with some bakeries closing and officials warning of growing risks to the environment including possible discharges of raw sewage into the sea. The suspension, intended to pressure resistance group Hamas in ceasefire talks, applies to food, medicine and fuel imports. Hamas describes the measure as “collective punishment” and insists it will not be pushed into making concessions at the discussions. The U.N. Palestinian refugees agency UNRWA said the decision to halt humanitarian aid threatens the lives of civilians exhausted by 17 months of “brutal”…

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said on Monday that the alliance fully supports the territorial integrity of Bosnia and urged political leaders to resolve tensions fuelled after the state court sentenced to jail the president of Bosnian Serb region. “We will not allow hard-won peace to be jeopardised,” Rutte told reporters after meeting the country’s tripartite presidency. “This is not 1992 and we will not allow a security vacuum to emerge,” Rutte underlined while referring to the year Bosnia’s bloody inter-ethnic war began.

Ukraine’s air defences shot down 73 of 119 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack on Sunday, the air force said. It said that 37 drones were “lost”, in reference to the military’s use of electronic warfare to redirect them. The military said damage was recorded in six Ukrainian regions but provided no immediate details.

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un emphasized the importance of strengthening naval power as he visited major shipyards to inspect construction projects of naval vessels and nuclear submarines, state media KCNA reported on Saturday. Kim said during the visit that naval power and its nuclear armament was crucial to the sovereignty of the country, bound by sea on the eastern and western sides, according to KCNA. Kim also said the country would not tolerate maritime and underwater military activities being carried out by enemies, such as deployments of strategic assets, and that its maritime defense would not be limited to…

A man was killed and an Israeli female tourist and Indian woman were gang-raped by three men in an attack late on Thursday near a popular UNESCO World Heritage site in southern India, local police said on Saturday. The Indian man and two women were stargazing with two other male tourists in the town of Hampi when the three men attacked them following an altercation over money, police superintendent Ram Arasiddi told Reuters over the phone. The assailants pushed the men into a river canal before raping the women, he said. Two of the men, including an American, survived, and…

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Ukraine is “fully committed” to having a constructive dialogue with U.S. representatives in Saudi Arabia next week over ways to end the war with Russia. Since taking office in January, U.S. President Donald Trump has paused U.S. military aid to Ukraine as well as intelligence-sharing with Kyiv. He has accused Zelenskiy of not being serious about reaching a peace agreement with Russia, which invaded Ukraine three years ago and has seized about 20% of its territory. “Ukraine has been seeking peace from the very first second of this war. Realistic proposals are on…

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday that Tehran will not negotiate under pressure by a “bullying country”, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump said he had sent a letter to the country’s top authority to negotiate a nuclear deal. In an interview with Fox Business, Trump said “there are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily, or you make a deal” to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. In a meeting with senior Iranian officials, Khamenei said the aim of Washington’s offer for negotiations was to “impose their own expectations”, Iranian state media reported. “The insistence…