World news
fromwww.aljazeera.com
2 hours agoSaudi Arabia expels Iran military attache, four embassy staff
Saudi Arabia expels Iranian military staff amid escalating attacks and tensions over regional security and oil exports.
A drone strike has sparked a fire at the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as Iran continues to launch sustained attacks on Gulf countries amid the United States-Israeli joint war on its soil more than two weeks ago. The Fujairah government's media office on Tuesday said there were no casualties resulting from the attack on the energy facility, located about 150km (93 miles) east of Dubai.
Hoping you can see that now, an Iranian drone literally just flew directly over our heads from Iran into Iraq. After that drone flew overhead they did close the border again for a period of time before reopening it. We then heard another drone going over.
Of the 129 journalists killed around the world in 2025, the Israeli military was responsible for 86, about two-thirds of the deaths, the CPJ found. The death toll is the highest since the New York-based press freedom group started tracking the killing of journalists in 1992.
Journalists are being killed in record numbers at a time when access to information is more important than ever. We are all at risk when journalists are killed for reporting the news. Most journalist deaths in conflict settings occurred amid conflicts, with two-thirds blamed on Israeli forces, who killed 86 members of the press, more than 60% of whom were Palestinians reporting from Gaza.
Fighting Russian forces launched 448 attacks on 34 settlements in Ukraine's front-line Zaporizhia region in a single day, injuring a six-year-old child and damaging homes, cars and other infrastructure, regional governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on the Telegram app. Russian drone, missile and artillery attacks on Ukraine's Kherson region injured five people and damaged homes, including seven high-rise buildings, the local military administration said on Telegram.
The big difference is that instead of writing code, answering emails, or buying stuff online, Scout AI's agents are designed to seek and destroy things in the physical world with exploding drones. In a recent demonstration, held at an undisclosed military base in central California, Scout AI's technology was put in charge of a self-driving off-road vehicle and a pair of lethal drones.
Ukrainian special forces have struck deep into Russian-controlled territory, targeting ammo depots, logistics hubs, and command posts, the SBU said yesterday. The Alpha Special Operations Center carried out precision raids on key enemy military infrastructure, crippling the invaders' ability to manage troops, resupply, and plan new attacks. "These strikes hit the enemy where it hurts most," the SBU said on Telegram. "We are disrupting their operations and slowing down their war machine."
Fatal drone strikes on civilians persist in Sudan's Kordofan, as the central region has emerged as the latest front line in Sudan's nearly three-year conflict, the United Nations has said. Addressing the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk painted a grim picture of the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has plunged the country into widespread bloodshed and humanitarian catastrophe.
One person has been killed and another injured in drone strikes in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region, a senior Tigrayan official and a humanitarian worker said, in another sign of renewed conflict between regional and federal forces. The Tigrayan official on Saturday said the drone strikes hit two Isuzu trucks near Enticho and Gendebta, two places in Tigray about 20km (12 miles) apart.
The Syrian army is telling civilians to evacuate parts of the rural Aleppo governorate after accusing the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) of building up troops in the area, following days of deadly fighting inside Aleppo city, as concerns rise over a new front in the simmering battle. A humanitarian zone was expected to remain open on Thursday from 9am local time (6:00 GMT) to 5pm (14:00 GMT), allowing residents to leave Deir Hafer and Maskana in the eastern countryside.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will host security talks in Kyiv on January 3 with Western partners as Moscow kept up its aerial barrage of Ukraine, including 95 overnight drone strikes. Ukraine's Air Force said it intercepted 80 of the drones and reported no casualties, but an earlier strike on January 2 that hit a residential area of the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv injured more than 31 people and killed two, including a 3-year-old child.
Ukraine says it struck oil facilities in Russia's north and south 12/31/2025December 31, 2025 Ukraine's domestic security service, the SBU, reported that Ukrainian long-range drones struck the Temp oil depot in the Russian city of Rybinsk, located approximately 270 kilometers north of Moscow. The SBU described the facility as a key logistics hub for fuel and said that the attack sparked a large fire.
At least three people have been killed and nine others wounded, when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched a drone attack on a central Sudanese city, as fighting intensifies across the vast strategic region of Kordofan that could determine the war's outcome. The strike hit a square near a police station in the Tayba neighbourhood of el-Obeid on Saturday afternoon, military sources told Al Jazeera. Several of the wounded are in critical condition, they said.
By the numbers: 29% of Americans said they supported the military killings without the involvement of a judge or court. A majority (51%) said they were opposed. The rest were unsure. Approval was split among party lines: 58% of Republicans and 8% of Democrats said they supported the approach. The big picture: The Trump administration has killed at least 80 people in 20 drone strikes since early September. The president is reportedly considering expanding the strikes to land targets, the Washington Post reports.
Ukrainian soldiers told Business Insider that a shift is underway and that the use of medium-range drones has become more commonplace as both sides withdraw logistics and fighting positions to spots farther away from the line of contact, beyond the reach of shorter-range first-person-view (FPV) drones. The evolution and resulting expansion of the kill zone show how both sides in this conflict are adjusting their targeting approaches as the battlefield changes and further underscore the role drones play in the war.
Amid the chaos of the Trump Administration, implementing all of Cheney's dreams of unitary executive on Chicago's residents and Latin American fishermen, his death didn't even make it above the fold of the NYT. This blog has written probably 500 stories on Dick Cheney - about torture, about illegal surveillance, about drone strikes, about outing Valerie Plame. But the most recent are telling for his legacy:
Reports in recent days said the Pentagon had told the White House that the US stockpile of Tomahawks was sufficient to be able to supply them to Ukraine. Ukraine has been seeking the Tomahawk missiles to carry out long-range strikes against Russia, but without them has still been able to wage a successful campaign using its own drones and missiles against Russian military and strategic targets such as oil depots and refineries.
First came the sound of drones. Then a boom that rattled windows. Shortly after that, two columns of black smoke rose over the Shebelinka gas processing plant in Ukraine's Kharkiv region. Towering flames threatened storage tanks. A refinery worker emerged from the site. Russian drones and missiles had struck the plant at 4.30am, he said. For now there was nothing for the fire crews to do but to stand back and watch.
At least one person has been killed in an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon, according to the state-run National News Agency (NNA), as near-daily attacks by Israel continue despite a November ceasefire. The attack on Monday hit an excavator in the Shamsiyah area of Sohmor in the Bekaa Valley, killing its driver. Footage on social media, verified by Al Jazeera, showed emergency responders carrying the victim away on a stretcher.
Growing up in a nomadic family in central Somalia's Galgaduud region, Luul Dahir Mohamed, like many girls in her Bedouin community, never got the opportunity to go to school. But as she grew up, married and had two children Mohamed and Mariam she dreamed of a better life for them. After her marriage ended, the young mother decided to relocate from her rural community in Bergan to the central Somali city of El Buur in 2018,
Ukraine has worsened fuel shortages across Russia in the past week as it has continued to hit Russia's refineries and energy infrastructure with long-range drones while Poland has called for more oil sanctions in the wake of Russia's first drone attack on NATO soil. In the meantime, Russia's creeping advance resulted in the capture of three villages over the past week, and perhaps for the first time, Ukraine's command reacted by dismissing the retreating officers.
Ukraine's Air Force reported several drones moving toward the southern Kherson and Mykolayiv regions, as well as Zaporizhzhia. Russian forces also launched guided aerial bombs against the Sumy region in the northeast, though there were no reports of large-scale missile barrages that have become almost daily in recent weeks. It said Russia launched one Iskander-M ballistic missile and 164 drones, including Shahed and Geran models. Air defenses reportedly downed or disabled 137 of them, though 27 drones and one missile hit targets in nine locations across the country.
In a video reportedly from 2006, a young Iraqi child was captured asking a U.S. soldier why America killed his dad. The soldier being questioned responds that it wasn't him who killed the young boy's father. When the child continues his line of questioning, the soldier turns the question around, asking him "do you hate Americans?" and "do you want to shoot me?"
Ukrainian forces launched drone and missile attacks on two cities in occupied parts of Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region as US and European officials met in Washington to discuss more economic sanctions on Russia to force it to negotiate an end to the war. The attacks killed two people and injured 16, according to Denis Pushilin, the Russia-installed head of the Donetsk region.
A series of Russian strikes across Ukraine overnight left at least two people dead and several others injured, Ukrainian officials reported. In Kyiv, falling debris from downed drones started fires on top of a 16-story residential building and two nine-story buildings, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko. Tymur Tkachenko, the head of Kyiv's city military administration, said that among the dead was a one-year-old child whose body was uncovered from the rubble by rescuers.