Day: May 16, 2025

Another 7 percent increase in Israeli displacement orders for Gaza, along with militarized zones, makes 71 percent of the Strip restricted areas for Palestinians, UN humanitarians said on Thursday. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the displacements with intensified hostilities resulted in further deaths and destruction of civilian infrastructure along with an aid blockade lasting one month and a half. OCHA said that in addition to ongoing bombardment, another three displacement orders were issued by the Israeli military covering 7 percent of the Gaza Strip's total area. Wednesday's order for six neighborhoods in North Gaza governorate overlaps with parts of the zones covered under Tuesday's displacement orders. The office said preliminary estimates ...

United Nations peacekeepers said axe-wielding locals confronted them on Friday in south Lebanon, where residents accused the international force of opening fire after refusing to leave a town. Andrea Tenenti, spokesman for the UN Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL), said that troops were confronted by a "large group of individuals" during a routine patrol near the town of Jmaijmeh. The "unacceptable" incident caused damage to UN vehicles, Tenenti said, prompting peacekeepers to use "non-lethal force to ensure the safety of both the peacekeepers and those present". No injuries were reported among UN troops, but a statement from Jmaijmeh residents said that at least onw person was wounded in the violence. The residents said they had asked UNIFIL peacekeepers to leave after they ha...

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed Friday to "increase the pressure" until Russia's Vladimir Putin is ready for peace, saying work has begun on an 18th package of EU sanctions against Moscow. "We want peace and we have to increase the pressure until President Putin is ready for peace," von der Leyen told reporters at a gathering of European leaders in Tirana, as the first talks in three years between Russia and Ukraine got underway in Turkey. The EU this week agreed its 17th package of sanctions since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, clamping down on its "shadow" oil fleet by blacklisting some 200 oil tankers used to circumvent curbs on Moscow's oil exports. Von der Leyen said the EU was already "working on a new package of sanctions" that would notably target the controversial...

More than 170,000 Afghan refugees have returned to their home country over the past 42 days, spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation Abdul Mutalib Haqqani said. "A total of 170,937 refugees returned to their country, Afghanistan, from April 1 to May 12, and out of these, 128,048 refugees returned from Pakistan, and the remaining from Iran and Türkiye," the local private media outlet Tolonews quoted Haqqani on Thursday night as saying. Pakistan, according to the official, has also released 3,372 Afghan nationals from prisons over the period and repatriated them to their homeland. Nearly 2 million Afghan refugees, mostly from the neighboring Pakistan and Iran, have returned to Afghanistan over the past year and the return of refugees continues.

The first direct talks on halting Russia's war on Ukraine in more than three years started Friday in Istanbul, with expectations low that the two sides would agree to end Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II. Kyiv is seeking an "unconditional ceasefire" in the fighting that has killed tens of thousands, destroyed large swathes of Ukraine and displaced millions of people. Moscow says it wants to address the "root causes" of the conflict and revive failed 2022 negotiations in which it made sweeping territorial and political demands of Ukraine. Turkey's Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan called for a ceasefire as he opened the meeting between Russian and Ukrainian delegations around 1:35 pm (1035 GMT) in Istanbul's Dolmabahce Palace. "While the war continues to take lives, it ...

A jihadist raid on a military base in northeast Nigeria near the border with Cameroon killed five troops from a multinational coalition Friday, two military sources told AFP. Fighters from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) stormed the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) base housing Nigerian and Cameroonian troops in the town of Wulgo in a pre-dawn attack, engaging troops in a gunfight, the two sources said. "Four Nigerian soldiers and a Cameroonian soldier were killed in the fighting," a Nigerian military source said. "Nine of the terrorists were also killed," the officer said. The militants forced the troops to abandon the base after overwhelming them, said a second officer, who gave the same toll. The attack came two months after a similar raid on the same...

On May 16, 1975, Japan's Junko Tabei became the first woman to climb to the top of Mount Everest. Half a century later, the world's highest mountain is set to record its thousandth ascent by a woman. Scaling the 8,849 metre-high (29,032-foot-high) peak has mainly been a male achievement. By May 2025 women had reached the top 962 times, while men had got there 11,955 times, according to an AFP analysis of figures from the Himalayan Database. - Won't 'be limited' - When Tabei reached the peak of Everest in 1975, 38 men had preceded her. With her all-woman team, she had struggled to find sponsors for her expedition, often being told that they would be better off looking after their children. "All men limit our likes and I do not want to be limited," Tabei wrote in her not...

Israel's main group representing families of hostages still being held in Gaza said Friday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was missing an "historic opportunity" to get them released, as US President Donald Trump concludes a visit to the region. "The hostages' families woke up this morning with heavy hearts and great concern in light of reports about increased attacks in Gaza and the imminent conclusion of President Trump's visit to the region," the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement. "Missing this historic opportunity would be a resounding failure that will be remembered in infamy forever," the group added. As Trump prepared to wrap up his four-day trip to the Middle East in Abu Dhabi on Friday morning, Gaza civil defence agency said that at least 50 pe...

US President Donald Trump said on Friday he would like to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin "as soon as we can set it up", during a business roundtable in Abu Dhabi. "As soon as we can set it up I would actually leave here and go," Trump said in response to a question about meeting the Russian leader. Trump has repeatedly said he was willing to travel to Turkey to join the first direct Russian-Ukrainian peace talks in more than three years, insisting "nothing's going to happen" before he meets the Russian president face-to-face. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky travelled to Turkey but said he would not attend the talks, after his Russian counterpart declined his calls for face-to-face negotiations. Zelensky had dared Putin to show up and negotiate directly to prove he...

Donald Trump on Friday said the United States would have the situation in Gaza "taken care of", telling reporters that people were starving in the besieged Palestinian territory. "We're looking at Gaza. And we're going to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving," the president told reporters. The brief comments came as Trump concluded his final leg of a multi-day tour of the Gulf countries. Israel has imposed a blockade for over two months on Gaza, leading UN agencies and other humanitarian groups to warn of shrinking fuel and medicine supplies to the territory of 2.4 million Palestinians. It has also repeatedly denied that there is a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Trump's remarks came a day after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio voiced openness to any ...