Spotlight
The Kremlin on Tuesday welcomed what it called U.S. President Donald Trump's "good idea" for a truce between Russia and Ukraine on striking energy infrastructure.
"We have seen President Trump's post. We consider it a good idea, a good initiative. We are in contact with the Americans," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, a day after Trump announced the warring sides had agreed to a truce, despite neither Kyiv or Moscow having said a deal had been struck.
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Qatar on Tuesday warned of dire consequences if the vital Bab al-Mandab waterway were to close, after a months-long blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and recent Houthi gains on the Red Sea coast.
"The world is suffering enough with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, so we cannot also afford to add the Bab al-Mandab into that equation," Qatar foreign ministry official Ibrahim Al Hashmi told reporters.
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U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa on Tuesday visited the southern town of Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, accompanied by a delegation from the state-run Council for Development and Reconstruction.
His first stop was the town’s church, which coincided with the movement of Israeli military vehicles in the adjacent town of Zawtar al-Sharqiyeh as an Israeli drone hovered over the area surrounding the church.
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The United Nations called Tuesday for international investigators to be granted to access to all of Gaza "to assist with evidence-gathering" as hundreds of bodies are pulled from the rubble.
"The discovery of extensive remains under the rubble in Gaza City resurfaces these concerns of war crimes and other atrocity crimes," U.N. rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Monday of heavy reprisals on Israel's enemies if they attacked, as he lauded the recent demolition of a Hezbollah tunnel network in southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu said Israel's destruction of Hezbollah positions at the Beaufort and Ali al-Taher ridges was a "massive victory" and vowed to "continue to destroy terrorist infrastructure".
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Yemen's Houthis said Monday they had fired dozens of drones and ballistic missiles at military targets in Saudi Arabia, in retaliation for airstrikes by Riyadh.
"The Yemeni armed forces conducted a large-scale military operation targeting military installations and infrastructure, including fighter jet hangars, radars, runways, ammunition depots, and other targets located at King Khalid Air Base in Khamis Mushait," said Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree.
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Iran's foreign ministry on Monday denied the country had any involvement in the war in Yemen, after the Iran-backed Houthi movement seized more territory.
"Iran does not interfere in Yemeni affairs," ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told reporters, saying the Houthis are "entirely independent actors who make their decisions based on their own interests".
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The EU's top diplomat said Monday that Russian strikes which hit a Warsaw-bound train near Ukraine's border with Poland shortly after top Western figures passed through were meant to "scare" off Kyiv's backers.
"It is clearly meant to scare Western countries from supporting Ukraine, from going to Ukraine to show support," foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said, urging Kyiv's backers to do "the opposite".
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Iran said a planned meeting with Gulf countries in Oman on Monday to discuss the Strait of Hormuz was postponed at the request of Saudi Arabia, which cited the war in Yemen.
"It is true that Saudi Arabia asked for this meeting to be postponed," said foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei. "Invoking the Yemeni issue as the reason is a false pretext," he added at a press conference in Tehran attended by AFP.
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Israel's demolition on Thursday of a tunnel network used by Hezbollah as a command center in southern Lebanon, near the border, represents a significant setback for the Iran-backed group.
Experts said that while Hezbollah is far from defeated, the group was now exposed after two fierce wars with Israel in which it suffered major blows including the loss of much of its top leadership and Israel's occupation of parts of southern Lebanon.
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