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Iran's top diplomat Abbas Araghchi stressed on Sunday that Tehran's strength came from its ability to "say no to the great powers," striking a maximalist position just after negotiations with the United States over its nuclear programme and in the wake of nationwide protests.
Araghchi, speaking to diplomats at a summit in Tehran, said that Iran would stick to its position that it must be able to enrich uranium.
"Iran has paid a very heavy price for its peaceful nuclear programme and for uranium enrichment," the foreign minister said in the country's capital.
"Why do we insist so much on enrichment and refuse to give it up even if a war is imposed on us? Because no one has the right to dictate our behaviour," he said, two days after he met US envoy Steve Witkoff in Oman.
The top diplomat also insisted that the US's military deployment in the region does not "scare" them, believing that "the secret of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s power lies in its ability to stand against bullying, domination and pressures from others".
Araghchi's remarks come two days after talks with Washington in Oman, which came amid a series of US threats to strike the country in the wake of Tehran's deadly crackdown on protesters, and years-long tensions regarding Iran's nuclear programme deal.
The Israeli military is reported to be conducting a raid in the southern town of al-Shuyukh, north of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
The death toll from the building collapse in Tripoli, Lebanon, has risen to nine people, according to the country's civil defense.
The search and rescue operation continues.
Two French-Israelis facing legal summons in France for "complicity in genocide" denounced on Sunday what they described as a political trial.
The summons were issued in July last year for lawyer Nili Kupfer-Naouri of the Israel is Forever group and Rachel Touitou of the Tsav 9 group over protests in 2024 and 2025 in which trucks carrying humanitarian aid for Gaza were blocked at checkpoints.
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Israeli gunboats are targeting the coast of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, according to Shehab media.
Information directorate of Idlib, Syria, says nearly 500 families living across 17 displacement camps have lost homes and property due to the recent flooding.
According to their statement, partial damage was further reported at another seven camps, impacting 437 families.
Rescue operations are continue into the night in Tripoli, Lebanon, at the site of the collapsed residential building in Tabbaneh, photos from local media show.
Flash floods caused by a storm in northern Morocco killed at least four people as the country struggled with days of heavy rain and water releases from overfilled dams that forced mass evacuations, local authorities said Sunday.
Three children — a girl and two boys aged 2 to 14 — and a man in his 30s died in a car that was swept away in a village near Tétouan, about 270 kilometers (168 miles) north of the capital Rabat, according to a statement from the Interior Ministry citing local authorities.
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Israel's President Isaac Herzog starts a tightly secured visit to Australia on Monday to honour the victims of a gun attack on Sydney's Bondi Beach that killed 15 people.
While the head of state seeks to console the Jewish Australian community, his four-day trip has also sparked calls for pro-Palestinian protests in Sydney's streets, where the authorities promised a large police presence.
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The toll in a building collapse in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Sunday rose to five dead, state media reported, as rescuers searched for survivors in the second such incident in weeks.
The state-run National News Agency reported "the collapse of an old building" in Tripoli's Bab al-Tabbaneh neighbourhood, the poorest in the impoverished city, adding that security personnel evacuated adjacent buildings fearing further collapses.
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Israeli forces have opened fire on areas east of al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, according to Palestinian media outlet al-Qastal.
The United Arab Emirates on Sunday said it welcomed a US-backed peace plan for the war in Sudan, where the Gulf country has repeatedly faced accusations of fuelling the devastating conflict.
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Israel's Competition Authority said on Sunday it planned to levy a fine of 121 million shekels ($39 million) on flag carrier El Al Israel Airlines for setting excessive and unfair airfares during Israel's war on Gaza.
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Israel's security cabinet approved a series of measures on Sunday set to deepen Israeli control over the occupied West Bank, paving the way for further settlement expansion in the Palestinian territory.
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Explosions are heard throughout the southern city of Rafah in Gaza, according to Shehab News Agency.
The nature of the incident remains unclear.
Iranian authorities announced the arrest of three reformist officials, according to Fars news agency.
The three officials are identified as Azar Mansouri, Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, and Mohsen Aminzadeh.
According to the statement, they are charged with "targeting national unity, coordinating with enemy propaganda" and "destabilising political groups" amongst other charges.
Israel's security cabinet approved a series of steps on Sunday that would make it easier for settlers in the occupied West Bank to buy land while granting Israeli authorities more enforcement powers over Palestinians, Israeli media reported.
The West Bank is among the territories that the Palestinians seek for a future independent state. Much of it is under Israeli military control, with limited Palestinian self-rule in some areas run by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA).
Citing statements by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defence Minister Israel Katz, Israeli news sites Ynet and Haaretz said the measures included scrapping decades-old regulations that prevent Jewish private citizens buying land in the West Bank.
They were also reported to include allowing Israeli authorities to administer some religious sites, and expand supervision and enforcement in areas under PA administration in matters of environmental hazards, water offences and damage to archaeological sites.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the new measures were dangerous, illegal and tantamount to de-facto annexation.
Around 180 Palestinians have left the Gaza Strip since the limited reopening of the Rafah crossing with Egypt a week ago, according to officials in the territory.
The Rafah crossing, the only gateway for Gazans to the outside world that does not pass through Israel, reopened for the movement of people on 2 February, nearly two years after Israeli forces seized control of it during the war with Hamas.
Between Monday and Thursday, 135 people crossed into Egypt from Gaza through the crossing, mostly patients and their companions, according to Ismail al-Thawabteh, head of the media office in the Palestinian territory.
"Official statistics on the movement at the Rafah crossing from Monday, February 2, 2026, until Thursday, February 5, 2026, show a severe restriction on travel," Thawabteh said.
He said the crossing was also closed on Friday and Saturday.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society confirmed that 135 Gazans had left through the crossing between 2-5 February.
On Sunday, another 44 people left the Gaza Strip through the crossing to Egypt, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of the territory's main Al-Shifa Hospital, told AFP.
They included 19 patients, while the rest were their companions, he added.
At least three people were rescued from the rubble of a multistory apartment building that collapsed Sunday in the city of Tripoli in northern Lebanon, state media reported.
Rescue teams were continuing to dig through the rubble. It was not immediately clear how many people were killed or injured.
Dozens of people crowded around the site of the crater left by the collapsed building, with some shooting in the air.
The building was in the neighborhood of Bab Tabbaneh, one of the poorest areas in Lebanon’s second largest city, where residents have long complained of government neglect and shoddy infrastructure. Building collapses are not uncommon in Tripoli due to poor building standards.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry announced that those injured in the collapse would receive treatment at the state’s expense.
An Iranian court sentenced Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi to a six-year prison term, her lawyer told AFP on Sunday.
"She has been sentenced to six years in prison for gathering and collusion to commit crimes," lawyer Mostafa Nili said, adding that she had also received a two-year ban on leaving the country.
Mohammadi also received a one-and-a-half-year prison sentence for propaganda activities and is sentenced to be exiled for two years to the city of Khosf in the eastern province of South Khorasan, the lawyer stated.
Israel's Competition Authority said on Sunday it planned to levy a fine of 121 million shekels ($39 million) on flag carrier El Al Israel Airlines for setting excessive and unfair airfares during Israel's Gaza war.
The fine is the maximum allowed by law.
The antitrust body said it reviewed the period from 7 October 2023, through May 2024 and found that El Al operated as a monopoly on 38 of the 53 routes it operated, including to New York, London, Paris, Bangkok and other cities in the United States, Europe and Asia.
It found that ticket prices rose by an average of 16 percent - and as much as 31 percent - noting that since most foreign carriers had halted flights, the airline "held market power".
El Al said it "categorically rejects" the claim that it charged excessive prices during the war.
"Even if the Competition Authority's position is accepted, according to which the average price increase during the war was 16% ... a figure we consider incorrect, there is no precedent for determining that such an increase constitutes excessive pricing," it said in a statement.
"El Al will present its full position at the hearing and in any appropriate legal forum, and is confident that its position will be accepted," it added, referring to a further hearing on the case.
In a statement the antitrust body said: "El Al's price increases were excessive and unfair and justify enforcement action by the Competition Authority, adding that freedom of movement to enter and leave Israel is a fundamental right.
"Under the circumstances of the war, exercising this right became immeasurably more important, especially during the first months of fighting ... Consumers became almost completely dependent on El Al for an essential service of the highest importance."
Two children and a Syrian Red Crescent volunteer have died as a result of flooding in the country's northwest, state media said on Sunday.
The heavy rains in Syria's Idlib region and the coastal province of Latakia have also wreaked havoc in displacement camps, according to authorities, who have launched rescue operations and set up shelters in the areas.
State news agency SANA reported "the death of a Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteer and the injury of four others as they carried out their humanitarian duties" in Latakia province.
The Syrian Red Crescent said in a statement that the "a mission vehicle veered into a valley", killing a female volunteer and injuring four others, as they went to rescue people stranded by flash floods.
"A fifth volunteer was injured while attempting to rescue a child trapped by the floodwaters," it added.
SANA said two children died on Saturday "due to heavy flooding that swept through the Ain Issa area" in the north of Latakia province.
Authorities said on Sunday they were working to clear roads in displacement camps in flooded parts of Idlib province.
The Israeli military has reportedly forced families to evacuate their homes in the town of Arraba, south of Jenin, on Sunday evening, local sources told the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Forces notified a number of families living on lands east of Arraba to evacuate by no later than next Tuesday, in preparation for reestablishing an Israeli military camp that had previously been located on the town’s lands and was evacuated in 2005.
Romania's president Nicusor Dan says he has a received an invitation from US President Donald Trump to attend a so-called 'Board of Peace' meeting on 19 February.
Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked his UAE counterpart Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan for help with the detention of a man suspected of shooting a Russian military intelligence officer during a phone call on Saturday evening, Russian agencies reported, citing Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
A Ukrainian-born Russian citizen has been extradited to Moscow from Dubai on suspicion of gravely injuring Vladimir Alexeyev, deputy head of Russia's vast GRU military intelligence service.
Two Palestinians were killed on Sunday morning by Israeli gunfire and shelling in the central and southern Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll of Palestinians killed to three so far on Sunday.
Medical sources reported that 20-year-old Nassim Abu Al-Ajeen was shot and killed by Israeli military vehicles in the Abu Al-Ajeen area east of Deir al-Balah, the Palestinian agency Wafa said.
The sources also added that young woman Dalia Khaled Asfour succumbed to her injuries sustained during the war when Israeli forces shelled her family home on Al-Dakhiliya Street in central Rafah, joining her four children who had previously been killed in the attack.
Earlier Sunday, another Palestinian was killed and a second seriously injured by Israeli artillery shelling in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip.
Iran has reason to doubt the United States is serious about resolving the current crisis in relations through negotiations, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday.
Speaking to a forum in Tehran attended by AFP, Araghchi said Washington's continuation of sanctions on Iran and its recent military deployments "raise doubts about the other party's seriousness and readiness to engage in genuine negotiations.
"We are closely monitoring the situation, assessing all the signals, and will decide whether to continue the negotiations," he said.
A senior Hamas leader said Sunday that the Palestinian Islamist movement would not surrender its weapons nor accept foreign intervention in Gaza, pushing back against US and Israeli demands.
"Criminalising the resistance, its weapons, and those who carried it out is something we should not accept," Khaled Meshal said at a conference in Doha.
"As long as there is occupation, there is resistance. Resistance is a right of peoples under occupation ... something nations take pride in," said Meshal, who previously headed the group.
A US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza is in its second phase, which foresees that demilitarisation of the territory -- including the disarmament of Hamas -- along with a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces.
Hamas has repeatedly said that disarmament is a red line, although it has indicated it could consider handing over its weapons to a future Palestinian governing authority.
Israeli forces detained five Palestinian youths late on Saturday following raids and searches of family homes in Al-Arroub refugee camp and the town of Al-Shuyukh, north of Hebron, in the southern West Bank.
Local sources told the Palestinian Wafa agency that Israeli forces stormed Al-Arroub refugee camp and detained Jamal Nasser Al-Badawi, his brother Mohammed, and another resident whose identity has not yet been confirmed.
The same sources added that Israeli forces also raided the town of Al-Shuyukh, detaining two Palestinian youths, Uday Saber Al-Halaika and Mohammed Wael Al-Shuyukhi.
At least one Palestinian man has been killed in northern Gaza's Beit Lahia after the Israeli military shelled the area on Sunday, local medias said.
Iran's foreign minister declared Sunday that his country was not intimidated by the US naval deployment in the Gulf, two days after talks with Washington's envoy.
"Their military deployment in the region does not scare us," Abbas Araghchi said, after US President Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff visited the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in the region.