Trump claims US nears 'end' of Iran war, holding 'direct talks'

Syria will offer cheaper diesel for heating, agriculture and industry, Energy Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said on Thursday, days after a fuel price hike triggered the most widespread protests since the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

The move signals a partial retreat by the government after last weekend's increases sparked demonstrations across the country, with protesters burning tyres, blocking roads and demanding the rises be reversed. About 90% of Syrians live below the poverty line, according to UN estimates.

Bashir told a press conference that diesel would be sold at three prices — 115, 150 and 175 Syrian pounds per litre — depending on its specifications and intended use, after a meeting with President Ahmed al-Sharaa on the fuel crisis on Wednesday night.

The government had raised the standard diesel price by 40% on Saturday to 175 pounds per litre from 125, alongside increases of about 26% to 28% for gasoline and about 9% for household and industrial gas.

Bashir said diesel produced by local refineries would be sold at 115 Syrian pounds per litre for heating, agriculture and other eligible users. A second grade, secured with the help of what he described as "friendly countries", would be sold at 150 pounds per litre for productive and service sectors and heavy machinery.

The standard grade would remain at 175 pounds per litre, while gasoline and gas prices would remain unchanged.

The Bank of England held its benchmark interest rate at 3.75 percent on Thursday, but warned that a hike might be needed as the Middle East war pushes up energy prices.

The widely expected decision following a regular monetary policy meeting comes after the Federal Reserve on Wednesday lifted US interest rates for the first time since 2023, citing the need to combat surging inflation.

"So far higher energy costs have had a limited effect on price and wage setting in the UK," Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey said.

"But the longer this volatility persists, the bigger the impact it will have on inflation, and the more likely it is we will need to raise" the benchmark rate, he added.

Surging energy prices triggered by the Middle East war have led central banks around the world to shift in favour of tightening monetary policy.

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis said Thursday three children had been killed in government strikes, according to the group's media.

"Three children were killed and several Yemeni nationals were injured in strikes by the Saudi-backed mercenaries," in the Taiz province, according to Almasirah television. Earlier, the broadcaster said Saudi airstrikes had killed one person.

Israel's defence minister suggested on Thursday that Turkey take in Hamas members from Gaza, as he called for the full-scale removal of the war-torn territory's two million people—a war crime.

The comments by Israel Katz, who is known for his xenophobic remarks, came after an increase in tensions between Turkey and Israel.

"Israel will continue to act to complete its security objectives and ensure that the threat of October 7 cannot return," Katz wrote on X.

Katz added that if Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan "wants to help his brothers in creed and path in Gaza—let him invite them to move to Antalya. A lot of space has opened up there in the absence of Israeli tourists".

Antalya, a beach town at the heart of Turkey's tourism industry, was a top destination for Israelis before relations deteriorated over Israel's genocide of Gaza.

Since 7 October 2023, the Israeli military has increased its use of drones known as "quadcopters" in the Gaza Strip, after previously deploying them in eastern and border areas.

This type of drone has been used extensively and on an unprecedented scale, are of multiple types, and their use has are not limited to attacking resistance fighters.

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One person, a Yemeni resident, was killed and two others injured in a drone interception in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern governorate of Taif, Saudi state TV says.

It is the first death announced in Saudi Arabia this month since the Iran-backed Houthis in neighbouring Yemen launched attacks.

Pakistan's Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said it's time to implement the Mecca agreement with Saudi Arabia and Turkye due to recent Houthi attacks.

Speaking with Pakistani TV channel Geo News, Asif said Islamabad remains committed to protecting Saudi Arabia and its holy sites, adding that even without an agreement, it was a duty to protect them.

China has privately asked Tehran to help rein in Yemen's Houthis after an appeal to Beijing by Saudi Arabia following the Iran-backed group’s military blitz in the past week, according to three Iranian sources familiar with the matter.

Riyadh turned to China for help after the Houthis made rapid advances along the Red Sea coast and around the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, moves that have left Saudi oil exports and shipping more exposed, the sources say.

China has publicly called for restraint, dialogue and the restoration of safe navigation, but its private message went further than the public statements, they say.

The sources, who have been briefed on the discussions and have spoken on condition of anonymity, do not provide details of how the message was delivered or whether it was conveyed during a visit to China yesterday by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

The sources say Tehran's response was that stability and peace in the region depend on ending the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Ireland will boycott the Eurovision Song Contest for a second year over Israel's participation, the country's national broadcaster says.

RTE said Thursday it will not send an act to the 2027 competition in Bulgaria and will not broadcast the show because of the "appalling and ongoing loss of lives in Gaza."

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Israel and Morocco said they will open embassies and expand relations established under the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords, which saw four Arab countries normalize ties with Israel in 2020.

Israel and Morocco announced the move in a joint statement with the United States, saying that integrating Israel into the broader Arab world “will lead to peace, stability and shared prosperity.” The Abraham Accords were a marquee foreign policy achievement of President Donald Trump’s first term.

Israel and Morocco face elections in the coming weeks.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza  said five Palestinians were killed and 28 wounded in the past 24 hours by Israeli attacks, including three new deaths and two people who succumbed to their wounds.

Since a ceasefire took effect on October 2025, the ministry said at least 1,386 Palestinians have been killed and 4,784 wounded by Israel, with 831 bodies retrieved from under the rubble.

The ministry added that the collapse of the Saada building had left 21 dead, and injured more than 14 others, with several people still missing, bringing the total death toll from building collapses to 61.

Iran gave a Swedish diplomat in Tehran 48 hours to leave the country on Thursday after Sweden expelled a staff member from the Iranian embassy in Stockholm.

The Swedish ambassador was summoned to the foreign ministry in Tehran to protest against the Swedish decision, which is "unjustified and contrary to international law", Iran's foreign ministry said in a statement broadcast by state television.

Israel has added a tender for 2,167 housing units to its E1 settlement expansion plan, Israeli rights groups said of a project that "buries" any potential Palestinian state.

The project would bisect the Israeli-occupied West Bank and cut it off from East Jerusalem, fragmenting the land Palestinians hope will form the heart of a state.

The tender for 2,167 units is in addition to a tender for 1,234 units announced at the end of August, bringing the total number of housing units to 3,401, Israeli rights group Ir Amim said in a statement issued late on Wednesday.

The decision was condemned by a representative for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday who said the E1 tenders were in violation of international law.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, an ultra-nationalist in the governing right-wing coalition, has said the plan would "bury" a Palestinian state.

The tender is scheduled to open for bidding on 25 October, two days before Israel is due to hold a parliamentary election.

The Palestinian Authority slams a decision by the United States to refuse to grant visas for its officials to attend the UN General Assembly in New York next week, a move that includes President Mahmoud Abbas.

In a statement, the Palestinian Authority foreign ministry calls it "an unjustified measure that runs counter to efforts to rebuild trust, develop Palestinian-US relations, and create the necessary political climate for implementing the two-state solution and achieving peace and stability."

Turkey's Defence Ministry condemned a Houthi drone attack targeting Saudi Arabia and other actions by the group, calling for an end to such acts that threaten regional stability.

The ministry said the continued Houthi threat in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab was negatively affecting not only regional security but also international maritime trade and global stability.

Despite Gadi Eisenkot emerging as Netanyahu’s strongest challenger in the Israeli elections, his political agenda won't change the current genocidal course, writes Yara Hawari.

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Budget carrier Wizz Air on Thursday said it had cut its planned capacity for the second half of its fiscal year by 5%, joining rivals in scaling back growth plans as the Iran war continues to drive a sharp rise in fuel costs.

The worst airline crisis in terms of costs since the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S.-Iran war has sent the global aviation industry into a severe cost shock, with Latvian airline airBaltic becoming the first European carrier to file for bankruptcy earlier this week due to the conflict.

While full-service flag carriers have generally proved more resilient than budget operators, whose business models rely on cheap fares, even larger U.S. carriers have scaled back their planned flight schedules as surging fuel prices threaten earnings.

Wizz Air upgraded its revenue per available seat kilometre (RASK) forecast for the second quarter running from July to September to flat year-on-year, from a previous forecast of "down low single digits," after a stronger-than-expected summer revenue performance, sending shares up more than 3% in early trade.

The Hungarian airline set out medium-term financial targets of achieving €10 billion ($11.47 billion) in revenue and a 10% EBIT margin by fiscal year 2030 as it seeks to restore sustainable profitability after a turbulent stretch.

It also plans to operate an all-new-engine-option fleet of 335 aircraft and carry 127 million passengers by fiscal year 2030, up from the 269 aircraft it currently operates and the 69.7 million passengers it carried in its last financial year.

A UN fact-finding mission on Iran said on Thursday it had reasonable grounds to believe the United States was behind two military strikes on a school and sports facility in Iran in February, and that these constituted war crimes.

It also found that Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity during their deadly crackdown on anti-government protests.

The findings in a new report by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, to be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, examined the US's conduct during the Iran war that began in February and the Iranian government's response to nationwide unrest that begun in late December.

The UN experts said they found reasonable grounds to believe US forces were responsible for an attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in the city of Minab, where more than 150 people were killed, including around 120 schoolchildren, according to Iranian officials.

The attack constituted an indiscriminate attack causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure, amounting to a war crime under international law, the mission concluded.

According to the report, the US relied on intelligence suggesting a senior Iranian military commander was present at the site but failed to adequately verify the information before launching the strike. Investigators said the failure to update targeting intelligence and confirm the building was a military objective amounted to more than mere negligence.

"Rather, the US directed the strikes at the building of the school while being aware of a substantial risk of striking a civilian object and acting recklessly as regards the possibility that this would happen."

Turkish authorities have directed Mahan Air, Iran's largest carrier, to suspend all flights to Turkey, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press Thursday, marking one of the most consequential disruptions yet to Tehran's already battered aviation industry.  

US Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, is obstructing a Trump administration proposal for a $2.8 billion bomb sale to Israel.

Meeks says he will not clear the transaction due to concerns that these 2,000-pound munitions will not be used in accordance with US and international law.

The proposal, he adds, raised questions "about how these munitions could be used in densely populated areas of Gaza and Lebanon."

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and Pakistan's army chief Asim Munir discussed the latest regional developments in a phone call during Araqchi's visit to Beijing on Wednesday, Iranian media reported, as US-Iran negotiations remain stalled with no agreement in sight.

Saudi strikes in Yemen killed one person and targeted three telecommunications towers on Thursday, according to Houthi media.

"Saudi enemy warplanes targeted three telecommunications towers" in Taiz province, while one civilian was killed and another injured in strikes on the town of Abs, Almasirah television said.

The heads of state of Lebanon, France and Jordan will meet Thursday in Paris as part of an effort to drum up support for the struggling Lebanese military.

A donor conference for Lebanon's cash-strapped army was initially set to take place in February, led by France, Saudi Arabia and the United States. However, it was postponed following the eruption of the Iran war.

The Lebanese army has now found itself caught between the Israeli military—occupying much of southern Lebanon—and Hezbollah, which refused calls to give up its weapons until Israel makes a full withdrawal.

Thursday's meeting in Paris will center on preparing the ground for a donor conference. It will also focus on the situation in southern Lebanon and plans for an international presence there after the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL expires at the end of the year, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun's office said in a statement.

Yemeni government forces clashed with Houthi fighters near the Saudi border, with AFP footage showing soldiers in armoured vehicles and trucks pushing across desert terrain under the crackle of machine-gun fire.

The Houthis also released footage on Wednesday of the fighting in the northwestern Al-Jawf area, as well as a video purporting to show the downing of a fighter jet belonging to Saudi Arabia, the group's longtime foe and the Yemeni government's main backer.

The group has recently made major gains in a lightning offensive that Saudi airstrikes have failed to roll back, leaving the Yemeni government scrambling to respond.

"The First Division Emergency Forces are advancing on the Al-Labanat front and, God willing, will reach Houthi positions," Waleed Al-Mahajeri, operations commander of the government's Fifth Brigade, told an embedded AFP journalist on Tuesday.

AFP footage showed the soldiers firing heavy machine guns, artillery and RPGs at distant targets, as well as the bodies of Houthi fighters and entrenchments the government forces said the group had abandoned as they fell back.

"Al-Masariya Hill has been liberated, as has Al-Labanat camp, and the advance is continuing," said soldier Abu Mithaq.

Two sources from the government's military later told AFP on condition of anonymity that government forces were in control of the lower points of Al-Labanat camp, located on a hill, but were facing difficulty seizing control of the rest, as the Houthis held the higher ground.

Taking the camp would be a strategic win for the government forces, as it would clear the path to Al-Hazm, the capital of Al-Jawf governorate, just 50 kilometres (30 miles) away.

US President Donald Trump is expected to meet Gulf leaders on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday to discuss the next steps in the Iran war, Axios reported late on Wednesday, citing sources.

The meeting is expected to focus on US ideas for a postwar strategy, Axios reported.