Foreign
Russia launches massive air attacks on Ukraine’s cabinet building
Russia fired its biggest-ever aerial barrage at Ukraine early Sunday, killing two people and setting the seat of the Ukrainian government in Kyiv ablaze in an attack President Volodymyr Zelensky warned would prolong the war.
An AFP reporter saw the roof of Ukraine’s cabinet of ministers in flames and smoke billowing over the capital.
Drone strikes also damaged several high-rise buildings in Kyiv, according to emergency services.
Russia has shown no sign of halting its three-and-a-half-year invasion of Ukraine, pushing hardline demands for ending the war despite efforts by the United States to broker a peace deal.
Residents in Kyiv spoke of their frustration following the strikes.
“This is already routine for us, unfortunately,” Olga, a 30-year-old resident of a damaged building, told AFP.
The Russians first “grab the Shaheds (Iranian-designed drones), then the rockets come,” she said.
The attack on Sunday was the first to hit Ukraine’s cabinet of ministers, a sprawling government complex at the heart of Kyiv.
An AFP reporter saw helicopters dropping what appeared to be buckets of water over its roof, as emergency services rushed to the scene.
Russia, which denies targeting civilians in Ukraine, said it had struck “Ukraine’s military-industrial complex and transport infrastructure” in the attack, without mentioning the government building.
Police cordoned off the area surrounding the building, the roof and upper floors of which sustained damage.
“We will restore the buildings. But we cannot bring back lost lives. The enemy terrorises and kills our people every day throughout the country,” Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.
Russia fired at least 810 drones and 13 missiles at Ukraine between late Saturday and early Sunday, in a new record, according to the Ukrainian air force.
Zelensky said emergency services were working across the country.
“Such killings now, when real diplomacy could have already begun long ago, are a deliberate crime and a prolongation of the war,” he said on Facebook.
The attack drew condemnation from European leaders, including Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.
“Once again, the Kremlin is mocking diplomacy,” von der Leyen wrote on X.
Strike kills six
AFP reporters heard explosions over the capital early Sunday.
A strike on a nine-story residential building in the west of Kyiv killed at least two people, a mother and her two-month-old son, prosecutors said.
More than a dozen others were wounded in Kyiv, according to the emergency service.
Among them was a 24-year-old pregnant woman, who delivered a premature baby shortly after the attack, and doctors were fighting for her life and that of her baby, state TV Suspilne reported.
Four more died, and dozens of others were wounded in overnight strikes across the country’s east and southeast, authorities said.
The attack also killed seven horses at an equestrian club in Kyiv’s suburbs, according to Ukraine’s foreign ministry.
“The world cannot stand aside while a terrorist state takes lives—human or animal—every single day,” it wrote on X.
The barrage came after more than two dozen European countries pledged to patrol any agreement to end the war, some of whom said they were willing to deploy troops on the ground.
Kyiv insists on Western-backed security guarantees to prevent future Russian attacks, but President Vladimir Putin warns that any Western troops in Ukraine would be unacceptable and legitimate targets.
Efforts in recent weeks by US President Donald Trump to end the war have so far yielded little progress.
Meantime, on the front line in the east, Moscow continued to claim territory in costly grinding battles, capturing another village in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Russia occupies around 20 per cent of the country in total.
Tens of thousands have been killed in three-and-a-half years of fighting, which has forced millions from their homes and destroyed much of eastern and southern Ukraine in Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.
AFP
Dozens of envoys from across the world walked out of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the UN on Thursday in protest at the Israeli leader.
Delegates jeered and booed, while Netanyahu’s own team stood and applauded, and the speaker of the session shouted for order.
“If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t left this hall, please do so now,” Netanyahu said.
Some attendees and delegation members walk out as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during the 81st United Nations General Assembly at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, on September 24, 2026. (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP)
The hall, sparsely filled earlier in the session, gradually filled up before Netanyahu’s speech.
The Palestinian delegation had called in a memo for other missions to join their own act of protest.
Netanyahu called the Israeli youths who target Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank “juvenile delinquents” during a speech Thursday to the United Nations.
“What (the media) cover is a handful of young juvenile delinquents, about 150 in number, who go or throw stones, who chop down olive trees,” Netanyahu said.
“I can’t stand that. I won’t stand for vigilantism.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on September 24, 2026. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP)
He called Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a “tyrant” during a speech at the UN on Thursday, accusing Ankara of harboring Hamas militant leaders.
“The latest country to become a super spreader of antisemitic lies (is Turkey)… Erdogan is a tyrant. He also hosts the Hamas terror chiefs,” he said.
The Prime Minister also claimed that “many Jews” no longer feel safe in New York since leftist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s election.
“Since you were elected mayor of this city, many Jews no longer feel safe in New York,” he said.
“You falsely, repeatedly accuse Israel of genocide.”
AFP
An adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has warned that Tehran could expand the ongoing Middle East conflict to the Indian Ocean if the United States launches further attacks.
Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior adviser to the Iranian leader, issued the warning on Thursday in a video released by Iran’s Fars news agency.
“Since the conflict has spread from the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea, it is possible that, in response to more war, the front will expand even further, reaching the Indian Ocean and perhaps beyond,” Safavi said.
The warning comes amid heightened tensions around strategic waterways in the region.
Yemen’s Houthis, who are fighting Saudi-backed government forces, recently took control of the Red Sea coastline, strengthening their hold around the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait, which connects Asia and Europe through the Suez Canal.
Iran has long provided military support to the Houthis but has denied any direct involvement in the Yemen conflict.
The Islamic Republic has also closed the Strait of Hormuz, off its southern coast, in retaliation for US-Israeli strikes that triggered the current Middle East war at the end of February.
Iran and the United States are now contesting control of the strategic waterway, through which a substantial portion of the world’s oil and gas supplies passed before the conflict began.
Iranian officials had previously warned that the geographic scope of the conflict could be widened if US strikes against Tehran resumed.
However, Thursday’s statement is the first time an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader has explicitly mentioned the Indian Ocean as a potential new theatre of the conflict.
The Indian Ocean is home to the strategic US-British military base at Diego Garcia, located nearly 4,000 kilometres from Iran.
Meanwhile, Iranian and US officials held talks in New York this week on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly as part of efforts to bring the conflict to an end.
Iran has said it is reviewing US response to its proposal to end war.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Tehran is reviewing the United States’ response to its proposal to end hostilities, but many differences remain between the Iranian and U.S. positions as diplomacy continues.
Reopening the Strait of Hormuz and lifting the U.S. naval blockade on Iran were discussed during indirect talks with the U.S. Tuesday, the official said.
Tehran previously said it could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within a week if the U.S. eased military pressure and lifted its blockade of Iranian ports.
Iran’s chief national security advisor Mohsen Rezaee wrote in a post the country is tiring of negotiations.
“Iran’s new diplomacy will not return to the past. We will force America to respect the rights of the Iranian nation and act according to the conveyed conditions; otherwise, the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened,” he wrote. “Enough with negotiations, take action.”
Iranian spokespeople say Iran and the U.S. met for two hours of mediated discussion during the United Nations General Assembly.
During the discussion, Iran repeated its conditions for opening the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. Army announced the death of an active-duty servicemember Wednesday who was supporting overseas operations in Qatar.
Capt. Bianca C. Wilkerson, 37, of Virginia, died on Sept. 18 as a result of a noncombat-related incident, according to a release. She was posthumously promoted to major.
The incident is under investigation.
U.S. representatives left the room as Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian addressed the United Nations General Assembly Wednesday.
“Yesterday, the United States President described us as terrorists. We have been the victims of terrorism,” Pezeshkian said. “Those who are terrorists and train and protect terrorists describe us as such.”
He says America has hit civilian populations and neighborhoods, including schools, and argued Iran has only defended itself. He compared America and Israel’s war with Iran to Israel’s actions in Gaza, calling for justice for Palestine.
“In Gaza, over 80,000 innocent civilians have been murdered, brutally murdered. They are committing genocide, then they label others as terrorists. We only seek to live independently,” he said. “We cannot speak of peace while ignoring Palestine. Lasting peace in West Asia is impossible without justice for Palestine.”
He said the bombing of Iranian cities will not go unanswered.
Trump tells NewsNation ‘we’ll see’ on whether to ‘annihilate’ Iran
Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said he warned the EU of “severe long-term consequences of facilitating and supporting Israeli-U.S. war crimes” in Gaza and Iran.
“That major folly aside, [NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte] should know by now that groveling never satisfies a bully,” he wrote in a post.
Iran spokesperson accuses Trump of ‘war crime’; Trump threatens to ‘annihilate’ country during UN speech
Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei accused Trump of an “unforgivable war crime” associated with Iranian schoolchildren who he says were killed in a Feb. 28 missile attack by American forces.
“They should have been here today, bright-eyed and joyful, celebrating the start of a new school year. Instead their slain bodies lie buried in the earth,” Baqaei wrote in a post with a video of the children. “The Iranian people will never forget these angelic faces. They will never forgive their killers.”
He criticised Trump’s speech at the UN General Assembly, during which the president said he was weighing whether to “annihilate” Iran if Tehran doesn’t agree to a deal, despite ongoing talks.
“The government whose president mockingly flouts international law from the UN podium bears responsibility for this unforgivable war crime. All who stood silent and looked away share in that responsibility,” Baqaei wrote.
Iran’s armed forces have dismissed Trump’s comments as propaganda and said the country is prepared to deliver “more severe, crushing and unpredictable blows” if attacked.
Two casualties in Strait of Hormuz cargo vessel strike: UKMTO
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations UKMTO says a cargo vessel was struck by an “unknown projectile” in the Strait of Hormuz Wednesday, “leaving it on fire and adrift.” Authorities are investigating.
All crew were evacuated and two casualties were reported.
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