Tunisian activists protested near a Tunis court where prominent figures face charges of conspiring against state security in a trial that the opposition says is fabricated and a symbol of President Kais Saied’s authoritarian rule. 

Rights groups say the trial highlights Saied’s full control over the judiciary since he dissolved the elected parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree before later dissolving the independent Supreme Judicial Council. 

Israel has carried out air strikes near Syria’s Mediterranean port city of Tartous, Syrian state media has reported. 

Israel this week introduced what it said was a new U.S. ceasefire plan— different from the one it agreed to in January—and is trying to force Hamas to accept it by imposing a siege on the Gaza Strip. 

The fall of the Assad regime marks the beginning of a long-overdue transformation in Syria. For the first time in decades, space has opened to speak freely about justice, accountability, and reconciliation. It is a moment filled with uncertainty and pain, but also one of immense hope.  

Israel faced sharp criticism as it stopped the entry of all food and other supplies into Gaza and warned of “additional consequences” for Hamas if a fragile ceasefire is not extended. 

Mediators Egypt and Qatar accused Israel of violating humanitarian law by using starvation as a weapon. 

Explosions have rocked a major city in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) during a rally for the M23 rebel group and their supporters that one of the armed group’s top commanders attended. 

The first explosion in Bukavu caused panic, sending attendees fleeing from the area before a second explosion rang out, according to the AFP news agency. Residents said the explosions were accompanied by gunfire.  

The jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Abdullah Ocalan has called on his party to lay down its arms and dissolve itself, a move that could end its 40-year conflict with Turkiye and have a wider impact on the region. 

A delegation of Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish DEM Party visited Ocalan in his island prison and later delivered his statement in nearby Istanbul. 

“I am making a call for the laying down of arms, and I take on the historical responsibility of this call,” Ocalan said in a letter made public by DEM party members. 

Israel will not withdraw from a strategic corridor in the Gaza Strip as called for by the ceasefire, says an official. Israel’s refusal could spark a crisis with Hamas and key mediator Egypt at a sensitive moment for the fragile truce. 

For more than 40 years, people in Hama spoke in whispers about the February 1982 massacre that then-President Hafez al-Assad unleashed on this city. 

Speaking about it could lead a Syrian to join the hundreds of thousands of their compatriots in al-Assad’s prisons.