Persecution of bereaved relatives. Impunity for perpetrators. Rampant executions and infighting among the opposition.
A bleak picture confronts opponents of Iran's clerical authorities two years after a protest movement erupted that they hoped would be a turning point in the four-and-a-half-decade history of the Islamic republic.
Thousands of people again took to the streets of Israel's main cities on Saturday in a bid to increase pressure on the government to secure the release of hostages in Gaza.
Of 251 captives seized during Hamas's October 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the ongoing war, 97 are still held in the Gaza Strip including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Weekly rallies have sought to keep up pressure on the Israeli government, accused by critics of stalling on a deal to free the remaining hostages.
A senior UN official said Saturday that teachers and other UN staff working in Gaza fear they are now targets after an Israeli air strike hit a school-turned-shelter in the territory this week.
Wednesday's strike on the UN-run Al-Jawni School in central Gaza, which is housing displaced Palestinians, killed 18 people. including six employees of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
It was the deadliest single incident for the agency in more than 11 months of war and drew international condemnation.
Hezbollah's second-in-command warned on Saturday that an all-out war by Israel aimed at returning 100,000 displaced people to their homes in areas near the Lebanon border would displace "hundreds of thousands" more.
Naim Qassem, number two in the Iran-backed Lebanese group, was speaking after Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was determined to restore security to its northern front.
Gallant told Israeli troops last week that "we are preparing for anything that may happen in the north".
Heavy fighting on Saturday shook a Sudanese city besieged by paramilitaries, witnesses told AFP, as US researchers reported unprecedented and escalating combat in the North Darfur state capital.
El-Fasher is one of five state capitals in Sudan's western Darfur region and the only one not in the hands of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who have been battling the regular army since April 2023.
Mourners gathered in southwest Turkey on Saturday for the funeral of a US-Turkish activist, who was shot dead while protesting Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
The killing last week of 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi has sparked international condemnation and infuriated Turkey, further escalating tensions over the war in Gaza that began with Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel.
Eygi's body, wrapped in the Turkish flag and carried by uniformed officers, arrived at its final resting place in the Aegean town of Didim.
Off a quiet Tunisian island, Sara Souissi readies her small fishing boat. As a woman in the male-dominated trade, she rows against entrenched patriarchy but also environmental threats to her livelihood.
Souissi began fishing as a teenager in a family of fishers off their native Kerkennah Islands near the city of Sfax, defying men who believed she had no place at sea.
"Our society didn't accept that a woman would fish," she said, hauling a catch onto her turquoise-coloured boat.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said Friday one of its employees was killed during an Israeli operation in the occupied West Bank, where raids have escalated since last month.
Israel's military called the UN worker a "terrorist" who posed a threat to troops.
The United Nations agency, UNRWA, said the employee was its first to be killed in the Palestinian territory in more than a decade.
But he is among dozens of Palestinians killed during the large-scale Israeli operation which began days ago and is ongoing, with several more Palestinians dead since Wednesday.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz doubled down Friday on Berlin's refusal to send long-range missiles to Ukraine, even as other Western powers discussed allowing Kyiv more freedom to use such weapons.
"Germany has made a clear decision about what we will do and what we will not do. This decision will not change," Scholz said when asked about the issue at a press conference.
The families of Palestinians killed in an air strike in the occupied West Bank city of Tubas held funerals on Friday after Israeli forces withdrew following their latest raid in the territory.
Violence in the Palestinian territory had already soared alongside the nearly 12-month-old war in Gaza but in late August Israel began large-scale raids that residents say marked an escalation.
