Global military expenditure saw its steepest increase in over a decade in 2023, reaching an all-time high of $2.4 trillion as wars and rising tensions fuelled spending across the world, researchers said Monday.
Military spending rose across the globe with particularly large increases in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, according to a new report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Families kissed the faces of the dead and neighbours cried in the streets after one of the worst Israeli raids anyone in the Nur Shams refugee camp can remember.
On Sunday a funeral procession for 13 Palestinians killed in the army's West Bank operation passed through roads piled with rubble from Israeli bulldozers and rocket fire.
Israeli forces carry out regular raids on towns and cities in the occupied West Bank, and violence has soared since the war in Gaza broke out last year.
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised the country's armed forces for their "success" in his first public comments since Tehran launched an unprecedented direct attack on Israel last week.
In a meeting with Iranian military commanders on Sunday, Khamenei praised the armed forces for their "success in recent events", a week after the country's first-ever direct attack on Israel from its own territory.
Gaza's civil defence said Sunday dozens of bodies had been found buried at a hospital complex previously raided by Israel, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to ramp up military pressure on Hamas.
Netanyahu, who threatened action "in the coming days" without elaborating, has repeatedly said Israel will launch a ground assault on Rafah despite international concern for civilians who have taken refuge in the southern Gazan city.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in neighbouring Iraq on Monday for his first state visit there in years, with water, oil and regional security issues topping their agenda.
Erdogan was greeted with a 21-gun salute at Baghdad's international airport by Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani and later met Iraqi President Abdel Latif Rashid.
Erdogan last visited Iraq in 2011. His trip comes as regional tensions spiral, fuelled by the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and tit-for-tat attacks between Israel and Iran.
Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian teenagers and a woman in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, the Palestinian health ministry said.
The army confirmed it had "neutralised" three attackers.
Sunday's incidents, after numerous deaths during an Israeli raid further north in the Palestinian territory, added to a two-year surge of violence in the West Bank that has accelerated since the war in Gaza began on October 7.
Karim Beguir launched the artificial intelligence start-up InstaDeep in Tunisia in 2014 with just two computers and $2,000.
By 2023, it was an international operation bought by German laboratory BioNTech for $700 million.
"For the first time, we saw that a start-up launched in Africa with very limited resources could become a major international player," the French-Tunisian CEO, who co-founded the company with Tunisian self-taught IT enthusiast Zohra Slim, told AFP.
It gives young Africans the "hope of being part of tomorrow's innovation and technology," he said.
Executions of convicts, arrests of dissidents and a resurgence in patrols enforcing the obligatory wearing of hijabs: Iran is stepping up repression at home as tensions flare with its arch-foe Israel, activists say.
Iranians in the Islamic republic have endured increased repression since nationwide protests were sparked from September 2022 by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly flouting the mandatory dress rules for women.
Bigwigs behind a Saudi megacity dogged by questions about its viability have wrapped up a tour courting Chinese investors, detailing plans for a futuristic ski resort and 170-kilometre-long skyscrapers.
The roadshow for NEOM, brainchild of de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, travelled from Beijing to Shanghai to Hong Kong, where for two days would-be business partners flocked to a chic museum to peruse eye-popping renderings in various stages of development.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Saturday at least 14 people had been killed in an Israeli raid on Nur Shams refugee camp in the north of the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli army said troops had killed 10 militants during the operation, which it said started on Thursday.
AFP journalists saw bodies in the streets and houses hit by blasts as Israeli drones flew overhead and armoured vehicles moved through the camp.
