Two Palestinians were killed in the West Bank Friday, one of them by a settler, after a shooting hit Tel Aviv, as a surge of Israeli-Palestinian violence shows no letup.
Tensions remained high a day after Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin had, on a visit to Israel, called for de-escalation ahead of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in March and the Jewish holiday of Passover in April.
It took just three weeks for the decades-old regime of Iraq's feared dictator Saddam Hussein to fall in one of the most controversial foreign military interventions of modern times.
Then-US president George W. Bush began major air strikes on Iraq on March 20, 2003, claiming that Saddam's regime illegally possessed weapons of mass destruction, though none were ever found.
The coalition spearheaded by US and British forces then launched the major ground invasion, which climaxed with the fall of Baghdad on April 9, symbolised by the toppling of a towering statue of Saddam.
Two decades after the US-led invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein, its war-weary people recount their painful memories of dictatorship, major conflict and years of violent turmoil.
Some told AFP about the iron-fisted repression under Saddam, others spoke of the traumatic childhoods they endured, marred by bullets, bombs and bloodshed.
They look back at the horrors of the Islamic State group and the dashed hopes of a brief anti-government protest movement. Some note signs of progress, but few voice any real optimism about the future.
- 'Terrified childhood' -
Twenty years after the US-led invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein, the oil-rich country remains deeply scarred by the conflict and, while closer to the United States, far from the liberal democracy Washington had envisioned.
President George W. Bush's war, launched in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, is seared in memory for its "shock and awe" strikes, the toppling of a giant Saddam statue, and the years of bloody sectarian turmoil that followed.
Several people have been killed in a shooting at a Jehovah's Witness centre in Hamburg, with the gunman believed to be among the dead, German police said Thursday.
Police have not given a death toll, but multiple local media outlets reported that the shooting had left seven dead and eight seriously injured.
The first emergency calls were made around 2015 GMT after shots rang out at the building in the city's northern district of Gross Borstel, a police spokesman at the scene said.
Iran's Foreign Minister welcomed during a trip to Damascus on Thursday Arab outreach to Syria's internationally-isolated government after an earthquake struck Turkey and the war-torn country last month.
He also said Tehran, which has backed Damascus during its 12 years of conflict, would join efforts to reconcile Syria and Turkey, which has long supported rebel groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Three people were shot and wounded in Tel Aviv on Thursday in an attack carried out by a member of the armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas, Israeli police said.
The shooting took place at about 8:40 pm (1840 GMT) on Dizengoff Avenue, a popular nightlife spot in the centre of Tel Aviv, where a Palestinian attack killed three people in April 2022.
"The three victims of today's attack in Tel Aviv are still alive, correcting the earlier statement that one of them had been declared dead," Israeli police spokesman Dean Elsdunne told AFP.
Just $1.4 billion in new loans and grants were promised at a UN summit devoted to the world's poorest nations where UN leader Antonio Guterres had appealed for massive aid, officials said Thursday.
A top UN envoy warned at the end of the five-day Least Developed Countries meeting that these countries are falling "far behind" in reaching development goals.
Guterres started the summit by saying the 46 poorest states need a $500 billion a year stimulus to reach the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs), a blueprint to end poverty and boost health and education by 2030.
The United Nations has bought a ship to remove oil and avoid a potentially catastrophic spill from a tanker decaying for years off the coast of war-ravaged Yemen, officials said Thursday.
In an unusual step for a UN agency, the UN Development Program said it signed a contract to purchase a crude carrier from major tanker company Euronav that will head to Yemen to remove the oil from the beleaguered FSO Safer.
The United States placed five Chinese companies on its sanctions blacklist Thursday for supplying components to Iran drone builders.
The US Treasury indirectly tied the Chinese companies to Russian attacks in Ukraine and Iranian attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf region, in both cases using Shahed-136 unmanned aerial vehicles made by the Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Co (HESA).
