Trapped inside their homes for days as intense street battles rage between Sudan's rival generals, Khartoum's residents have banded together on social media offering aid, advice and support.

WhatsApp groups crowd-source needs, while medical professionals upload first-aid video tutorials, and others in the city of more than five million people work together to provide any support they can.

Turki finally summoned the courage last year to come out as gay, but his family's refusal to accept him forced the 20-year-old to seek safety -- and freedom -- outside conservative Saudi Arabia.

Soon after his disclosure, Turki found himself effectively detained by his parents and brothers, confined to a room and barred from attending his university classes.

"When my mother learned of my sexual orientation, she said to me, 'You are not my son,'" he recalled.

"My father and brothers beat me, and I was prevented from going out and meeting my friends for weeks."

Some 67 million children partially or fully missed routine vaccines globally between 2019 and 2021 because of lockdowns and health care disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the United Nations said Wednesday.

"More than a decade of hard-earned gains in routine childhood immunization have been eroded," read a new report from the UN's children's agency, UNICEF, adding that getting back on track "will be challenging."

At least 85 people were killed and over 300 injured in a crush at a charity distribution event in war-torn Yemen on Thursday, Huthi officials said, one of the deadliest stampedes in a decade.

The latest tragedy to strike the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country came days ahead of Eid al-Fitr, a Muslim holiday celebrated around the world by feasting to mark the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

Hundreds of people in the poverty-hit country had gathered at a school in the capital Sanaa to receive cash handouts of 5,000 Yemeni Rials (around $8).

Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran's last shah, called Wednesday during a visit to Israel for "maximum" international backing for the protest movement that rocked the Islamic republic following Mahsa Amini's death.

"I'm... here to explore how can we cooperate in helping the Iranian people in their campaign for freedom," Pahlavi said at a news conference in Tel Aviv alongside Israeli Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel.

Russian mercenary outfit Wagner has been present in Sudan for years, but has kept a low profile during recent clashes to preserve its interests in the gold-rich country, experts say.

Here is what we know about Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin's dealings in the troubled African nation:

- Russian ties -

Russia supplied weapons to Sudan during the three-decade-long rule of former president Omar al-Bashir, especially after the United Nations imposed sanctions on the country in 2005 over the Darfur conflict.

One by one, members of Iraq's minority Yazidi community light oil lamps to mark their New Year at a sacred shrine, but for Omar Sinan the celebration cannot erase the atrocities of jihadist rule.

In 2014, the Islamic State (IS) group swept across swathes of Iraq, carrying out horrific violence against the Kurdish-speaking community whose non-Muslim faith the extremists considered heretical.

IS massacred thousands of men and abducted thousands of women and girls as sex slaves.

Sudan has degenerated into a battleground for two rival generals, but they are backed by complex webs of international alliances with conflicting interests that could imperil the country's future, analysts say.

Missiles, air strikes and gunfire have been ceaseless in Khartoum since Saturday as army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan wages war with his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the powerful Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group.

Thousands of residents fled from Sudan's capital where witnesses reported bodies in the streets and embassies said more than 270 civilians had been killed in battles between the army and paramilitaries by Thursday, with no end in sight.

"Life in Khartoum is impossible if this war does not stop," said Alawya al-Tayeb, 33, on her way out of the city.

"I tried to make children not see the slain bodies on the streets," she said, adding that her youngsters are already suffering from trauma and will need treatment.

One man mimes his bones being broken, a woman recounts her surrender to religious brainwashing, and a third man replicates his confinement in a tiny prison cell.

With his new documentary "Where God is Not", French-Iranian filmmaker Mehran Tamadon hopes that the testimonies of former detainees who say they were tortured in Iran will "unsettle" some of their persecutors.

All recount abuse that occurred before the protests that are now shaking Iran, from the brutal repression of the 1980s in the immediate aftermath of the revolution up until the last decade.