AFP photographer Yasin Akgul, who was arrested this week covering Turkey's worst unrest in more than a decade, was freed Thursday from an Istanbul jail, AFP correspondents said, though his lawyer said the charges against him remain.

Akgul was detained in a pre-dawn raid at his home Monday and remanded in custody by an Istanbul court a day later.

He was charged with "taking part in illegal rallies and marches", drawing outrage from rights groups and the Paris-based news agency.

Mohammed Hussein Mohammedie was just 19 when he left Iraq and attempted the perilous English Channel crossing in November 2021.

He died alongside 26 others when their dinghy sank.

His family were refugees from Iran and suffered financial hardship, his father told a UK inquiry into the capsizing of the dinghy in the early hours of November 24, 2021.

"He wanted to be different. He wanted to be brave," Hussein Mohammedie said of his son's ambitions to leave Iraq, during the final days of the inquiry this week.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday warned "the fate of free societies" was linked to their fight against anti-Semitism, at a conference in Jerusalem, where the attendance of far-right European politicians has divided the international Jewish community.

Guests at the symposium on combating anti-Semitism included the leader of France's far right National Rally (RN), a party whose cofounder Jean-Marie Le Pen was known for his anti-Semitic comments.

Six Russian tourists, including two minors, died on Thursday when a submarine carrying dozens of passengers sank off a major resort town on Egypt's Red Sea coast.

The governor of Egypt's Red Sea region, Amr Hanafi, said "39 foreign tourists had been rescued and six others killed, with no one missing," according to a statement shared by his office, confirming that the six tourists were Russian.

Russian state news agencies quoted General Consul Viktor Voropaev as saying that two of the deceased were minors.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun visits France on Friday, his first trip to a European country since his January election and as Paris pushes Beirut for long-demanded political and economic reforms.

He is due to meet President Emmanuel Macron, who on a visit to Beirut days after Aoun's appointment said France would hold an international aid conference to support Lebanon's reconstruction after a devastating war between Israel and Hezbollah.

No date for the conference has been announced.

Turkey on Thursday stepped up a crackdown on media coverage of mass protests since the arrest of Istanbul's popular mayor, deporting a BBC journalist and imposing a 10-day broadcast ban on an opposition TV channel.

The moves came after police detained 11 Turkish journalists, including an AFP photographer, who were covering the worst street protests to hit Turkey since 2013.

The protests erupted on March 19 after the arrest and subsequent jailing of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's biggest political rival.

Thousands protested Thursday after Israel's parliament passed a law expanding the power of politicians over the appointment of judges pushed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

The approval came with Netanyahu's coalition, the most right-wing in Israeli history, locked in a standoff with the supreme court after the premier began proceedings to dismiss Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and announced the sacking of Ronen Bar, head of the internal security agency.

The Iran-backed Huthis said Thursday they targeted an Israeli airport and army site as well as a US warship, soon after Israel reported intercepting missiles launched from Yemen.

The Huthis "targeted Ben Gurion airport... with a ballistic missile... and a military target" south of Tel Aviv, their military spokesman Yahya Saree said.

Earlier Thursday, the Israeli military said it intercepted two missiles launched from Yemen "prior to crossing into Israeli territory" after it activated air raid sirens across multiple areas, including Jerusalem.

Sudan's gold industry has become the lifeblood of its war, with nearly all of the trade channelled through the United Arab Emirates, enriching both the army and paramilitaries, according to official and NGO sources.

The two-year conflict has decimated Sudan's economy, yet last month the army-backed government announced record gold production in 2024.

Demand for the country's vast gold reserves was "a key factor in prolonging the war," Sudanese economist Abdelazim al-Amawy told AFP.

The United States has removed multimillion-dollar bounties on leaders of Afghanistan's feared Haqqani militant network, including the current Taliban interior minister, the State Department and the Taliban government said.

The Haqqani network was responsible for some of the deadliest attacks during the decades-long war in Afghanistan.

The men remain on Washington's list of "specially designated global terrorists" but the bounty price has been scrapped.