France's highest court rules arrest warrant for ex-Syrian leader Assad is invalid
PARIS (Reuters) -France's Cour de Cassation, the country's highest court, ruled on Friday that a warrant issued for former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad was invalid.
(Reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten, Charlotte Van Campenhout, Writing by Makini Brice)
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The Star
30 minutes ago
- The Star
Ukraine bets big on interceptor drones as low-cost air shield
A view shows an interceptor FPV-drone of the 1129th Bilotserkivskyi Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment during its flight, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in an undisclosed location in Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko DNIPROPETROVSK REGION, Ukraine (Reuters) -When President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said at the end of last month that Ukraine needs $6 billion to fund the production of interceptor drones, setting a target of 1,000 a day, he had his reasons. Having already reshaped the battlefield by doing work once reserved for long-range missiles, field artillery and human intelligence, drones are now fighting Russian drones - a boon for Ukraine's dwindling stock of air defence missile systems. In the last two months, just one Ukrainian charity supplying aerial interceptor drones says its devices have downed around 1,500 of the drones that Russia has been sending to reconnoitre the battlefield or to bomb Ukraine's towns and cities. INTERCEPTORS HELP TO SAVE VALUABLE MISSILE STOCK Most importantly, such interceptors have the potential to be a cheap, plentiful alternative to using Western or Soviet-made air defence missiles, depleted by allies' inability, or reluctance, to replenish them. Colonel Serhiy Nonka's 1,129th air defence regiment, which started using them a year ago to ram and blow up enemy drones, estimated that they could down a Russian spotter drone at about a fifth of the cost of doing so with a missile. As a result, the depth to which these enemy reconnaissance drones can fly behind Ukrainian lines has decreased sharply, Nonka said. Some estimates put the interceptors' speed at over 300 kph (190 mph), although the precise figures are closely guarded. Other units are using interceptors to hit the long-range Shahed "kamikaze" drones that Russia launches at Kyiv and other cities, sometimes downing dozens a night, according to Zelenskiy. In the three and a half years since Russia invaded Ukraine at scale, drones have gone from an auxiliary tool to one of the primary means of waging war for both sides. To chase them down, interceptor drones need to be faster and more powerful than those that have already revolutionised long-range precision strikes and aerial reconnaissance. INTERCEPTOR DRONES TO BECOME UBIQUITOUS Like the First-Person View drones that now dominate the battlefield, interceptor drones are flown by a pilot on the ground through the video feed from an onboard camera. 'When we started to work (with these drones), the enemy would fly at 800 or a thousand metres," the officer who spearheaded their adoption by the 1,129th regiment, Oleksiy Barsuk. "Now it's three, four or five thousand – but their (camera) zoom is not infinite.' Most of the regiment's interceptor drones are provided by military charities that crowdfund weapons and equipment through donations from civilians. Taras Tymochko, from the largest of these, Come Back Alive, said it now supplies interceptors to 90 units. Since the project began a year ago, the organisation says over 3,000 drones have been downed by equipment it provided, nearly half of them in the last two months. However, such interceptors are still no match for incoming missiles or the fast jet-powered attack drones that Moscow has recently started deploying. The organisation reports the value of the downed Russian craft at $195 million, over a dozen times the cost of the drones and equipment handed over under the project. Sam Bendett, adjunct senior fellow at the Centre for a New American Security, said Russian forces were complaining about the effectiveness of large Ukrainian interceptors, but were also developing their own. 'We're starting to see more and more videos of various types of interceptions by both sides ... I think this is going to accelerate and it's going to become more and more ubiquitous in the coming weeks." (Editing by Kevin Liffey)
The Star
2 hours ago
- The Star
Hunger mounts, cemeteries grow in Sudan's besieged al-Fashir
(Reuters) -Hundreds of thousands of people under siege in the Sudanese army's last holdout in the western Darfur region are running out of food and coming under constant artillery and drone barrages, while those who flee risk cholera and violent attacks. Al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur state, is the biggest remaining frontline in the region between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), under fire at a pivotal point in a civil war now well into its third year. "The RSF's artillery and drones are shelling al-Fashir morning and night," one resident told Reuters. Electricity was completely shut down, bakeries were closed and medical supplies scarce, he added. "The number of people dying has increased every day and the cemeteries are expanding," he said. The war between the Sudanese army and the RSF erupted in April 2023 when the former allies clashed over plans to integrate their forces. The RSF made quick gains in central Sudan, including the capital Khartoum, but the army pushed them westward this year, leading to an intensification in fighting in al-Fashir. The city's fall would give the RSF control over nearly all of Darfur - a vast region bordering Libya, Chad, Central African Republic and South Sudan - and pave the way for what analysts say could be Sudan's de facto division. Besieged along with the army and its allies are hundreds of thousands of al-Fashir's residents and people displaced by previous attacks, many living in camps that monitors say are already in famine. One doctor, who asked not to be named for her safety, said hunger was an even bigger problem than the shelling. "The children are malnourished, the adults are malnourished. Even I today haven't had any breakfast because I can't find anything," she said. The RSF has blocked food supplies and aid convoys trying to reach the city have been attacked, locals said. Prices for the goods traders are able to smuggle in cost more than five times the national average. Many people have resorted to eating hay or ambaz, a type of animal feed made out of peanut shells, residents told Reuters. One advocacy group said even ambaz was running out. The RSF, which has its roots in the Janjaweed militias accused of atrocities in Darfur in the early 2000s, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. RISKS OF FLIGHT Many residents fleeing the city have sought shelter in Tawila, about 60 km (40 miles) west. Some of those who made it told Reuters they were attacked by groups of RSF fighters along the way. "We fled to Shagra (village) first before getting to Tawila and they attacked us again," 19-year-old Enaam Abdallah said. "If they find your phone, they take it. Money, they take it. A donkey or anything, they'll take it. They killed people in front of us and kidnapped girls in front of us," she said. On Monday, Emergency Lawyers, a human rights group, said at least 14 people fleeing al-Fashir were killed and dozens injured when they were attacked in a village along the route. Tawila is hosting more than half a million displaced people, most of whom have arrived since April, when the RSF stepped up its assault on al-Fashir and attacked the massive Zamzam displacement camp to the city's south. But Tawila offers little aid or shelter, as humanitarian organisations are stretched by foreign aid cuts. People who arrived there told Reuters they receive small amounts of grain, including sorghum and rice, but amounts were varying and insufficient. Sudan is in the throes of the rainy season, which in combination with poor living conditions and inadequate sanitation has led to an outbreak of cholera. Since mid-June, aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres has treated 2,500 cases of cholera, a spokesperson told Reuters. Some 52 people have died from the disease, according to the Coordinating Committee for Displaced People, a Sudanese advocacy group that operates across Darfur. Vaccines needed to stem the outbreak, if provided, will take time to arrive given the rains. An assessment by the Norwegian Refugee Council found that only 10% of people in Tawila had reliable access to water, and even fewer had access to latrines. Most families report eating one meal a day or less, the organisation said. "We don't have houses to protect us from the rain and we don't have tarps. We have to wait for the rain to stop for the children to sleep," mother-of-four Huda Ali said as she sat among roofless shelters made of straw. She said she tried to make sure her children washed their hands and only ate food that had been properly heated. The United Nations called for a humanitarian pause to fighting in al-Fashir last month as the rainy season began, but the RSF rejected the call. Fighting has also raged across Sudan's Kordofan region, which borders Darfur, as the two sides fight to demarcate clear zones of control amid stalled mediation efforts. (Reporting by Nafisa Eltahir, Khalid Abdelaziz, and Mohamed Jamal; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
The Star
3 hours ago
- The Star
Kremlin urges caution with nuclear rhetoric after Trump's submarine order
MOSCOW (Reuters) -The Kremlin said on Monday that everyone should be careful about nuclear rhetoric, in its first response to a statement by U.S. President Donald Trump that he had ordered a repositioning of U.S. nuclear submarines. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov played down the significance of Trump's announcement last Friday that he had ordered two subs to be moved to "the appropriate regions" in response to remarks from former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev about the risk of war between the nuclear-armed adversaries. "In this case, it is obvious that American submarines are already on combat duty. This is an ongoing process, that's the first thing," Peskov told reporters. "But in general, of course, we would not want to get involved in such a controversy and would not want to comment on it in any way," he added. "Of course, we believe that everyone should be very, very careful with nuclear rhetoric." Peskov said that Russia did not see Trump's statement as marking an escalation in nuclear tension. "We do not believe that we are talking about any escalation now. It is clear that very complex, very sensitive issues are being discussed, which, of course, are perceived very emotionally by many people," he said. Peskov declined to answer directly when asked whether the Kremlin had tried to warn Medvedev to tone down his online altercation with Trump. "Listen, in every country, members of the leadership... have different points of view on events that are taking place, different attitudes. There are people who are very, very tough-minded in the United States of America and in European countries, so this is always the case," he said. "But the main thing, of course, is the position of President (Vladimir) Putin," he said. "You know that in our country, foreign policy is formulated by the head of state, that is, President Putin." (Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Mark TrevelyanEditing by Gareth Jones)
