World News

The Iranian ayatollah was banned from Meta's social media platforms this week due to rhetoric in support of terrorist group Hamas.

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been banned from Facebook and Instagram.

"We have removed these accounts for repeatedly violating our Dangerous Organizations & Individuals policy," a Meta spokesperson told news outlet Agence France-Presse.

IRAN MANUFACTURED THE DRONE THAT KILLED 3 US SOLDIERS IN JORDAN, US OFFICIAL SAYS

The cited policy regulates rhetoric in support of violent groups or terrorist organizations.

"We do not allow organizations or individuals that proclaim a violent mission or are engaged in violence to have a presence on our platforms," the policy reads. "That includes those designated as terrorists by the U.S. government."

Khamenei began voicing regular support for Hamas on social media following the October 7 attack on Israel that killed over a thousand people.

US WITHDRAWAL FROM SYRIA WOULD PUT 'WHOLE REGION AT RISK,' ALLOW IRAN TO 'SOW' MORE DISCORD, EXPERT WARNS

Iran reportedly helped Hamas plan its attack on Israel, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah.   

Just days after Hamas' surprise assault on Israel, Khamenei reportedly said during a televised speech, "We kiss the hands of those who planned the attack." 

The Wall Street Journal reported in early October that Iranian security officials approved Hamas' plan to attack Israel during a recent meeting in Beirut. Hamas and Hezbollah leaders said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has worked with Hamas since August on air, land and sea attack plans.   

Iran backs multiple terrorist groups in the Middle East, including Iraq's Kata'ib Hezbollah, Yemen's Houthi rebels, Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

Each group, which receives support from Iran through several methods, has increasingly become a threat to members of the U.S. armed forces, U.S. allies, commercial global shipping and the regions in which they operate.

Fox News Digital's Greg Norman and Kyle Morris contributed to this report.

North Korea's supreme leader once again threatened military force against the country's southern counterpart 

Kim Jong Un made the comments Thursday during a 76th anniversary celebration of the North's Korean People's Army.

"Defining the South Korean puppets as the most harmful primary foe and invariable principal enemy and deciding it as a national policy to occupy their territory in the event of a contingency is a reasonable measure for the eternal safety of our country and the peace and stability of the future," Kim Jong Un said, according to Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

MOSCOW RELEASES $9M OF FROZEN ASSETS TO NORTH KOREA IN EXCHANGE FOR WEAPONS: REPORT

KCNA is a state-owned news outlet.

The statement from Kim Jong Un is the latest in a series of escalating comments from North Korean leadership threatening to destroy South Korea if prompted with an attack.

"Peace is not something that should be begged for or gained in exchange for talks," the dictator said.

KIM JONG UN ADMITS LACK OF 'BASIC LIVING NECESSITIES' IS 'SERIOUS POLITICAL ISSUE' IN NORTH KOREA

North Korea, a largely impoverished and ill-equipped nation, typically walks a thin line by voicing serious threats of military attack coded in the language of self-defense.

In recent weeks, Kim Jong Un has ordered a complete abandonment of efforts to eventually reunify with South Korea — a long-shot hope of both North and South since the beginning of the Korean War.

Kim has ramped up his country’s industrial efforts in recent months with the goal of building a nuclear-armed navy to counter what he perceives as threats from South Korea, the U.S. and Japan.

The navy "presents itself as the most important issue in reliably defending the maritime sovereignty of the country and stepping up the war preparations," Kim said  earlier this month during an inspection of the naval facility.

According to the Korean news agency, the warships being constructed in Nampho are related to a five-year military development plan set during a ruling party congress in early 2021. It did not specify the types of warships being built.

At the shipyard, Kim ordered workers to "unconditionally" complete the efforts within the timeframe of the plan that runs through 2025, KCNA said.

Fox News Digital's Lawrence Richard contributed to this report.

FIRST ON FOX – Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant says Israel has new evidence that dozens of individuals employed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) – the controversial U.N. aid agency responsible for the welfare of millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants – were directly involved in the atrocities carried out against Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, Fox News Digital has learned.

In an interview this week with Fox News Digital, Gallant said the country had knowledge that "dozens" of UNRWA staff were involved in the Hamas-led massacre. While he declined to give a specific figure, Gallant said it was a far greater number than the 12 employees already acknowledged – and dismissed last month – by the organization. 

Calling UNRWA "Hamas with a facelift," the defense chief, who is a member of Israel’s war cabinet and considered the highest ranking official after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that it was time for the world to "dismantle UNRWA" and create an alternative mechanism for providing aid to civilians in the war-stricken Gaza Strip.

"I think the world needs to wake up and address this issue in a different way, while also addressing Gaza’s needs," Gallant told Fox News Digital. "UNRWA is a group of terrorists who receive salaries from many countries – these countries gave money to people who raped, murdered and took people into captivity."

UN APPOINTS INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF UNRWA AMID ALLEGATIONS ITS WORKERS JOINED HAMAS-LED ATTACK ON ISRAEL

On Oct. 7, thousands of Palestinians, led by terrorists from Hamas’ elite Nukbah force, broke through the border fence from the Gaza Strip into Israel, murdering more than 1,200 people on multiple army bases, as well as in towns, villages, and at a music festival taking place in the area. In addition, some 240 individuals, including babies, children, women and the elderly, were taken hostage back to Gaza. More than 100 people are still being held captive some four months later. 

The minister highlighted that many of those murdered or kidnapped held dual Israeli and U.S. citizenship.

Last month, UNRWA, which receives billions of dollars in funding from multiple countries, including the U.S. and the EU, acknowledged previous Israeli revelations that 12 of its workers were directly involved in the murderous rampage. 

The organization’s Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said at the time that he had decided to "immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation in order to establish the truth without delay."

ISRAEL'S EVACUATION ORDERS COVER MORE THAN TWO-THIRDS OF THE GAZA STRIP AS WAR WITH HAMAS CONTINUES

"Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution," Lazzarini said in a statement, acknowledging that the "Israeli authorities had provided UNRWA with information."

Following Lazzarini’s announcement, at least 19 donor countries, including the U.S., froze their funding to the organization. On Tuesday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 30-19 to advance a bill to permanently cut all U.S. aid to UNRWA in response to the allegations.

There has, however, been some pushback against halting UNRWA’s funding, particularly at this critical stage when the organization, as well as other non-profits working inside Gaza, says a dire humanitarian crisis threatens thousands of people who have been forced from their homes during four months of fighting that has destroyed the healthcare system and other essential infrastructure. 

Despite its past and current controversies, UNRWA and its commissioner-general were shortlisted this week for the Nobel Peace Prize. 

On Monday, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres appointed a committee to look into what he said were "alleged breaches of U.N. staff regulations, rules and codes of conduct." Led by Catherine Colonna, a former French Foreign Minister, with assistance from three international research organizations, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights, the committee will begin its work next week and is expected to deliver an interim report sometime in March. A final report is slated to be completed by late April.

IDF VIDEO REVEALS TUNNEL USED TO HIDE HAMAS MEMBERS, HOSTAGES IN TERRORIST GROUP'S STRONGHOLD

A spokeswoman for UNRWA told Fox News Digital that to date "the Israeli government has officially informed UNRWA of ONLY about 12 staff who are allegedly involved in the attack against Israel on Oct. 7."

"That was in a meeting between the Israeli authorities and the UNRWA Commissioner General on 18 January," said the spokeswoman, adding, "No additional information has been shared by the government of Israel directly or indirectly or officially to UNRWA since then."

Israel has long claimed that UNRWA, which was established in 1949 to provide shelter, welfare and health services for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced when Israel was created, perpetuates the decadesold conflict. It points out that Palestinian refugees are the only group afforded their own separate aid agency – while refugees from almost every other global conflict past and present are cared for under the broader umbrella of the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees – and the only nation where refugee status is inherited.

Israel has also highlighted multiple times that UNRWA’s education system allows antisemitic tropes to be taught to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian pupils in its schools throughout Gaza, the West Bank and the Arab countries in which it operates. In January, UN Watch, an NGO that monitors U.N. bias against Israel, published messages celebrating the Oct. 7 massacre that were shared in a social media group made up of some 3,000 UNRWA school teachers.

One of the U.N.’s largest agencies, UNRWA employs more than 30,000 individuals worldwide and operates out of two main headquarters located in Amman, Jordan and Gaza. According to its latest figures, around 5.9 million Palestinian refugees are eligible to receive UNRWA’s services and its annual budget for 2022 was more than $1 billion. Ninety percent of that funding comes from U.N. member states, with the U.S., Germany and the EU being the largest donors.

Speaking to his cabinet members last week, Netanyahu said that the evidence that some of UNRWA’s staff "participated in the atrocities and abductions on October 7… only strengthens what we have known for a long time – UNRWA is not part of the solution, it is part of the problem."

Late last month, the Taliban ambassador to China, Bilal Karimi, presented his credentials to Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, making China the first country to accept a Taliban ambassador.

It is a "normal diplomatic arrangement for China to receive the new ambassador," Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters. "China believes that Afghanistan should not be excluded from the international community. …. We believe that diplomatic recognition of the Afghan government will come naturally as the concerns of various parties are effectively addressed," he said.

Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that he considers the relationship between China and the Taliban as "strictly transactional." He said the groups are at an impasse because the Taliban cannot support China’s ongoing oppression of its Muslim Uyghur population and the Taliban host Uyghur militants from the al Qaeda-affiliated Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) despite assuring China that the TIP will not be allowed to operate within Afghanistan

AFGHAN DIPLOMAT SHUNS TALIBAN RULE BY REFUSING TO LEAVE POST, CALLS ON WEST TO ‘MOBILIZE’ AGAINST ABUSES 

A Taliban spokesperson, the Chinese embassy and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to Fox News Digital’s questions about the status of the countries’ relations or the Taliban’s myriad restrictions against Afghan women.

Jason Howk, director of Global Friends of Afghanistan, told Fox News Digital that China’s actions are a form of "soft recognition" used by several nations that "are legitimizing the Taliban and Haqqani terror regime without … fully recognizing the terrorists as a legitimate government."

Howk says "women and girls in Afghanistan are in the worst spot when it comes to … confer[ring] legitimacy on the terrorists." Without censure from external actors, the Taliban and Haqqani Network are able to use "unlimited violence to shut down all opposition to their regime policies," leaving women with "no recourse for reversing their misery in an open-air prison."

CHINA MOVES IN ON AFGHANISTAN AS RELATIONSHIP WITH TALIBAN GROWS: ‘WE WELCOME CHINESE INVESTMENT’

In response to press questions about the diplomatic development, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said he "would let the Chinese government speak to … their relationship and whether they have formally recognized the Taliban," adding that the U.S. has informed Taliban leaders that "we will be looking to see them take a different course of action," especially with regard to Taliban human rights violations against Afghan women and girls.

Fueling concerns about China’s recognition of the Taliban are increased business relations between Kabul and Beijing. In the last year, Afghanistan has attracted multiple hundred-million and multibillion-dollar investments from Chinese companies interested in its reserves of copper, cobalt, gold, iron and lithium that are valued at about $1 trillion. China also agreed in May 2023 to expand the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of its controversial Belt and Road Initiative, to Afghanistan.

Some business ventures are already underway. After signing a $540 million deal with the Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co. in January 2023, Sinopec of China increased Afghanistan’s crude oil production by 300% as of December. The Taliban spokesperson for the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum told Bloomberg that China has drilled about 10 wells in Afghanistan and produces about 5,000 barrels of oil per day.

UN ADDS AFGHAN CRISIS TO AGENDA AFTER TALIBAN BANS WOMEN, GIRLS FROM SCHOOL, PUBLIC SPACES, JOBS

Other projects have hit snags. Chinese investors who purchased the contract to mine Afghanistan’s Mes Aynak copper reserves more than a decade ago have not started work. The copper mine is situated amid the ruins of a 1,000- to 2,000-year-old city. Though open pit mining of Mes Aynak is the more economical option for exploiting its resources, doing so would disturb the area’s archeological ruins.

Another possible future link between China and the Taliban could spell trouble for the Taliban's enemies. Reuters reported in September 2023 that the Taliban seek to create a "large-scale camera surveillance network" in Afghan cities, with Chinese company Huwaei providing a "verbal agreement" to support an installment contract.

Huawei products are banned in the U.S. and many Western countries. The Washington Post found that Huawei facial-recognition technology has been used to track China’s Uyghur population. Roggio says the Taliban "would use such technologies to advance its interests with China, including spying on problem elements of Uyghurs sheltering in Afghanistan." The technology also poses a risk to a population of 3,000 Uyghurs who fled to Afghanistan to escape persecution in China, according to The China Project.

For Afghans who already fear the biometric technology that Taliban members are said to be using at some of their checkpoints, the proposed surveillance network is likely to present new concerns.

Whether or not China officially recognizes the Taliban, its growing relationship with Afghanistan’s ruling party is "a bitter pill to swallow" for Mariam Solaimankhil, a parliamentarian from the former Afghan government. Solaimankhil told Fox News Digital that she feels the Chinese are "telling [Afghan women that] our struggles and pleas for freedom are worth less than political and economic gains. The message is loud and clear: Afghan women’s rights are up for sale, and the Chinese are all too ready to make a deal."

Authorities in a northern Indian town imposed an indefinite curfew and ordered police to shoot violators after clashes over the construction of a Muslim seminary and a mosque left at least five people dead and more than 150 injured, officials said Friday.

The violence Thursday also led authorities to shut down internet services and schools in Haldwani, Uttarakhand state government official Chief Radha Raturi said.

The situation was brought under control with nearly 4,000 police officers rushing to the area, said police officer A.P. Anshuman. He said police were ordered to shoot protesters violating the curfew.

MILITANTS IN INDIAN-CONTROLLED KASHMIR OPEN FIRE ON PUNJABI WORKERS, KILLING 1

On Thursday, thousands of protesters tried to block government officials and police who arrived to demolish the seminary and mosque following a court order that the structures were being built on government land without local authorization, Anshuman said.

As violence escalated, police fired live ammunition and tear gas to disperse protesters using petrol bombs and stones to attack a police station and set several vehicles on fire, Anshuman said.

State police chief Abhinav Kumar said five people died in the violence. He did not give details but said no fresh violence was reported on Friday.

Government administrator Vandana Singh Chauhan over 150 police officers were injured and several people were hospitalized.

Anshuman did not say whether police fire killed the protesters. He also didn't identify the religion of the victims.

Haldwani is about 170 miles northeast of New Delhi.

Muslim groups and rights organizations have accused India’s Hindu-nationalist government of demolishing their homes and businesses in the past. Officials have defended their actions, saying they are only targeting illegal buildings, but critics call it a growing pattern of "bulldozer justice" aimed at punishing activists from minority group.

INDIA LAW ENFORCEMENT CLEAR SUSPECTED CHINESE SPY PIGEON

In a report released this week, Amnesty International condemned several instances of bulldozers razing Muslims’ homes, businesses and places of worship, which it said was often done under the guise of illegal encroachment and without adequate notice.

"The unlawful demolition of Muslim properties by the Indian authorities, peddled as ‘bulldozer justice’ by political leaders and media, is cruel and appalling. Such displacement and dispossession is deeply unjust, unlawful and discriminatory," said Agnès Callamard, the rights group’s secretary general.

The group’s researchers found that between April and June 2022, authorities in five states used demolitions as punishment following incidents of communal violence or protests, and documented at least 128 demolitions during this period.

Critics and opponents have long accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of looking the other way and sometimes enabling hate speech against Muslims, who comprise 14% of India’s 1.4 billion people.

Modi’s Bhartiya Janata Party denies the accusations.

Malaysia's top court on Friday struck down Shariah-based criminal laws in an opposition-run state, saying they encroached on federal authority. Islamists denounced the decision and said it could undermine religious courts across the Muslim-majority nation.

In an 8-1 ruling, the nine-member Federal Court panel invalidated 16 laws created by the Kelantan state government, which imposed punishments rooted in Islam for offenses that included sodomy, sexual harassment, incest, cross-dressing and destroying or defiling places of worship.

The court said that the state could not make Islamic laws on those topics because they are covered by Malaysian federal law.

THAILAND AND MUSLIM SEPARATIST REBELS AGREE TO END CONFLICT, MALAYSIAN FACILITATOR SAYS

Malaysia has a dual-track legal system, with both government laws and Shariah — Islamic law based on the Quran and a set of scriptures known as the hadith — covering personal and family matters for Muslims. Ethnic Malays, all of whom are considered Muslim in Malaysian law, make up two-thirds of Malaysia’s 33 million people. The population also includes large Chinese and Indian minorities.

The case decided Friday was filed in 2022 by two Muslim women from Kelantan, a rural northeastern state whose population is 97% Muslim. The conservative Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, or PAS, has governed the state since 1990.

Lawyer Nik Elin Nik Abdul Rashid, who brought the challenge to the state laws with her daughter, said the court’s ruling attested to the Malaysian Constitution as the supreme law of the country.

Hundreds of Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party supporters gathered outside the Federal Court calling for the protection of Shariah.

"We are very sad today. This is a black Friday for Islamic Shariah laws," PAS Secretary-General Takiyuddin Hassan told reporters. "When Shariah laws in one locality become invalid, this means that Shariah laws in other states may now face the same risk."

Malaysian media quoted Chief Justice Maimun Tuan Mat as saying the ruling does not dispute the position of Islam as the official religion and dismissing claims that the court was trying to curb the powers of Shariah courts.

The PAS is a member of the opposition bloc but is the single biggest party represented in Parliament. It also runs the governments in four of Malaysia’s 13 states.

The party favors tough Islamic legal norms and once sought to implement a criminal code known as "hudud," which prescribes penalties such as amputations for theft and death by stoning for adultery. The federal government blocked the move.

Mohamad Na’im Mokhtar, the government minister in charge of religious affairs, promised that the court ruling woold not affect the position of Shariah courts. He urged Muslims to stay calm and said that ongoing efforts to empower Shariah courts would continue.

The issue could pose a challenge for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who is struggling to win Malay support after taking office following a 2022 general election.

Anwar has also disputed PAS's assertion that the court case was an attack on Shariah. He has said the the root issue was about state jurisdiction and that the matter shouldn't be politicized.

The suspect in a London chemical attack that left a woman hospitalized with life-changing injuries and injured her two young daughters likely has vanished in the River Thames, police said Friday.

Metropolitan Police Commander Jon Savell said closed-circuit television images showed Abdul Ezedi walking on a bridge over the river but never exiting it. Investigators concluded he had probably "gone into the water,'' although they haven't found a body.

A MAN EXTRADITED FROM SCOTLAND CONTINUES TO CLAIM HE'S NOT THE PERSON CHARGED IN 2 UTAH RAPE CASES

"At this time of year, the Thames is very fast flowing, very wide and full of lots of snags,'' Savell told reporters. "It is quite likely that if he has gone in the water, he won’t appear for maybe up to a month, and it’s not beyond possibility that he may never actually surface."

Police launched a nationwide manhunt for Ezedi, 35, after the woman and her daughter were attacked with an alkaline substance in the Clapham area of south London on Jan. 31. Images of Ezedi captured after the attack revealed he suffered significant injuries to the right side of his face.

The woman had previously been in a relationship with him, according to police.

British media reported that Ezedi is an Afghan refugee who was granted asylum even after he was convicted of a sex offense in Britain in 2018. Ezedi’s asylum application was initially rejected, but he was later given permission to remain in the U.K. after claiming that he had converted to Christianity, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported.

Police said their inquiries continue.

Dries van Agt, the Christian Democrat prime minister of the Netherlands from 1977 until 1982, has died by euthanasia, "hand in hand" together with his wife, according to the human rights organization he founded. They both were 93.

The news was made public on Friday by The Rights Forum, which said the couple died Monday and and would be buried in a private ceremony in the eastern city of Nijmegen.

"He died hand in hand with his beloved wife Eugenie van Agt-Krekelberg, the support and anchor with whom he was together for more than 70 years and whom he always continued to refer to as ‘my girl,’" the non-profit organization said in a statement.

NAMIBIAN PRESIDENT HAGE GEINGOB DEAD AT 82

The two both had been in fragile health for some time. In 2019, Van Agt suffered a brain hemorrhage while giving a speech at a commemoration event for Palestinians and never fully recovered.

A Christian Democrat from traditional Dutch stock, Van Agt became increasingly progressive after he departed politics, ultimately leaving his party in 2017 over ideological differences with the center-right Christian Democratic Appeal's approach to Israel and the Palestinians.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who referred to Van Agt as his "great-great-grandfather in office," spoke highly of the former politician.

"With his flowery and unique language, his clear convictions and his striking presentation, Dries van Agt gave color and substance to Dutch politics in a time of polarization and party renewal," Rutte said in a statement.

The Dutch royal family also praised him. "He took administrative responsibility in a turbulent time and managed to inspire many with his striking personality and colorful style," King Willem-Alexander, Queen Máxima and Princess Beatrix said in a joint statement.

Van Agt was known for his archaic references and grandiose language, as well as his passion for cycling. He was forced to quit that hobby in 2019 after a fall.

Together with the right-wing Liberal Party, the Christian Democrat Appeal governed the Netherlands with Van Agt as prime minister from 1977 until 1981. After elections, he again became prime minister, forming a coalition with the Labor Party and the centrist Democrats 66 in a government that held for a year.

Following a visit to Israel in 1999, he became increasingly vocal about his support for the Palestinian people. He referred to his experience of the trip as a "conversion."

In 2009, he founded The Rights Forum, which advocates for a "just and sustainable Dutch and European policy regarding the Palestine/Israel issue," according to the non-profit organization.

He is survived by his three children.

The leaders of Serbia and Kosovo sparred at the United Nations over the latter's ban of the use of the Serbian currency in areas where minority Serbs live, the latest crisis between the two governments.

Tensions escalated after the government of Kosovo, a former Serbian province, banned banks and other financial institutions in the Serb-populated areas from using the dinar in local transactions, starting Feb. 1, and imposed the euro.

The dinar was widely used in ethnic Serbian-dominated areas, especially in Kosovo's north, to pay pensions and salaries to staff in Serbian parallel institutions, including schools and hospitals. Serbia said last week it would seek an emergency meeting at the U.N. Security Council over the issue.

EUROPEAN UNION LAWMAKERS DEMAND PROBE INTO ALLEGED VOTE FRAUD ALLEGATIONS IN SERBIA

In 1999, a 78-day NATO bombing campaign ended a war between Serbian government forces and ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo. Serbian forces were pushed out but Belgrade never recognized Kosovo’s independence and still considers it a Serbian province.

At a heated meeting on Thursday, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic told the council that abolishing the dinar was a push to make living conditions unbearable for the minority Serb community with the goal of expelling them.

He said it was "nothing more than another in a series of facts of persecution, and a systematic and widespread attack on the Serbian population — in one word, a crime against humanity."

Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti retorted that claims his country is conducting an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Serbs are "a lie," and said that abolishing the dinar will prevent criminal groups in Kosovo from receiving illegal cash.

"Serbs who leave Kosovo just as those who leave Serbia, do so to pursue opportunities in Western Europe, not to flee some fictional ethnic cleansing campaign," Kurti said.

The European Union and the United States expressed concern that Kosovo’s ban of the dinar could raise tensions in an already volatile region and called for consultations and a delay in the ban.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield urged an immediate postponement of the ban, telling the council "the decision was taken without adequate preparation or consultation with the local population."

She also expressed deep concern at "uncoordinated actions" taken by the Kosovo government, including law enforcement operations at offices of Serb-supported institutions in western Kosovo and the nongovernmental Center for Peace and Tolerance in the capital of Pristina, an ethnic Serb institution where papers and computers were confiscated.

Russia’s deputy ambassador Dmitry Polyansky strongly criticized Kurti for calling ethnic Serbs "criminals" and accused Kosovo of organizing "anti-Serbian terror" and trying to get rid of the "non-Albanian population."

He said the ban of the dinar was "a criminal and deceitful step" and that about 100,000 non-Albanians risk being left without their pensions, scholarships and salaries. Polyansky also said it "undermines all efforts made by the international community to find compromises and lasting solutions and dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina."

"As a result, what we have is a direct risk that there will be a new outbreak of violence in the Balkans," he added.

At least 18 people were killed Friday when the bus they were traveling on collided with a truck in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa, authorities said.

The bus collided with the truck as it tried to make a turn along a highway leading to the N’Djili International Airport, said Anaddolu Nganga, mayor of Kimbaseke municipality where the accident happened.

HIGH-SPEED TRUCK CRASH KILLS 18 IN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO, POLICE SAY

"All the bodies of the victims were taken to the morgue of the nearby hospital," Nganga said. Only two of the passengers survived with broken arms, he said.

Freddy Dongo, the head of the local road traffic agency, urged drivers to avoid excessive speeding, which is believed to be the cause of the accident.

"I also recommend the installation of concrete separators to avoid accidents," said Dongo, adding that an investigation will be carried out into the latest crash.

Road crashes along major roads in Congo are common. Local authorities have promised to educate drivers and enforce traffic rules but adherence to those rules is still low and defaulters often evade penalties.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday said he has ordered the military to prepare a plan to evacuate civilians from Rafah ahead of an expected Israeli invasion of the densely populated southern Gaza city.

The announcement came after heavy international criticism, including from the U.S., of Israeli intentions to move ground forces into the city that borders Egypt. Rafah had a prewar population of roughly 280,000, and according to the United Nations is now home to some 1.4 million additional people living with relatives, in shelters or in sprawling tent camps after fleeing fighting elsewhere in Gaza.

Israel says that Rafah is the last remaining Hamas stronghold in Gaza after more than four months of war.

ISRAELIS DISPLACED BY TERROR ATTACKS RECEIVE THOUSANDS OF POUNDS OF DONATED FOOD WITH BLOGGER'S HELP

"It is impossible to achieve the goal of the war of eliminating Hamas by leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah," Netanyahu’s office said. "On the contrary, it is clear that intense activity in Rafah requires that civilians evacuate the areas of combat."

It said he had ordered the military and security officials to come up with a "combined plan" that includes both a mass evacuation of civilians and the destruction of Hamas’ forces in the town.

Israel declared war after several thousand Hamas militants burst across the border into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage. An Israeli air and ground offensive has killed roughly 28,000 Palestinians, most of them women and minors, according to local health officials. Roughly 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced, and the territory has plunged into a humanitarian crisis with shortages of food and medical services.

Netanyahu has largely rebuffed international criticism of the civilian death toll, saying that Hamas is responsible for endangering civilians by operating and hiding in residential areas. But that criticism has grown in recent days as Netanyahu and other leaders vow to move into Rafah.

U.S. President Joe Biden said Thursday that Israel’s conduct in the war is "over the top," the harshest U.S. criticism yet of its close ally. The State Department said an invasion of Rafah in the current circumstances "would be a disaster."

The operation will be a challenge on many levels. It remains unclear where civilians can go. The Israeli offensive has caused widespread destruction, especially in northern Gaza, and hundreds of thousands of people do not have homes to return to.

In addition, Egypt has warned that any movement of Palestinians across the border into Egypt would threaten the four-decade-old peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. The border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which is mostly closed, serves as the main entry point for humanitarian aid.

Israel already has begun to strike Rafah from the air. Airstrikes overnight and into Friday hit two residential buildings in Rafah, while two other sites were bombed in central Gaza, including one that damaged a kindergarten-turned-shelter for displaced Palestinians. Twenty-two people were killed, according to AP journalists who saw the bodies arriving at hospitals.

Growing Friction

Comments from top U.S. officials about Rafah have signaled growing friction with Netanyahu after a visit to the region by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Blinken, who has been working with Egypt and Qatar on trying to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, left the region Thursday without an agreement. But he said he believed it was still possible to strike a deal that would include an extended pause in fighting in exchange for the release of many of the more than 100 hostages held by Hamas.

Netanyahu appeared to snub Blinken, saying he will settle for nothing short of "total victory." The Israeli leader has said the war seeks to destroy Hamas’ military and governing capabilities and return all hostages home. With Blinken still in town, Netanyahu said achieving those goals would require an operation in Rafah. Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, said Thursday that going ahead with such an offensive "with no planning and little thought in an area where there is sheltering of a million people would be a disaster."

John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesman, said an Israel ground offensive in Rafah is "not something we would support."

Aid agency officials have also sounded warnings over the prospect of a Rafah offensive. "We need Gaza’s last remaining hospitals, shelters, markets and water systems to stay functional," said Catherine Russell, head of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF. "Without them, hunger and disease will skyrocket, taking more child lives."

With the war now in its fifth month, Israeli ground forces are still focusing on the city of Khan Younis, just north of Rafah, but Netanyahu has repeatedly said Rafah will be next, creating panic among hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

SENATE REPUBLICANS PREPARE FOR LONG HAUL IN FIGHT OVER UKRAINE, ISRAEL AID

Airstrikes Overnight

Shortly after midnight Friday, a residential building was struck near Rafah’s Kuwaiti Hospital, killing five people from the al-Sayed family, including three children and a woman. A second Rafah strike killed three more people.

Another overnight strike, in the central town of Deir al-Balah, claimed nine lives. Also in central Gaza, a strike hit near a kindergarten-turned-shelter, damaging the building. It killed five and wounded several more people. Witnesses said shelter residents were asleep at the time.

A woman, carrying a small girl in her arms, shouted as she arrived at the local Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital: "What can we do? This is the work of the coward Zionist enemy that chooses innocent civilians. This girl is firing rockets at the Jews? May God help us."

Some of the wounded children were treated while lying on the floor.

Working for a Ceasefire

Israel’s 4-month-old air and ground offensive — among the most destructive in recent history — has killed 27,947 Palestinians and wounded more than 67,000, local health officials said Friday. The war has driven most people from their homes and pushed a quarter of the population toward starvation, according to the U.N.

Biden has said said he continues to work "tirelessly" to press Israel and Hamas to agree on an extended pause in fighting.

Netanyahu has rejected Hamas’ demands for a hostage deal, which includes an end to the war and the release of hundreds of veteran Palestinian prisoners serving long sentences in Israel for deadly attacks carried out as part of the long-running conflict. Netanyahu dismissed Hamas’ demands as delusional, even as Blinken said he believes continued negotiations, through mediators Egypt and Qatar, are possible.

Israel’s war goals appear increasingly elusive, as Hamas reemerges in parts of northern Gaza, which was the first target of the offensive and has seen widespread destruction. Israel has only rescued one hostage, while Hamas says several have been killed in airstrikes or failed rescue missions.

Egypt has sent about 40 tanks and armored personnel carriers to northeastern Sinai within the past two weeks as part of a series of measures to bolster security on its border with Gaza, two Egyptian security sources said.

The deployment took place ahead of the expansion of Israeli military operations around Gaza's southern city of Rafah, where much of its population has sought safety, sharpening Egyptian fears that Palestinians could be forced en masse out of the enclave.

Israeli warplanes struck Rafah, which adjoins the border, on Friday and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military to prepare to evacuate the displaced people.

RIGHTS GROUP SLAMS EGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT FOR CONVICTING EL-SISI CHALLENGER: 'CLEAR MESSAGE'

Since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted on Oct. 7, Egypt constructed a concrete border wall that reaches 6.6 yards into the ground and is topped with barbed wire. It has also built berms and enhanced surveillance at border posts, the security sources said.

Last month Egypt's state information service detailed some of the measures it had taken on its border in response to Israeli suggestions that Hamas had obtained weapons smuggled from Egypt. Three lines of barriers made any overground or underground smuggling impossible, it said.

Images shared with Reuters by the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, an independent group, appear to show the installation of the wall in December, with several berms running behind it.

Later pictures, which the group said were taken in early February, appear to show three vertical layers of coiled barbed wire being installed on top of the wall. Reuters was not able to independently verify the images.

Satellite images from January and December also show some new construction along the 13 km (8 mile) border close to Rafah and the extension of a wall to the sea's edge at its northern end.

Egyptian and Israeli authorities did not respond to requests for comment.

The new measures come after an expansion of security in northern Sinai as Egypt's military consolidated its grip against an Islamist insurgency that escalated a decade ago.

Well before the current war in Gaza broke out, Egypt said it had destroyed tunnels through which smuggling to Gaza had previously flourished, and had cleared a buffer zone close to the border.

On the approach to the Rafah Crossing with Gaza, the remains of razed houses can be seen along with miles of concrete walls that have been built parallel to the sea and near roads close to the border.

Egypt and Israel have been at peace for more than four decades and in recent years have extended ties through Israeli exports of natural gas and security coordination around their shared border and the Gaza Strip.

The two countries have maintained a blockade on Gaza, strictly limiting the movement of people and goods across its borders, after Hamas took control there in 2007.

But the relationship has come under strain because of Israel's current military operation in Gaza, unleashed in retaliation for an Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.

Egypt has repeatedly raised the alarm over the possibility that Israel's offensive could displace desperate Gazans into Sinai, while bristling over suggestions from Israel that it would retake full control of the Gaza-Egypt border corridor in order to ensure the Palestinian territory's demilitarization.

In January, Egypt announced two operations to tackle drug smuggling in northeastern Sinai in an apparent effort to demonstrate its control of the area.

An Israeli official told Reuters that restructuring of security on the border, where he said a small number of tunnels remained, was under regular discussion by the two countries.

Israel would try to organize for the movement of displaced Palestinians northwards within Gaza ahead of any military operation there, the official said.

Egyptian security sources have played down any discussions and said they are prioritizing efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza. The state information service called accusations of smuggling "lies" intended to give cover to Israel's objective of occupying the border buffer zone, known as the Philadelphi Corridor.

Egypt has also blamed Israel for limiting deliveries of aid into Gaza, where the risk of famine is growing and aid workers have warned of disease spreading.

Israel has denied holding up or rejecting humanitarian supplies.

Egypt has framed its opposition to the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza as part of wider Arab rejection of any repeat of what Palestinians mourn as the "Nakba", or "catastrophe", when some 700,000 fled or were forced from their homes in the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948.

Diplomats and analysts say Egypt is also concerned about infiltration by Hamas and hosting a large refugee population. In October, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi warned that displacement could turn Sinai into a base for attacks against Israel. 

President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan has officially won another term in office with 92.12% of the vote, the country’s Central Election Commission said Friday.

Election monitors, however, have expressed concern about the vote. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said Thursday that the election took place in a restrictive environment with no real political competition.

Aliyev has been in power for more than 20 years. He had called an early vote while he was enjoying a surge in popularity after his forces swiftly reclaimed the Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists who had controlled it for three decades. He is now heading into another seven-year term in office.

AZERBAIJANI PRESIDENT ILHAM ALIYEV RE-ELECTED IN LANDSLIDE

The election Wednesday, "took place in a restrictive environment and ... was marked with the stifling of critical voices," said Artur Gerasymov, special coordinator and leader of the OSCE group of election observers in Azerbaijan.

Aliyev was "not meaningfully challenged," and because of limitations on independent media, civil society and other political parties, the contest was "devoid of genuine pluralism," Gerasymov said Thursday. He added that the "near absence of analytical reporting" in Azerbaijani media hampered voters’ ability to make an informed choice.

Analysts suggested that Aliyev moved the election forward to capitalize on his burst in popularity following September’s blitz in Karabakh. He will be in the limelight again in November when Azerbaijan, a country which relies heavily on revenues from fossil fuels, hosts a U.N. climate change conference.

Aliyev, 62, has been in power since 2003 when he succeeded his father, who was Azerbaijan’s Communist boss and then president for a decade when the country became independent after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

Aliyev had declared that he wanted this election to "mark the beginning of a new era," in which Azerbaijan has full control over its territory. He and his family cast their ballots in Khankendi, a city that was called Stepanakert by Armenians when it housed the headquarters of the self-declared separatist government.

The region, which had been known internationally as Nagorno-Karabakh, and large swaths of surrounding territory came under full control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia at the end of a separatist war in 1994.

Azerbaijan regained parts of Karabakh and most of the surrounding territory in 2020 in a six-week war that ended with a Moscow-brokered truce. In December 2022, Azerbaijan started blockading the road linking the region with Armenia, causing food and fuel shortages, and then launched a September 2023 blitz that routed separatist forces in just one day and forced them to lay down their arms.

More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled the region, leaving it nearly deserted.

Aliyev’s time in power has been marked by the introduction of increasingly strict laws that curb political debate, as well as arrests of opposition figures and independent journalists — including in the runup to the presidential election.

Azerbaijan’s two main opposition parties — Musavat and the People’s Front of Azerbaijan — did not take part in the vote, and some opposition members alleged it may have been rigged.

A volcanic eruption in southwestern Iceland appears to have subsided, though scientists are warning that the area may experience further eruptions in the coming months.

Iceland’s Meteorological Office said late Thursday that the eruption had decreased significantly.

ICELAND VOLCANIC ERUPTION JUST MILES FROM CAPITAL CAUGHT ON INCREDIBLE VIDEO

The eruption began at about 6 a.m. local time on Thursday in the area northeast of Mount Sýlingarfell, the Met Office said. It prompted the evacuation of the popular Blue Lagoon thermal spa and cut off heat and hot water to several communities on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwestern corner of the island.

"Although the eruption has significantly decreased it is still too early to declare if it has come to an end,'' the Met Office said Friday. The office said it was maintaining a close watch on the area.

Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir said authorities hope to restore hot water to the area by midday on Friday, national broadcaster RUV reported.

The eruption site is about 2½ miles northeast of Grindavík, a coastal town of 3,800 people that was evacuated before a previous eruption on Dec. 18. The town wasn’t threatened by Thursday’s eruption.

Benedikt Ófeigsson, a geophysicist at the Icelandic Met Office, told RUV that the area can expect an eruption every month or so over the next few months.

"In the long term, it’s very difficult to say, but in the short term, the next months, we will probably continue to see repeated magma intrusions and eruptions,’’ he said.

Farmers in Italy, Spain and Poland demonstrated Friday as part of ongoing protests against European Union farming policies and to demand measures to combat production cost hikes, reduced profits and unfair competition from non-EU countries.

Similar protests have taken place across the bloc in recent weeks. Farmers complain that the 27-nation EU's policies on the environment and other matters are a financial burden and make their products more expensive than non-EU imports.

The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, has made some concessions over the last few weeks, including shelving plans to halve the use of pesticides and other dangerous substances. Nonetheless, the protests have spread.

FARMERS BLOCK SPANISH HIGHWAYS IN PROTEST OF EUROPEAN UNION BUREAUCRACY

In Poland, where imports of cheap grain, milk and other produce from Ukraine have caused particular anger, farmers drove tractors across the country to slow down traffic and block major roads, some displaying signs that read "EU Policy is Ruining Polish Farmers."

Access roads to border crossings with Ukraine in Hrebenne and Dorohusk, in the east, were blocked by tractors, with only a trickle of traffic being let through.

In the western city of Poznan, the police estimated that some 1,400 tractors entered the streets and reached the office of the regional governor. Protesters lit flares there and placed a coffin, symbolizing the death of Polish agriculture, as well as a manure-filled wheelbarrow with a EU flag stuck in it. There was no violence reported.

SPANISH MIGRANT CRISIS ESCALATES AS OVER 1,000 MIGRANTS REACH CANARY ISLANDS IN 3 DAYS

Agriculture Minister Czesław Siekierski said he understood the grievances and he would talk to the farmers, who said they were also protesting on behalf of Polish consumers.

Deputy Prime Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz called on the EU commissioner for agriculture, Janusz Wojciechowski, Poland's former agriculture minister, to resign. There was no immediate reaction from Wojciechowski.

The organizers, the Solidarity Union of Individual Farmers, said EU policies triggered the protest.

"The protest is directed against the policy of the European Union, against the Green Deal and against the policy that allows for an uncontrolled inflow of farming produce from Ukraine," Adrian Wawrzyniak, spokesman for the union, told The Associated Press.

He said storage warehouses are filled with Ukraine grain, causing prices to fall 40% in 2023. Demand for Polish sugar, milk and meat has fallen: as a result, farmers are holding off on investments.

Farmers are also concerned that the EU’s Green Deal, which calls for limits on the use of chemicals and on greenhouse gas emissions, will result in a reduction in production and income. They say that the EU’s requirement for 4% of farmland to be devoted to biodiversity and landscape protection will also have a negative effect on their output.

In Italy, a small convoy of tractors moved across Rome’s historical center to the Colosseum, escorted by police patrols.

Farmers have been peacefully protesting outside of Rome and across the country for days to express their discontent

Premier Giorgia Meloni has repeatedly said that her right-wing government has already addressed some of the farmers’ key requests, but many of them feel neglected.

A meeting between a delegation of farmers’ institutional organizations and Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida has been called for Friday afternoon. Many Italian farmers say they don’t feel represented by large sector associations, which they say are removed from their daily struggles.

Farmers in Spain staged similar actions in their fourth straight day of protests.

Besides EU policies, Spanish farmers maintain that a law aimed at guaranteeing that wholesale major supermarket buyers pay fair prices for their goods isn't being enforced while consumer prices soar.

PROTESTING FRENCH FARMERS PLAN 'SIEGE OF THE CAPITAL' IN PARIS, REJECTING GOVERNMENT CONCESSIONS

Friday's protests centered around the northern cities of Oviedo, Pamplona and Zaragoza, with tractors clogging several city streets and commuter roads. In many places, farmers kept their protests going overnight.

A group not affiliated with Spain’s three main farming organizations has called for farmers to move on Madrid at midnight for a Saturday protest near the headquarters of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's Socialist party.

The demonstrations are expected to continue over the coming weeks with a major protest being organized in the capital for Feb. 21.

Several Spanish media reports have linked many of the protests to conservative and hard-right groups.

Police said that 20 people have been arrested during this week's demonstrations.

One of the most prominent figures in the far-right Alternative for Germany party will go on trial in April on charges related to his alleged use in a 2021 speech of a slogan used by the Nazis' SA stormtroopers, a court said Friday.

Björn Höcke, 51, is the party's leader in the eastern state of Thuringia and an influential figure on the hard right of Alternative for Germany, or AfD. He is set to lead its campaign in a state election set for Sept. 1.

In the case scheduled for trial at the state court in Halle on April 18, Höcke is charged with using symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations. He is accused of ending a speech in nearby Merseburg in May 2021 with the words "Everything for Germany!"

PROMINENT GERMAN POLITICIAN CHARGED WITH ALLEGED USE OF NAZI SLOGAN

Prosecutors contend he was aware of the origin of the phrase as an SA slogan. They have said Höcke’s lawyers denied that his words had any "criminal relevance."

The court scheduled four sessions through May 14.

Höcke also faces trial on charges of incitement in a separate case related to a 2022 Telegram post. The court in Muehlhausen, located in his home state, has set no dates yet.

AfD’s branch in Thuringia has a particularly radical reputation and is viewed by Germany's domestic intelligence agency as a "proven right-wing extremist" group.

GERMAN POPULISTS TO DISCIPLINE MEMBER FOR HOLOCAUST REMARKS

Höcke once called the Holocaust memorial in Berlin a "monument of shame" and called for Germany to perform a "180-degree turn" in how it remembers its past. A party tribunal at the time rejected a bid to have him expelled.

National polls in recent months have shown AfD in second place behind the mainstream conservative opposition, and the party is particularly strong in the country's formerly communist east.

In recent weeks, there has been a string of large protests against the far right following a report that extremists met to discuss deporting millions of immigrants, including some with German citizenship, and that some members of AfD were present.

Tears welled in Alex's eyes and he pressed his head into his hands as he thought about more than a year of birthdays and holidays without his mother, who was swept up by El Salvador's police as she walked to work in a clothing factory.

"I feel very alone," the 10-year-old said last month as he sat next to his 8-year-old brother and their grandmother. "I’m scared, feeling like they could come and they could take away someone else in my family."

Forty thousand children have seen one parent or both detained in President Nayib Bukele’s nearly two-year war on El Salvador’s gangs, according to the national social services agency. The records were shared with The Associated Press by an official with the National Council on Children and Adolescents, who insisted on anonymity due to fear of government reprisal against those violating its tight control of information. The official said many more children have jailed parents but aren't in the records.

EL SALVADOR'S PRESIDENT WINS LANDSLIDE RE-ELECTION, BLINKEN CONGRATULATES BUKELE

By arresting more than 1% of his country's population, Bukele, who won reelection to a second five-year term Sunday, is trying to break the chain of violence that has ravaged El Salvador for decades. But many worry that debilitating poverty, long-term trauma and government failures to protect their children could instead fuel a future wave of gang warfare.

"Kids aren’t spared when their dad, brother or mom is detained, they carry this trauma with them," Nancy Fajardo, a lawyer and aid provider working with 150 such families. "They feel as if the president has robbed them of their family … It could push the kids to later join a gang as a form of vengeance for everything they’re suffering."

Single mother Juana Guadalupe Recinos Ventura raised her boys in a small concrete house in an area coated by Barrio 18 gang graffiti. The family was never rich, but they were able to scrape by.

EL SALVADOR'S BUKELE, AN ANTI-GANG HARDLINER, TAKES REELECTION BID ABROAD

When she was detained outside their home in June 2022 on vague charges of "illegal gathering", the boy's grandmother, María Concepción Ventura, was left struggling to feed Alex and his brother and pay the bills without her daughter's salary. The $75 packages of food and clothes the family sends once a month dealt the family another financial blow at a time that poverty has soared in El Salvador.

And that's made the kids even more vulnerable in the long term.

"They would cry and cry, and still cry when they remember her," Ventura said. "They’d just ask me, ‘When is mom coming back? When is my mom coming back?’ And you just have to tell them you don’t know when the government will let her go."

The Associated Press spoke to Alex after being told he wanted to speak about his mother, and with consent of his grandmother Ventura.

Concerns were echoed by social workers, relatives, religious leaders and even Salvadoran Vice President Félix Ulloa, who said in an interview that, "if the state doesn’t do something, these kids will become the criminals of the future."

Alex's home in the western city of Santa Ana is like much of the Central American nation: Two gangs once divided its territory.

El Salvador’s Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 gangs originated from marginalized migrant communities in Los Angeles in the 1980s, made up in part of vulnerable unaccompanied minors fleeing Central America’s military conflicts. Once deported from the United States, the gangs began to prey upon youth in precarious situations in their own communities in El Salvador, eventually driving new waves of emigration as families fled their terror.

In his effort to eradicate the gangs, Bukele has detained over 76,000 Salvadorans, many with little evidence or access to due process. Families pass months without any news of their imprisoned loved ones. Human rights groups have documented widespread human rights abuses.

The Supreme Electoral Tribunal said Friday that with 99.1% of the precinct tallies counted Nayib Bukele won 84.6% of the vote in Sunday’s presidential election.

The crackdown has broad support among Salvadorans who have been able to retake their neighborhoods, but children left without parents have been among its heaviest costs.

While younger kids feel abandoned or confused why their parents have left, older teenagers are left with festering resentment or fear of authorities.

In one San Salvador community, neighbors are rotating children as young as 3 years old, sharing the economic burden so the kids don't end up in the government system, where neighbors worry they could suffer sexual or physical abuse. Kids who slip through the cracks often end up on the street, said a local leader who asked to not share his name because he feared government retaliation.

"They are children, they're not guilty even if their parents did wrong," he said. But "they are forced to suffer."

In Santa Ana, a 61-year-old grandmother had to take in eight grandchildren, feeding them with only the $30 a week she makes picking leaves to wrap tamales, and aid from the local church. The children say that, despite being innocent, they’re treated like criminals by neighbors.

"Now, they look at us as if we were scum," said 14-year-old Nicole, who still wants to be a police officer.

For Alex, the pain is in the small moments.

He misses his mother helping him with schoolwork and has nightmares about police coming to take away the rest of his family. When he got bullied at school, his mom would go to his teachers to defend him. Until last year the family would set off fireworks together on Christmas in the alley outside their home.

Yet before police swept the neighborhood, the family would often hear gang shootouts ring out over their tin roof and neighbors would go missing. The family would never let the kids play outside.

Now, Alex and his 8-year-old brother run next to walls where the government has painted over the gang graffiti, so María Concepción Ventura sees benefits to the crackdown.

"They just need to free the innocents. Those that are guilty should pay the price, but let the innocents go," she said, adding that her daughter’s detention prompted her to not vote in El Salvador’s elections.

El Salvador’s government has admitted it "made mistakes" and has released some 7,000 people.

The government has touted a youth program as a "security strategy," which includes opening up libraries and recreational areas in formerly violence-torn areas, and providing many students in public schools with laptops and tablets.

"Many of those detained right now were kids that the state didn’t care for, orphans of the war, kids whose parents had gone to the United States, or who died and grew up in dysfunctional families, and past governments didn’t do anything for them," said Ulloa, on his way to a second term as vice president. "And look what we have now – criminals when they are adults."

EL SALVADOR'S BUKELE RESPONDS TO DEMOCRATIC LAWMAKERS ATTACKING HIM FOR HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AND MORE

Ulloa said the administration was "100% obligated" to provide for children of detained Salvadorans, but he could not list an example of what the government was doing for them.

None of the five families interviewed by the AP said they'd received any aid from Bukele’s government. Local churches assisting hundreds of families said they had not heard of any government aid being distributed to the kids. Even then, children need more than just monetary support, said Kenton Moody, the pastor of the local church providing Ventura’s family with food.

"These kids need love," Moody said. "The government can’t give love, only a family unit can."

Two adopted teenagers have been arrested in Spain on suspicion of killing their mother after she was found dead in a car inside the family’s garage with a bag over her head and a "stab wound to the neck," a report says. 

The juveniles, who were adopted from an Eastern European country and are 15 and 13 years old, were tracked down by Spanish authorities in Castro Urdiales early Thursday morning, hours after police discovered the remains of Silvia López Gayubas, according to the El Diario Montañés newspaper. 

The outlet reported that the juveniles first called their grandmother, who lives in an adjacent property in Castro Urdiales, on Wednesday night to tell her they had been kidnapped. She then alerted police. 

When police arrived at the family’s home to investigate, they discovered the 48-year-old mother in the "back seat of a car with a bag over the head, with blows and a stab wound to the neck," El Diario Montañés reported. 

FARMERS BLOCK SPANISH HIGHWAYS IN PROTEST OF EUROPEAN UNION BUREAUCRACY 

Authorities then launched a search for the juveniles who were missing from the home. 

When investigators called their father, who was working the night shift at a metallurgical company in the region, "he didn't believe it, he was devastated," a source told the newspaper. 

CHINESE FATHER, MISTRESS EXECUTED AFTER THROWING TODDLERS OUT OF HIGH-RISE APARTMENT WINDOW: REPORT 

The boys were eventually located in Cotolino Park in the coastal Spanish town, and one of them tried to run away from police before being taken into custody, according to El Diario Montañés, which added that they did not confess to the killing. 

A regional government official then told the newspaper Thursday that the juveniles were being held on suspicion of killing their mother. 

"Our feeling is one of absolute sadness. It is regrettable that acts like this occur," Castro Urdiales Mayor Susana Herrán told El Diario Montañés. 

The motive for the killing is unclear.  

The U.S. is calling for an investigation into an alleged massacre of civilians in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, where a local rights group says more than 80 people were killed last week following clashes between soldiers and armed groups.

The U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia, Ervin Massinga, said Friday that the "U.S. government is deeply concerned" by the reports from the town of Merawi and called for "unfettered access by independent human rights monitors as well as an impartial investigation to ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice."

Massinga said in a statement that the reported killings of civilians in Merawi followed "disturbing reports of other violations" in Amhara and elsewhere in Ethiopia, which is gripped by several internal conflicts.

A rebellion broke out in Amhara last April when the government moved to dissolve regional forces and absorb them into the federal army. A militia group known as the Fano launched a surprise assault in August in which they captured towns across Amhara over several days before retreating to the countryside.

Rights monitors have documented a range of human rights abuses by government forces during the conflict, including alleged extra-judicial killings.

On Tuesday, the Ethiopia Human Rights Council said it had received information "showing that massive human rights violations were committed" during fighting in Merawi on Jan. 29. It said more than 80 civilians were killed, mostly men.

The rights group said the killings "were conducted by moving from house to house" during searches. However, it stopped short of laying blame for the shootings, saying it was unable to visit the site, and called for a further investigation.

Until recently, the Fano were allied with the federal military in the war against the Tigray People's Liberation Front in the neighboring region of Tigray, but the relationship was always uneasy. The two sides began fighting even before the Tigray conflict ended in November 2022 with a peace deal.

Last week, Ethiopia’s parliament voted to extend a state of emergency in the Amhara region in an attempt to quash the Fano rebellion.

Combat exercises between the United States and the Philippines involving thousands of forces each year will not be affected by America’s focus on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, a U.S. general said Thursday.

The Biden administration has been strengthening an arc of military alliances in the Indo-Pacific region to build deterrence and to better counter China, including in any future confrontation over Taiwan and the disputed South China Sea.

But there have been concerns that the war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict could hamper America’s pivot to Asia and the Pacific and divert military resources intended for the region.

OVER 100 MISSING, AT LEAST 11 DEAD IN PHILIPPINE MOUNTAIN VILLAGE LANDSLIDE

"Certainly, it does not affect our presence," Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, commanding general of the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division, told The Associated Press in an interview late Thursday when asked to comment on those concerns.

"If anything, it drives an increased sense of urgency to focus on these partnerships that we’ve developed decades ago and it’s our responsibility to continue to build on these unique training opportunities.," said Evans, who has 12,000 soldiers under his command.

Evans, who is based in Hawaii, was in Manila for talks with his Philippine army counterparts ahead of largescale combat maneuvers between the U.S. and Philippine forces.

The annual drills include the Salaknib, which are army-to-army drills first held in the country in 2016, and the larger Balikatan, a Tagalog term for shoulder-to-shoulder, which was joined by more than 17,600 military personnel in April of 2023 in their largest combat exercises in decades.

Some of last year's Balikatan exercises were held in Philippine coastal areas across the sea from the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. The expanded combat exercises involving U.S. forces have been criticized by China as a threat to regional unity and peace.

Evans said the scope of this year’s Salaknib and Balikatan exercises, which would include jungle training, "remains consistent with last year." After the exercises, a contingent from a Hawaii-based combat readiness center would take part for the first time in a "very focused evaluation exercise" to assess the ability of the allied forces to operate together, he said.

The unfolding conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, he said, were a source of important lessons for the allied troops in the Philippines.

"The two conflicts … are continuing to provide us lessons to be learned and to be implemented and to be trained on here in the Philippines," Evans said.

As the conflicts unfold, "We are actively learning, understanding what are some of the challenges that are being experienced," he said without elaborating.

PHILIPPINES SHIFTS FOCUS TO PROTECTING TERRITORY AS TENSIONS BETWEEN CHINA AND US INCREASE

"We talked about this today, our ability to be small and undetectable, our ability to be able to move quickly in this place, our ability to project forward and see and sense are all things that we need to continue to train on," he said.

"Collectively, we have a responsibility to make ourselves more ready today than we were yesterday," he said.

Last year, Washington repeatedly expressed its support to the Philippines amid a series of increasingly tense territorial faceoffs between Chinese and Philippine ships, including incidents where the Chinese coast guard and suspected militia vessels resorted to water cannons and dangerous blocking maneuvers that caused minor collisions in the disputed South China Sea.

Washington last year renewed a warning that it would defend the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in Asia, if Filipino forces, ships and aircraft come under an armed attack, including in the disputed waters.