CNN – Europe/Mideast/Africa

By Al Goodman, Duarte Mendonca and Heather Chen, CNN Six Leopard 2 tanks bound for Ukraine have left the Spanish port city of Santander in northern Spain and are en route to their destination, the Spanish Minister of Defense Margarita Robles said Saturday. Robles told journalists the tanks left Santander “along with 20 heavy transport

By Al Goodman, CNN A fire believed to have been started by a flambéed pizza has killed two people and injured 12 others at a restaurant in the Spanish capital Madrid, city officials said Saturday. “It appears the fire started when a flambéed pizza was being served, which set fire to the decorations in the

By Darya Tarasova More than 3,000 people were evacuated on Saturday from residential buildings in the Russian city of Belgorod after a bomb was found close to the area accidentally bombed by Russia’s air force earlier this week, Russian state media reported. Explosives specialists assessed the device and said there was no danger of explosion,

By Allegra Goodwin, Niamh Kennedy, Sugam Pokharel, Ivana Kottasová, Eyad Kourdi, Jennifer Hansler and a CNN journalist in Sudan Saudi Arabia has become the first country to announce evacuations of its stranded citizens from Sudan, a week after intense fighting broke out there between two rival forces. The Saudi foreign ministry said “several nationals of

By Celine Alkhaldi Two men are battling for control in Sudan, but stuck in the middle are the country’s people. Hundreds have died, tens of thousands have fled. Residents have been stranded at home and in shelters without food or water, and petrol has become an increasingly important commodity. Since the fighting began last Saturday,

By Katie Polglase, Sarah El Sirgany and Ivana Kottasová, CNN Video by Matthew Brealey, Martin Bourke and Oscar Featherstone, CNN Neville Lawrence sometimes imagines walking through London and looking at buildings his son Stephen might have worked on, had he lived long enough to fulfill his dream of becoming an architect. The closest he ever

By Mitchell McCluskey Belgium has destroyed a shipment of American beer after taking exception to its maker’s slogan that it was “The Champagne of Beers.” Belgian customs crushed the 2,352 cans of Miller High Life beer earlier this week, reasoning that they were improperly labeled as Champagne. The move came after a trade association for

By Salma Abdelaziz, CNN Iranian dissident Massi Kamari felt helpless when she found out about her elderly parents being harassed by the authorities back home. She called her mother’s phone in late December, but the person on the other end was a man whose voice she didn’t recognize. Her parents were inside the offices of

By Jessie Yeung and CNN journalists in Sudan Both of Sudan’s warring factions have declared a 72-hour truce for the Muslim holiday of Eid after nearly a week of fierce fighting, which has left more than 400 people dead and pushed tens of thousands of refugees to flee the country. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces

By Radina Gigova, Victoria Butenko, Josh Pennington and Brad Lendon, CNN A Russian warplane dropped a bomb on a Russian city of more than 400,000 people late Thursday, leaving a crater 20 meters (65 feet) across, blowing a car onto a roof and damaging buildings in what state media called an “accidental” or “emergency” release

By Stephanie Busari, Chris Liakos and Catherine Nicholls, CNN Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni does not oppose a controversial anti-LGBTQ+ bill and plans to finalize it next week, Uganda’s ruling party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM), said on Thursday. “President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has congratulated the members of parliament for their stand on homosexuality and agreed

By Nima Elbagir, Gianluca Mezzofiore, Tamara Qiblawi and Barbara Arvanitidis, CNN The Russian mercenary group Wagner has been supplying Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces with missiles to aid their fight against the country’s army, Sudanese and regional diplomatic sources have told CNN. The sources said the surface-to-air missiles have significantly buttressed RSF paramilitary fighters and their

By Rob Picheta, Mostafa Salem, Sahar Akbarzai and CNN journalists in Sudan, CNN Sudanese people and Western staff are desperately trying to flee the country’s capital, Khartoum, where intense violence between rival factions is overwhelming hospitals with victims and multiple attempts to bring about a ceasefire have failed. Bloody clashes and confrontations between the Sudanese

By Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN The brother-in-law and close political ally of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has warned that Italy’s low birth rate and an increase in irregular immigration could lead to “ethnic replacement,” sparking anger from the country’s opposition. Francesco Lollobrigida remarks comes in response to a recent report which found Italy has

By Lianne Kolirin, CNN One of the last surviving members of the Warsaw Ghetto resistance has told CNN the world must never forget the bravery of those who stood up to the Nazis, 80 years after World War II’s largest Jewish uprising. On April 19, 1943, a group of Polish Jews fought back against their

By Jessie Yeung, Emiko Jozuka, Celine Alkhaldi, Mostafa Salem and journalists in Sudan Clashes erupted north of Sudan’s capital Khartoum on Wednesday night, upending a temporary ceasefire between the Sudanese Army and its rival, the Rapid Support Force, just hours after it was struck. The two factions have been battling for days, and Wednesday saw

By Brad Lendon, CNN Battlefield losses and Western sanctions have left the Russian military in a state of decline, but Moscow will still have enough firepower to extend the war in Ukraine, according to a new independent analysis. The report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies gives stark numbers of Russian military losses

By Nimi Princewill and Stephanie Busari, CNN South African prosecutors have dropped a murder charge against Zolile Sekeleni, the father of the girlfriend of high-profile convicted murderer Thabo Bester, who is accused of escaping from a South African prison after faking his own death in a fire, officials told CNN Monday. Sekeleni’s daughter, Nandipha Magudumana,

By Tim Lister and Saskya Vandoorne, CNN A Russian man who said he had killed children and other civilians while serving with the Wagner private military company in Ukraine appears to have recanted the claim, suggesting he was blackmailed into making it. Azamat Uldarov, a former convict, made his retraction in a video call with

By Stephanie Halasz, CNN Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was on Tuesday denied an appeal to change the terms of his detention on espionage charges at a court hearing in Moscow. The US citizen was arrested in Russia last month in a sign of the Kremlin’s crackdown on foreign media news outlets since it

By Tim Lister, Teele Rebane, Angus Watson, Josh Pennington and Sana Noor Haq, CNN Russian President Vladimir Putin visited troops at a military base in the southern Kherson region on Tuesday, at a critical stage in the war in Ukraine as Kyiv prepares to launch a spring offensive. In his second public trip to territory

By Jessie Yeung, Teele Rebane, Rob Picheta, and CNN journalists in Sudan Gunfire, explosions and overhead fighter jets were heard across Sudan’s capital Khartoum on Tuesday, as gunmen reportedly stormed the homes of people working for the United Nations and other international organizations, amid conflicting reports of an agreed ceasefire in the country. Fighting between

By Sarah Dean and Josh Pennington, CNN Two Russian men who claim to be former Wagner Group commanders have told a human rights activist that they killed children and civilians during their time in Ukraine. The claims were made in video interviews with Gulagu.net, a human rights organization targeting corruption and torture in Russia. In

By Nima Elbagir, Tamara Qiblawi, Mick Krever and Celine Alkhaldi, CNN As fighting between warring factions has engulfed Sudan in recent days, hospitals treating people wounded in clashes have themselves become the targets for attacks, dealing the nation’s healthcare sector a devastating blow. In one episode, five eyewitnesses told CNN that the paramilitary group battling

By Rob Picheta, Uliana Pavlova, Radina Gigova and Vasco Cotovio, CNN Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent Russian human rights advocate and Kremlin critic, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after publicly condemning Moscow’s war in Ukraine, in a decision that was condemned as politically motivated and draconian by the international community. Kara-Murza was initially

By Nima Elbagir, Jessie Yeung, Rob Picheta and and CNN journalists in Sudan Sudan’s military leader condemned what he called an “attempted coup” after a day of intense fighting left at least 180 people dead in the country and saw hospitals coming under attack from missiles as they battled to save lives. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan,

By Scott McLean, Lauren Kent, Roman Tymotsko and Oscar Featherstone, CNN A year ago, Natalia’s life was upended by war. With her family, she fled the fighting in Ukraine’s southeastern city of Mariupol and crossed into Russia. From there, she and many other Ukrainians were encouraged by Russian authorities to take a 4,000-mile train journey

By Jonny Hallam, Artemis Moshtaghian and Jessie Yeung, CNN A court in Tehran convicted as many as 10 Iranian military personnel on Sunday for their involvement in the shooting down of Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752 in 2020, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr News. But the sentence was dismissed as a “sham ruling” by victims’ families

By Mayria Knight and Jonny Hallam, CNN Poland and Hungary have banned imports of grain and other food products from Ukraine following a surge in cheap goods. The Polish prime minister’s office said the move was “to protect the Polish agricultural market against destabilization.” Ukraine responded by saying it “regrets the decision of its Polish

By Sana Noor Haq, Caolán Magee and Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN As a boat carrying 400 migrants drifted, out of fuel, along a perilous migration route in the central Mediterranean last week, Italian authorities led a major rescue operation following the reported refusal of Maltese authorities to retrieve those on board. Passengers’ desperate pleas for

CNN journalists in Sudan Fierce fighting across Sudan entered a second day as months of tensions between a paramilitary group and the country’s army erupted into violence. Clashes around the army headquarters and presidential palace in capital Khartoum involved heavy weapons. There have also been reports of battles hundreds of miles away in the eastern

By Laura Paddison, Nadine Schmidt and Inke Kappeler, CNN Germany’s final three nuclear power plants close their doors on Saturday, marking the end of the country’s nuclear era that has spanned more than six decades. Nuclear power has long been contentious in Germany. There are those who want to end reliance on a technology they

By Saskya Vandoorne and Joseph Ataman, CNN France’s pension reforms have come into law, a day after the country’s top court approved the government’s unpopular plans to raise the age of retirement by two years to 64. The decision marked a huge win for President Emmanuel Macron in the face of mass protests across the

By Nadeen Ebrahim, CNN Yemen’s Houthi rebels are not interested in spreading tyranny in the country and are willing to share power with other political factions if a permanent ceasefire with Saudi Arabia is reached, a top Houthi official has said. In an exclusive interview with CNN, Mohamed Ali al-Houthi, member of the Supreme Political

By Saskya Vandoorne and Sophie Tanno, CNN Heightened security is in place in the French capital Paris as the country braces for a crucial ruling on the constitutionality of divisive changes to France’s pension system. The Constitutional Council in Paris, France’s equivalent of the US supreme court, has been barricaded ahead of the decision, which

By Kareem El Damanhoury and Joseph Ataman, CNN Iran executed at least 582 people last year, a 75% increase on the previous year, according to human rights groups who say the rise reflects an effort by Tehran to “instill fear” among anti-regime protesters. It was the highest number of executions in the Islamic republic since

By Sarah Dean and Anna Chernova, CNN A fresh leak of classified US intelligence documents suggests broad infighting between Russian officials, including some within the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Defense Ministry, the New York Times reported Thursday. CNN has not independently verified the documents. The NYT said it had shown the new 27-pages of

By Xiaofei Xu, Oliver Briscoe and Saskya Vandoorne, CNN Hundreds of thousands of people took part in a fresh round of demonstrations across France on Thursday over government plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, a day before a crucial court ruling on the constitutionality of the divisive law. Protesters in Paris

By Kate Golembiewski, CNN An elephant’s trunk is a remarkable organ: a fusion of nose and upper lip, capable of movement via a dense network of muscles. It’s strong enough to lift a log, and sensitive enough to perform delicate tasks like picking up a single tortilla chip without breaking it. Now a team of

By Rob Picheta, CNN When Vladimir Putin tried to mobilize hundreds of thousands of citizens to fight in his invasion of Ukraine last September, chaos, fear and anger reverberated through Russia. For many, those feelings returned on Wednesday after the Russian parliament approved a law that made the country’s conscription program more efficient, more modern

By Vasco Cotovio, Andrew Carey, Josh Pennington and Yulia Kesaieva, CNN Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday condemned as “beasts” those who purportedly beheaded Ukrainian soldiers shown in two videos that emerged on social media in the past week. The videos appear to be of separate events — one of them may have been filmed

By Mostafa Salem and Anna Chernova, CNN A senior Egyptian official denied that the country’s military was planning to produce 40,000 rockets for Russia, following reporting by the Washington Post citing a leaked US intelligence document, Egyptian state-affiliated media said. A leaked US intelligence document obtained by the Washington Post said Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah

By Alex Stambaugh and Anna Chernova, CNN The Shiveluch volcano erupted early Tuesday morning in Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka region, spewing ash up to 20 kilometers above sea level, according to the local branch of the Russia Academy of Sciences (RAS) Geophysical Survey. Seismic activity was first reported around 12:54 a.m. local time on Tuesday

By Barbie Latza Nadeau and Alex Stambaugh, CNN The Italian Coast Guard was on Tuesday escorting two boats carrying 1,200 migrants in the Mediterranean Sea, as part of a major operation in a region that has seen migrant arrivals spike in the past year. Emergency workers were racing to rescue a barge with 400 migrants

By Jennifer Hauser, Sana Noor Haq, Saskya Vandoorne and Xiaofei Xu, CNN At least six people were killed and several others injured in an avalanche that struck the French Alps over the weekend. Emergency workers were deployed after the incident at the Armancette glacier near Mont Blanc in southeast France, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin tweeted

By Celine Alkhaldi, CNN A highly addictive drug that became Syria’s economic lifeline over a decade of isolation may now be serving as a bargaining chip as it tries to normalize ties with neighboring states, analysts say. Captagon, a drug that is relatively unknown outside the Middle East, helped Syria turn into a narco-state after

By Abeer Salman and Jo Shelley, CNN Israeli forces shot and killed a 15-year-old Palestinian boy in the Aqbat Jaber refugee camp near the occupied West Bank city of Jericho, Palestinian officials said, as violence in the region continued to simmer on Monday. Mohammad Fayez Balhan was “killed by live occupation bullets in the head,

By Jo Shelley and Donie O’Sullivan, CNN Lauren and Emily Blewitt may have been in preschool at the time, but they were old enough to know that then-Vice President Joe Biden had committed a serious breach of mealtime etiquette. “He was just eating our chips!” Lauren, 10, says — a mixture of delight and outrage

By Maija Ehlinger and Joseph Ataman, CNN At least 44 civilians were killed in two separate attacks on villages in northern Burkina Faso, authorities there said. A local governor, Rodolphe Sorgho, blamed terrorists for the “despicable and barbaric” attacks, without naming a specific group. In a statement Sorgho gave his “sincere condolences to the grieving

By Frederik Pleitgen, Alex Stambaugh and Sophie Tanno, CNN Residents in the German city of Hamburg have been warned of heavy smoke and possible toxins in the air after a major fire broke out at a warehouse. Video circulating on social media shows the warehouse engulfed in flames early Sunday morning, with smoke billowing into

By Caolán Magee, CNN Photos by Sarah Tilotta, CNN Cori Conlon grew up thinking Protestants were “the bad guys.” They went to different schools, played different sports, had different flags, and sang different songs. She said she was oblivious to the complexities of Northern Irish politics, but knew only one thing: to stay away from

By Ben Wedeman, CNN “God protects me,” says 73-year-old Tamara. She’s one of the few people who have stayed in the town of Konstantinivka, eastern Ukraine. “If there is a need, God will save me. If not,” she adds with a shrug, “it is what it is.” Tamara has lived in the same flat for

By Nick Paton Walsh, Kostyantin Gak, Natalie Gallón and Yulia Kesaieva, CNN A group of 31 Ukrainian children have been reunited with their families months after they were taken from their homes and moved to Russian-occupied territories. A CNN team on the ground in Kyiv watched as the last of the children climbed off a

By Mohammed Tawfeeq and Jo Shelley, CNN Jordan has warned of “catastrophic consequences” if Israeli forces were to storm the al-Aqsa mosque again. Should the Israeli police, “assault worshipers again, in an attempt to empty [the mosque] of worshipers, in preparation for major incursions into the mosque,” it would, “push the situation towards more tension

By Mohammed Tawfeeq, Larry Register, Richard Allen Greene, Michael Schwartz, Teele Rebane and Eyad Kourdi, CNN Israel launched strikes against Syrian military targets after several rockets were fired from Syria, the Israeli military said. A total of six rockets were launched from Syria towards Israel, and three crossed into Israeli territory, the Israel Defense Forces

By Zahid Mahmood and Fariba Sahraei, CNN Iranian authorities are to use cameras in public places to identify women who violate the country’s hijab law, state media reported. Women in Iran risk arrest for not covering their hair. Many have been defying the mandatory dress code as part of the widespread protests that followed the

By Amir Tal, Irene Nasser, Sharon Braithwaite and Christian Edwards, CNN An Italian tourist was killed and seven people wounded in a car-ramming attack in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv on Friday evening. Israeli police said a vehicle was driven onto the bike path of the Tel Aviv boardwalk, hitting pedestrians before it overturned

By Anna Chernova, Zahid Mahmood and Sophie Tanno, CNN Russian authorities arrested a Chinese LGBTQ blogger Wednesday for allegedly violating a law that bans so-called same-sex “propaganda,” according to Adel Khaydarshin, a lawyer representing the blogger and his partner. Chinese national Haoyang Xu was found guilty during a hearing Thursday, Khaydarshin said. He’s being held

By Anna Chernova, Allegra Goodwin, Radina Gigova and Tara John, CNN Russian investigators have formally charged Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich with espionage, Russian state media reported Friday, adding he denied the accusations. “The FSB investigation charged Gershkovich with espionage in the interests of his country. He categorically denied all accusations and stated that

By David McKenzie, Ghazi Balkiz and Maria Avdeeva, CNN The sheared nose cone of the Antonov An-225 cargo plane towers over Yevhen Bashynsky. Affectionately known as the Mriya, or “Dream,” the leviathan plane was the pride of Ukraine and of 38-year-old Bashynsky, one of its pilots. This is the first time Bashynsky has come back