The Israeli military says it striking Iranian regime targets in Tehran. That move came after its strikes on Beirut earlier, it said on social media.
Ukraine has begun the compulsory evacuation of children from the city of Sloviansk, in a sign the security situation is deteriorating in one of the country’s main remaining strongholds in the Donbas area. Russian forces have been slowly advancing to the north and east of Sloviansk and are about 20km (12 miles) from the edge of the city at various points along the frontline, Reuters reports. Sloviansk is one of several towns and cities that remain under Ukrainian control in an urban “fortress belt” in the eastern region of Donetsk, which comprises part of the Donbas. Russia sees control of the entire Donbas, known for its coalmines and heavy industry, as its key military goal. Ukraine still controls just under a quarter of the Donetsk region. Ukraine is still expecting the first tranche of a 90bn euro ($103bn) loan from the EU next month, despite a failure to break Hungary’s veto of the funding this week, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday. EU leaders were unable to convince the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, on Thursday to lift his blockade of the loan, which is crucial for Ukraine to maintain its fight against Russia. Zelenskyy said he had discussed the matter with the EU leaders and trusted they would find a solution. However, Orbán has raised the prospect of further actions his government could take against Ukraine to force the resumption of Russian oil deliveries that have been stalled to Hungary and Slovakia since January. Speaking on Friday, Orbán said he and his government had “a lot of cards in our hands” beyond holding up the financial aid Kyiv needed to equip its armed forces and keep its economy running. “We have other tools as well,” he said. “40% of Ukraine’s electricity supply goes through Hungary; we haven’t touched that yet. [The EU] constantly wants to introduce new sanctions [against Russia]. That will require unanimity, and we will not give it.” Tensions between Hungary and Ukraine have escalated in recent weeks into a bitter feud over Hungary’s access to Russian oil through a pipeline that crosses Ukrainian territory. Zelenskyy said negotiators will seek clarity from US officials on the next round of trilateral talks with Russia, postponed due to the Iran war. “We want clear dates – at least approximate ones. Everyone understands that the situation in the Middle East, the war, is affecting the postponement of this date,” Zelenskyy said on Friday. He added Ukrainian officials at talks in the US on Saturday would discuss the recent “dangerous” US decision to ease some sanctions on the Russian energy sector. A sizable number of US Patriot air defence missiles have been moved from Europe toward the Middle East, leaving concerning gaps in Europe’s air defences against Russia, US defence officials told the Associated Press. Two Patriot missile systems were sent from Germany to Turkey after several ballistic missiles were fired toward Turkey from Iran since the start of the war, the Turkish defence ministry and three US officials said. The US officials said missiles for the Patriot system were moved from various locations around Europe in an effort to reinforce air defences towards the Middle East. One official said stocks of Patriot missiles were “absolutely” dwindling in Europe and elsewhere because of the war in Iran, and added the situation was “pretty concerning”. Hungarian security operatives administered a “forced injection” to one of the Ukrainians detained earlier this month during a dramatic raid on bank vehicles carrying gold bars and tens of millions of dollars and euros in cash, sources have told the Guardian. The sources said they believed the injection contained a relaxant that was meant to predispose subjects towards becoming talkative during interrogations, write Shaun Walker and Flora Garamvolgyi. Russia attacked Ukrainian oil and gas facilities in Poltava and Sumy regions overnight, Ukraine’s largest state oil and gas company, Naftogaz, said. The company said damage had been caused, and operations at the unspecified facilities were suspended. Ukraine has deployed military units to protect critical and civilian infrastructure against drones in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan, Ukraine’s security council secretary Rustem Umerov has confirmed.
The US is reportedly preparing to send three more warships and thousands more troops to the Middle East, as Donald Trump called Nato allies “cowards” for not wanting to “help open” the strait of Hormuz, and while fears of the economic damage of the US-Israeli war on Iran continued to grow. The US is reportedly considering plans to occupy or blockade Iran’s strategically crucial Kharg Island to pressure Tehran to reopen the strait. The reports from US media organisations emerged as Iran’s military threatened it would “hunt down” officials and military commanders from the US and Israel wherever it could find them in the world, including at tourist destinations. “We are watching your cowardly officials and commanders, pilots and wicked soldiers,” the Iranian armed forces spokesperson Abolfazl Shekarchi said, quoted by state TV. “From now on, based on the information we have on you, the promenades, resorts and tourist and entertainment centres in the world will not be safe.” Trump ruled out reaching a ceasefire agreement with Iran, saying on Friday night that Washington has the upper hand in the three-week-old war. “I don’t want to do a ceasefire. You know you don’t do a ceasefire when you’re literally obliterating the other side,” he told journalists at the White House. Also on Friday night, he wrote on his Truth Social platform that the US was considering “winding down” military operations in Iran. He said: “We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran.” The reports that Washington is considering plans to occupy or blockade Kharg Island come despite earlier suggestions by Trump that he was not leaning towards putting “boots on the ground”. Any attempt physically to occupy Kharg Island would probably entail high risks, exposing American forces there to Iranian drone and rocket fire in a geographically confined space. Just 8 sq miles (20 sq km) in size and situated 16 miles (25km) from the Iranian city of Bushehr at the northern end of the Gulf, the Kharg Island terminal exports about 90% of Iranian oil and is supplied by pipes from nearby offshore fields. Iran is heavily dependent on revenue from fossil fuels, and any attempt to seize such a key strategic asset would almost certainly be resisted. Writing on social media on Friday, Trump said: “Without the U.S.A., NATO IS A PAPER TIGER! They didn’t want to join the fight to stop a Nuclear Powered Iran. Now that fight is Militarily WON, with very little danger for them, they complain about the high oil prices they are forced to pay, but don’t want to help open the Strait of Hormuz, a simple military maneuver that is the single reason for the high oil prices. So easy for them to do, with so little risk. COWARDS, and we will REMEMBER!” The Pentagon has already deployed the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, a rapid-response force of about 2,200 marines, to the Middle East. Military officials have not said what missions the marines being sent to the Middle East would be assigned to carry out. Officials said that the USS Boxer, with the Marine Expeditionary Unit onboard, were also leaving the US about three weeks ahead of schedule. It is not clear what their mission is. The Trump administration and its Israeli allies have given contradictory briefings about their intentions in the war. Descriptions of plans appear to change on an almost daily basis, reflected in statements by administration officials grappling with a war whose consequences have spiralled beyond their control. A White House official said: “As President Trump said, he has no plans to send troops anywhere – but he wisely does not broadcast his military strategy to the media, and he retains all options as commander-in-chief. The United States military can take out Kharg Island at any time.” The war showed no signs of de-escalating on Friday, with an Iranian drone attack hitting a Kuwait refinery and the US and Israel striking 16 Iranian cargo vessels in port towns on the Gulf. “Following the American-Zionist air attack, at least 16 cargo vessels belonging to citizens of the towns of Bandar Lengeh and Bandar Kong were completely burned in the fire,” a local official from the southern Hormozgan province said, quoted by the Tasnim news agency. Heavy explosions also shook Dubai as air defences intercepted incoming rockets, as people were observing Eid al-Fitr, the end of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. Separately, Israel attacked Syrian government positions, only days after US officials had anonymously suggested using the same Syrian forces to disarm Hezbollah in eastern Lebanon. As violence continues across the region, from Tel Aviv and Haifa to the Caspian Sea, oil and gas prices are soaring and there are warnings of a spreading global economic shock that has been exacerbated by the increasingly incoherent messaging from Washington. As a fourth week of war approached, Kuwait said two waves of Iranian drone strikes hit its Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery, one of three oil refineries in the tiny, oil-rich country on the Gulf. The refinery, which can process about 730,000 barrels of oil a day, was already damaged on Thursday in another Iranian attack. Iran stepped up its attacks on energy sites in Gulf Arab states after Israel bombed Iran’s massive South Pars offshore natural gas field in the Gulf on Wednesday. Explosions could be heard in Jerusalem after the Israeli army warned of incoming Iranian missiles. In a rare statement, Iran’s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who was reportedly wounded in the initial US-Israeli strikes, said Tehran’s enemies needed to have their “security” taken away. Khamenei has not been seen since he succeeded his father, Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the first day of the war. His remarks were part of a statement issued on his behalf and sent to the president, Masoud Pezeshkian, after Israel killed the intelligence minister, Esmail Khatib, this week. The renewed attacks followed an intense day during which Iran hit energy infrastructure around the region and launched more than a dozen missile salvoes at Israel after the attack on South Pars. South Pars, the Iranian part of the world’s largest gasfield, is located offshore in the Gulf and owned jointly with Qatar. With about 80% of power generated in Iran coming from natural gas, the attack posed a direct threat to the country’s electricity supplies. Late on Thursday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the country would hold off on any further attacks on the gasfield at the request of Trump after the Iranian response sent oil prices soaring. Netanyahu claimed Iran’s capability to produce ballistic missiles had been taken out, but the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards said in comments released on Friday that they were still in production. “We are producing missiles even during war conditions, which is amazing, and there is no particular problem in stockpiling,” a spokesperson, Gen Ali Mohammad Naini – who was killed in an airstrike on Friday – was quoted as saying in a state-run newspaper. “These people expect the war to continue until the enemy is completely exhausted,” Naini said. “This war must end when the shadow of war is lifted from the country.”
The Home Office is investigating a company linked to a religious sect based in Cheshire over its use of immigration visas. The company under investigation is linked to the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light (AROPL), a sect that blends tenets of Islam with conspiracy theories about the Illuminati and aliens controlling US presidents. Followers believe the sect’s leader, Abdullah Hashem, can cure the sick and make the moon disappear. About 100 of his followers live in a former orphanage in Crewe, in the north-west of England. The community moved to the UK in 2021, after transferring their headquarters from Sweden, where immigration authorities investigated several companies linked to the sect and issued deportation orders to dozens of its members. Now, immigration officials in the UK are looking into a company linked to the sect over its use of skilled worker visas to bring people into the country. The investigation, which was confirmed by the Home Office, is understood to centre on the use of visas by AROPL Studios, a company set up in 2021 to produce social media and YouTube videos about the sect’s teachings. Data released to the Guardian by the Home Office showed that AROPL Studios had 12 skilled worker visas issued between 2022 and 2025. Skilled worker visas were introduced in 2020 and are designed to allow companies to hire foreign workers with specialist skills for a specific role. In September 2025 the Home Office announced it was cracking down on sponsors who were found to be abusing the immigration system. AROPL denied using illegal immigration practices. Through lawyers, it said the immigration status of all its members and workers was lawful. It added that it was unaware of any investigation. Hashem, who habitually wears a black beanie hat, has built a following through slick online videos, with AROPL’s YouTube channel notching up more than 31m views. Some of these set out his teachings, while others detail the group’s belief that Hashem has performed miracles including bringing a woman back from near death, curing a follower’s arthritis and making angels fly across the sky. Hashem has previously spoken about the international nature of the group based in the UK. In one video published at the end of last year, he said: “We have people here from Malaysia. We’ve got people here from Azerbaijan. We’ve got people here from Algeria, from Morocco, from Tunisia, from Egypt … We’ve got people from every continent on the globe almost, right? And we got [people] from about a hundred different countries and they’re all living together peacefully, harmoniously, getting married to one another.” The Home Office’s investigation is not the first that the group has faced. The Guardian reviewed judgments from multiple immigration court decisions in Sweden, where immigration authorities found that three AROPL-linked companies were “rogue employers”, hiring AROPL followers to allow them to have Swedish residency. The Swedish migration court issued 69 deportation orders for AROPL members. AROPL told the Guardian that the group had already left the country and moved to the UK when the orders were handed down. In public statements, Hashem decried the migration court’s rulings as racist and religious persecution. AROPL’s lawyers said any suggestion that visas were used improperly to bring followers to the UK was false, and that it had the paperwork to prove it. It said it was a peaceful, open and transparent movement derived from Shia Islam and that it had been recognised as a religion by multiple international bodies. It said that members of the group had faced persecution in certain countries because of the sect’s interpretation of Islam, in which it allows the consumption of alcohol and for women to eschew the hijab.
On Friday morning, little space remained in Baitul Futuh mosque as thousands of people poured in to mark the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The south London mosque, one of the largest in Europe, offered a glimpse of the Eid al-Fitr festivities being celebrated by millions of Muslims across the UK. This year, however, a political furore around one of the most important holidays in the Islamic calendar has divided UK party leaders, drawn warnings of bigotry and left members of the community feeling disturbed and disappointed. Earlier this week, Nick Timothy, the shadow justice minister, claimed Islamic prayers taking place in public are intimidating, un-British and an “act of domination”, after a Ramadan event in London’s Trafalgar Square. Reform’s leader Nigel Farage called the event, which has taken place five times without previous incident or controversy, an attempt to “intimidate and dominate our way of life”. Taufique Ahmad, 22, standing outside the mosque as people entered for Eid prayers, said the “harsh and potentially harmful language” used against the community is “quite disturbing”. “The British identity is such a strong thing that it’s not fragile enough that you see a glimpse of diversity that you’ll wither away and shatter,” said Ahmad, a legal intern and member of the mosque’s press team. “At least my British identity is that strong that if I see other communities practising their faith publicly and peacefully, if anything it makes me feel more British.” Politicians, legal experts and community leaders have increasingly warned of a shift of the Overton window – the range of ideas deemed acceptable in the mainstream population – concerning political discourse around identity, race and religion. While the Conservative party leader, Kemi Badenoch, said Timothy was “defending British values”, Keir Starmer claimed the party “has a problem with Muslims”. The prime minister’s offensive on Wednesday was welcomed by members of the Muslim community who fear they have been singled out for political leverage they say is capable of translating into real world harm. In an effort to combat unacceptable treatment, prejudice and discrimination against Muslims, amid a rise in hate crimes , the government has recently adopted an anti-Muslim hostility definition. The feeling is one Taahir Ahmad has grown up with: “9/11 happened when I was a kid,” said the 35-year-old, heading to see his mother after Friday prayers. “It was horrifying, I was the only brown kid at my school at the time, and kids being kids, they blamed me for everything and what not, it was kind of traumatic.” Of the political rhetoric that has surfaced this week, Ahmad said he believes the aim is to cause chaos and division. If anything, leaders should attend the events, he said, and see how peaceful they are. “If you target a certain ethnicity or religious group, you are isolating them and what you’re trying to do is organise the public to go against those people,” said Ahmad, a streamer who lives in Morden. “It’s a tactic, I understand that, not welcome, not appreciated but we learned to live with it, we learned to deal with it,” he added. “We’re not as bad as the media or politicians portray us to be.” Such perceptions are out of step too with Michelle Rahman’s experience. As a practising British Muslim woman from east London she said the views of a few politicians are not those of the broader public. “We expect our politicians to hold unity in society, so how do I look at it? Disappointed. But what I don’t see is that that defines the United Kingdom,” said Rahman, an NHS worker who is also a youth leader at the mosque. “That is not the opinion of the masses,” she added. “There’s been division throughout society and I see this as just one of those events, but actually it’s not a representation of the broader community.”
The population of monarch butterflies in Mexico increased 64% this winter, compared with the same period in 2025, offering a glimmer of hope for an insect considered at risk of extinction. The figures, released this week by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Mexico, showed that the area occupied by monarchs expanded to 2.93 hectares (7.24 acres) of forest from 1.79 hectares (4.42 acres) the previous winter, the largest coverage since 2018. “The monarch butterfly is the symbol of the trilateral relationship between Mexico, the United States and Canada,” Mexican environment minister Alicia Bárcena Ibarra said at a news conference on Tuesday. “Its conservation is a collective commitment we must maintain for the future.” Every fall, tens of millions of the butterflies travel nearly 3,000 miles from Canada, across the US and finally to the forests of western Mexico. There, the orange insects cover entire trees and flutter through the air in spectacular fashion. But a combination of habitat loss from deforestation, climate crisis and the use of herbicides has seen their numbers plummet over the last 30 years. In the US, the increasing use of herbicides like glyphosate and dicamba has seen the amount of milkweed, the only plant that monarch caterpillars can eat, drop considerably, with butterfly numbers also plummeting as a result. Because of this decline, the Biden administration had proposed listing the monarch as threatened under the Endangered Species Act at the end of 2024, but Trump officials have since delayed the decision indefinitely. In February, two environmental groups filed a lawsuit to compel the Trump administration to set a date for protections. “It would be unforgivable for [the monarch’s] epic migrations to collapse because of political cowardice on enacting range-wide protections for them,” said Tierra Curry, endangered species co-director at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups behind the lawsuit in a statement. “Even the Trump administration has to think twice about letting these iconic butterflies collapse toward oblivion.” In Mexico, the spread of avocado farming in the state of Michoacán has seen vast swaths of forest lost to illegal logging, driven partly by organized crime groups who have infiltrated the highly profitable avocado trade. Compared with a peak of nearly 18.21 hectares (45 acres) in the winter of 1995, the area covered by monarchs in Mexico today is just a sliver, and well below the 6.07 hectares (15 acres) that scientists say are necessary for the species’ survival. The involvement of cartels in logging has at times become deadly: in 2020, Homero Gómez González, one of the best-known monarch butterfly conservators in Mexico, was found dead, with his family suspecting he was murdered by organized crime groups intent on clearing the monarch’s habitat. Still, conservation efforts have slowed logging in recent years: from a peak of nearly 500 hectares (1,235 acres) of forest in 2003-2004, just 2.55 hectares (6.3 acres) between February 2024 and February 2025 were affected. “One of the greatest achievements of this work is that illegal logging in the core zone of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve has been virtually eradicated since 2008,” María José Villanueva, WWF Mexico’s director, told reporters. “This means that the forests that represent the fundamental habitat for the monarch butterfly’s hibernation are being protected and conserved.”
A French member of Islamic State has been convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity for atrocities committed against Yazidis in a historic judgment that highlighted the atrocities committed by jihadists. The Paris criminal court found Sabri Essid, who was tried in his absence, directly participated in an organised system of killing, raping and enslaving members of the Iraqi ethnic and religious minority who are descended from some of the region’s most ancient roots. The case was based on harrowing evidence from two Yazidi women who were “owned” by the Toulouse-born terrorist in the IS Iraqi-Syrian declared caliphate between 2014 and 2016. One victim told the court an IS member had bought her in exchange for a car and a gun before selling her to Essid, who made her his sexual slave, raping her every day, often in front of her two-year-old daughter. Her ordeal lasted more than two years. “I would like Yazidi voices to be heard, not only in France, but throughout the world,” the woman told the court. A number of women who had managed to escape IS identified Essid as their “owner”, stating he had bought them for between $40 (£30) and $100. Judge Marc Sommerer read chilling extracts from transcripts of conversations from a Telegram group headed “market for caliphate soldiers”. It included posts from IS members selling young children to be sexual slaves. The youngest girls fetched up to $14,000 and were considered by IS to have reached sexual maturity at the age of nine. Bahzad Farhan, the founder of Kinyat, an NGO documenting the Yazidi genocide, obtained the transcripts by infiltrating online discussion groups. “All girls over 10 and boys over 12 were taken from their mothers. The girls became sexual objects; the boys fighters,” he said. A document listing women and girls between the age of one and 50, and fixing a “market price”, was shown to the court. The Yazidi genocide started with an IS massacre in the Sinjar mountains in August 2014 that left thousands dead. The Islamist group enslaved an estimated 6,000 Yazidis, of whom 2,000 are still missing. An investigator from France’s general directorate of internal security described how IS had a plan to wipe out the religious minority, involving the killing or forced conversion of men and boys and the enslaving of women, girls and younger children. Essid is the stepbrother of Mohamed Merah, the French terrorist who killed three soldiers and four Jewish people, including three children, in Toulouse in 2012 before being killed in a shootout with police. Essid travelled to Syria’s northern border with Iraq in 2014 and was later joined by his wife and children. He was presumed killed in 2018, but his wife believes he may still be alive. He gained notoriety after appearing in a video next to a 12-year-old boy who he encouraged to kill a hostage by shooting him in the head. Clémence Bectarte, representing three Yazidi women and eight children, none of whom were named, said the trial allowed them “to recount the hell they endured at the hands of Isis”. “Fighting for justice means fighting against being forgotten,” Bectarte said. “This verdict was achieved through the courage and determination of the Yazidi survivors who attach great value to this first conviction of a French Isis member for genocide and crimes against humanity.” In a landmark hearing in Germany in November 2021, Taha al-Jumailly, an Iraqi member of Isis, was sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide and crimes against humanity for leaving a five-year-old Yazidi girl and her mother held as slaves to die of thirst.
… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today! Nato has moved its personnel from Iraq after a series of attacks from Iran and amid “worsening” security situation in the region, the alliance said (15:28, 16:08, 16:53). This comes as US president Donald Trump doubled down on its unrelated criticism of the alliance, calling allies “cowards” for not joining his war against Iran (15:20). Separately, Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, reacted to the crisis provoked by the Iran war by unveiling a €5bn, 80-point package of measures to help Spaniards weather the economic uncertainty (13:24, 13:27). Speaking after an emergency cabinet meeting, Sánchez also reiterated his outspoken opposition to the “illegal” conflict (13:39). And earlier, The French navy has boarded an oil tanker in the western Mediterranean, which was flying a Mozambican flag and had departed from Russia (12:36, 13:03). France’s president Emmanuel Macron said the vessel belonged to the Russian shadow fleet and stressed that “the war in Iran will not divert France from its support for Ukraine” (12:42). If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.