Border Disputes

An air strike on a fuel market near Chad’s border with Sudan killed 12 and injured seven, according to officials.

An air strike near Chad’s border with Sudan has killed at least 12 people, with Chad accusing the Sudanese army of launching it.

Addressing Thursday’s strike, a Chadian security source said it “targeted a fuel market where the RSF [Rapid Support Forces] refuel. The strike killed 12 people and wounded seven”, AFP news agency reported about the attack on the paramilitary group.

Chad’s accusation comes against the backdrop of a civil war between Sudan’s army and the RSF which has lasted over three years and displaced millions of people.

Previously, Chad said that Sudan was responsible for an air strike that hit a military convoy in its territory last week. Chad’s army said the strikes took place more than 100km (62 miles) inside its territory in the eastern Ennedi region, and that there were no Chadian casualties.

In response to threats posed by drones, Chad had raised its alert level in the area to its highest point, according to a security source. The country deployed about 100 armoured vehicles and signal-jamming trucks near eastern Tine, close to the Sudanese border, a local source told Reuters news agency.

On Thursday, Sudan said it was surprised by the allegations against its army “before any professional and independent investigation into the circumstances of the incident”.

Sudan’s Foreign Ministry said its forces “are carrying out their constitutional duty to protect Sudan’s sovereignty, security and safety and to face any threats it faces, while respecting the sovereignty of its neighbours and without targeting their territory”.

The US embassy in Khartoum also accused the Sudanese army of launching the recent strikes on Chad, condemning them on Thursday.

The Sudanese army has previously accused Chad of being aligned with the RSF. Meanwhile, nearly one million displaced Sudanese people have fled to Chad, where they have been facing a water crisis.

Germany splits

At least two generations on both Guetinger’s maternal and paternal sides were from Babenhausen, a small Bavarian market town of about 4,000 people in the 1960s. Surrounded by a castle, it was once home to a merchant family said to have been prominent during the Middle Ages.

Guetinger’s father, Ernst, was among five siblings and the youngest of the three boys. Hans was the eldest, followed by another brother, Erich, and there was a four-year age gap between Ernst and Hans. Guetinger said this age difference played a role in his father’s and uncle’s relationship.

“My dad and uncle Hans didn’t have a very close relationship because they had grown up during wartime,” he said. “When war broke out in 1939, Uncle Hans was obliged to serve as a soldier.”

Soldiers were in short supply, so German boys aged 16 and 17 were drafted as “Flakhelfer” to work with anti-aircraft guns or man the huge lights that tracked enemy aircraft.

“My Uncle Erich was in this age range so served in this role, but my dad, being the youngest, did not have to serve,” he added.

After Nazi Germany’s defeat in 1945, the country was divided into occupation zones and then formally split into two separate countries in 1949.

Hans returned to Babenhausen, Bavaria, after the war and looked for work as a shoemaker. But jobs were scarce, and he had trouble finding work.

Amid their struggles, Hans’s homesick wife encouraged him to try finding work in the GDR, where she was from. They knew they would be welcomed, because the GDR was keen on people willing to buck the trend of those going west – roughly 2.7 million people moved to West Germany between 1949 and 1961 – for better economic and employment opportunities.

In 1958, Hans’s family moved east to Brieskow-Finkenheerd, a village near the Polish border, where Hans started working at a power station that also provided their accommodation. He was also able to indulge in his love of hunting as much as he liked.

“He was very happy hunting,” Guetinger remembered fondly. “In West Germany, you could only hunt if you owned land, but since the government owned all the land in the GDR, my uncle was told he could hunt wherever he wanted.”

Hans became so well known for his hunting abilities that when the big cadres wanted to celebrate something and eat some tasty meat like boar or wild swine, they would ask Hans to go hunting.

“The party had its own hunters, but they considered my uncle one of the best,” Guetinger said.

Meanwhile, Hans’s younger brother Ernst, back in Bavaria, became a father to Erich Guetinger in 1951.

In the 1950s, freedom of movement between the two countries remained largely unrestricted, but from the 1960s onwards, tougher measures were instituted. After that, East Germans were generally only allowed to travel to the West for urgent family matters, such as funerals or weddings.

In August 1961 – 65 years ago – the East German government began building the Berlin Wall, a 155km (96 miles) concrete structure surrounding West Berlin that effectively isolated it within GDR territory and severed the capital.

Outside Berlin, efforts to fortify the division led to the installation of new barbed wire fences, detectors, watchtowers, as well as booby-traps and extended powers for border guards to shoot and arrest escapees. Between then and 1989, when the wall came down, an estimated 75,000 people were imprisoned for trying to escape.

Guetinger says that in the early years of the division, there was barely any contact with his uncle and family.

“Eventually, we were able to start sending letters, but we shared very little in these because everybody knew the East German secret police, known as the Stasi, would carefully check the post between families, often reading our letters,” he said.

Like many families in West Germany, the Guetingers would often send Western products to their relatives in the East.

“For Christmas, we made parcels containing things we knew they would like, and which we knew it would be difficult for them to get, such as coffee and blue jeans,” Guetinger said.

“Blue jeans were particularly hot property, and my cousins liked this kind of clothing. And even though we would send parcels, there was always a chance that they wouldn’t reach them,” he explained, noting that shipments were closely monitored.

Guetinger says it is still hard to fully assess how the day-to-day disruption caused by the division impacted their family’s sense of safety and unity.

“Even if my parents had a heavy heart back then, they would rarely talk about it, so today, I have to rely on other indicators to try and understand. And one of the indicators is that my dad and his elder brother tried to visit each other as soon as it was possible for both of them.”

The South American nation is only the second country to recognise Israel’s claims over the illegally annexed Syrian territory.

Colombia has become only the second country to recognise Israel’s claim of sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, just days after far-right President Abelardo de la Espriella took power.

Colombia’s Foreign Ministry made the announcement on Monday, joining the United States as the only other country to recognise Israel’s annexation of the territory in 1981.

“The Government of Colombia recognises Israeli sovereignty over this territory, as well as that State’s right to protect itself against external threats,” read a statement published on X.

“Colombia recognises that maintaining Israel’s control and sovereignty over the Golan Heights is an essential component of its national defence,” it added.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar thanked his “good friend” de la Espriella for the “historic” recognition.

He said the pair had agreed on the move in the Colombian city of Barranquilla a day before de la Espriella’s inauguration.

Israel captured most of the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War, before illegally annexing the territory in 1981. The move was rejected by most of the international community, although the US formally recognised Israel’s claim in 2019 during President Donald Trump’s first term in office.

The United Nations recognises the region as a part of Syria, and last month, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterated that stance, describing Israeli occupation as “totally unacceptable”.

Syria tried to regain the Golan in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, but was thwarted. Israel and Syria signed an armistice in 1974, and the Golan has been relatively quiet since.

Colombia’s recognition of the Israeli claim comes as Israel expands its military footprint in Syria following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government in December 2024. Israel has moved troops into a UN-monitored buffer zone and seized strategic territories, including the Syrian side of Jabal al-Sheikh (Mount Hermon), which overlooks the capital, Damascus.

De La Espriella, the new Colombian president, ran a bombastic campaign during which he promised close relations with the US and Israel as a way to combat armed groups in his country.

The US-backed millionaire has promised to restore Bogota’s ties with Israel after his predecessor, Gustavo Petro, criticised Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, severed diplomatic relations and halted Israeli arms imports.

De La Espriella has also cancelled Petro’s plans to open an embassy in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

A China Coast Guard vessel has fired its water cannon at Philippine government boats near Scarborough Shoal, the latest in a series of confrontations in the disputed South China Sea.

The incident adds to concern that Moscow’s war on Ukraine risks spilling over to entangle neighbouring NATO states.

A Romanian fighter jet has shot down a drone, suspected to be Russian, that breached the country’s airspace.

The incident on Friday marked the first time the Eastern European country has intercepted an intruding aircraft since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, President Nicusor Dan noted.

However, concern that Moscow’s war on Ukraine risks entangling neighbouring NATO states is on the rise. Romania is one of several alliance members to confront repeated stray drones recently, as Russia and Ukraine launch hundreds of drones daily.

Dan reported that a Romanian F-16 jet shot down the drone after it entered the country’s airspace, adding that the fighter had shot over an uninhabited area.

A Romanian military source told the Reuters news agency that Russia was the suspected point of origin, given the pattern of previous incursions in the region.

Romania’s Ministry of National Defence said a radar first detected the drone about 20km (12 miles) east of the Black Sea port of Sulina, before it crossed into national airspace on a path through Braila, Fetesti and Buzau county.

Two Italian Eurofighter Typhoon jets, deployed to Romania under NATO’s air policing mission, were joined by two Romanian F-16s. One F-16 engaged the target with an air-to-air missile, downing it over unpopulated ground near the village of Padina. No casualties or injuries were reported.

Romania, an EU and NATO member sharing a border with Ukraine, has recorded dozens of drone incursions since the war began. This incident marked the first successful interception.

In late May, a drone struck an apartment building in the city of Galati, injuring two people – the first time such a strike hit a populated area in a NATO country.

NATO and European Union officials condemned the incident. The European Commission said it showed Russia’s war had “crossed yet another line”.

A month later, a Ukrainian sea drone exploded at the port of Constanta. Kyiv said that it had launched the vessel, which had been knocked off course by Russian jamming.

The Baltic states have also reported repeated airspace violations in recent months, incursions that contributed to the collapse of Latvia’s government in May.

NATO chief Mark Rutte has said Moscow’s “reckless behaviour is a danger to us all”. United States ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, has pledged the alliance will “defend every inch” of its territory.

Thousands of people who travel every day between the southern tip of Spain and the British territory of Gibraltar will no longer have to cross a physical border from Wednesday.

This came after the European Union and United Kingdom on Tuesday signed a treaty that delivers “economic and trade certainty for the people and businesses of Gibraltar, safeguards British sovereignty and protects the autonomous operation of UK military facilities”.

The treaty was signed in Brussels by the European Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic, British Minister of State for Europe Stephen Doughty, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares and Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo.

“Gibraltar was left out of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement following Brexit, creating the prospect of a devastating ‘hard border’ for the 15,000 people – more than half of Gibraltar’s workforce – who cross the land border between Spain and Gibraltar every day,” the treaty said.

Here’s what we know about the treaty:

What does the treaty include?

Britain secured Gibraltar, a strategically important enclave at the southern tip of Spain, in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of Spanish Succession.

The contested British overseas territory of 38,000 people is perched at a strategic location, only 8 nautical miles (15km) from Morocco where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean Sea.

The new agreement allows residents of Gibraltar to cross into Spain using residence cards without needing to have their passports stamped. In return, Spanish citizens will be allowed to enter Gibraltar using a government ID card.

The treaty in effect brings Gibraltar into the EU’s Schengen free-travel area, which allows people from 29 countries to move among them freely without needing visas.

At Gibraltar’s airport and port, entry and exit checks will be conducted by both British and Spanish border officials. The arrangement is similar to what’s in place at Eurostar train stations in London and Paris, where both British and French officials check passports.

Travellers to Gibraltar from countries outside the Schengen area, including the UK, will have to contend with the EU Entry/Exit System, which was rolled out in Europe in April and replaced passport stamps with biometric data collected through photographs and digital fingerprints.

Under the older system, every person had to face two border checks, one by Gibraltarian border agents and the other by Spanish officials when entering or exiting the Schengen area. The checks caused long queues, heavily impacting the workers who made the crossing daily.

The British government said the agreement brings “fluidity for people and goods crossing the Gibraltar-Spain border to support economic growth and jobs in the region”.

What was the motivation behind the treaty, and how does Brexit feature in it?

In a 2016 referendum in which UK voters approved leaving the EU, 96 percent of voters on “the Rock”, as Gibraltar is popularly known in English, supported remaining in the bloc.

When Britain eventually left the EU in 2020, the relationship between Gibraltar and the bloc was left unresolved. Previous talks on a deal to ensure people and goods could keep flowing across the border had made halting progress.

While the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which came into force in 2021, broadly covered relations between the bloc and Britain, it was decided that Gibraltar would be addressed in separate negotiations because of its unique situation because it’s not in the EU customs union or the Schengen area.

In 2025, the EU and UK announced an agreement on those issues after more than three and a half years of negotiations.

Does the treaty place Gibraltar in a special position, and do any other British overseas territories have the same privileges?

Yes, Gibraltar is in a unique position because it has now gained EU privileges without being an actual EU member.

Still, it is under British sovereignty, and the treaty solely seeks to resolve post-Brexit cooperation with the EU and border management due to its open land border with the EU.

None of Britain’s other overseas territories, which include 14 territories scattered across the Caribbean and the Antarctic, has a deal similar to Gibraltar’s due to the shared land border.

Some of the territories have international arrangements, including Bermuda, which has its own immigration and tax systems, and the Falkland Islands, which govern themselves.

Relations begin to thaw as both countries reinstate ambassadors and reopen airspace closed to each other since April 2025.

More than a year after a diplomatic fallout, relations between Algeria and Mali are beginning to thaw, with both countries reinstating their ambassadors and reopening their airspace to one another.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune announced on Saturday that the country’s ambassador would return to Mali, a day after Algiers fully reopened its airspace to civilian and military aircraft travelling to and from its southern neighbour.

Issa Ousmane Coulibaly, spokesperson for Mali’s military government, confirmed in a statement that Bamako had taken reciprocal measures.

Relations between the two African nations deteriorated in April last year after Algeria said it had shot down a Malian surveillance drone for violating its airspace. Bamako disputes this, saying the drone was downed within its own borders.

The fallout between Algeria and Mali has jeopardised security in the Sahel region. Mali is a member of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), along with Burkina Faso and Niger. Both Ouagadougou and Niamey also withdrew their ambassadors to Algeria in April last year in solidarity with their ally.

The AES has experienced a surge in attacks by armed groups linked to the ISIL (ISIS) group and al-Qaeda in recent years. Many analysts argue that such groups were able to establish a foothold in the Sahel partly because of the NATO-backed overthrow of longtime Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The ousting of Gaddafi left a power vacuum that has been exploited by armed groups. Vast stockpiles of weapons belonging to forces loyal to him were looted and are believed to have been used by those groups.

Algeria has previously mediated peace talks between the Malian government and Tuareg separatist rebels waging an armed rebellion there.

However, last year’s diplomatic fallout led Algiers to step back from its role as mediator, raising concerns about Mali’s security and territorial integrity while also posing a threat to Algeria’s own internal security.

This April, Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf reaffirmed Algiers’s support for Mali’s territorial integrity, rejecting what he described as all forms of “terrorism”.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Iran will not be permitted to charge tolls or fees for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz under any final agreement with Washington, exposing one of the biggest points of friction in negotiations aimed at ending months of conflict across the Middle East.

The dispute comes after Iran announced it would waive planned transit fees through the strait that crosses through its territorial waters for 60 days while talks with the United States continue in Switzerland, suggesting charges could be introduced once the negotiating period expires.

Washington and Tehran signed a preliminary agreement in Switzerland this week to halt hostilities and launched a 60-day diplomatic process focused on sanctions relief, Iran’s nuclear programme and the future administration of the Strait of Hormuz.

Pakistan, which helped mediate the talks alongside Qatar, has said negotiations to end the four-month US-Israel war on Iran are expected to resume early next week, likely on Tuesday.

The future of Hormuz has already emerged as a key sticking point after Iran effectively closed the waterway during the war, severely disrupting maritime traffic through one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints and causing the price of oil to soar.

In peacetime, one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas supplies are shipped for export by Gulf producers through the waterway.

In April, the US imposed a corresponding naval blockade on Iranian naval ports in a bid to stem Iranian oil exports.

While a number of ships have crossed through the strait since the US-Iran agreement was signed last week, uncertainty remains over whether Tehran intends to impose permanent fees or service charges on shipping operators using the route. Here’s what we know – and what else is happening in the Strait of Hormuz this week.

What are the US and Iran saying?

On Friday, Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) said planned fees for ships using the waterway would be suspended during the 60-day negotiation period established under the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed with the US.

Earlier this week, Iran and Oman said in a joint statement that they would study the future administration of the trade route as well as possible charges for services provided there, while maintaining their sovereignty claims over territorial waters bordering the strait.

Speaking at the start of a regional tour in the United Arab Emirates, Rubio rejected the idea of transit fees. “It’s an international waterway. No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway,” he said, adding that he believed “all the countries in this region would agree”.

Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has signalled that Tehran views the post-war arrangement as fundamentally different from the status quo that existed before the conflict, however. Experts also say that Iran will not give up control of the strait, which has proved to be its greatest point of leverage in the conflict with the US.

“Hormuz will never return” to its prewar status, Ghalibaf said, despite both sides agreeing on Monday to establish “communication mechanisms” aimed at keeping the waterway open.

What does international law say?

International law protects the right of transit through strategic waterways such as the Strait of Hormuz, preventing coastal states from imposing explicit tolls simply for passage through international shipping lanes, even when they are passing solely through territorial waters.

However, countries can charge for specific services, including inspections, navigation assistance, security measures and certain insurance-related requirements, insurance experts say.

Examples include fees associated with transit through the Suez Canal and Panama Canal, as well as some services provided in Turkiye’s Bosporus and Dardanelles straits.

Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, an economist at Germany’s Philipps-Universitat Marburg, told Al Jazeera last month that Iran, like Turkiye, could justify a negotiated mechanism for transit fees or service-based contributions through natural straits as payment for maintaining a safe passageway, reducing environmental risks and providing predictability in a waterway that supports global energy, food and technology supply chains.

A key difference, however, is that while those waterways pass through the territory of a single state in each case, the Strait of Hormuz passes through the territorial waters of both Iran and Oman, while also connecting to waters used by the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states.

“This sort of arrangement is unprecedented, and there would not be such an outcome, unless there is a complete coordination between the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries and Iran, with the approval of major international powers, such as China and the United States,” Nader Habibi, an Iranian American economist, told Al Jazeera.

How many ships are getting through the strait now?

Ship movements through the Strait of Hormuz remain well below prewar levels, when between 120 and 140 ships transited the passage each day, including tankers carrying about 20 million barrels of oil from the Gulf.

As the strait begins to open up, Oman says it is working with the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization (IMO) on temporary arrangements to facilitate safe transit through the strait, launching an operation to evacuate more than 11,000 sailors stranded in the area after the conflict left hundreds of vessels trapped for months.

Traffic through the strait has also been held back by ongoing concerns about the possible presence of sea mines in the central shipping channels used by international vessels before the war.

The Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC), which includes representatives from the US and other maritime partners, has warned ships to avoid the area “due to the existence of mines”.

Other countries, including Japan, are currently weighing up whether to send ships to help with efforts to remove mines from the strait.

While Iran has never confirmed the presence of mines in the strait, when it first issued a map of the waterway for vessels it had approved for transit while the conflict was ongoing, it ordered ships to pass close to its coast to avoid possible mines. Ships had previously passed much closer to the coast of Oman.

The graphic below illustrates how much shipping through the strait dropped off as a result of the US-Israel war on Iran.

Could the dispute over strait fees derail a peace deal?

Mostafa Khoshcheshm, a professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Tehran, told Al Jazeera that Iran is unlikely to abandon plans to introduce long-term service fees in the strait.

“According to the MoU, Iran is not going to charge service fees for 60 days, but afterwards, Iran is definitely going to do that,” Khoshcheshm told Al Jazeera.

He said many Iranians were already unhappy that Tehran had agreed to suspend fees for the duration of the negotiating period.

“The money is not the real core of the issue,” he said. “The point here is how to impose your new protocols in the region. This is highly important for the Iranians.”

Cyrus Schayegh, professor of international history and politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute, told Al Jazeera the success of any new administrative arrangement would depend heavily on regional support.

“I think this is a very big question, and the biggest question is whether they will be able to sell it to the Emirates,” Schayegh told Al Jazeera.

“I think the Emirates will need to be involved in a really substantive way for any sort of new authority to actually work.”

More broadly, he said, the future of Hormuz forms part of a wider debate over Gulf security architecture following the war.

“It is only one piece of a much larger puzzle,” Schayegh said, adding that several regional states now accept that Iran has strengthened its deterrence capabilities following the conflict.

What other issues remain unresolved?

Hormuz is far from the only serious obstacle to a peace deal.

Questions also remain over the future of Iran’s nuclear programme, with Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, saying that access for international inspectors to nuclear facilities damaged during the war would only be addressed as part of a final agreement with Washington.

His comments came after US President Donald Trump claimed Iran had agreed to “the highest level” of nuclear inspections.

Iranian officials insist no commitments were made in Switzerland regarding Tehran’s nuclear programme and say they did not meet representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), including Director-General Rafael Grossi.

Regional security remains another major source of disagreement, with Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz insisting Israeli forces will not withdraw from southern Lebanon “even if there is an American demand” to do so.

Meanwhile, Ghalibaf has identified the withdrawal of foreign military forces from the Middle East as one of Tehran’s strategic objectives in the negotiations.

The future of Iran’s frozen assets also remains a sticking point, with Trump indicating Washington is reluctant to release large sums of Iranian funds directly, arguing that money could ultimately benefit the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Instead, he has suggested a mechanism under which some funds would be used to purchase US goods.

“Food is desperately needed in Iran, and we will be purchasing it for them exclusively from the United States,” Trump said. Iran has not confirmed plans to do this.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Two roadside bomb blasts in northwestern Pakistan have killed at least seven people.

The first explosion on Saturday hit a vehicle, and the second was detonated as rescuers responded, police said.

“A private pick-up truck carrying passengers was targeted with a remote-controlled IED,” said Yasir Afridi, a police officer in Bannu district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, using a common acronym for a homemade bomb.

“The injured were being transported to hospital in a car for emergency treatment when a second IED exploded,” he said, adding that three people were wounded.

Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attack and said the government would bring those responsible to justice.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the blast, but the Pakistan Taliban, known by the acronym TTP, and other armed groups operate in the area.

Pakistan has blamed Afghanistan for a surge in attacks near the border, although the Taliban government in Kabul has repeatedly denied Pakistani accusations that Afghan territory is used as a sanctuary for armed groups.

Frosty relations have escalated into clashes in recent months, including Pakistani air strikes on Afghan cities.

Pakistani air strikes near the border this month killed at least 26 Taliban fighters, the Pakistani government said, while the Afghan government said 12 civilians were killed.

The border has remained largely closed since violence escalated in October, freezing bilateral trade and disrupting the movement of people and goods.