The latest attack brings the death toll from US military boat strikes to at least 235 from 70 maritime strikes across the region.
Published On 5 Oct 20265 Oct 2026
The United States has conducted another strike on an alleged drug trafficking boat in the Caribbean, killing four, according to the US military.
US Southern Command said late Sunday that it struck alleged drug traffickers operating along “established narco-trafficking routes” in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, following its standard reporting pattern for military operations of suspected cartels across the multinational maritime zones.
The latest attack brings the death toll from US military boat strikes to at least 235 deaths across 70 attacks, since the administration of US President Donald Trump first launched its counter-narcoterrorism campaign, termed Operation Southern Spear, in September of last year.
At the time, Trump characterised the fight against cartels in Latin America as an active “armed conflict” while defending the strikes as a necessary escalation to curb illicit drug trafficking and reduce fatal US overdoses.
The move comes as United Nations experts warn that the strikes violate international law and could amount to crimes against humanity.
Despite releasing footage on X showing the explosion that destroyed the moving vessel, the US military has offered no evidence that the targeted boat was ferrying drugs.
The Trump administration has been actively seeking regional security agreements across Latin America to expand joint military operations against what it has designated as criminal cartels. The deals come under the US-led Shield of the Americas coalition, launched in March. The president has pledged the undertaking will use “unmatched military might” to dismantle drug cartels while simultaneously countering Chinese economic influence in the Western Hemisphere.
During a visit to Panama in August, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras had agreed to joint counter-crime military operations on their soil, a statement Guatemala quickly disputed to clarify its sovereignty and boundaries within the 19-member alliance.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Leeds Bradford Airport is very profitable and can more than afford to come back to the table with an offer that doesn’t fall short of our members’ expectations.
“Our hardworking members should not be paid less than those doing the same jobs at other airports.
“Workers taking action at Leeds Bradford Airport have Unite’s full support in their fight for fairer pay.”
It also previously revealed plans to one day launch long-haul flights, with most routes being to Europe including Spain.
Although the airport is losing all of it’s easyJet flights next year, which will be axed by January 2027.
Unite regional officer Neil Whitaker said they had “no choice but to strike,” citing a “fair pay rise” needed to call it off.
A Leeds Bradford Airport spokesperson told Sun Travel: “Leeds Bradford Airport acknowledges the proposed industrial action due to take place between 16-18 October involving a group of operational colleagues.
“We respect the right of employees to participate in lawful industrial action. However, we are disappointed by this and do not believe strike action is the right way to resolve the issues still under discussion.
“The airport has made what we believe is a fair and responsible offer that is significantly above inflation and reflects both current economic conditions and the need to ensure the long-term sustainability of the business.
“Our priority now is to minimise disruption for customers, many of whom have worked hard and saved for important holidays, family visits and business travel. At this stage we anticipate running near-normal operations during the period.
“Leeds Bradford Airport plays a vital role in connecting Yorkshire to the world. Industrial action has the potential to cause inconvenience for thousands of customers and local businesses who rely on those connections.
“We remain committed to constructive dialogue with Unite and would welcome continued discussions aimed at reaching a resolution.
“It is important to recognise that any profits generated by Leeds Bradford Airport are reinvested back into the airport and has been for a number of years. Those funds support improvements to facilities, infrastructure, operations and customer experience including the ongoing LBA:REGEN project which saw the opening of a new central search zone and staff welfare facilities this week.”
Funeral prayers were held at Gaza City’s Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church for a Palestinian mother and daughter who were among five killed in an overnight Israeli airstrike on an apartment.
Hundreds of flights have been cancelled in a union dispute that could affect thousands of passengers
Robert Rowlands Deputy editor, money and lifestyle, content hub and Maria Ortega
17:24, 02 Oct 2026
EasyJet says it is “extremely disappointed” that the action is taking place – file image of one of the airline’s planes at Lisbon airport(Image: Sergey Sokolnikov via Getty Images)
A ‘massive’ EasyJet cabin crew strike has resulted in the cancellation of hundreds of flights in a popular British tourist destination – and could jeopardise Christmas plans for holidaymakers.
The initial 5-day industrial action is expected to ground approximately 500 scheduled flights across Lisbon, Porto and Faro airports. And the festive period is also set to be disrupted.
The strike began this Friday, October 2, in Portugal and is the first of two walkouts planned for this year. The affected flights involve all domestic airports, but mainly Lisbon and Porto.
The EasyJet cabin crew strike goes on until Tuesday, with 443 flights from the Lisbon, Porto, and Faro bases already scrapped as of this morning, according to the National Union of Civil Aviation Flight Personnel (SNPVAC). “80% of flights involving the Lisbon, Porto, and Faro bases” between October 2 and 6 have already been cancelled, union official Ana Dias told local news agency Lusa. They noted that “the impact has already been massive.”
EasyJet, meanwhile, said 55% of flights were set to operate over the five-day strike period. The National Union of Civil Aviation Flight Personnel (SNPVAC) reported strong participation on Friday, the first of five scheduled strike days for EasyJet cabin crew, adding that only minimum services are being maintained.
EasyJet has confirmed that two return flights from Manchester Airport to Portugal have been axed in the coming days due to industrial action, the MEN reports. The walkout was announced by the National Union of Civil Aviation Flight Personnel and is set to impact flights from Lisbon, Porto and Faro airports, all served by EasyJet from Manchester Airport.
Sic Noticias reports that the union has said other currently scheduled flights could still be disrupted by the strike, although some may be operated by aircraft and crews from other European bases. An official EasyJet source told Lusa on Thursday that the airline anticipates operating approximately 55% of its schedule during the strike period. The source explained that, in addition to “minimum services” (representing about 22% of its Portugal-based operations), the airline is maintaining flights to and from the country operated by crews from other European bases.
The company says these operations are being conducted “in full compliance with applicable laws and regulations,”. The SNPVAC union deems the use of workers from other bases to replace striking staff “illegal” and is considering taking the matter to court.
EasyJet said it was “extremely disappointed” that the strike was taking place, despite its “ongoing efforts to maintain a constructive dialogue and reach an agreement.” It expressed regret over the disruption caused to passengers.
An EasyJet spokesperson said: “We are extremely disappointed that the union representing our Portugal-based cabin crew has announced an industrial action from 2 to 6 October, despite our willingness to continue a constructive dialogue and reach an agreement to meet our employees’ requests and protect the sustainability of EasyJet business in Portugal.
“We are sorry for the impact the unnecessary action will have on our customers, and are doing all we can to minimise disruption, including cancelling two return flights from Manchester in advance to allow our customers to rearrange their travel plans. Customers have been informed directly and offered options including a free transfer or a refund.
“We advise customers travelling to or from Portugal between 2 and 6 October to check the status of their flight via our Flight Tracker.”
EasyJet operates from a number of UK airports including Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Newcastle, London Gatwick and London Luton.
The strike comes due to an ongoing dispute with the airline about pay, rostering and working conditions for cabin crew in Portugal.
Any travellers due to fly to or from Portugal during the strike dates are being advised to check their easyJet app or emails for updates.
Meanwhile, the Portuguese government has promised that there will be a minimum of one Lisbon to London and then London to Lisbon flight per day during the strike.
Some flights have already been cancelledCredit: Getty
On the other hand, it appears that no UK flights to or from Faro or Porto remain protected.
The SNPVAC union has announced further walkouts later on in the year in December between 19–23.
A spokesperson for easyJet told Sun Travel: “We are extremely disappointed that the union representing our Portugal-based cabin crew has announced an industrial action from 2 to 6 October, despite our willingness to continue a constructive dialogue and reach an agreement to meet our employees’ requests and protect the sustainability of easyJet business in Portugal.
“We are sorry for the impact the unnecessary action will have on our customers and we are doing all we can to minimise disruption, including actioning some cancellations in advance to allow our customers to rearrange their travel plans.
“Customers whose flights are cancelled have been informed directly and offered options including a free transfer or a refund.
“We advise customers travelling to or from Portugal between 2 and 6 October to check the status of their flight via our Flight Tracker.”
IF YOU are due to head to or from Italy today you might want to check your flight as strikes across the country have seen huge cancellations.
Strike action is set to take place across Italy today between 1pm and 5pm with ENAV – the company that runs Italian air traffic control – walking out at all 33 Italian airports.
A number of major Italian airports including Milan are set to be impactedCredit: Alamy
The main airports expected to be affected include Rome, Naples, Milan and Venice.
Flights cancelled today already include:
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10:15am British Airways flight to Milan from London Heathrow
3:25pm British Airways flight to London Heathrow from Milan
11:50am British Airways flight to Venice from London Heathrow
5:20pm British Airways flight to London Heathrow from Venice
1:25pm British Airways flight to Milan from London City
2:25pm British Airways flight to London City from Florence
5:50pm British Airways flight to London City from Milan
3:50pm Ryanair flight to Bologna from London Luton
Currently, flights to Italy from London Heathrow and London Gatwick state they are scheduled as planned, though this may change.
ITA Airways has already warned that 29 per cent of its scheduled flights are cancelled today.
Passengers are being advised to check their flight status with their airline and airport before travelling.
If you are due to fly this morning between 7am and 10am or this evening between 6pm and 9pm then your flight is guaranteed to go ahead as normal, under Italian law.
If you are able to move your flight, then it might be worth doing this to avoid disruption.
Airlines are advising passengers to check their flight status ahead of travelling to the airportCredit: Alamy
Unfortunately though, if your flight is delayed or cancelled you won’t get any compensation as a strike is deemed to be outside of the airline’s control.
But airlines do have a duty of care so should provide you with food and water and if necessary, accommodation overnight.
There is also set to be a strike on October 16 in Italy, lasting 24 hours – but this time it will be easyJet flight crew walking out.
The medical condition of dozens of prisoners has deteriorated as inmates protest against suspension of amnesty law.
Published On 30 Sep 202630 Sep 2026
The medical condition of dozens of inmates on a hunger strike for more than two weeks inside Lebanon’s largest prison has become “dire”, according to a legal campaigner.
“About 400 prisoners are on a hunger strike for more than two weeks. Ambulances enter daily to take [dozens of] them away because their condition is dire,” Mohammed Sablouh, a Lebanese lawyer, told Al Jazeera.
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“The prisoners are refusing medication, food and water,” Sablouh, who is also the director of the Prisoners’ Rights Center at the Tripoli Bar Association, said on Wednesday.
The inmates at Roumieh prison went on a hunger strike on September 12 in protest against the suspension of a general amnesty law, which could have granted an immediate release or reduced their sentences.
Protests have also been staged in Lebanon’s second city of Tripoli against the suspension of the law, which has a provision to release inmates jailed for petty crimes.
Many of the prisoners on hunger strike were arrested for their solidarity with the Syrian revolution against President Bashar al-Assad, who was toppled in December 2024 after more than 10 years of bloody war.
The Free Patriotic Movement, one of the country’s largest parties, filed an appeal before the Constitutional Council over concerns that some of the inmates were charged with “terrorism”.
The Constitutional Council is expected to issue its verdict next month.
Overcrowded prisons
Lebanese prisons are notorious for being overcrowded and thousands of inmates spend years behind bars without trial. Lebanon’s current prison population stands at about 8,500, nearly double its capacity.
The law passed on August 12 aimed to address overcrowded prison conditions in the country.
“Prison overcrowding exceeds 330 percent of the facilities’ actual capacity,” Sablouh said.
“The situation in Lebanon’s prisons is truly tragic, it can no longer withstand any … shock or any overturning of the amnesty law.”
More than 40 prisoners died in 2025. “Some died due to medical neglect, others under torture. Some died by suicide due to prolonged trials and repeated postponements,” Sablouh said.
The Lebanese lawyer blamed judicial delays for the large number of inmates, many of them arrested for petty crimes.
He pointed out the failure of the judiciary “to adhere to Article 108 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which sets a limit for pre-trial detention: two months for misdemeanours, renewable for an equal period, and six months for felonies, renewable for an equal period [up to a maximum of one year].”
Tens of thousands of civil servants, including teachers, firefighters and healthcare workers, have marched in cities across France to demand higher pay, as students clashed with the police in separate protests over conditions at their schools.
Unions said some 300,000 people took part in the one-day strike action nationwide, while police on Tuesday estimated a turnout of 30,000 in the capital, Paris. The workers also demanded better working conditions and expressed anger at the government’s planned budget cuts.
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Protests also took place at more than 400 schools, about 40 of which were blockaded and 44 of which faced attempted blockades.
Ten people, both students and staff members, were wounded, and at least 440 were detained, officials said.
The strikes and the student unrest came two days before the government is to unveil its draft budget and seven months before the presidential election. According to unions, the government proposes freezing base salaries for state employees in 2027 to save 2 billion euros ($2.3bn).
It would be the fourth consecutive annual freeze and the eighth during President Emmanuel Macron’s tenure. Unions say the freezes have cost workers a double-digit share of their purchasing power, and they are demanding a 6 percent raise.
‘Red alert’
Sophie Binet, general secretary of the General Confederation of Labor, called the protests “a red alert”.
“This anger is not going away. The government must look again at the budget,” she told Al Jazeera. She gave the government 48 hours to reverse the planned cuts before her union decides on further strike action.
The Education Ministry said just more than 11 percent of teachers and other school staff went on strike. French teachers are paid less on average than their counterparts in other European countries.
Fewer than 1 in 10 other civil servants took part, and fewer still in hospitals, with the loss of a day’s pay a likely factor in the turnout. France’s civil aviation regulator had warned of flight disruptions at some airports.
Professional firefighters, who say this summer’s huge wildfires exposed a lack of resources, were among those marching.
The government has already unveiled measures to help households cope with a spike in energy prices driven by the United States and Israel’s war on Iran, but it has failed to quell the discontent with Macron and his administration.
Student unrest
Students, meanwhile, have been protesting outside hundreds of schools over timetables, class sizes, teacher shortages and overheated classrooms during this year’s heatwaves. The demonstrations began in the Ile-de-France region around Paris and spread to other cities.
In addition to the 10 students and staff members who were hurt, 48 law enforcement officials were injured, authorities said, as students in some places set fire to rubbish bins and hurled projectiles, and officers responded with batons and tear gas.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told BFMTV that 440 people had been detained.
“We don’t have the final tally yet, but I’m told two thirds led to police custody,” he said. “Violence is never legitimate. There is nothing that justifies violence.”
Education Minister Edouard Geffray condemned the clashes on social media.
“This violence is unspeakable,” he wrote, adding that legal proceedings had begun. “To legitimize it or… call for an expansion of the blockades is to endanger both our students and public officials. It is irresponsible.”
‘Fewer cops, more money’
In Seine-Saint-Denis, a low-income suburb of Paris, Bally Bagayoko, the district’s mayor and a member of the hard-left France Unbowed party, joined hundreds of students protesting at the Lycee Paul-Eluard.
He led them in singing the national anthem and called the protests “completely legitimate”, saying poorer areas received fewer resources than wealthier ones.
Outside the Arago school in Paris, students, some with their faces covered, sat on dumpsters to block the entrance beneath a placard reading “Macron explosion”. A banner at the Helene-Boucher school read “Fewer cops, more money”.
“We want fewer police because we think there is a huge amount of police repression, both against high school student movements and social movements more generally,” said Mael Breton, a final-year student there. “This is a real problem, especially when there is such a lack of funding… here at our school and in the national education system more broadly.”
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu on Monday condemned the high school protests as irresponsible but acknowledged that the “difficulties of high schools must be heard and addressed”.
Jean-Luc Melenchon, a hard-left presidential contender, accused the government of steadily dismantling public services as he addressed protesters in Paris and urged his supporters to mobilise against the draft budget.
A Toluna Harris poll on Monday suggested that Melenchon and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally, would advance to next year’s presidential run-off, with Le Pen best placed to win.
Dozens of mourners in Gaza grieve the loss of their loved ones as they bury the fragmented remains of relatives killed in an Israeli strike in October 2023.
So if you are able to move your flight, especially to the morning, then you’d be protected from a cancellation.
As a strike is outside of an airline’s control, you sadly won’t get any compensation.
But the airline does have a duty of care, which means they must provide you with food and water as well as book you into a hotel if you are stuck overnight.
Four major airports are expected to be hit, as well as other airports across the countryCredit: Alamy
Flights expected to be impacted tomorrow include a 12:30pm Wizz Air service from Milan to London Luton, a 2pm easyJet flight from Milan to London Gatwick and a 1:20pm easyJet flight from Rome to London Gatwick.
Passengers are being advised to check their flight status with their airline and airport before travelling.
There will be another strike on October 16, lasting 24 hours – but this time it will be easyJet flight crew walking out.
Thousands of public transport drivers in the Philippines begin a three-day strike over soaring fuel prices. Drivers say incomes are falling short of a living wage because of rising costs and taxes.
Russian forces have again struck the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, hours after a drone hit the National Academy of Sciences in the historic centre of the city, killing at least two people.
Explosions were heard across Kyiv early on Tuesday, with Mayor Vitali Klitschko saying missile debris had fallen in the courtyard of one building while a second had caught fire in another part of the city.
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The attacks come as Russia has begun hitting Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with faster, high-flying jet drones.
Emergency officials said the strike on the National Academy of Sciences on Monday killed two people, with one person’s body recovered from the rubble later in the evening.
Video shared online appeared to show a fast-moving drone slamming into the building at a steep angle and exploding, sending smoke into a clear sky. People were seen leaning out of windows as bright orange flames engulfed part of the building.
Volodymyr Horbulin, a former secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, told the public broadcaster Suspilne that he was at work at the academy when it came under attack. He said his assistant, who was near the building, was killed and that he was also slightly wounded.
The academy is near the German Embassy, a cathedral, the national opera and government buildings.
In a statement, the academy called the attack “Russian terror” and “barbarity” aimed at “peaceful people who were simply at their workplaces”.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha accused Russia of cynicism for hitting a scientific institution during the workday.
“Russia is deliberately expanding the boundaries of what it believes the world will tolerate,” he said in a statement, urging Ukraine’s allies to provide more air defences.
Jet-powered drones
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces also hit a medical facility in Kyiv on Monday. He said at least nine people had been killed in Russian drone strikes throughout the country, while more than 80 people were wounded.
In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was still having difficulty countering the faster, high-flying Russian jet-powered drones.
“New interceptors are being actively tested,” he said. “Some combat groups are using them, but, of course, some details still need to be refined to achieve enough effectiveness and scale. We are speeding up the developers.”
According to the Ukrainian president, 90 of 120 drones fired on Ukraine on Monday were jet-propelled, rather than propeller-driven, with an interception rate for this type of drone at 57 percent.
Widening targets
Officials said the Russian strikes on Kyiv also targeted a pharmaceutical company and petrol stations. In other cities and regions, civilian facilities, businesses and communications infrastructure were hit.
In the southeastern city of Dnipro, a Russian drone attack on a business centre killed three people and wounded 19, according to officials. Another person was killed in a logistics office in Synelnykove, southeast of Dnipro, the regional governor said.
Emergency services said an attack on infrastructure in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia wounded 32 people.
Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, reporting from Kyiv, said Russia has been hitting economic targets across Ukraine “in a rolling series of strikes that have been ongoing for six days now”, during the day and night.
“Data centres increasingly being hit, as well as digital and communications infrastructure,” he said. “Kyiv Star, the country’s biggest cell provider, was hit on Sunday, as was the second biggest, Vodafone Ukraine. The government is said to be preparing for the worst: a total blackout in communications should that come.”
The Russian attacks have brought Kyiv “firmly into the eye of this war”, Hull added.
Ukraine has also increased attacks on Russia, targeting oil refineries as well as online retailers to try to undermine revenues and support for Moscow’s war effort.
Zelenskyy said on Monday that Ukraine struck Russian oil facilities in the Krasnodar region and two defence plants.
Both sides have denied deliberately targeting civilians.
Nearly half a million people are displaced in Rakhine as a result of the conflict between the military and rebel groups.
Published On 28 Sep 202628 Sep 2026
An air strike carried out by Myanmar’s military has killed at least 33 people in territory controlled by rebel factions.
The attack near a market in the north of the Rakhine state in the west of the country on Monday also wounded 36 people, rescue and rebel group officials reported. The strikes are the latest in a series of assaults against pro-democracy and ethnic armed groups by the military government, which took power in a coup in 2021, sparking armed opposition.
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The Arakan army said a fighter jet dropped two bombs near a local market in the town of Kyauktaw at noon local time (0530 GMT), killing 33 people, including vendors, shoppers, and pedestrians. It said the death toll “may continue to increase”.
Wai Hun Aung, a senior rescue official in Rakhine, confirmed the details to the Associated Press news agency. He said the market was the region’s main wholesale centre, drawing traders and shoppers from across the state.
“This is one of the most severe airstrikes in Rakhine,” he said. Photos and videos posted on social media showed buildings on fire, damaged vehicles and parts of a nearby bridge destroyed.
Myanmar’s military did not immediately comment, but it has previously said it strikes only legitimate military targets and accused resistance groups of “terrorism”.
Smoke billows from fires in a residential area following a Myanmar military air attack on a market and adjacent bridge in Kyauktaw, Rakhine state, September 28, 2026 [AFP]
Myanmar has been gripped by conflict since the elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi was ousted in the 2021 coup. A nationwide resistance movement has since evolved into a civil war between the military government and an array of armed ethnic and pro-democracy groups.
President Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s former military government chief, was elected by a military-backed Parliament in April, formalising his grip on power after five years of army rule.
The Arakan army is a well-trained and well-armed military group seeking autonomy for Rakhine’s ethnic minority. It launched an offensive in November 2023 and has since captured strategically important military headquarters and 14 of the state’s 17 townships.
The military has imposed severe restrictions on trade routes to Rakhine since the fighting there intensified, worsening food shortages.
In December, a military airstrike on a hospital in Rakhine’s Mrauk U township killed at least 33 people and wounded 70 others.
Nearly half a million people are displaced in Rakhine as a result of the conflict, according to United Nations data. The UN added in August that the human rights situation in Myanmar has plummeted “to a new low”, citing “brutal abuse” against the Rohingya minority and the devastating impact of illicit economic activity, including illegal mining for rare earth minerals.
Rebel groups and Myanmar’s military are now both using drones in the protracted conflict, which has killed more than 100,000 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project.
NATO member Latvia is moving toward acquiring Anduril Industries’ Barracuda family of long-range strike missiles, with Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs highlighting the effort during a visit to the U.S. defense technology company and a series of new defense-industry cooperation agreements involving Latvia. If the acquisition goes through, Latvia would be the first of the Baltic states to field a strike weapon in this category.
“It was great to visit Anduril to meet with Palmer Luckey and to witness signing of memoranda of cooperation with MOD of Latvia and Origin Robotics,” Rinkēvičs said in a post on X. “Looking forward to complete acquisition of Barracuda long-range missiles and [Latvian-U.S.] defense industry cooperation.”
The statement does not specify the precise Barracuda variant involved, the number of missiles Latvia intends to acquire, the expected delivery schedule, or the value of the prospective purchase. We have reached out to Anduril for more details.
A likely candidate weapon is the Barracuda-500M, one member of Anduril’s family of autonomous, jet-powered cruise missiles, alongside the Barracuda-100M and -250M variants. Official descriptions put its range at more than 500 nautical miles, with a stated speed range of approximately 190 to 500 knots. The missile can be air-launched, for which it has received the official U.S. military designation AGM-189A. But with only a handful of utility biplanes and helicopters in its inventory, Latvia would acquire the surface-launched version, designated SLB-500M.
Introducing: Barracuda-M Family of Cruise Missiles
The announcement points to a potentially significant expansion of Latvia’s precision-strike capabilities as NATO’s eastern flank continues to build out longer-range conventional fires.
Latvia has already ordered the U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, which will be fired from M142 HIMARS launchers. The system is expected to enter Latvian service in 2027 and has a maximum range of about 186 miles.
A U.S. Army M142 HIMARS launcher involved in an exercise at at Spilve Airfield and Liepāja Airport in Latvia. Latvian Armed Forces Eriks Kukutis
Latvia’s ATACMS capability will give the country a foundation for ground-launched precision fires, but the broader European trend is toward significantly greater reach.
Ground- and sea-launched cruise and ballistic missile systems capable of hitting targets at between 1,000 and 2,000 kilometers (620 and 1,242 miles) or more are an emerging target for several European NATO members. France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom are pursuing combinations of indigenous development and foreign procurement to address this requirement.
Latvia’s neighbor Poland, for example, has been building a layered long-range strike architecture combining JASSM/JASSM-ER air-launched cruise missiles with HIMARS and ATACMS. Warsaw’s ambitions are extending toward ground-launched weapons with ranges potentially reaching 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) and the country has previously expressed openness to hosting U.S.-owned nuclear weapons on its territory, too.
A M142 HIMARS launcher is seen during Poland’s Armed Forces Day parade in 2025. Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Artur Widak
Latvian interest in Barracuda fits into the same larger transformation in European conventional strike capabilities.
For NATO’s Baltic members, the logic is particularly straightforward, with mobile, ground-launched weapons providing an additional means of striking military targets at depth without requiring control of the air over the launch area.
Dragon’s teeth obstacles are among the anti-mobility measures on Latvia’s eastern border with Russia. Latvian Armed Forces
The potential Barracuda acquisition would represent another step in a broader European shift toward deep precision strike, a term increasingly used to describe conventional weapons capable of holding targets hundreds or thousands of miles away at risk.
Deep precision strike is widely acknowledged as an increasingly important European capability gap. European NATO members have historically relied heavily on air-launched cruise missiles and other aircraft-delivered weapons, while ground-launched long-range systems have been comparatively scarce.
The deterioration of the European security environment following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, together with the 2019 collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, are important factors behind renewed European interest in long-range conventional strike.
A key driver behind Europe’s push for longer-range conventional strike is the desire to build a credible deterrent capable of holding targets deep inside Russia at risk, potentially including Moscow. Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign has demonstrated the strategic value of being able to impose costs at significant distances, while also underscoring the importance of having sufficient stocks of precision weapons. For NATO’s eastern flank, systems such as the ground-launched Barracuda could therefore provide not just another fires capability, but an additional means of imposing costs on an adversary without relying exclusively on airpower.
Importantly for Latvia, the emerging European approach is not limited to large air forces. NATO’s prospective deep-strike requirements are likely to place significant emphasis on mobile ground-launched systems because they can be dispersed and offer survivability advantages while avoiding the cost and vulnerability associated with relying exclusively on aircraft or ships as launch platforms.
An Anduril Barracuda 500, top, and a Barracuda 100, displayed during Modern Day Marine 2026 in Washington, D.C. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Abigail Hutcheson Cpl. Abigail Hutcheson
That makes systems such as the surface-launched Barracuda particularly relevant to countries on NATO’s eastern flank.
Anduril has positioned Barracuda as part of an effort to address what it describes as a shortfall in affordable, producible long-range precision weapons. A prototype surface-launched Barracuda-500 successfully demonstrated its launcher, missile, and booster concept in testing in 2025. Anduril has emphasized that the family is intended to be more producible and affordable than many existing “exquisite” long-range weapons.
European governments are increasingly wrestling with the same issue. However, there is a fundamental tension between rapidly filling capability gaps through off-the-shelf purchases and developing indigenous European weapons that can strengthen the continent’s defense-industrial base, which is also a critical political consideration.
Latvia’s emerging relationship with Anduril appears to combine elements of both approaches, by acquiring an American-developed strike capability while simultaneously pursuing industrial cooperation with U.S. defense companies.
Ground launch of Anduril’s Barracuda-500M. Anduril
There is also a recent European precedent for combining Barracuda procurement with local industrial participation.
In July 2026, Anduril signed a strategic agreement with Polish national maintenance, repair and overhaul provider Wojskowe Zakłady Lotnicze Nr 2 (WZL-2) to establish production of the Barracuda-500M at WZL-2 facilities in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Polish state-owned defence group Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa said Poland was the first European country to sign such an agreement with Anduril.
Bezpieczeństwo zaczyna się od silnych sojuszy.
💥🖊️ Dziś została podpisana umowa o współpracy @PGZ_pl i WZL-2 z firmą Anduril Industries, która umożliwi utworzenie w Polsce miejsc montażu i produkcji autonomicznych rakietowych pocisków manewrujących dalekiego zasięgu… pic.twitter.com/JnmM6lQZ7L
— Ministerstwo Aktywów Państwowych 🇵🇱 (@MAPGOVPL) July 6, 2026
Polish officials have also emphasized the missile’s intended low production cost relative to higher-end U.S. cruise missiles. The planned Polish program is expected to progressively increase Polish content and eventually incorporate broader European elements, including software solutions from Anduril.
Latvia has not publicly detailed whether any Barracuda-related production, assembly, or other industrial work would be conducted in the country.
However, Latvia’s Investment and Development Agency says the country’s defense-technology delegation in the United States is seeking opportunities involving joint development, testing, manufacturing, system integration and supply chains. Origin Robotics is among the Latvian companies participating in that effort.
The broader Latvian delegation includes companies working across unmanned and counter-unmanned systems, communications, electronics, sensors, software, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and manufacturing.
A Latvian Army soldier shows drone video footage to U.S. Marines during a HIMARS live-fire exercise at Adazi Training Area, Latvia. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Niles Lee Sgt. Niles Lee
Exactly how Latvia intends to employ Barracuda, how many missiles it plans to acquire, and whether any portion of the system will eventually be produced or integrated in Latvia remain unclear from the president’s announcement.
For now, the development marks another indication that long-range precision fires are moving from a capability concentrated among Europe’s largest military powers toward a broader requirement across NATO’s highly strategic eastern flank.
Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao has said that eight crew members who were assigned to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide during their lengthy deployment.
The disclosure was made in a letter to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York on Tuesday in response to questions from the Democrat on the well-being of sailors onboard following mounting concerns.
Family members of sailors had raised alarm about deteriorating mental health and grim conditions during a prolonged mission in the Middle East as part of the US war in Iran.
The carrier, which had been deployed since last November, is now returning to the US. The BBC has contacted the US Navy for comment.
In his letter, Cao said that there were five chaplains and multiple mental health professionals available on board to meet the “spiritual and emotional needs of the crew”.
He said the eight sailors included “the Lincoln crew and sailors from the carrier airwing, strike group and destroyer squadron staff, escorting destroyers and all embarked aviation squadrons”.
While the US Navy has previously acknowledged supply challenges on the carrier, it denied that a mental health crisis was taking place on the Lincoln, which had some 5,000 crew aboard.
Cao’s letter also denied widespread concerns about broken plumbing and shortages of fresh food, but acknowledged temporary “localized piping failures” and problems with the reverse osmosis desalination units, and some meal options were reduced for a “short time”.
Senator Gillibrand, a member of the Senate’s armed services committee, criticised the Trump administration’s previous responses to reports of grim conditions, calling the treatment of service members “completely unacceptable”.
“What Trump and Secretary Hegseth dismissed as ‘fake news’ turned out to be serious and deteriorating conditions for our service members,” she said in a statement to the BBC on Wednesday.
“Our troops and their families make immense sacrifices every single day, yet the president dismissed them with open disrespect,” she added.
The carrier left California in November for the South China Sea and was sent to the Middle East ahead of attacks on Iran in February. The deployment, which was originally set to end in May, was repeatedly extended.
In August, the USS George Washington, an aircraft carrier, was sent to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln following a nine-month deployment.
US sailors stopped in Thailand on their way home, hitting bars, malls and beach areas in their first time on land before continuing on to the US.
Suicide remains a leading cause of death in the US Navy and Marines, according to an analysis of military data by USNI News, while veterans have higher rates of suicide than Americans who have not served in the military, according to the Veterans Administration.
A study, external of 956 sailors released in January 2025 found that troops aboard US Navy ships suffer the highest rates of “serious psychological distress” compared to other branches of the US military.
The study cited “unique stressors, such as poor habitability, noise and demanding schedules that leave inadequate time for sleep and rest”.
If you or anyone you know has been affected by the issues raised in this article, details of organisations offering information are available at BBC Action Line or you can call the US Suicide and Crisis Lifeline on 988.
TRAVELLERS heading to a popular European country next month could face flight delays and cancellations.
Pilots and cabin crew are set to walk out over five days in France next month.
There a number of strikes taking place across France next monthCredit: GettyA nationwide strike will take place between October 17 and 21Credit: Getty
A nationwide strike is set to take place between October 17 and October 21.
Action has been called by a number of unions regarding a disagreement over being allowed to receive their retirement pension while still working.
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The strike notice applies to pilots and cabin crew working for all air transport and aviation companies, covered by French labour law – which means it might not just be French airlines affected.
Though airlines expected to be affected include French-based carriers such as Air France, Transavia France and Volotea.
There may also be disruptions to easyJet and Ryanair flights.
Currently, it is not clear how many flights will be delayed or cancelled.
Travellers are being urged to check with their airline before travelling if they are due to travel in the five-day period.
Unions have stated that they remain open to discussions, so the situation may possibly change or be called off before October 17.
EasyJet are also set to strike on October 1 and 2Credit: Getty
EasyJet is also planning to strike across six French airports on October 1 and 2.
The strikes were due to take place this week but have been postponed to the beginning of October and will involve pilots walking out at Paris Orly, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Nantes, Lyon, Nice and Bordeaux airports.
Within hours of a Feb. 28 missile attack that hit an Iranian school, some Pentagon personnel knew the U.S. was responsible, according to officials involved in an internal investigation of the incident. That probe found what the officials now describe as a cascade of preventable failures.
Two Tomahawk missiles struck the building and its grounds that Saturday, killing more than 150 people, including at least 123 children. The strikes devastated the two-story school, which was built on land that was part of a military compound in the southern Iranian town of Minab. In terms of child casualties, it’s the deadliest American military targeting error of the 21st century.
United Nations investigators said Thursday that there were reasonable grounds to conclude that the strike on Minab and another U.S. attack that took place on the same day amounted to war crimes. The U.S. has yet to publicly accept responsibility for the school strike, and President Trump has previously suggested it was Tehran’s fault. As recently as July 14, he told Fox News, “I don’t think anybody’s going to ever be able to say what happened there.”
But in interviews, officials with direct involvement in the Pentagon’s internal investigation have offered some of the first accounts of the probe. The strike didn’t result from a single catastrophic decision but an accumulation of smaller ones, they said, and their review has identified a series of missed opportunities to prevent the disaster. The officials, like more than two dozen others who provided descriptions of targeting procedures or background information for this story, asked not to be named to discuss sensitive matters.
In the final days of February, the Trump administration demanded an overwhelming aerial assault. More than 1,000 Iranian targets were hit within the first 24 hours alone. That order compressed the time frame for finalizing targets, the officials said, instilling an urgency that — combined with gaps in underlying information about the site, cuts in civilian protection personnel and an overreliance on artificial intelligence technology — set the stage for the deadly error.
Full details from the investigation remain tightly held. Officials who described it said they faced constraints on the amount of information they could share. Previous news reports have indicated that by early March, a preliminary internal review determined the U.S. was likely responsible for the Minab strike.
A report on the full Pentagon investigation, which commenced in March, hasn’t been released — though the officials said it has been all but complete for several months.
Adm. Brad Cooper, who heads U.S. Central Command and ordered the investigation, told members of Congress in May that he’s committed to providing transparency. Yet it’s not clear how much detail will be included, nor how much of the report ultimately will be released to the general public.
A child runs past a banner strung across the rubble of Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School showing portraits of the children and teachers killed there by a U.S. missile strike.
(Vahid Salemi / Associated Press)
A Pentagon spokesperson said the incident remains under investigation and declined to comment further.
In response to questions, including about when the White House was informed that the strike was a mistake, a senior administration official also cited the ongoing probe and added: “The United States does not target civilians.”
Last week, a report from the United Nations’ Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran said that the U.S. had “failed in its obligation to do everything feasible to verify” that the school was a military target and that the failure “went beyond negligence.” The U.S. Department of Defense has declined to comment on the report.
U.S. officials have said that outdated intelligence was a problem. Although the site in Minab had been identified years earlier as a military compound, there was clear evidence that it had been modified and undergone a change of purpose, the officials said. Physical changes reflecting new construction — visible on satellite imagery — dated back almost a decade, they said, and the site operated openly as a school.
Analysis of commercially available satellite images shows construction of walls and entrances that separate the school site from the military base, work that appears to have been completed by 2017. An image from 2018 shows brightly painted walls alongside a soccer pitch, assembly rows and play markings on the ground.
Some U.S. intelligence analysts took notice, the officials said. Bloomberg reported in June that one analyst detected changes to the site as early as 2019, and logged remarks about the modifications in a system that wasn’t connected to the primary military intelligence database, which informs targeting.
Inside Centcom, which conducted the U.S. attack, some personnel relied too much on the artificial intelligence embedded in Maven Smart System, the officials said. Maven, which is made by Palantir Technologies Inc., allows users to view and coordinate complex military operations — from targeting to command and control — using AI-enabled software that fuses more than 150 different data inputs into a coherent set of information to inform commanders’ decisions.
In the past year, the Defense Department has rapidly made Maven a cornerstone of the U.S. military apparatus. Several former senior U.S. military officials now work for Palantir, including some with high-level security clearances in Centcom’s Tampa headquarters. Their role is to keep the software functioning inside secure military environments.
Some Centcom personnel expected Maven to flag stale information or inconsistencies in the underlying intelligence assembled for potential targets, the officials said. It’s not clear why they had such expectations.
A Palantir spokesperson said that the company “is not responsible for the underlying data nor identifying intelligence deficiencies” and that there’s no evidence that its software was at fault in the Minab strike.
Two people familiar with the firm’s Pentagon contracts said the government retains primary responsibility for the quality of the information that’s fed into Maven. But they said it’s not uncommon for personnel who use tools such as Maven to develop operational understandings that differ from contractual terms.
After the Minab strike, Palantir built new capabilities into Maven that “re-review underlying intelligence to identify factors that would disqualify a target and flag inconsistencies and inaccuracies that human review may have missed,” according to a person familiar with the matter. That work has already caught some anomalies, the person said.
The ‘kill chain’
As Feb. 28 approached, Pentagon officials were tasked with identifying strikes they thought would paralyze Iran’s military before Tehran had a chance to respond, the officials said.
High on Centcom’s list: the naval division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the most powerful force across the country’s military, economy and politics. It’s tasked with defending — and at times, disrupting — the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. The Minab school site — with its uncorrected classification as a Revolutionary Guard facility — was fed into Maven along with other potential targets. It ultimately emerged as one of the recommended Day 1 targets, people involved in the investigation said.
As all targets do, the Minab site moved through a multi-stage assessment process known by the military as the “kill chain.” Steps in that process have traditionally involved intelligence analysts, imagery specialists, targeteers, lawyers, operational commanders and launch crews, according to U.S. military doctrine and interviews with current and former Defense officials. Today, Maven sits at the heart of those operations — between the initial intelligence inputs and the latter review stages, officials said.
In past conflicts, preparing lists of proposed targets — work that includes assessing how they align with an operation’s objectives — had taken hours for staffers to complete. Ahead of the U.S. attack on Iran, much of that work was condensed into several minutes via Maven, people involved in the Pentagon’s internal review said.
Officials involved in the investigation pointed to gaps that they said were left after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismantled most of the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation, or CHM, units — cutting headcount across a number of teams by roughly 90% to fewer than 20 staff members, people with direct knowledge of the matter said. Centcom’s team was reduced from 10 to 1.
No CHM team member reviewed the Minab site before the strike, according to officials involved in the internal investigation. That was a consequence of the cuts in staffing but also a decision not to involve the group in planning and operations, the officials said. While not mandatory, that sort of review had become routine in recent years, they added. It’s unclear whether such checks, which include mapping the civilian environment, assessing noncombatant presence and developing lower-risk strike options, would have been enough to raise questions about the Minab site.
The Biden administration had built up civilian-harm-prevention capabilities within the Pentagon after an August 2021 drone strike in Kabul killed 10 civilians — based on the misidentification of an aid worker as a threat. Hegseth has characterized his subsequent cuts to those efforts as a shift away from “Biden-era, non-lethal programs.”
“America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history,” Hegseth said at a news conference March 2, days after the Minab attack. “All on our terms with maximum authorities. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise, no politically correct wars.”
Under Hegseth’s leadership, the U.S. military has prioritized speed of delivery. People involved in the Pentagon probe said a rush to finalize targets shortly ahead of Feb. 28 contributed to the tragedy.
“Haste can lead to errors,” said Laurie Blank, who was appointed a special counsel at the Pentagon’s general counsel during the Biden administration from 2022 to 2024. She drew a distinction between planned targets and those that arise in the heat of battle. “A rush to hit pre-planned targets just isn’t the same thing,” she said, “especially when the operations are launched by choice and not in response to an attack where you are responding without time to plan.”
Why Minab?
A little more than 800 miles south of Tehran, the city of Minab sits on the critical Strait of Hormuz, at the crossroads of centuries-old trade routes and the nation’s modern military might. As the U.S. attack on Iran began, it was deemed a high-value target, according to people involved in the investigation.
As the strait’s significance grew in the 1980s, so did the number of military assets devoted to protecting it and projecting power into the Persian Gulf. The Revolutionary Guard’s missile units, naval facilities and logistics compounds operate alongside neighborhoods where fishermen, teachers and civil servants have lived for generations in the city of 76,000.
Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School was built almost a decade ago on land originally occupied by a Revolutionary Guard naval unit. The Pentagon had cataloged the site as a military base several years earlier — a determination that wasn’t updated before the February attack. The New York Times reported in June that targeting officials used satellite imagery that hadn’t been updated in seven years and that did not show a school at the site. Investigators have focused on the Defense Intelligence Agency’s failure to reclassify the location, officials involved in the inquiry said.
On Feb. 28, Minab awoke to clear skies. Shopkeepers unlocked their storefronts. Fishing crews unloaded ice chests along the docks. Children in green-plaid uniforms walked through the gates of the 260-student school, before heading into classrooms.
Firsthand descriptions of the events that took place in and around the school that day have been gathered by a group of human rights advocates, lawyers and digital forensics experts who’ve spent months reconstructing the attack. Members of the informal consortium — including some based in the U.S. and Europe — asked not to be named given the sensitivity of their outreach efforts with victims’ families. Their work and an assessment by the U.K.-based watchdog group Airwars — viewed as a highly reliable source by some Pentagon officials — provides the following account:
After the first reports of attacks on Iran emerged that Saturday morning, teachers called parents and asked them to collect their children, saying the school planned to close early. Shortly after 11 a.m., a first missile hit part of the school, triggering an explosion that reverberated across the neighborhood. Panicked shrieks filled the air. Teachers ushered children from the playground back inside to take cover in a prayer room.
Within minutes, a second missile struck, sending metal fragments across the school. Part of the roof collapsed. Only a few children inside the prayer room survived, buried beneath the rubble.
Rescue vehicles rushed to the scene while passersby helped the wounded. Some injured children were pulled from the rubble while dozens more, deceased, were slowly identified. One rescue crew member stumbled upon a child’s hand, detached and laying on the ground. He wept as colleagues continued to hunt through the debris alongside him.
Some parents were left to identify their dead children by fragments of clothing or belongings — a pencil case, bracelet or shoe — as many faces were no longer distinguishable. The father of Arash Gol-Azin didn’t learn the fate of his 7-year-old son until reaching the morgue. Only then did he spot him by identifying his sock.
Payam Akhavan, a Toronto-based lawyer who has practiced before the International Criminal Court and is an expert on civilian protection, said it’s important for investigators to determine what efforts U.S. officials made to try to ensure they were targeting a military installation.
“The Geneva Convention says you must take all feasible measures to determine that this is, in fact, a military objective,” said Akhavan, who spoke before Thursday’s U.N. report was published. “This does not mean that every mistake is a war crime, because mistakes will be made, even if you take all feasible measures.
“But if all feasible measures were not taken,” he added, “then that raises a question of criminal responsibility.”
At least 1,701 civilians were killed in the opening 39 days of the war, according to data compiled by the U.S.-based group Human Rights Activists in Iran. That’s an average of 43 people a day, and the group — viewed by some in the Pentagon as an authoritative source for Iranian casualty figures — said it’s a low estimate.
“We should be asking how so many civilians were killed amid an unprecedented tempo of strikes over just a matter of weeks,” said Skylar Thompson, the group’s deputy director.
More recently, Iranian officials and a United Nations body said the U.S. was responsible for a Sept. 1 strike on Kuhestak — some 20 miles south of Minab — that hit a residential area where a wedding party was underway and killed at least five people with dozens more injured. The U.S. is investigating the incident, Vice President JD Vance said earlier this month.
Target libraries
For decades, American military planners had maintained extensive target libraries in anticipation of potential conflict with Iran, encompassing everything from limited strikes to maritime war and major air campaigns. The list stretched into the thousands and included air bases, missile factories, nuclear facilities and ports, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the plans.
Some potential targets had remained on the books for years, accumulating layers of satellite imagery, intelligence reports and legal reviews.
But these catalogs can age quickly, according to people who’ve dealt with them. Buildings appear and disappear. Headquarters switch locations. Where a military barracks once stood, schools, hospitals and mosques may now exist. So the libraries’ contents require close and continual review well before any particular building or site winds up on a target list.
Maintaining the lists is critical but labor-intensive. Officials involved in the internal investigation of the Minab incident described gaps in vetting — or checking whether the underlying information is accurate, reliable and timely — that came well before the school site was selected.
Some of the most sensitive sites, such as Iran’s nuclear facilities — attacked by Israel in its 12-day war with Tehran in June 2025 — faced relentless attention from U.S. intelligence analysts ahead of the 2026 war, according to officials with direct knowledge of the matter. Less prominent locations, such as Minab, went months without receiving another close look, the officials added.
War planners start to think they’ll have time to revisit the less urgent sites, current and former Pentagon officials said.
That assumption evaporated during the final days of February as diplomatic talks between U.S. and Iranian officials in Geneva faltered and then collapsed on Feb. 26.
Work that had unfolded in previous conflicts over weeks or months — matching sites from the library, such as buildings, airfields or bases — was completed in a matter of days, according to officials involved in the inquiry. More than a thousand potential targets had to be reassessed and approved.
By the time the first Tomahawk missile bound for the Minab site left its launcher on a ship operating in the Arabian Sea, roughly three dozen people were involved along the kill chain, the officials said.
Most sat in secure facilities more than 7,000 miles away in Tampa, Fla., studying maps, imagery and databases in preparation for a war that, until 48 hours before the Minab attack, many officials had believed for decades wouldn’t occur.
Typically, part of their work entails refining a list based on satellite imagery and on-the-ground intelligence that’s used to create a pattern-of-life analysis reflecting human movements on the site and changes over time. In Iran, a bitter U.S. adversary for almost half a century, such intelligence was limited, especially in the south of the country, people involved in the probe said.
Additional steps in the kill chain address other types of issues. Lawyers assess whether each proposed target is a lawful military objective. Specialists estimate potential collateral damage. Weapons experts debate not only which missiles to fire but when.
Every stage leaves a record. Analysts sign off on each piece of the chain. They’re told to report any inconsistencies to superiors.
Then a series of questions is asked by the senior commander: Is the target lawful? Is there sufficient intelligence? And have reasonable precautions been taken to minimize civilian harm? In the early hours of Feb. 28, the answer to each question about the Minab site was yes, according to the officials involved in the probe.
The Pentagon’s internal investigators, who examined the satellite imagery, intelligence databases, targeting materials, operational chat logs and computer records that analysts used, concluded that there was high confidence throughout the kill chain that the Minab site was a Revolutionary Guard facility, according to people involved in the probe.
“Insufficient intel wasn’t really viewed as a concern before the war,” said one Pentagon official involved in the internal probe. “We were confident in our intel. Minab proved you should never be too confident.”
Political pawns
Government researchers and auditors have noted deficiencies in the primary intelligence database that’s used to develop strike targets, and the Pentagon is working to replace it with one that will introduce more automation. And Minab isn’t the first time that flawed intelligence has directed U.S. precision weapons toward the wrong target.
The accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in the Serbian capital Belgrade in 1999 killed three people and injured 27 others. A mistaken 2015 airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz in Afghanistan killed 42 people. More recently, soon after the Pentagon’s civilian-harm-mitigation teams were disbanded, a strike on the Ras Ina port in Yemen in April 2025 resulted in at least 80 civilian deaths.
In the months since the attack, the children of Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary have become symbols. Their faces were plastered on the backs of the seats of Iranian planes ferrying diplomats to Islamabad for talks with the U.S. in April. They adorn memorials on the streets of Minab. Some families have complained that their injured children haven’t received the treatment they need. Critics accuse Iranian officials of leveraging the school attack to their political advantage.
In the U.S., the disaster has become a different sort of political touchstone. Democratic lawmakers, who are seeking to take control of the Congress in the November election, are asking how the attack could have happened.
Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, accused the Pentagon of deliberately withholding the results of the investigation, and his Republican counterpart, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, called for congressional briefings on what went wrong.
That call is echoed by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who also sits on the committee, which helps set spending caps for the Pentagon’s roughly $1-trillion annual budget.
“The administration should have been forthcoming within hours or days, and here we are months later and nothing has been provided,” Blumenthal said.
Separate attacks struck central refugee camps as officials warned Gaza’s health sector faces total collapse.
Published On 19 Sep 202619 Sep 2026
An Israeli strike on a motorcycle has killed one Palestinian and injured others, with one child in critical condition, reports the Palestinian Wafa news agency.
The air strike targeted the vehicle in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, west of Gaza City, on Friday. Ongoing Israeli strikes on the besieged enclave have killed at least 1,381 people since the ceasefire was announced in October 2025.
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Israel has killed at least 73,795 people and wounded 174,869 others since the start of its genocidal war in October 2023.
On Friday, the Israeli army also opened fire in the Nuseirat and al-Bureij refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip, reports Wafa. The attacks on tents sheltering displaced people have resulted in multiple injuries.
Earlier this week, an Israeli “double-tap” air strike killed a paramedic and a 15-year-old schoolboy in Gaza City. Israeli forces claimed they were targeting Hamas operatives.
Last month, UNICEF found that, on average, one child is killed a day by Israel.
Families are now confined to about a third of the enclave, sheltering among destroyed buildings, rubble and uncleared waste, the agency said.
A Palestinian woman carries a girl past a blood stain on the ground after an Israeli drone strike on a cafe in al-Bureij camp, central Gaza Strip, on September 16, 2026 [File: AFP]
On Wednesday, a previously damaged building collapsed in Gaza City, killing at least 21 people, including 12 children. The Palestinian Civil Defence agency in Gaza struggled to recover bodies from under the rubble due to Israel’s severe restrictions on heavy equipment.
The Health Ministry warned on Wednesday that Gaza’s health system was on the verge of “total collapse” as Israel continues to limit the amount of medical aid and fuel permitted to enter the enclave.
Looking at today’s schedule, it’s mostly arrivals into the airport after 9.30pm that are affected.
Only two flights from the UK are affected by the strike action today.
The first is a flight from Manchester Airport to Charleroi which was scheduled for 10.55pm and has since been cancelled.
The second is a flight from Charleroi to Manchester Airport which was scheduled for 19.35pm and has also been cancelled.
Ryanair has asked passengers to monitor their Ryanair App for the latest updates regarding their flight.
In a previous statement, the airline said: “We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused as a result of these ATC strike delays/cancellations, which are entirely beyond airlines’ control.”
Yesterday, about 40 flights in total were cancelled at Charleroi Airport.
According to Skeyes, the Belgium‘s official national air navigation service provider, the nightly strikes are expected to affect more than 800 flights.
The strike is set to continue until October 10Credit: Getty
A Russian strike hit a shopping centre in Zaporizhzhia, southeastern Ukraine, sparking a major fire. Peace talks between Ukraine and Russia remain stalled, even as the US broker a pause in the fighting.
Schools in England are to get around £500 million in extra funding towards the teachers’ pay award this school year, reducing the risk of a strike ballot by the largest education union.
Daniel Kebede, the General Secretary of the NEU, said the offer of more funding was a “significant” step in negotiations.
In a letter to the union on Wednesday, which has been seen by the BBC, the government said the increase would be funded by savings in employers’ contributions to the local government pension scheme.
The letter said the 4.9 percentage point drop in what employers are expected to contribute will deliver “significant savings” on the pay bill for support staff, which will not be clawed back by central government.
The National Education Union said it expected the extra money to be around £500m, which schools can now use towards teachers pay this year.
In July, ministers accepted the recommendation of the independent pay review body for teachers and agreed a 3.5% increase from September 2026 would be followed by 3% the following year.
The pay increase had been partly funded by an additional £700m for 2026-27 and £1.1bn for the following year.
Independent economists at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said that left schools facing a shortfall of around 1% between rising costs and funding this year.
Luke Sibieta, IFS research fellow, said the extra money would mean the pay increase this year was fully funded – and on top of other funding increases, schools would be £1.6bn better off by next year than they had expected this summer.
The additional money could potentially bring the uplift for this year into line with next year.
Kebede said schools has been “running on empty” and the funding signalled “a welcome return to reality, and a message of hope for the entire school community”.
Paul Whiteman, General Secretary of the National Association of Headteachers, said the decision is “certainly welcome”, putting schools in a “better position”.
He said his union would look carefully at the detail “to determine whether this means the pay uplift is genuinely fully funded” for schools.
Pepe Di’Iasio, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said he was “pleased” at the announcement of additional funding but “the wider pressure on school and college budgets remains intense”.
Similarly, the NASUWT union welcomed the news. General Secretary Matt Wrack added schools needed “a sustainable, long-term injection of extra funding” to meet the needs of young people.
In an indicative ballot by the NEU in April, 90% of teachers who voted said they would be prepared to take industrial action over funding and pay, on a turnout of 48%.
A formal ballot was due to begin on 3 October and close 15 December, raising the prospects of teachers pay strikes early in 2027.
The national executive of the NEU will meet on 24 September to consider whether to call that off following the additional funding on offer from the government.
A spokesperson for Education Secretary Lucy Powell said the government was “confident schools can now meet the costs of the award at a national level”.
“The Secretary of State has been clear from day one that supporting teacher recruitment, retention and wellbeing, and rebuilding the relationship with the profession, are among her top priorities.”
![Smoke billows from fires in a residential area following a Myanmar military air attack on a market and adjacent bridge in Kyauktaw, Rakhine state, September 28, 2026 [AFP]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/afp_6abaab2c736e-1790618412.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
