Russia has obtained hundreds of Iranian drones capable of being used in its war against Ukraine despite U.S. warnings to Tehran not to ship them, according to Western intelligence officials.

It's unclear whether Russia has begun flying the drones against Ukrainian targets, but the drones appear to be operational and ready to use, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

After Washington's latest attacks, AFP unpacks the deployments in a porous border region where the U.S. and its Iran-backed rivals operate in close proximity.

The Euphrates river bisects the eastern province of Deir Ezzor where a patchwork of rival forces have taken up positions on opposing river banks. 

France has made several attempts over the years to heal the wounds with former colony Algeria, but it refuses to "apologize or repent" for the 132 years of often brutal rule that ended in 1962.

At Moscow's sprawling Izmailovsky outdoor souvenir market, shoppers can find cups and T-shirts commemorating Russia's deployment of troops into Ukraine — but from the 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. There's nothing about the "special military operation" that began six months ago.

Throughout the capital, there are few overt sign that Russia is engaged in the worst fighting in Europe since World War II. Displays of the letter "Z" — which initially spread as an icon of the fight, replicating the insignia painted on Russian military vehicles — are hardly seen.

Six months after Russian forces launched what they hoped would be a blitzkrieg invasion of Ukraine, the conflict has turned into a grinding campaign of daily air strikes and battles with no clear endgame in sight.

According to Russian state TV, the future of the Ukrainian regions captured by Moscow's forces is all but decided: Referendums on becoming part of Russia will soon take place there, and the joyful residents who were abandoned by Kyiv will be able to prosper in peace.

In reality, the Kremlin appears to be in no rush to seal the deal on Ukraine's southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, even though officials it installed there already have announced plans for a vote to join Russia.

If you think you've seen this movie before, it's because you have -- except the second time will be even more nerve-racking. Yes, world: get ready for Biden vs Trump 2.

A judge ordered a gunman who took up to 10 hostages at a Beirut bank to force the release of his trapped savings to stay behind bars Friday, apparently a bid to prevent copycats as desperation deepens over Lebanon's economic meltdown.

A few dozen relatives of Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein briefly closed a major road in Ouzai, saying that keeping him in jail breaches an agreement reached Thursday. The 42-year-old food-delivery driver surrendered after a seven-hour standoff in return for getting $35,000 of his money and promises that he would only be questioned then set free. No one was injured.

Israel's caretaker prime minister took a gamble with his preemptive strike against Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza, less than three months before he is to compete in general elections to retain his job.

Yair Lapid had counted on Gaza's militant Hamas rulers to stay out of the fight, thus enabling Israel to weaken Hamas' smaller sister group while avoiding a full-blown escalation. At the same time, he may also have gained political ground ahead of the polls.

Khalil Ibrahim's four sons are among thousands of followers of an influential Shiite cleric staging a sit-in outside Iraq's parliament after storming the building last week in a stunning move that threw the country into a new era of political instability.

Ibrahim is behind them all the way, he says — as are practically all his neighbors in Sadr City, the huge Baghdad district of millions of largely impoverished Shiites that is the heart of support for the cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr.