The Sudanese army intercepted drones fired overnight by its rival paramilitary group on two cities in Sudan's northeast, a military official said Friday.

The army official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss the matter, said 15 drones targeted Atbara, a city north of the capital, in River Nile province. He confirmed that strikes caused no casualties. Local media reports said residents heard explosions.

For more than two years, Sudan's military and a powerful paramilitary force have torn the country apart in a war for power, both digging in against peace efforts even as atrocities mount and starvation spreads. One reason they can keep going is the support each reportedly gets from other nations looking for influence.

International alarm has grown since Oct. 26, when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces seized the key city of el-Fasher in Sudan's Darfur region from the military and reportedly went on a rampage. Witnesses and aid groups say fighters have killed hundreds of civilians, and the fate of thousands more is unknown.

North Korea on Friday fired a suspected short-range ballistic missile toward its eastern waters, South Korea's military said, as Pyongyang steps up its testing activity while talks with Washington and Seoul remain stalled.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the weapon flew about 700 kilometers (434 miles) cross-country after being fired from an inland area around the western county of Taekwan.

Multiple explosions shook a mosque at a high school during Friday prayers in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, injuring at least 54 people, mostly students, police said.

Witnesses told local television stations that they heard at least two loud blasts around midday, just as the sermon had started at the mosque at SMA 27, a state high school within a navy compound in Jakarta's northern Kelapa Gading neighborhood. Students and others ran out in panic as gray smoke filled the mosque.

Kazakhstan is set to join the Abraham Accords between Israel and Arab and Muslim majority countries in a symbolic move aimed at boosting the initiative that was a hallmark of President Donald Trump's first administration.

The action, announced Thursday, is largely symbolic as Kazakhstan has had diplomatic relations with Israel since 1992 and is much farther geographically from Israel than the other Abraham Accord nations — Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates.

Senior North Korean and Russian military officials discussed strengthening cooperation in their latest talks this week in Pyongyang, North Korean state media said Friday, as the two countries continue to align over Russia's war in Ukraine.

The report came days after South Korea's spy agency, in a closed-door briefing to lawmakers, said it had detected signs of recruitment and training activities in North Korea, possibly in preparation for additional troop deployments to Russia.

Airports in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago along with hubs across the U.S. are among the 40 that will see flights cut starting Friday due to the government shutdown, according to a list distributed to the airlines and obtained by The Associated Press.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday that it will reduce air traffic by 10% across 40 "high-volume" markets to maintain travel safety as air traffic controllers exhibit signs of strain during the ongoing government shutdown.

Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, at war with the regular army for more than two years, announced on Thursday that they had agreed to a proposal for a humanitarian truce put forward by mediators.

"In response to the aspirations and interests of the Sudanese people, the Rapid Support Forces affirms its agreement to enter into the humanitarian truce proposed by the Quad countries," the RSF said in a statement, referring to the United States, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Nigeria on Wednesday told foreign diplomats posted to the country that its designation as a violator of religious freedom by the United States was "fundamentally misinformed", while also keeping the door open to security cooperation with Washington.

The Colombian survivor of a US attack on a suspected narco submarine in the Caribbean was released without charge after being treated for his injuries, authorities told AFP on Tuesday.