AFP news

Syria's new authorities launched an operation in a stronghold of ousted president Bashar al-Assad on Thursday, with a war monitor saying three gunmen affiliated with the former government were killed.

Dec 26, 2024

Tearful mourners prayed and lit candles Thursday at ceremonies across Asia to remember the 220,000 people killed two decades ago when a tsunami hit coastlines around the Indian Ocean in one of the world's worst disasters.

Dec 26, 2024

Beside India's holy rivers, a makeshift city is being built for a Hindu religious festival expected to be so vast it will be seen from space, the largest gathering in history.

Dec 26, 2024

An Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet crashed on Wednesday in western Kazakhstan after travelling far off course, killing 38 of the 67 people on board, officials said.

Dec 26, 2024

Angry protests broke out Wednesday in the heartland of deposed Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad's Alawite minority, a war monitor and witnesses said, after a video circulated showing an attack on a shrine.

Dec 26, 2024

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday denounced an "inhumane" attack from Russia, which launched over 170 missiles and drones on his war-torn country's power grid on Christmas Day, killing an energy worker.

Dec 26, 2024

Christmas revellers around the world donned red and white Santa hats, offered meals to the homeless and lit candles on Wednesday, as Pope Francis launched observation of the global holiday with a sombre mass in the Vatican.

Dec 25, 2024

From riding pillion on zooming motorbikes to round-the-clock airport stakeouts, India's celebrity-hunting paparazzi photographers have gone from "outcasts" to becoming a key part of Bollywood's vast film industry machine.

Dec 25, 2024

AFP photographer Sameer al-Doumy never dreamed he would be able to return to the hometown in Syria that he escaped through a tunnel seven years ago after it was besieged by Bashar al-Assad's forces.

Dec 25, 2024

Hundreds of people gathered at the Church of the Nativity in the holy city of Bethlehem on Tuesday to mark another solemn Christmas overshadowed by the war in Gaza.

Dec 25, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump's repeated support for TikTok has sparked speculation about potential solutions to prevent the app's impending ban in the United States, though the path forward remains unclear.

Dec 25, 2024

A massacre of more than 200 people in Haiti this month followed a gang-ordered manhunt that saw victims, many of them elderly, pulled from their homes and shot or killed with machetes, the UN said Monday.

Dec 25, 2024

South Korea's opposition said Tuesday it would hold back a decision to impeach acting president Han Duck-soo until later in the week.

Dec 25, 2024

A powerful blast ripped through an explosives plant in northwestern Turkey on Tuesday killing 12 people and injuring five others, officials said.

Dec 25, 2024

NASA's pioneering Parker Solar Probe is poised to make its closest-ever approach of the Sun on Christmas Eve, a record-setting 3.8 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) from the surface.

Dec 25, 2024

A US government panel failed to reach a consensus on whether US Steel's acquisition by Nippon Steel threatens Washington's national security, shifting the decision to the White House, the Japanese company said late Monday.

Dec 25, 2024

Global stocks were mostly higher on Tuesday boosted by a tech rally on Wall Street, but gains remained modest in thin Christmas Eve trade.

Dec 25, 2024

The status of the Panama Canal is non-negotiable, President Jose Raul Mulino said in a statement Monday signed alongside former leaders of the country, after Donald Trump's recent threats to reclaim the man-made waterway.

Dec 25, 2024

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen said Tuesday that the days of France's new government are already numbered, predicting an early presidential election in a few months.

Dec 25, 2024

Finland is consistently ranked as Europe's most media literate country and the skills needed to spot online hoaxes are on the school curriculum, amidst a boom of mis- and disinformation campaigns.

Dec 24, 2024

A factory turned into a battlefield, riot police armed with tasers and an activist who spent 100 days atop a chimney -- the unrest that inspired Netflix's most successful show ever has all the hallmarks of a TV drama.

Dec 24, 2024

The world's deadliest tsunami hit nations around the Indian Ocean two decades ago before social media platforms flourished, but they have since transformed how we understand and respond to disasters -- from finding the missing to swift crowdfunding.

Dec 24, 2024

French President Emmanuel Macron named a new government Monday evening, putting together a team under Francois Bayrou, his fourth prime minister of the year, to drag the second-largest EU economy out of political crisis.

Dec 24, 2024

Two Syrian doctors and a nurse told AFP in a series of interviews over the weekend that Bashar al-Assad's government coerced them into providing false testimony to international investigators after a deadly 2018 chlorine attack.

Dec 24, 2024

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told lawmakers on Monday that "some progress" had been made in negotiations to secure the release of hostages held in Gaza, more than 14 months into the war.

Dec 24, 2024

Three days after Germany's deadly Christmas market attack in which a Saudi man was arrested, both the far-right AfD and counter-protesters were due to hit the streets Monday in the bereaved city of Magdeburg.

Dec 23, 2024

Despite a barrage of Western sanctions and swathes of brands quitting Russia after the Kremlin launched its Ukraine offensive, Moscow's most well-off shoppers are still spoilt for choice when it comes to luxury Western goods.

Dec 23, 2024

Exhausted by more than 14 months of war, the wives and mothers of Israeli soldiers are uniting in protest against exemptions from conscription for ultra-Orthodox men.

Dec 23, 2024

Two weeks after seizing power in a sweeping offensive, Syria's new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday said weapons in the country, including those held by Kurdish-led forces, would come under state control.

Dec 23, 2024