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Russia Says Downed Several Ukrainian Drones Headed for Moscow, Following Mass Strike on Kyiv

This handout photograph taken and released by Ukrainian Emergency Service on November 25, 2023, shows a rescuer working at the site of a drone attack in Kyiv. (Handout / Ukrainian Emergency Service / AFP)
This handout photograph taken and released by Ukrainian Emergency Service on November 25, 2023, shows a rescuer working at the site of a drone attack in Kyiv. (Handout / Ukrainian Emergency Service / AFP)
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Russia Says Downed Several Ukrainian Drones Headed for Moscow, Following Mass Strike on Kyiv

This handout photograph taken and released by Ukrainian Emergency Service on November 25, 2023, shows a rescuer working at the site of a drone attack in Kyiv. (Handout / Ukrainian Emergency Service / AFP)
This handout photograph taken and released by Ukrainian Emergency Service on November 25, 2023, shows a rescuer working at the site of a drone attack in Kyiv. (Handout / Ukrainian Emergency Service / AFP)

Russian authorities on Sunday claimed that Ukraine tried to attack Moscow with dozens of drones overnight, just a day after Russia launched its most intense drone attack on Kyiv since the beginning of its full-scale war in 2022, according to Ukrainian officials.

Russian air defenses brought down at least 24 drones over the Moscow region — which surrounds but does not include the capital — and three other provinces to the south and west, the Russian Defense Ministry and Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported in a series of Telegram updates. Neither referenced any casualties.

Andrei Vorobyev, governor of the Moscow region, wrote on Telegram that the drone strikes damaged three unspecified buildings there, adding that no one was hurt.

Russian Telegram channels reported that one drone crashed into a 12-story apartment block in the western Russian city of Tula, about 180 kilometers (113 miles) south of Moscow, injuring one resident and frightening others.

Moscow’s Vnukovo and Domodedovo airports also briefly shut down because of the drone attack, according to Russia’s state-run news agency Tass. Both appeared to have resumed normal operation by 6 a.m. local time, according to data from international flight tracking portals.

As of late morning Sunday, Ukrainian officials did not acknowledge or comment on the strikes, which came a day after Russia targeted the Ukrainian capital with over 60 Iranian-made Shahed drones. At least five civilians were wounded in the hourslong assault, which saw several buildings damaged by falling debris from downed drones, including a kindergarten. The wounded included an 11-year-old child, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.

The attack was “the most massive air attack by drones on Kyiv" in the war so far, Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv city administration, said on Saturday. Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat confirmed later that same day that air defenses shot down 66 air targets over the Ukrainian capital and surrounding region throughout the morning.

The attack on Kyiv was carried out on the morning of Holodomor Memorial Day, which commemorates the manmade famine in Soviet Ukraine that killed millions of Ukrainians from 1932 to 1933. It is marked on the fourth Saturday in November.

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World

ISIS Suspect Killed in Raid Ahead of Ankara NATO Summit

The prosecutor's office had on Tuesday confirmed issuing warrants for 241 people, with anti-terror police arresting 209 people in early morning raids in and around the city. (AFP file)
The prosecutor's office had on Tuesday confirmed issuing warrants for 241 people, with anti-terror police arresting 209 people in early morning raids in and around the city. (AFP file)
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ISIS Suspect Killed in Raid Ahead of Ankara NATO Summit

The prosecutor's office had on Tuesday confirmed issuing warrants for 241 people, with anti-terror police arresting 209 people in early morning raids in and around the city. (AFP file)
The prosecutor's office had on Tuesday confirmed issuing warrants for 241 people, with anti-terror police arresting 209 people in early morning raids in and around the city. (AFP file)

Police shot dead a man suspected of ties to ISIS group militants during a raid on a district near Ankara, security sources told Turkish media Wednesday.

The incident occurred during police raids early Tuesday, two weeks before the July 7-8 NATO summit in the capital Ankara that world leaders from 32 nations, among them US President Donald Trump, will attend.

The shooting happened in Sazagasi, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of the capital, during a simultaneous operations that saw police arresting more than 200 people, the DHA and IHA news agencies reported.

The suspect, M.K., was shot dead when a police special force unit raided an address where he was staying with his wife N.K.

IHA news agency said the pair had opened fire first on police, prompting a shootout.

"The police carried out an operation here, but I don't know who the suspects are supposed to be linked to," local neighborhood leader Nuri Demir told AFP by phone.

"We saw ambulances transporting wounded, but I don't know anything else," he added.

Contacted by AFP, neither Ankara's provincial governorate nor the Ankara public prosecutor's office would make a comment on the incident.

The prosecutor's office had on Tuesday confirmed issuing warrants for 241 people, with anti-terror police arresting 209 people in early morning raids in and around the city.

Of the total number wanted for arrest, 56 were identified as ISIS suspects, while 185 were identified as belonging to several far-left organizations branded terror groups by Ankara.

It was not immediately clear on Wednesday whether police had managed to round up any of the remaining 32 suspects.

World

Australia Spy Chief Warns of Iran Terror Threat

Police officers gather at the scene of a shooting incident at Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia, December 14, 2025. (Reuters)
Police officers gather at the scene of a shooting incident at Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia, December 14, 2025. (Reuters)
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Australia Spy Chief Warns of Iran Terror Threat

Police officers gather at the scene of a shooting incident at Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia, December 14, 2025. (Reuters)
Police officers gather at the scene of a shooting incident at Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia, December 14, 2025. (Reuters)

An Australian citizen living in Iran who was a senior member of its Revolutionary Guards orchestrated a major antisemitic firebomb attack in Sydney, Australia's spy chief said Wednesday.

Giving an annual threat assessment, Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), said he was also concerned that an Iranian group active in Europe could conduct further attacks or an assassination in Australia.

ASIO has come under scrutiny after 15 people were killed in an antisemitic mass shooting at Bondi Beach in December, with an independent inquiry into antisemitism noting a drop in the share of funding for counter-terrorism investigations.

In his Canberra speech, Burgess defended the agency as it faced "concurrent, cascading, and compounding threats", and revealed details of investigations into two antisemitic firebombings traced to Iran.

An Iran-based Australian citizen orchestrated the 2024 firebombing of a Bondi restaurant, Lewis' Continental Kitchen, in the first major antisemitic attack in Australia, he said.

"This person is a senior agent of the IRGC Quds Force, running its networks around the world," he said, referring to the Guards' foreign operations branch.

A former Australian resident living in Iraq but working for Iran had directed another major firebomb attack, on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne, he said. Australia expelled Iran's ambassador last year over the attack.

- State hackers -

An Australian crime figure was arrested in January after pressure from Australian and Iraqi police.

"Iran recruited him through a complex web of Iraqi-based militia groups. Valuing his high wealth and criminal connections, the IRGC protected him and supported his illegal enterprises," Burgess said.

Iran continued to view Australia as a target, and could "conduct or inspire acts of arson, vandalism or even assassinations on Australian soil".

The Bondi Beach attack, allegedly by father-and-son killers, was shocking but not surprising in the context of a deteriorating global and domestic security environment, he said.

There were "misunderstandings" about how ASIO allocates resources, he added.

The number of officers working on counter-terrorism doubled between 2005 and 2025 and the agency was using new tools including artificial intelligence.

ASIO had foiled 31 major terrorism plots since 2014, and its cases had become more complex as people became radicalized in online chat rooms not prayer halls, within weeks, and at a younger age.

Burgess said state hackers had penetrated a critical infrastructure network, and outlined how a particular nation had sought to coerce eight people, including five Australians, to return to their place of birth to silence them.

Foreign spies were seeking to recruit Australians to reveal official secrets about AUKUS, the country's security partnership with Britain and the United States.

"What's more important: the liberty and agency of an individual, countering antisemitism, the availability of critical infrastructure or defending AUKUS? I don't believe we can prioritize the major threats -- you must deal with all of them," he said.

World

France Announces First Ebola Case

Healthcare workers carry on a stretcher a patient suffering from the Ebola virus disease from an ambulance at the Ebola Treatment Center (ETC) in Bunia, Ituri, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo on June 23, 2026. (Photo by Benediction MURHABAZI / AFP)
Healthcare workers carry on a stretcher a patient suffering from the Ebola virus disease from an ambulance at the Ebola Treatment Center (ETC) in Bunia, Ituri, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo on June 23, 2026. (Photo by Benediction MURHABAZI / AFP)
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France Announces First Ebola Case

Healthcare workers carry on a stretcher a patient suffering from the Ebola virus disease from an ambulance at the Ebola Treatment Center (ETC) in Bunia, Ituri, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo on June 23, 2026. (Photo by Benediction MURHABAZI / AFP)
Healthcare workers carry on a stretcher a patient suffering from the Ebola virus disease from an ambulance at the Ebola Treatment Center (ETC) in Bunia, Ituri, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo on June 23, 2026. (Photo by Benediction MURHABAZI / AFP)

France on Wednesday announced its first confirmed case of Ebola identified on its territory, a doctor who had returned from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The health ministry "confirms today the identification of a first positive case of Ebola virus disease on national territory,” it said. Contacted by AFP, the ministry specified that the case was identified in mainland France.

The ⁠patient is being isolated and authorities are contact tracing, the ministry said ⁠in a statement, adding that the risk for the general European population was low.

Congo's Ebola outbreak, which has infected more than 1,000 people and killed 267, has ⁠had ⁠the largest number of confirmed cases within the first month of any episode of the disease, the World Health Organization has said.