Category World News

A French aid worker for the United Nations children’s agency has been killed in the eastern Congolese city of Goma, France’s president said, after M23 rebels who control the city said air strikes hit a house there.

“A French humanitarian from UNICEF has been killed in Goma,” French President Emmanuel Macron said on X on Wednesday. “I call for respect for humanitarian law and for the personnel who are on the ground and who are committed to saving lives,” he added.

Goma is the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) North Kivu province, a strategic city that Rwanda-backed M23 rebels seized from government control in January 2025.

Since taking up arms again in 2021, M23 has captured swathes of the mineral-rich Congolese east, unleashing a fresh spiral of violence in a region long plagued by fighting.

M23 spokesperson Lawrence Kanyuka said a drone attack in the early hours of Wednesday hit a residential building in the centre of Goma. He said Karine Buisset, a French national and UNICEF employee, was in the residence at the time and had been killed. The UN has yet to comment.

Video shared online and verified by Al Jazeera showed a house with part of its roof destroyed, and a trail of smoke emerging from one side. Sources on the ground, speaking to Al Jazeera, confirmed the structural damage.

An aid worker close to the house that was hit told the AFP news agency that he heard the sound of a drone, followed by a loud explosion that blew a “hole in the roof” of the building.

Local residents and humanitarian sources told AFP that several sites were hit and several people may have been killed.

Kanyuka said a “combat drone” had been used against the city, and blamed the Congolese government for the attack.

“This morning, the city of Goma was struck by a drone-led terrorist attack … targeting the United Nations and the European Union,” he wrote on X.

“This act of aggression constitutes an intolerable provocation targeting a densely populated urban area and deliberately endangering thousands of innocent civilians,” Kanyuka said.

The Congolese government has not yet commented on the M23 claims.

‘Violations’ of peace deal

The incident comes a day after the DRC’s army, also known as FARDC, said it shot down two drones belonging to Rwandan forces and “their allies” after they entered Congolese airspace in neighbouring South Kivu province.

The drones were downed in Mikenge “after they illegally violated Congolese airspace in the Minembwe area”, said an X account affiliated with the FARDC.

“This act of aggression constitutes a new provocation and a violation of the Washington Accord,” it said, adding that the Congolese forces “remain vigilant, disciplined, and ready to defend” DRC’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

M23 rebels seized the capitals of both North and South Kivu provinces last year, as well as other cities.

They have advanced across several areas in the resource-rich east, even after an agreement signed with the Congolese government in Qatar last year, and following a separate accord signed between the DRC and Rwanda in the United States on December 4.

DRC’s government, the UN and the US all accuse Rwanda of supporting M23, something Kigali denies as it says it is facing threats from armed groups in the DRC.

The US sanctioned Rwanda’s military and four of its senior officers on March 2, accusing them of backing the M23.

Iranian authorities say a number of hospitals have been temporarily put out of service and thousands of civilians affected by the ongoing war with the United States and Israel, as Tehran also escalates attacks across the region.

Speaking to state television on Wednesday at noon in Tehran, a spokesman of the Iranian Red Crescent Society said nearly 20,000 civilian buildings, including at least 16,000 residential units, have been affected after more than 11 days of war. Mojtaba Khaledi said 77 healthcare facilities have been affected, but did not say how many were hospitals or whether any were directly struck.

“Some of them are out of order, so we can’t admit patients in them, and in some, patients were in the surgery room or undergoing other medical operations” while hit by attacks, he said, adding that 16 Red Crescent centres were affected, with personnel moved to other places to continue rescue operations.

Khaledi was speaking in front of what the Red Crescent described as “an administrative building related to a bank” that was attacked last night in the capital. He pointed out that a number of residential buildings in the immediate area had their windows broken or sustained additional damage.

He said 65 schools and educational facilities have also been affected across the country since the start of the war, some seriously, but did not elaborate.

The most horrific incident so far in the war is the Minab elementary school in southern Iran, where 167 people, mostly students, were killed on the first day of the conflict.

Iranian armed forces, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), signalled on Wednesday that they now consider banks and economic interests of the US and Israel across the region, as well as technology companies offering military applications, to be legitimate targets.

As both sides emphasise they are ready for weeks, if not months, of war, the Iranian government has sought to assure that it has strong stockpiles of essential goods, including foodstuffs and medicine, as well as contingency plans in motion to import necessities.

Iranian officials have also repeatedly stressed the civilian toll of the conflict, with Deputy Health Minister Ali Jafarian telling Al Jazeera on Tuesday that more than 12,000 people have been wounded and most of the 1,250 confirmed killed so far have been civilians, including 200 children and 200 women.

The Israeli army said on Monday that it has killed more than 1,900 military personnel and commanders and wounded thousands during its ongoing air attacks. It has not commented on reports of civilian casualties.

The Health Ministry’s Jafarian said 11 healthcare workers were killed and 55 wounded, including physicians, nurses and emergency workers. He said 29 clinical facilities were damaged, 10 are now inactive, and patients are to be evacuated from seven other facilities across the country.

The head of the Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Allahkaram Akhlaghi, announced on Tuesday that the Persian Gulf Martyrs Hospital in the southwestern city – where a key IRGC naval base is located – is out of service for now after shockwaves from explosions caused by US attacks “damaged parts of the facility”.

Patients were moved to a nearby hospital, he added. According to a Health Ministry update on Tuesday afternoon, at least 18 ambulances and 21 medical emergency centres have been damaged across the country.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino ‌says Iran’s participation in the World Cup would be welcomed by United States President Donald Trump, with whom he met and discussed the upcoming tournament amid the ongoing war in the Middle East.

Infantino said on Wednesday that Trump “reiterated that the Iranian team is welcome to compete in the tournament”, which is being cohosted by the US, Mexico and Canada in June and July.

During a meeting to discuss preparations for the competition, “we also spoke about the current situation in Iran,” Infantino, the head of world football’s governing body, wrote on Instagram.

“During the discussions, President Trump reiterated that the Iranian team is, of course, welcome to compete in the tournament in the United States,” he wrote.

All of Iran’s group games are scheduled to take place in the US.

“We all need an event like the FIFA World Cup to ⁠bring people together now more than ever, and I ⁠sincerely thank the President of the United States for his support, as it shows once again that Football Unites the World,” Infantino said.

The comments marked the first time that Infantino, who in December created a FIFA peace prize and awarded it to Trump, has acknowledged the war in the Middle East.

The US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The attacks have killed 1,255 people and wounded more than 12,000 in Iran in the first 12 days of the war.

Tehran has responded by launching waves of missiles and drones at Israel, several military bases in the Middle East where US forces operate and at infrastructure in the region.

Iran was ⁠the only nation missing from a FIFA planning summit for World Cup participants held last week in Atlanta, Georgia, deepening questions over whether the country’s football team ⁠would compete on US soil this summer amid an escalating regional war.

Trump told the online news magazine Politico that he is not concerned about Iran’s participation because it is a “very badly defeated country”.

If the US refuses to host the Iran team, it could risk being removed as a World Cup host by FIFA.

That is what happened to Indonesia three years ago when the country refused to welcome Israel for the men’s Under-20 World Cup eight months after the Israeli team qualified. FIFA dropped Indonesia just weeks before the scheduled first game and moved that tournament to Argentina.

The head of the Iranian Football Federation cast doubt on his team’s participation in the sporting extravaganza after the defection this week of several Iranian female footballers during the Asian Cup in Australia.

“If the World Cup is like this, who in their right mind would send their national team to a place like this?” Mehdi Taj asked on Iranian state television.

Fans from Iran were already banned from entering the US in the first iteration of a travel ban announced by the Trump administration in December.

Iran are scheduled to play two of their World Cup group games in Los Angeles and one in Seattle.

If both the US and ‌Iran ‌finish second in their respective groups, the two countries could meet in a July 3 elimination match in Dallas.

Should Iran withdraw from the sport’s quadrennial showpiece, it would be the first time a country did that since France and India pulled out of the 1950 finals in Brazil.

This week, FIFA’s World Cup chief operating officer said the tournament is “too big” to be postponed because of the global turmoil caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Heimo Schirgi said FIFA continues to closely monitor the Iran war.

India’s Supreme Court has allowed the country’s first case of passive euthanasia – withdrawal of artificial life support – for a 32-year-old man who has been in a vegetative state for more than 12 years.

A bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and K V Viswanathan on Wednesday permitted the withdrawal of life support to Harish Rana, a resident of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, who suffered severe head injuries after falling from a building in 2013.

“The patient’s next of kin and the medical boards have reached the opinion that CAN [clinically administered nutrition] administration should be discontinued,” the Press Trust of India news agency quoted the Supreme Court bench as saying.

The court was hearing a petition filed by Rana’s father, seeking permission to withdraw life-sustaining treatment for his son. The family said Rana was being kept artificially alive.

The court in its ruling said Rana exhibited “no meaningful interaction” and had been dependent on others for “all activities of self-care”.

“His condition has shown no improvement,” the court was quoted as saying by legal news website, Bar and Bench.

India recognised passive euthanasia in 2018, permitting the removal of life support under strict conditions to allow death to occur naturally. But this marks the first time that a court has approved its use for an individual.

Doctors had already concluded that Rana has virtually no chance of recovery.

But because he does not have a living will – a legally binding document outlining preferences for medical care in the event of a terminal condition – he has not been able to give his consent for passive euthanasia.

His parents, therefore, had petitioned the court to allow him to be taken off life support.

Active euthanasia, in which substances are directly administered to cause death, remains illegal in India.

But the debate in India over allowing someone to die dates to the 2011 case of Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse who spent 42 years in a vegetative state following a brutal sexual assault.

The Supreme Court rejected a plea by Shanbaug’s family to end her life, and she died from pneumonia in 2015 aged 66.

But the court did issue a landmark opinion, recognising passive euthanasia under strict safeguards and with judicial approval.

The move relied on earlier judgements that recognised the constitutional right to die with dignity, and served as a prelude to the expanded 2018 ruling on passive euthanasia.