Israeli strikes have killed two people in Lebanon, according to the Lebanese health ministry, in the latest violation of a ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah.
In a statement on Friday, the Ministry of Public Health said an “Israeli enemy strike” on a vehicle in Mansuri in southern Lebanon had killed one person.
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It also said that a strike on the southern town of Mayfadun killed one person the previous night. Israel said the victim of that attack was a Hezbollah member who it alleged “took part in attempts to reestablish Hezbollah’s infrastructure in the Zawtar al-Sharqiyah area”.
The Israeli military on Thursday also carried out several strikes in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa region, north of the Litani River, after issuing warnings to evacuate.
United Nations peacekeepers deployed in southern Lebanon on Friday sent a stop-fire request to the Israeli army after a drone “dropped a grenade” on its troops. It was unclear if the grenade exploded or not.
UNIFIL said such activities put both civilians and peacekeepers at risk and constitute a violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701.
UNIFIL was established in 1978 following Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon and saw its mandate significantly expanded after the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah under Resolution 1701.
More than 10,000 peacekeepers were deployed to monitor the cessation of hostilities and support the Lebanese army’s presence south of the Litani River.
The UN Security Council decided in August to end UNIFIL’s mandate on December 31, 2026, followed by a one-year plan for a phased drawdown of forces.
Israel has continued violating the ceasefire with Hezbollah in place since late November 2024, resulting in hundreds of casualties, while Israeli forces remain on five Lebanese hills seized in the latest war, in addition to other areas occupied for decades.
Who: Manchester United vs Manchester City What: English Premier League Where: Old Trafford, Manchester, United Kingdom When: Saturday, January 17, at 12:30pm (12:30 GMT) How to follow: We will have all the build-up on Al Jazeera Sport from 09:30 GMT, in advance of our text commentary stream.
Michael Carrick will step into the dugout as Manchester United’s interim manager for the first time in Saturday’s Manchester derby at Old Trafford, tasked with steadying a side that has stumbled through another bleak winter – and another change of manager.
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City have put behind them their period of discontent, which saw them implode last season in their title defence, and they are once again challengers for the Premier League crown.
Al Jazeera Sport takes a look at one of the biggest games in world football, which sees the rivals in contrasting form.
How have Man Utd fared in the Premier League this season?
United are seventh in the table with one win in their last six league matches – add to that last week’s FA Cup exit, and the mood is flat on the red side of Manchester.
Carrick’s arrival, however, in the wake of Ruben Amorim’s sacking, brings a flicker of hope.
The former midfielder, who won the full set of major trophies as a United player, certainly does not give the impression of being overawed by the situation.
“I feel in a really good place to be here. It feels very natural, to be honest, very normal,’ he said this week. “I understand the job, what it entails and the responsibility of it.”
What experience does Carrick bring to the Man Utd job?
Carrick had an unbeaten three-game interim spell in charge of United in 2021, but his only long-term experience as a manager was at second-tier Middlesbrough from 2022-25.
He has a contract until the end of the season as United gives itself time to identify candidates to try to end a decade-plus of decline. Carrick has the chance to put himself in the frame in the 17 remaining games this term.
Carrick wants to put smiles on the faces of fans who jeered at the final whistle as United was knocked out of the FA Cup by Brighton last week.
“I want to be off my seat [with excitement],” he said. “I want to be enjoying watching the boys play and results obviously need to come with that. You can feel my kind of enthusiasm for it because I’m buzzing to get started and see what we can do.”
After City, United face a trip to Arsenal. Quite the start for a coach barely experienced at this level and taking on a role that increasingly looks like an impossible job after Amorim became the sixth coach or manager to make way since Alex Ferguson retired in 2013.
How have Man City fared in the Premier League this season?
Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City appear to be returning to somewhere close to their best. For a team that won an unprecedented four Premier League titles in a row, however, they still have some way to go.
City are six points behind Arsenal and second in the league table, despite three consecutive draws.
They are still in the hunt for four trophies and a victorious run – similar to that that saw them lift five trophies in 2023 – cannot be ruled out.
Indeed, City arrive with their own narrative twist with January signing Antoine Semenyo stealing the headlines.
Two games, two goals, and his own chant from the Etihad faithful, Semenyo has injected a dose of unpredictability into Guardiola’s well-oiled machine.
While City’s three draws cost them precious points in the title race, their recent form suggests they are rediscovering their ruthless edge, with a 10–1 FA Cup demolition of League One side Exeter City and a 2-0 League Cup semifinal win over Newcastle United on Tuesday.
What happened the last time United played City in the Manchester derby?
City demolished Amorim’s United 3-0 in September in the first Premier League meeting of the season.
City’s goal-scoring machine Erling Haaland struck twice in the match at Etihad Stadium, while Phil Foden chipped in with the other.
What happened in the corresponding fixture last season?
Last season’s Premier League encounter at Old Trafford resulted in a dour 0-0 draw on April 6.
United were already long out of contention for their aim of Champions League qualification but City’s place at European football’s top table was still in doubt.
United also had one eye on the upcoming Europa League final against Tottenham, which ultimately ended in defeat.
When did United last beat City in the Manchester derby?
United’s last victory in the derby came last season with a 2-1 win in the Premier League match at Etihad Stadium.
City led, through Josko Gvardiol’s first-half strike, with two minutes remaining of the match, but one of Amorim’s finest hours was to follow.
Amad Diallo netted a late equaliser to the delight of the away support, which soon turned to delirium, though, when Bruno Fernandes netted an injury-time penalty.
Head-to-head
This is the 197th Manchester derby, with the first match coming in the old Second Division in England in 1894, and resulting in a 5-2 win for United at City.
Overall, United have won 79 of the contests with City claiming the spoils on 62 occasions.
Manchester United team news
Harry Maguire is back fit, and Bryan Mbeumo and Amad Diallo return from Africa Cup of Nations duty, adding depth to a squad that has looked threadbare.
Noussair Mazraoui remains at AFCON with Morocco ahead of their final on Sunday, while defender Matthijs de Ligt is injured and forward Shea Lacey is suspended after being shown a second yellow in the FA Cup defeat by Brighton last weekend.
Guardiola is counting on Omar Marmoush’s return from AFCON to shoulder some of the attacking load on “exhausted” Haaland. Marmoush’s Egypt lost 1-0 to Senegal in Wednesday’s AFCON semifinals, but City will have to wait for the forward’s return until after the tournament’s third-place playoff on Saturday.
Haaland, who once again tops the Premier League scoring chart with 20 goals, played Tuesday’s full match, including 10 minutes of injury time. He has not scored from open play, however, since their 3-0 win over West Ham United on December 20.
“Hopefully Omar will be back soon to give rest to Erling because Erling is exhausted,” Guardiola said on Tuesday.
Josko Gvardiol, Mateo Kovacic, John Stones, Ruben Dias, Oscar Bobb and Savinho are all absent due to injury.
Russian attacks deepened the energy and humanitarian crises in Ukraine during the second week of the year, as temperatures dropped below freezing.
On January 9, Russia pounded Kyiv and several other cities with 242 kamikaze drones and 26 missiles, said Ukraine’s Air Force, which managed to shoot down all but 16 of the drones and 18 missiles.
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Even so, the drones and missiles that got through to Kyiv, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad, Odesa, Dnipro, and Lviv killed four people and wounded nearly 30.
The strikes left 6,000 apartment buildings and half a million people without power, heat and water in sub-freezing temperatures, with January winds howling into homes whose windows were shattered.
Approximately 1,000 apartment buildings in Kyiv were still without power two days later.
[Al Jazeera]
On January 13, Russia struck again, targeting power stations and electricity substations, killing another four civilians.
Emergency power cuts were introduced in Kyiv and Chernihiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia and the Donetsk regions, the energy ministry said.
“Over the weekend, my apartment on the left bank [of the Dnipro river] had the luxury of having five hours’ worth of electricity within a span of 72 hours,” wrote deputy editor of the Kyiv Independent Oleksiy Sorokin.
“My apartment technically has heating, but it’s very weak,” wrote the newspaper’s head of social media, Liza Nechyporuk. “I bought several hot water bottles, and I use them while working and while sleeping.”
“The Russians are exploiting the weather – the cold snap – trying to hit as many of our energy facilities as possible,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
[Al Jazeera]
After the second attack, Zelenskyy declared a state of emergency for Ukraine’s energy sector and set up a coordination headquarters in Kyiv for repair work.
Zelenskyy also appointed former Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal as the energy minister with instructions to “increase electricity import capacities using all business opportunities.”
He said the situation was difficult in the whole Dnipro valley, including Odesa and Kryvyi Rih.
The Kyiv Independent said the latest strikes brought to 70 percent the proportion of the energy infrastructure hit by Russia this winter.
Even before Russia’s two strikes, Zelenskyy said the weather alone was “causing serious problems on the roads and with utilities,” calling it “an emergency situation for all services”.
Russian missile diplomacy
The assaults came after an agreement was almost reached between the United States and Ukraine on January 8, on the provision of security guarantees following a ceasefire.
[Al Jazeera[
At the same time, Ukraine’s allies, the Coalition of the Willing, were finalising the details of a multinational force that would be sent to help maintain a ceasefire.
“The architecture of post-war security is practically already in place,” Zelenskyy had said on January 6 at a joint news conference with France’s President Emannuel Macron and US negotiator Steve Witkoff.
On January 9, the United Kingdom said it was accelerating funds of $268m to finance the UK contingent of the multinational force.
Russia lambasted the developments.
On January 8, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova called support for a multinational force “militaristic declarations” from an “axis of war,” and repeated the Russian position that European forces in Ukraine would be considered “legitimate combat targets”.
To ram the point home, Russia included its newest ballistic missile, the Oreshnik, in the barrage that fell on Ukraine the following day.
The missile damaged an aircraft factory servicing F-16 and MiG-29 fighters in Lviv, Russia’s defence ministry said, but its diplomatic import was that it would be Russia’s weapon of choice against European troops.
Russian National Security Council chairman Dmitry Medvedev posted video of the Oreshnik strike on social media, warning members of the coalition, “this is what you’ll get”.
“It’s been said a thousand times: Russia won’t accept any European or NATO troops in Ukraine,” Medvedev wrote.
“Russia’s behaviour and rhetoric in no way indicate that they want to end this war,” Zelenskyy said on Monday.
Trump and Russia
Despite the fact that Ukraine has engaged with the US to formulate precise ceasefire and post-war security agreements, US President Donald Trump told the Reuters news agency that Ukraine, not Russia, was holding up a peace deal.
“I think he’s ready to make a deal,” Trump said of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I think Ukraine is less ready to make a deal.”
Asked why negotiations had not yet ended the war, Trump said, “Zelenskyy.”
Asked why he thought Zelenskyy was holding up a deal, Trump said, “I just think he’s, you know, having a hard time getting there.”
“President Trump is clear that Zelenskyy is sabotaging and delaying peace,” agreed the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kiril Dimitriev, who has acted as one of Putin’s main negotiators.
Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine found that conflict-related violence killed 2,514 civilians and injured 12,142 in 2025, a 31 percent rise in the number of victims from 2024.
A woman walks on debris inside a gym situated in a building of Pthe rofessional Lyceum of Construction and Architecture, which was hit by a Russian drone strike in Odesa, Ukraine, on January 13, 2026 [Nina Liashonok/Reuters]
Russian officials appear to be demonstrating that they see dividends in deepening the cleavage between the US and Europe, now manifesting itself as a real crisis over the fate of Greenland, a Danish-owned, self-governed territory.
Russian Ambassador to Copenhagen Vladimir Barbin told Izvestia that under the Monroe Doctrine, “Greenland is considered within the sphere of US interests.”
“In this context,” he said, “it will be difficult to reconcile US ambitions, Greenland’s aspirations for independence, and Denmark’s sovereignty over this Arctic island.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov provided a reminder of Russia’s territorial ambitions in Ukraine on Wednesday.
The Trump administration, he said, “understand perfectly well that without resolving the issue related to the fate of people living in Crimea, Novorossiya, and Donbas, who categorically reject the [Kyiv] regime, having expressed their desire to return to Russia, without resolving this issue nothing will work,” he said during a visit to New Delhi.
Ukraine’s energy minister has sounded an alarm over the energy situation as Russian strikes on the country’s infrastructure leave people shivering in subzero temperatures without heating or power.
Denys Shmyhal, who took office earlier this week, told parliament on Friday that there was “not a single power plant left in Ukraine that the enemy has not attacked”.
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Russia, since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, has each winter concentrated fire on the country’s energy infrastructure in a bid to weaken Kyiv’s determination to defend itself and resist Moscow’s far-reaching demands for territory and limits on its military capabilities.
Shmyhal said the most challenging energy situation is in the capital, as well as the regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Odesa. Towns near the front line in eastern Ukraine are also filled with thousands of homes that have been without electricity and heating for days in subzero conditions.
“In some cities and regions, winter preparations have failed. Over the past two days in office, I’ve seen that many things are clearly stalling,” he said.
The minister has ordered emergency imports of electricity, while declaring that Ukraine needs to install up to 2.7 GW of generation capacity by the end of the year if it is to meet its consumption needs.
“State companies, primarily Ukrainian Railways and Naftogaz, must urgently ensure the procurement of imported electric energy during the 2025-26 heating season, amounting to at least 50 percent of total consumption,” Shmyhal said.
His ministry estimates that Ukraine has fuel reserves for just 20 days. It did not give data on how much electricity Ukraine currently generates or imports, information that authorities have withheld due to wartime sensitivities.
Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko has introduced measures to try to help with the emergency, including reducing overnight curfews to allow people to access central heating and power hubs and extending school holidays in Kyiv until February 1.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the foreign and energy ministries had organised an international appeal for funds to help tackle Ukraine’s energy problems, similar to periodic meetings on arms supplies. Norway, he said, had made an initial grant of $200m.
Russia has attacked the power grid and other energy facilities while pressing a battlefield offensive that has left Kyiv on the back foot as it faces US pressure to secure peace.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Thursday that about 300 apartment buildings in the capital remained without heat after a January 9 attack knocked out heating to half the city’s high-rises.
Kharkiv’s Mayor Ihor Terekhov said Russian forces destroyed a large energy facility in Ukraine’s second-biggest city on Thursday.
He did not specify what sort of facility had been hit, but said emergency crews were working around the clock. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the attack had left 400,000 people without electricity.
Illiberal systems often look most permanent just before they change. But moments of upheaval can also produce a different illusion: That the system is one dramatic external blow away from collapse. With Iran convulsed by unprecedented protests against the country’s leadership, it is tempting to imagine that the United States’ air power could deliver the final shove.
That temptation misreads how the Islamic Republic actually survives. Coercive cohesion is the cement of the system: The ability of parallel security and political institutions to keep acting together, even when legitimacy erodes. When that cohesion holds, the system absorbs shocks that would more conventional states would fall under.
Iran is not a single pyramid with one man at the apex. It is a heterarchical, networked state: Overlapping hubs of power around the Supreme Leader’s office, the Revolutionary Guards, intelligence organs, clerical gatekeepers, and a patronage economy. In such a system, removing one node, even the most symbolic one, does not reliably collapse the structure; redundancy and substitute chains of command are a design feature. Decapitation – a prominent narrative after US President Donald Trump’s tactical “success” in Venezuela – thus looks less like a strategy and more like a gamble on chaos.
This is why Trump’s dilemma matters. He sits between neoconservative hawks who want regime change by force and an America First base that will not support lengthy wars, post-conflict stabilisation, or another Middle Eastern adventure. The instinct, therefore, is quick-in, quick-out punishment that looks decisive without creating obligations.
Regional politics further narrow Trump’s menu. Israel wants Washington to do the heavy lifting against Tehran. Key Gulf interlocutors, notably Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman, have pressed for de-escalation and diplomacy. Operationally, the Gulf’s lack of support for a new campaign might push the US towards military options launched from a distance, making sustained air operations harder to sustain.
Trump has also boxed himself in rhetorically. Having warned that if Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters”, the US would “come to their rescue”, he has had to signal credible military options even as he suggests diplomacy is preferable and hints that the killing is “stopping”. In practice, this oscillation appears to be less strategic ambiguity and more bargaining and indecision, encouraging every faction around him to believe it can still win the argument.
It is important to be clear about what Washington’s inner circle seems to want. The goal is not liberal democracy. The prize is a pragmatic Iran that can be drawn into a regional geo-economic framework, opened to business with the US, and nudged away from overreliance on China. That implies constraints on nuclear activity, some curbs on ballistic missiles, and a drawdown – real or cosmetic – of Iran’s support for the so-called “axis of resistance”. This is a transformation of posture, not a wholesale replacement of the Islamic Republic.
Air power can punish and signal. It can degrade specific facilities. It can raise the cost of repression by authorities. But it cannot reorganise a security sector, arbitrate succession, or deliver a behaviour change. And it cannot protect protesters from the air. Libya in 2011 remains the cautionary tale. Military force, at most, is a high-risk attempt to coerce Iranians to the negotiation table that will likely backfire.
The most plausible military scenario is limited standoff punitive strikes, using cruise missiles and long-range munitions against Iranian Revolutionary Guard centres or enabling infrastructure. This fits the “quick and clean” preference and can be framed as punishment rather than war. Its strategic downside is that it hands the Guards an “existential threat” narrative that can legitimise harsher repression, while raising retaliation risk through proxies, shipping disruption, and pressure on US bases in the Gulf. It can also reduce the chance of internal fragmentation by pushing rival factions to rally around the flag.
A leadership “decapitation” attempt is more cinematic and less credible. It is the most escalatory option, likely to unify hardliners, and still unlikely to collapse a networked system.
A sustained air campaign is the least plausible and the most dangerous. Without Gulf basing and overflight, the logistics push operations towards more distant platforms and thinner sortie generation. Politically, it would violate the America First premise; strategically, it would internationalise the crisis, widen the battlefield, and invite a tit-for-tat escalation cycle that neither side can reliably control.
Cyber- and electronic disruption sits in a different category: Lower visibility, sometimes deniable, and potentially compatible with Gulf preferences for avoiding open war. But the effects are uncertain and often temporary, and a networked state can route around disruption. The most realistic outcome is that cyberoperations might accompany other moves, yet they are unlikely to deliver decisive political change on their own.
The deeper point is that external shocks rarely produce the specific internal outcome Washington claims to want: A pragmatic transition at the top. Severe outside pressure often hardens a system’s coercive core, because escalating violence is not always confidence; it is frequently panic wearing a uniform. The only durable trigger for transformation is internal: Fractures within the security services or elite splits that create competing centres of authority with incompatible survival strategies.
If the US wants to influence those dynamics, it should focus on cohesion-shaping levers rather than dramatic bombing. Maintain deterrence against mass slaughter but avoid promising “rescue” that cannot be delivered without war. Calibrate economic pressure towards the individuals and entities driving violence while leaving credible off-ramps for technocrats and pragmatists who might prefer de-escalation and negotiation. Above all, coordinate with the US’s friends in the region, chief of all Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia, who can constrain escalation and translate coercive discourse into bargaining space.
Filmmaker Simplice Ganou, from Burkina Faso, spends his time documenting people and relationships, but when he travels to Winterthur, Switzerland, he faces a new challenge: nobody wants to talk to him. Struggling to make connections, he’s confronted with a question many documentary filmmakers know well: how do you film people who don’t want to engage?
Through humour, vulnerability and persistence, Ganou discovers a creative way to break through. But will it be enough?
