Dozens of people have been rushed to hospital after an explosion at a mosque in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, local police said.
The incident happened during Friday prayers inside a school complex in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta.
City police chief Asep Edi Suheri said the cause of the explosion is still being investigated. Witnesses reported hearing two loud blasts around midday (04:00 GMT), just as the sermon had started at the mosque.
Fifty-four people, mostly students, have been admitted to hospital with injuries ranging from minor to serious and including burns, Suheri said. Twenty remain in hospital care, with three suffering from serious injuries, he added.
Suheri said an anti-bomb squad that was deployed at the scene found toy rifles and a toy gun near to the mosque.
“Police are still investigating the scene to determine the cause of the blasts,” he explained.
Gaza’s classrooms are slowly coming back to life, following two years of relentless Israeli war and devastation that has destroyed the Palestinian enclave’s fabric of daily life: Homes, hospitals and schools.
Four weeks into the United States-brokered ceasefire in Gaza, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is in the process of reopening schools across the territory amid ongoing Israeli bombardment and heavy restrictions on the flow of aid.
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Since October 2023, more than 300,000 UNRWA students have been deprived of a formal education, while 97 percent of the agency’s school buildings have been damaged or destroyed by the fighting.
What were once centres of education are now also being used as shelters by hundreds of displaced families.
Reporting from the central city of Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum found families sharing classrooms with children striving to reclaim their futures.
Inam al-Maghari, one of the Palestinian students who has resumed lessons, spoke to Al Jazeera about the toll Israel’s war on Gaza has had on her education.
“I used to study before, but we have been away from school for two years. I didn’t complete my second and third grades, and now I’m in fourth grade, but I feel like I know nothing,” al-Maghari said.
“Today, we brought mattresses instead of desks to sit and study,” she added.
Palestinian student Inam al-Maghari speaks about her return to school [Screen grab/Al Jazeera]
UNRWA is hoping to expand its educational services in the coming weeks, according to Enas Hamdan, the head of its communication office.
“UNRWA strives to provide face-to-face education through its temporary safe learning spaces for more than 62,000 students in Gaza,” Hamdan said.
“We are working to expand these activities across 67 sheltering schools throughout the Strip. Additionally, we continue to provide online learning for 300,000 students in Gaza.”
Um Mahmoud, a displaced Palestinian, explained how she and her family vacate the room they are staying in three times a week to allow students to study.
“We vacate the classrooms to give the children a chance to learn because education is vital,” Um Mahmoud said. “We’re prioritising learning and hope that conditions will improve, allowing for better quality of education.”
A picture taken from outside a classroom in Deir el-Balah, Gaza [Screen grab/Al Jazeera]
The war in Gaza has taken an immense toll on children, with psychologists warning that more than 80 percent of them now show symptoms of severe trauma.
The UN children’s agency UNICEF has estimated that more than 64,000 children have been killed or injured in Gaza during the fighting.
United States President Donald Trump has said he expects a US-coordinated international stabilisation force to be on the ground in Gaza “very soon” as part of his post-war plan for the enclave, which is still suffering a full-blown humanitarian crisis amid continued Israeli bombing.
“It’s going to be very soon. And Gaza is working out very well,” said the president on Thursday, adding that an alliance of “very powerful countries” had volunteered to intervene if any problems arose with the Palestinian armed group Hamas, which has not yet confirmed it will disarm.
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The president’s projection came as the United Nations Security Council prepares to start negotiations to authorise a two-year mandate for a transitional governance body and the stabilisation force, which is supposed to protect civilians, secure border areas and train Palestinian police.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that any stabilisation force must have “full international legitimacy” to support Palestinians in Gaza.
A senior US government official told the Reuters news agency that negotiations were expected to start on Thursday, following his country’s circulation of the draft resolution to 10 elected UNSC members and several regional partners this week.
The resolution, which was reportedly seen by Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye, would permit a stabilisation force of 20,000 troops to “use all necessary measures” to carry out its mandate, meaning it will be allowed to deploy force, according to Reuters.
Hamas has not said whether it will demilitarise, a key tenet of Trump’s 20-point plan, but part of the stabilisation force’s task would be to destroy its capacities and “offensive infrastructure” and to prevent it from rebuilding.
Trump’s plan helped lead to a captive release deal and a fragile ceasefire between Israel and the armed group on 10 October, which the former has repeatedly breached with its repeated bombing and heavy restrictions on aid to the enclave.
Turkiye played a crucial role in the negotiations by encouraging Hamas to accept the peace plan and rallying support for the stabilisation force by hosting foreign ministers from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Pakistan, and Indonesia in Istanbul this week.
Turkiye has repeatedly condemned Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and demanded at the top-level meeting that Israel stop violating the truce and allow crucial humanitarian aid to enter the embattled Palestinian territory.
But Israeli officials – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar – are adamant that their country will not accept a Turkish presence in Gaza.
Israel appears to have its own narrative on the stabilisation force. During a joint news conference with Trump back in September, Netanyahu told reporters that “Israel will retain security responsibility, including a security perimeter, for the foreseeable future” in Gaza.
Astrophysicists are scrambling to study an ancient comet from another star system that entered the solar system this year, and which has already swung past Mars.
Dubbed 3I/ATLAS, the comet poses no threat to Earth or its neighbouring planets, but has aroused immense interest as space agencies train their sights on what is only one of three interstellar objects detected by scientists.
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Here is what we know about the object that is intriguing scientists:
A diagram released by NASA on July 2, 2025 shows the trajectory of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it passes through the solar system [NASA/JPL-Caltech via Reuters]
What is the 3I/ATLAS?
The comet is only the third interstellar object ever recorded to pass through Earth’s solar system from another star. Comets are celestial bodies made of ice, dust and gas which orbit the sun. They are considered remnants from when the solar system formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago.
3I/ATLAS was first discovered in July by scientist Larry Dennau of the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope team, located in Rio Hurtado, Chile. The project is funded by NASA and is operated by researchers at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy.
Before this, 1I/’Oumuamua, a rocky, cigar-shaped object, was discovered by Canada’s Robert Weryk using the Pan-STARRS telescope at Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii, in October 2017.
In August 2019, 2I/Borisov, a “rogue comet” – one that is not bound by gravity to any particular star system, so is travelling freely through space – was discovered by the Crimean astronomer and telescope maker Gennadiy Borisov at the MARGO Observatory in Crimea.
Comets are typically named after their human or station founders. The “I” in their names stands for “interstellar”, meaning that it has originated from another solar system.
Where is 3I/ATLAS travelling?
It zipped past Mars earlier in October, coming within 29 million km (18 million miles) of the red planet at a breakneck speed of 310,000km/h (193,000mph).
The comet made its closest approach to the sun at the end of October and is expected to pass closest to Earth in December, when it will be about 270 million km (170 million miles) away, according to NASA. It will still be farther from Earth than the sun, which is 150 million km (93 million miles) away.
Who is studying the comet?
A host of spacecraft and other assets have already set eyes on the celestial visitor, particularly as its current trajectory has hidden it behind the sun, making it untrackable from Earth for now. NASA notes that it will reappear on the other side of the sun by early December 2025.
Scientists are eager to understand more about the comet’s actual size and physical properties.
Aside from the Hubble telescope, other space assets owned by NASA will track, or are already tracking, the comet and relaying information about it, including:
The Perseverance and Curiosity Mars rovers, which have been exploring Mars since 2021.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, designed to search for water on Mars.
The Europa Clipper mission, a space probe bound for Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, launched on October 14, 2024.
The Lucy and Psyche missions, two robotic spacecraft launched in 2017 to visit eight different asteroids which share Jupiter’s orbit around the sun.
The Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018 to make observations of the sun’s outer corona.
The March 2025-launched Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission, which is studying the sun’s outermost atmosphere. NASA describes the mission as “four suitcase-sized spacecraft” which “are now spread out along the planet’s day-night boundary, giving the mission a continuous, unobstructed view” of the sun.
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), run by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). It was launched in 1995 and, according to the project, now orbits the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L1, about 1.5 million km from Earth, from where it has a continuous view.
Separately, the ESA’s Juice spacecraft, launched in 2023 and heading to Jupiter and its icy moons, will also keep an eye on the zipping interloper throughout November.
What has been discovered so far?
Using these multiple resources, researchers have been able to capture clear enough images of the object to determine that the object is indeed a comet, as indicated by the hyperbolic shape of its orbital path, that is, the fact that the object does not follow a closed orbital path around the sun, according to NASA.
The NASA Hubble Space Telescope first captured images in July showing that the comet has a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy nucleus, according to the agency.
Observations by the Hubble Space Telescope put the comet’s nucleus at no more than 5.6 km (3.5 miles) across. It could be as small as 440 metres (1,444 feet), according to NASA.
China’s latest aircraft carrier has officially entered service after extensive sea trials, according to Chinese state media, with experts saying the ship will help the world’s largest navy expand Beijing’s sphere of influence farther beyond its own waters.
President Xi Jinping boarded the carrier Fujian – named after the Chinese province facing Taiwan – for an inspection tour in the city of Sanya in southern Hainan province on Wednesday, state news agency Xinhua reported on Friday.
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More than 2,000 representatives from China’s navy and aircraft carrier construction units attended the commissioning and flag-presenting ceremony, according to state media.
The Fujian is China’s third aircraft carrier, but its first indigenously designed and built model.
The vessel looks set to be a far more effective naval weapon than China’s first two Russian-designed carriers, Liaoning and Shandong, which are smaller and rely on ramps to launch aircraft.
With a flat flight deck and electromagnetic catapults for take-offs – only found elsewhere on the latest United States Navy Ford-class carriers – the Fujian will be able to carry significantly more and heavier-armed jet fighters.
During the Fujian’s sea trials, the Chinese navy launched its new carrier version of the J-35 stealth fighter and an early-warning aircraft, the KJ-600, as well as a variant of its established J-15 fighter jet.
The ability to carry its own reconnaissance aircraft also means that, unlike the Liaoning and Shandong, the Fujian will not be operating blind when out of the range of land-based support, allowing it to operate its most advanced aircraft further afield.
It remains to be seen how quickly the Fujian will become combat-ready, but the vessel is perhaps the most visible example yet of President Xi’s deep overhaul and rapid expansion of China’s military.
The Chinese leader has previously said his goal is for China to have a modernised military force by 2035 and a “world-class” force to rival the US by 2050. With the Fujian, Beijing has taken another significant step towards closing that gap.
Greg Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Associated Press news agency that aircraft “carriers are key to Chinese leadership’s vision of China as a great power with a blue-water navy”.
While China’s navy wishes to dominate the waters of the South China Sea, East China Sea and Yellow Sea – the so-called First Island Chain around Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines – it also seeks to challenge US dominance deeper into the Pacific, according to Poling.
North Korea has fired at least one ballistic missile towards its eastern waters, the South Korean military has said, just days after United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited South Korea for annual security talks.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed the development on Friday, saying the short-range missile flew 700km (435 miles) towards the East Sea, otherwise known as the Sea of Japan.
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The Japanese government also said North Korea had launched a missile, adding that it is likely to have fallen in waters outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
Pyongyang’s latest launch comes four days after South Korea said its neighbour had fired 10 rounds of artillery into its western waters, and about a week after US President Donald Trump gave Seoul permission to build a nuclear-powered submarine.
Experts say the move, which will see South Korea join a small club of countries using such vessels, will greatly enhance its naval and defence capabilities.
South Korea wants to receive enriched uranium from the US to use as fuel for the nuclear-powered submarine, which it plans to build at home, a South Korean presidential official said on Friday.
Since they both took office earlier this year, Trump and his South Korean counterpart Lee Jae Myung have sought to restart dialogue with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
However, Kim has shunned any talks with Washington and Seoul since previous discussions with the US collapsed in 2019.
North Korea’s leader said in September that he was open to talks provided that the US drop its demand for Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons. He has repeatedly said his country is an “irreversible” nuclear state.
Last month, Kim attended a major military parade in Pyongyang, along with high-level officials from allied countries, including Russia and China. It showcased some of his nation’s most powerful weapons, including a new intercontinental ballistic missile.
North Korean and Russian military officials met in Pyongyang this week to discuss strengthening cooperation, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Friday.
Pak Yong Il, vice director of the Korean People’s Army’s General Political Bureau, met a Russian delegation led by Vice Defence Minister Viktor Goremykin on Wednesday.
KCNA said the allies discussed expanding ties as part of the “deepened bilateral relations” agreed between Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Earlier this week, South Korea’s spy agency said it had detected possible recruitment and training activities in North Korea, noting this could signal a potential further deployment of troops to Russia.
So far, Seoul estimates that Pyongyang has sent 15,000 soldiers to Russia to aid it in its war against Ukraine, and large numbers have died on the battlefield there.
