Headline

Police Storm Iranian Embassy In Paris After Man ‘In Suicide Vest’ Threatened To Blow Himself Up

Published

1 year ago

April 19, 2024

A man has surrendered to police after he reportedly threatened to blow himself up at the Iranian consulate in Paris with a suicide vest.

According to Mail Online, the man gave himself after 2pm, walking out of the consulate with his hands in the air and giving himself over to police at the scene.

‘He had no explosives or weapons on him,’ said a security source. ‘He was placed under arrest immediately and taken away to a secure police station for questioning.’

Specialist BRI officers continued to swarm around the area, together with sniffer dogs, just in case explosives had been hidden in the area.

‘The security perimeter will be maintained for a while yet,’ said the source.

The individual was for a time holed up inside the building in the French capital’s 16th arrondissement in a room with the ambassador, one report said.

He was said to be wearing an explosive belt and equipped with an object that resembled a grenade, Europe 1 and other sources reported earlier.

The area was cordoned off and evacuated, with a police source saying that an ‘intervention was imminent’.

This suggested officers had been preparing to storm the building.

‘A witness saw a man enter carrying a grenade or an explosive belt,’ a source told France’s AFP news agency, adding that an elite police unit had been mobilised after the consulate requested an intervention.

‘The man presented him at the consulate, and then removed his coat, to show off an alleged explosives vest,’ another security source said at the scene.

‘He said he was carrying a grenade, and then placed a national flag on the floor. He said he wanted to avenge his brother.’

Police ordered the city’s Metro Line 6 to be interrupted as a safety measure.

Europe 1 reported that the embassy contacted the police requesting assistance, reporting that the man was inside the building. It said he was holed up in a room inside the consulate ‘in the presence of the ambassador’.

There were no reports of an explosion.

The incident came amid increasing tensions between Israel and Iran, with the Jewish state today launching strikes against the Islamic Republic.

This was in response to Iran launching over 300 missiles toward Israel on Saturday, 99 percent of which were intercepted by Israel and its allies.

Headline

Militia Attack On DRC IDP Camp, Kills 10, Mostly Women, Children

Published

10 minutes ago

June 27, 2025

Editor

An armed group at the centre of a long-running ethnic conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s northeast attacked a camp for displaced people on Friday, killing 10, local sources told AFP.

Bordering Uganda, Ituri province has for years been the scene of pitched battles between the Lendu, a group mainly made up of settled farmers, and the Hema people, typically nomadic herders.

The fighting has led to the deaths of thousands of civilians and the mass displacement of many more.

Friday’s assault on the Djangi displaced persons camp was carried out by the self-proclaimed Cooperative for the Development of Congo (Codeco), a Lendu-aligned militia responsible for previous civilian massacres, the camp’s head told AFP.

“They were many and armed with firearms and machetes. They surprised us, they killed 10 displaced people, most of them women and children,” said Richard Likana.

An employee of the Red Cross, who asked to remain anonymous, confirmed the attack, which took place around 60 kilometres (37 miles) from Bunia.

“They were cut up with machetes while others were shot,” the humanitarian worker added.

Congolese army Colonel Ruffin Mapela, the local administrator for Djugu territory where the camp is located, gave the same toll of 10 dead and put the number of injured at 15.

According to local and humanitarian sources, Codeco was responsible for an attack on February 10 which killed 51 people in Ituri province. Most of the victims were also displaced persons.

That raid was said to be a response to a strike by the rival Hema-led Zaire militia in the same area.

Violence between the Hema and Lendu killed thousands in gold-rich Ituri from 1999-2003, which only ended after European forces intervened.

The conflict erupted again in 2017, killing thousands more.

The violence has led to more than 1.5 million people leaving their homes, according to the UN.

AFP

Headline

Israel Wants Global Action Against Iran’s Nuclear Plans

Published

21 minutes ago

June 27, 2025

Editor

Israel’s foreign minister said on Friday that the world was obliged to stop Iran from developing an atomic bomb, days after Israel claimed it had “thwarted Iran’s nuclear project” in a 12-day war.

“Israel acted at the last possible moment against an imminent threat to itself, the region, and the international community,” Gideon Saar wrote on X.

“The international community must now prevent, by any effective means, the world’s most extreme regime from obtaining the most dangerous weapon.”

Israel and Iran each claimed victory in the war that ended with a ceasefire on June 24.

The conflict erupted on June 13 when Israel launched a bombing campaign, stating it aimed to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon—an ambition Iran has consistently denied.

Following waves of Israeli attacks on nuclear and military sites, the United States bombed three key facilities, with President Donald Trump insisting it had set Iran’s nuclear programme back by “decades”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an address to the nation after the ceasefire, announced that “we have thwarted Iran’s nuclear project”.

However, there is no consensus as to how effective the strikes were.
On Friday, Iran rejected a request by UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi to visit the bombed facilities, saying it suggested “malign intent”.

The comments from Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi came after parliament approved a bill suspending cooperation with the UN watchdog.

In a post on X following the move, Saar said Iran “continues to mislead the international community and actively works to prevent effective oversight of its nuclear programme”.

Headline

We Would Have Killed Iran’s Supreme Leader If Given Opportunity – Israel

Published

4 hours ago

June 27, 2025

Editor

Defence Minister Israel Katz told media that Israel would have killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during the war between the two countries if the opportunity had presented itself.

“If he had been in our sights, we would have taken him out,” Katz told Israel’s public radio station Kan Thursday evening, adding that the military had “searched a lot”.

“Khamenei understood this, went very deep underground, broke off contact with the commanders… so in the end it wasn’t realistic,” Katz told Kan.

He told Israeli television Channel 13 Thursday that Israel would cease its assassination attempts because “there is a difference between before the ceasefire and after the ceasefire”.

Katz had said during the war that Khamenei “can no longer be allowed to exist”, just days after reports that Washington vetoed Israeli plans to assassinate him.

But on Kan, Katz advised Khamenei to remain inside a bunker.

“He should learn from the late Nasrallah, who sat for a long time deep in the bunker”, he said, referring to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah’s former leader Hassan Nasrallah, who Israel killed in a Beirut air strike in September 2024.

The movements of the supreme leader, who has not left Iran since he took power, are subject to the tightest security and secrecy.

Katz said Thursday that Israel maintained its aerial superiority over Iran and that it was ready to strike again.

“We won’t let Iran develop nuclear weapons and threaten (Israel) with long-range missiles”, he said.

In his Channel 12 interview, Katz admitted that Israel does not know the location of all of Iran’s enriched uranium, but that its air strikes had destroyed the Islamic republic’s uranium enrichment capabilities.

“The material itself was not something that was supposed to be neutralised,” he said of the enriched uranium.

The impact of Israeli and US strikes on Iran’s nuclear programme has been a subject to debate.

A leaked US intelligence assessment estimated the programme to have set Iran back a few months, while Katz and other Israeli and US public figures said the damage would take years to rebuild.

Israel and Iran each claimed victory in a 12-day war that ended with a ceasefire on June 24.

The war erupted on June 13 when Israel launched a bombing campaign that it said aimed to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon — an ambition Iran has consistently denied.