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Just two days after Israel and Lebanon agreed to a 10-day ceasefire to negotiate an end to six weeks of cross-border conflict, a deadly ambush targeting United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon has left one French soldier dead and three more wounded, with French President Emmanuel Macron publicly holding the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah responsible — an accusation the organization has forcefully denied.

The fallen service member was identified as 24-year-old Staff Sergeant Florian Montorio, who died from a close-range gunshot wound during the attack Saturday in the Ghandouriyeh-Bint Jbeil region near the Israeli-Lebanese border. French Armed Forces Minister Catherine Vautrin confirmed in a post on X that Montorio’s unit was moving to resupply a UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) outpost that had been isolated by days of ongoing combat when they were ambushed by an armed faction. Despite Montorio’s comrades pulling him to safety under active fire, medical efforts to revive him were unsuccessful, Vautrin added.

In his own public statement on X, President Macron said “Everything points to Hezbollah being responsible for this attack,” and called on Lebanese national authorities to immediately apprehend and prosecute those behind the killing. This is not the first French military fatality linked to the broader regional conflict sparked by the October 7 Hamas attacks: last month, another French soldier, Arnaud Frion, was killed by an Iranian-designed drone in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

Hezbollah, which has repeatedly denounced the upcoming ceasefire negotiations with Israel as a surrender of Lebanese sovereignty, quickly rejected all claims of involvement. In an official statement, the group said it “denies any connection to the incident that occurred with UNIFIL forces in the Ghandouriyeh-Bint Jbeil area,” and called for “caution in making judgments and assigning responsibilities” until the Lebanese army completes its official probe into the attack.

Senior Hezbollah official Mahmud Qamati doubled down on the group’s opposition to the talks Saturday, describing the negotiations led by the Lebanese government as “a failure, weak, defeated… and submissive,” and stressed the organization would not be bound by any outcome of the discussions. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has pushed back against Hezbollah criticism, saying the negotiations do not represent any concession of Lebanese interests, marking the first direct formal talks between Lebanon and Israel in decades.

UNIFIL’s initial assessment echoed French claims that the attack was likely carried out by Hezbollah, with the peacekeeping force noting the gunfire came from non-state actors as peacekeepers cleared explosive ordnance from a local road to reach the cut-off outpost. UNIFIL added that the incident “may amount to war crimes,” and has launched an independent internal investigation into the attack. Both Lebanese President Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam have condemned the killing, with Salam ordering a national probe and Aoun pledging to hold all responsible parties accountable. In the wake of the attack, Macron held urgent phone calls with both Aoun and Salam to press for full guarantees of security for all UNIFIL personnel deployed in the country.

Tensions around UNIFIL’s mission have escalated sharply since the Israel-Hezbollah border conflict began six weeks ago, when Hezbollah launched rocket attacks on Israel in solidarity with Hamas, drawing Lebanon into the broader regional war. The peacekeeping force, which has served as a neutral buffer between Lebanon and Israel for nearly 45 years, has repeatedly been targeted by both Israeli and Hezbollah forces during the current fighting. Last month, three Indonesian UNIFIL peacekeepers were killed: a preliminary UN investigation found one was killed by Israeli tank fire, while the other two died in an improvised explosive device attack widely linked to Hezbollah. In separate incidents earlier this year, Israeli troops destroyed surveillance cameras at UNIFIL’s headquarters, and just last week an Israeli tank rammed two UNIFIL patrol vehicles, causing damage but no injuries. UNIFIL’s current mandate is set to expire at the end of 2024, adding further uncertainty to the force’s future in the region.

Pope Leo XIV has launched the third stop of his historic 11-day, four-nation African pilgrimage, arriving in Angola Saturday after wrapping up a high-profile three-day visit to Cameroon, where he delivered sharp social and political critiques amid a worsening war of words with former U.S. President Donald Trump over the ongoing Middle East conflict.

The American pontiff, who was elected to the papacy in May 2025 after the passing of Pope Francis, marked the end of his Cameroon leg with a massive open-air mass at Yaoundé’s airport that drew more than 200,000 adoring worshippers, who greeted him with traditional songs and festive dances. Speaking in French during his homily, Pope Leo thanked the Cameroonian people for their warm welcome, before issuing a pointed call for the nation to find the courage to break from harmful long-standing habits and outdated power structures. His remarks came against the backdrop of 42 years of authoritarian rule by 93-year-old President Paul Biya, who has held power since 1982.

Following the mass, Pope Leo departed midday for Angola’s capital Luanda, where he is scheduled to meet with President Joao Lourenco and deliver a policy address before wrapping up his visit on Tuesday. Only two other popes have traveled to the resource-rich southern African nation: John Paul II in 1992 and Benedict XVI in 2009, with roughly 44% of Angola’s population identifying as Catholic. Organizers and local officials expect tens of thousands of worshippers to travel across the country to catch a glimpse of the head of the global Catholic Church, which counts 1.4 billion followers worldwide.

For many Angolans, the papal visit carries deep personal and national meaning. “It’s as if God were very close to us,” Helena Maria Miguel, a 40-year-old human resources manager based in Luanda, told reporters ahead of the pope’s arrival.

Pope Leo’s consistent calls for global peace are expected to resonate particularly strongly in Angola, a nation that only emerged from a brutal 27-year civil war in 2002. The conflict broke out immediately after Angola gained independence from Portugal in 1975, leaving deep socioeconomic scars that persist decades later. Despite the country’s vast fossil fuel reserves, an estimated one-third of Angolans still live below the poverty line, with the national economy overly reliant on volatile global oil prices and long plagued by systemic corruption that has even reached the inner circle of former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

Many local residents hope the pope’s visit will shine a light on the unmet needs of Angola’s young population. “There is a lot of suffering, a lot of poverty in Angola. I hope the pope will see with his own eyes the needs of the youth here,” said 33-year-old engineer Antonio Masaidi.

The visit comes as Pope Leo has adopted a far more assertive public tone after facing repeated sharp criticism from Donald Trump, breaking from the more low-key, measured approach he took immediately after his election. Up until the public feud erupted, the new pope had positioned himself as more discreet than his predecessor, Pope Francis, who led the church from 2013 to 2025. Throughout the African tour, the pontiff has repeatedly called out global corruption, the exploitative plunder of Africa’s natural resources by foreign and domestic actors, and the unregulated risks of artificial intelligence, even as his public clash with Trump continues to unfold. After Trump’s Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, publicly called on the Vatican to stay out of political affairs and “stick to matters of morality”, Pope Leo fired back Thursday, arguing the world is “being ravaged by a handful of tyrants” and doubling down on criticism of actors who misuse religious doctrine to justify armed conflict. During his time in Cameroon, he doubled down on these critiques, demanding local leaders root out graft and condemning “those who, in the name of profit, continue to seize the African continent to exploit and plunder it”.

On Sunday, Pope Leo will lead a second massive open-air mass in Kilamba, a suburb of Luanda, where local authorities have built new infrastructure including a large public food court to accommodate the expected crowds of worshippers. In the afternoon, he will travel by helicopter to the riverside village of Muxima, roughly 130 kilometers southeast of the capital, which is home to a 16th-century church that has grown into one of southern Africa’s most important Catholic pilgrimage sites. The village, where enslaved Africans were once baptized before being forcibly shipped out of the continent, is currently the site of a multi-million-dollar government development project to build a new basilica and transform the area into a major international religious tourism destination.

“It is a historic moment of grace, a moment of profound emotion, with tears in our eyes and gratitude in our hearts,” Father Mpindi Lubanzadio Alberto, rector of the Muxima shrine, told the Catholic outlet ACI Africa ahead of the visit. On April 20, the pope will travel more than 800 kilometers from Luanda to Saurimo, where he will visit a local retirement home and lead another mass before departing Angola the following morning. After wrapping up his time in Angola, Pope Leo will travel to Equatorial Guinea for the fourth and final stop of his 18,000-kilometer journey, which launched in Algeria earlier this month.

The volatile standoff over one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints shifted dramatically Saturday, as Iran’s military command announced it had reclosed the Strait of Hormuz just hours after initially reopening it, with more than a dozen commercial vessels mid-transit through the strategic waterway. This rapid reversal casts fresh uncertainty over U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent optimistic claims that a final peace deal to end the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran is “very close.”

Tehran first declared the 21-mile strait, which normally carries roughly one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas trade, open for transit on Friday, after a ceasefire agreement was reached to pause Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The announcement triggered immediate relief in global commodity markets, sending oil prices tumbling. But the reprieve was short-lived: President Trump insisted that the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports would remain in place until a comprehensive peace deal is finalized, a move that prompted Tehran to renew its threat to shutter the waterway.

By late Saturday morning, Iranian state television, citing a statement from the country’s central military command, confirmed the strait had returned to its restricted status, with full strict management and control held by Iranian armed forces. The decision was explicitly framed as a direct response to the continued American blockade. At the time of the announcement, maritime tracking data showed multiple commercial vessels rushing through the narrow passage, hugging Iranian territorial waters as instructed by Tehran. Several of the ships identified themselves as Indian or Chinese, a move widely interpreted as a public signal of their neutrality in the conflict.

As of 10:30 GMT Saturday, at least eight oil and gas tankers had successfully completed transit through the strait, but an equal number of vessels that had begun departing the Persian Gulf had already turned back to safer ports.

The current two-week ceasefire in the U.S.-Israeli war, which was launched by the American-Israeli alliance on February 28, is set to expire in just four days. Despite the growing tensions over the strait, Trump has remained outwardly confident that a final agreement can be finalized quickly. He took to social media Friday to declare the day “GREAT AND BRILLIANT,” and repeatedly praised Pakistan, the lead mediator in the talks, for its diplomatic work.

Pakistan’s top military leader, Field Marshal Asim Munir, wrapped up a three-day diplomatic visit to Tehran Saturday focused on advancing peace negotiations, where he held meetings with Iran’s highest-ranking leadership. While Munir conducted talks in Iran, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey to shore up regional support for the peace process. Egypt, another key diplomatic player in the negotiations, also expressed cautious optimism Saturday: Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said Cairo and Islamabad expected to secure a final agreement “in the coming days.”

Pakistan has emerged as the primary mediator throughout the conflict, hosting a marathon round of direct peace talks last weekend that was attended by U.S. Vice President JD Vance. A second round of negotiations is scheduled to take place in the Pakistani capital next week, with envoys from all sides aiming to end the conflict that began with a massive surprise attack by U.S. and Israeli forces. That pre-emptive strike, launched even as diplomatic talks were ongoing, killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of senior Iranian government and military officials. The war quickly spread across the Middle East: Iran retaliated by targeting U.S. military and commercial interests across the Gulf, while Hezbollah entered the conflict by launching rocket attacks on northern Israel, dragging Lebanon into full-scale hostilities.

In a sign that the broader ceasefire framework remains largely intact, Iran’s Civil Aviation Authority announced Saturday that the country’s airspace has been reopened, allowing international commercial flights to transit through eastern Iranian airspace once again.

Even with ongoing diplomatic progress, two major sticking points remain unresolved in the talks: the future of Iran’s stockpile of near-weapons-grade enriched uranium, and the long-term status of the Strait of Hormuz. Both issues remain up in the air, despite conflicting claims from the two sides.

Speaking to AFP by phone Friday, Trump claimed “we’re very close to having a deal,” and insisted there were “no sticking points at all” left in negotiations with Tehran. Later that same day, during a campaign event in Arizona, the president claimed Iran had already agreed to hand over its roughly 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% purity — a level just short of what is required to build a nuclear weapon. “We’re going to get it by going in with Iran, with lots of excavators,” he told attendees.

But Iran flatly contradicted Trump’s claims just hours before the president’s Arizona remarks. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told state television that the country’s enriched uranium stockpile, which Iran says was buried deep underground by U.S. bombing during the 12-day June 2025 war, will remain in Iran. “Iran’s enriched uranium is not going to be transferred anywhere,” Baqaei said, adding that “Transfer of Iran’s enriched uranium to the U.S. has never been raised in negotiations.”

For ordinary Iranians, the conflict continues to disrupt daily life: internet monitor Netblocks confirmed Saturday that the nationwide internet blackout imposed at the start of the war has now entered its 50th day, leaving most Iranians cut off from the global digital network.

On a Friday in early 2026, Ben Roberts-Smith, Australia’s most decorated living ex-soldier, made his first court appearance via video link from a remote location to a small Sydney courtroom, standing silent as he faced unprecedented war crimes charges that have rocked Australia’s military establishment.

Weeks prior to the bail hearing, prosecutors had formally laid five counts of murder against the 47-year-old, all stemming from alleged atrocities he committed while serving as a Special Air Service (SAS) corporal deployed to Afghanistan on Australian national operations. Newly unsealed court documents, obtained and verified by the BBC, lay out graphic, detailed accusations of systematic war misconduct that have never before been tested in an Australian criminal courtroom.

According to the documents, the allegations span three separate operational missions between 2009 and 2012. The first incident unfolded in April 2009, when Roberts-Smith’s SAS team was called in to clear the Taliban-held Whiskey 108 compound near Tarin Kowt following an airstrike. Inside a hidden tunnel, troops pulled out two detainees, identified as father and son Mohammad Essa and Ahmadullah, both of whom were immediately restrained and cuffed. Prosecutors allege Roberts-Smith carried Ahmadullah, a disabled man who used a prosthetic leg, outside the compound’s perimeter, threw him to the ground, and fired multiple rounds from a belt-fed machine gun to kill him — an act witnessed by several Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel posted on outer cordon duty. Returning inside the compound, the documents claim Roberts-Smith ordered an inexperienced rookie soldier, anonymized as Person Four, to execute Mohammad Essa in an initiation practice known within the unit as “blooding.” After the rookie followed the order, both Roberts-Smith and the patrol leader documented the event as a successful initiation.

The second alleged killing took place in September 2012, two weeks after an Afghan soldier turned on his Australian partners, killing three and wounding two. Roberts-Smith, who had received Australia’s highest military honor, the Victoria Cross, just one year prior, led a search team to Darwan village that captured three detainees, including a man named Ali Jan. Court documents allege Roberts-Smith physically assaulted the handcuffed detainees during questioning before escorting Ali Jan to the edge of a 10-meter cliff. Even with Ali Jan cuffed and restrained by another soldier, Roberts-Smith kicked him off the cliff, causing severe injuries including broken teeth. The prosecution claims that after climbing down to the injured detainee, an unnamed soldier acting on Roberts-Smith’s direction shot Ali Jan dead. To cover up the unlawful killing, the team planted a captured handheld radio on Ali Jan’s body to falsely frame him as an armed insurgent. During an earlier civil defamation trial, Roberts-Smith denied the entire event, claiming no detainees were captured that day and no such cliff existed at the search site.

The final two murder charges stem from an October 2012 mission in Syachow village, where Roberts-Smith served as patrol commander. Official mission reports claimed four insurgents were killed in active combat: two inside a compound, and two more in an adjacent cornfield after they refused to surrender. Prosecutors say this narrative is a deliberate cover-up. A junior soldier, Person 66, testified that the two men in the cornfield were already detained and unarmed when Roberts-Smith ordered their execution. According to the court documents, a senior soldier shot the first detainee, before Roberts-Smith ordered the first-tour Person 66 to kill the second. After the shooting, Roberts-Smith threw a grenade into the cornfield to create false evidence that the men had been killed during a legitimate engagement. Forensic analysis of post-mission photos found ligature marks consistent with handcuff restraint on both men’s bodies.

Roberts-Smith’s military career began in 1996, when he joined the ADF at 18. He completed two tours of duty in East Timor before passing selection for the elite SAS in 2003, building a reputation as one of Australia’s most decorated serving soldiers by the height of his Afghanistan deployment. He stepped back from active service at the end of 2012 and formally retired from the ADF in 2015, six years before allegations of war crimes would lead to a high-profile legal battle.

In 2016, senior Australian military leadership launched an official inquiry into widespread rumors of war crimes committed by Australian special forces in Afghanistan, with media reports soon naming Roberts-Smith as a primary suspect. In 2018, he launched a landmark defamation suit against media outlets that published the allegations, but he ultimately lost the civil case. Transcripts of his sworn testimony from that trial have been entered into the current criminal case, where Roberts-Smith repeatedly denied violating the Geneva Conventions, claimed he knew killing restrained detainees was never permissible, and denied ever planting “throwdown” items to justify unlawful killings. Court documents note that Roberts-Smith has exercised his right not to amend or add to his previous sworn testimony for the criminal case.

Prosecutors have outlined consistent patterns across all five alleged murders: every victim was cuffed, detained, and questioned before being killed, all killings occurred when ADF forces had full control of the area with no active enemy combat ongoing, and every incident has at least one direct eyewitness testimony. Three of the witnesses are former soldiers who have testified they themselves participated in executing detainees under Roberts-Smith’s orders when he was their commanding officer.

To date, Roberts-Smith has not formally responded to the detailed allegations contained in the unsealed documents, and he has not yet entered a plea. At Friday’s bail hearing, Justice Greg Grogin granted the former soldier strict conditional bail, noting that the trial would not proceed for years, rather than weeks or months, due to the complexity of the unprecedented case. Australia has never held a war crimes trial in its history, and Roberts-Smith’s defense team has already noted the case falls into “uncharted legal territory” for the Australian judicial system. Roberts-Smith continues to vehemently deny all charges against him.

A new chapter in diplomatic efforts to stabilize the Middle East emerged Friday, as France and the United Kingdom announced they would spearhead a strictly defensive multinational task force to safeguard unimpeded navigation through the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz — a deployment that will only move forward once a durable regional ceasefire is finalized.

The joint confirmation came as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron co-chaired a high-level international conference in Paris, convened specifically to address threats to global trade passing through the key shipping chokepoint. Hosted primarily via video conference, the gathering drew participation from 49 countries across Europe and Asia, with representation ranging from senior diplomatic envoys to dozens of heads of state and government. Notably, neither the United States nor Iran, the two primary opposing actors in the ongoing regional conflict, took part in the discussions.

The crisis that prompted the conference began on February 28, when Iran implemented a shipping blockade of the strait immediately after the U.S. and Israel launched military operations against the Islamic republic. The disruption sent immediate economic shockwaves across the globe, stoking widespread fears of renewed global inflation, disrupting global fuel supply chains, and raising alarms over potential worldwide food shortages.

Tensions eased somewhat during the Paris talks, however, when Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced via a post on X that the Strait of Hormuz would remain open to all commercial vessels for the duration of any Middle East ceasefire. The announcement was met with a measured positive response from global markets.

In his remarks following the conference, Starmer emphasized that the multinational mission would only activate once conditions on the ground allow for a stable deployment. “This will be strictly peaceful and defensive as a mission to reassure commercial shipping and support mine clearance,” Starmer stated, noting that more than 12 nations have already committed to contributing military assets to the effort.

Macron echoed the call for a permanent end to hostilities, saying that while leaders welcomed Iran’s temporary reopening announcement, they continued to push for “a full, unconditional reopening by all the parties.” The French president added that the verified opening of the strait makes the multinational mission even more critical: it will serve to consolidate recent diplomatic gains in the short term, and lay the groundwork for long-term stability in the corridor.

Macron stressed that the task force is explicitly neutral, and operates completely independent of the belligerent parties currently engaged in the regional conflict. Multiple European nations have already signaled their willingness to join the effort: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who attended the conference in person, confirmed Italy stands ready to participate, joining Macron and Starmer in emphasizing that a full ceasefire must precede any deployment. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, also present in Paris, noted that it would be desirable for the United States to join the mission at a later date.

The conference marked a key moment for European diplomatic and security leadership, coming after European powers were largely sidelined from earlier U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to end the conflict. The U.S. response has been guarded so far: in a post-conference social media statement, U.S. President Donald Trump said he had rejected an offer from NATO to assist with securing the strait, telling the transatlantic alliance to “STAY AWAY”. It remains unclear whether Trump’s comment referenced the Paris-led initiative, as NATO was not invited to or represented at Friday’s talks.

Starmer framed the mission as a critical step to protect the global economy, noting that “the world needs the Strait of Hormuz fully open because that is how we keep prices down for our people and stop the global economic damage” caused by the blockade. While he welcomed Iran’s announcement of a temporary opening during a ceasefire, he underscored that the international community must work to guarantee the opening is lasting and functional.

According to a statement from Starmer’s office, senior military commanders from participating nations will gather next week at the UK’s Northwood military command headquarters outside London to work out operational details for the proposed task force.