At least 35 children were killed and six others critically injured in a crowd crush at a funfair in southwest Nigeria on Wednesday, police said.

Eight people have been arrested for their alleged involvement in the incident at the Islamic school in the city of Ibadan, an Oyo state police spokesperson said in a statement Thursday.

The event’s main sponsor is among those detained, police said.

According to local radio station Agidigbo FM, the organizers of the event – identified as the Women in Need of Guidance and Support (WING) – expected to host 5,000 children under the age of 13 at the free event, where they could win prizes like scholarships.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu expressed his condolences through a statement from his spokesperson, state news agency NAN News reported.

“In this moment of mourning, President Tinubu stands in solidarity with the affected families and offers prayers that the Almighty God will grant peace to the souls of those who have departed in this unfortunate event,” the statement said.

The president also urged the Oyo State Government to take necessary steps to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring, according to NAN.

Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde said it was “a very sad day.”

“We sympathise with the parents whose joy has suddenly been turned to mourning due to these deaths,” Makinde posted on Facebook.

“I want to reassure our people that anyone directly or remotely involved in this disaster will be held accountable. Please remain calm as the security agencies investigate this unfortunate incident.”

The case has been transferred to the homicide section of the state’s criminal investigation department, police said.

“The Oyo State Police Command sympathizes with all the families and loved ones affected by the tragedy and assures the good people of the state that justice will be served accordingly,” the police spokesperson said.

Nigeria, a West African nation home to more than 236 million people, has seen several deadly crowd crushes in recent years.

In February, the Nigeria Customs Service confirmed that an unspecified number of people were trampled to death during a crowd surge as they waited for discounted rice at its office in Lagos, the country’s largest city.

Many children were among 30 people killed in a crowd crush at a church event in the southeastern city of Port Harcourt in 2022, according to police and security officials.

Pakistan on Thursday denounced new US sanctions on the country’s ballistic missile program as “discriminatory” that put the region’s peace and security at risk.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry warned in a statement that the sanctions “have dangerous implications for strategic stability of our region and beyond.”

It also cast doubt on US allegations that targeted businesses were involved in weapons proliferation because previous sanctions “were based on mere doubts and suspicion without any evidence whatsoever.”

It also accused the US of “double standards” for waiving licensing requirements for advanced military technology to other countries.

The sanctions freeze any US property belonging to the targeted businesses and bar Americans from doing business with them.

The US State Department said one such sanctioned entity, the Islamabad-based National Development Complex, worked to acquire items for developing Pakistan’s long range ballistic missile program that includes the SHAHEEN series of ballistic missiles.

The other sanctioned entities are Akhtar and Sons Private Limited, Affiliates International and Rockside Enterprise.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Wednesday on X that the US had “been clear and consistent about our concerns” over such weapons proliferation and that it would “continue to engage constructively with Pakistan on these issues.”

The sanctions were also opposed by the party of Pakistan’s imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Zulfiqar Bukhari, a Khan’s spokesman, took to the social platform X to criticize the administration of US President Joe Biden, saying “we strongly oppose US sanctions on the National Development Complex and three commercial entities.”

The latest US sanctions came months after similar measures were slapped on other foreign entities, including a Chinese research institute, after the US State Department accused them of working for the National Development Complex, which it says was involved in the development and production of Pakistan’s long-range ballistic missiles.

Analysts say Pakistan’s nuclear and missile program is primarily aimed at countering threats from neighboring India.

Security expert Syed Muhammad Ali called the sanctions “short sighted, destabilizing and divorced from South Asian regional strategic realities.”

Pakistan became a declared nuclear power in 1998, when it conducted underground nuclear tests in response to those carried out by its rival and neighbor India. The two sides regularly test-fired their short, medium and long-range missiles.

The two South Asian rivals have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since gaining independence from Britain in 1947. The disputed Himalayan region is split between them and claimed by both in its entirety.

Ahmad Morjan was desperate to hug his mother for the first time in more than 13 years but, when he reached the door of his childhood home, he found her head to the ground, kneeling in prayer.

Morjan immediately dropped to his knees too and cried “Oh God!” in gratitude for a reunion he believed might never happen.

For a moment, the two remained prostrated before finally embracing and weeping with joy.

The poignant moment, shared on social media, is one of countless homecomings seen across Syria in the wake of its sudden liberation from the Assad dynasty’s rule. A trickle of those forced out of the country by the conflict are returning to what remains of the lives they lived before they fled.

Syria’s 13-year civil war forced 6 million people to become refugees and saw 7 million become internally displaced, according to the United Nations.

Of those who fled the country, one million are expected to return in the first six months of 2025, the UN’s refugee agency said Tuesday, as it appealed for donors to help support their humanitarian needs.

Many have longed to return for years, but in the immediate aftermath of a sudden rebel takeover, not all are keen to hurry back to an unstable country with an uncertain future.

‘It was pure joy’

When the uprising against Assad began in the spring of 2011, Morjan, then an 18-year-old high school student, picked up a camera and started filming the massive demonstrations that rocked his city, Aleppo.

In 2012, Aleppo was split in two – Free Syrian Army rebels wrested control of the eastern portion of the city, while the rest, including Morjan’s neighborhood, remained under government control.

Morjan, hunted and afraid, said he decided to cross battle lines and flee into opposition territory, leaving his family behind.

He threw himself into his work at an activist-run media network, while Syrian troops encircled and besieged the enclave, eventually cutting it off from food, water, medicine, and basic supplies. Barrel bombs, crudely made explosive devices packed into oil barrels and dropped from helicopters, pummeled the quarter of million people trapped in the hellscape.

The international community condemned what it called the “kneel or starve campaign” but, ultimately, Assad got his surrender.

In December 2016, rebel forces and civilians withdrew from the city under an evacuation agreement, and government forces re-established control.

“We are leaving with our dignity,” Morjan said in a video he filmed of the exodus and posted online at the time. “We are leaving with our heads held high, and we will return one day.”

Morjan made his way to Turkey, home to more than 3.2 million Syrian refugees, where he started a family, found a job, and built a life. But Syria was never far from his mind.

On the night that rebels took control of Aleppo this month, on their march to reach the capital and ultimately overthrow Assad, Morjan called his mother and vowed he would return now that his city was “liberated.”

“I cannot describe the feeling of returning home after 13 years of exile,” Morjan said.

“When I finally reached the front door, my legs would no longer carry me. We were so happy and overwhelmed that my mom and I both kneeled and prayed. It was pure joy.”

But despite this happiness his return was fraught, he said, with the knowledge that ex-government forces and shadowy former intelligence officers lurked in the city’s streets. Morjan enjoyed a home-cooked meal, laughed, and chatted with loved ones all evening, then left again first thing in the morning.

Now he is back in Gaziantep, preparing to move permanently back to Aleppo with his wife, who’s also from Syria, and their two young daughters, both born in Turkey, in the next few months.

He knows it will be dangerous and difficult to eke out a living in a country where 90% of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the UN, but he said it’s worth it.

“I am optimistic about the future, and I have huge hope that the country will be better than before,” Morjan said. “All our efforts, all the blood that was shed for the revolution, will be the seeds that sow a new Syria.”

Revenge killing fears

Hussam Kassas pleaded with his Bedouin smugglers to let him die in the desert. It was a 13-hour walk out of Syria and across the Jordanian border to safety, back in early 2016, but he couldn’t take another step.

Only two months prior, he had undergone surgery to remove shrapnel from his knees, the lingering aftermath of a barrel bomb blast that had torn through his legs.

The human rights activist made it to Jordan and, years later, the United Kingdom granted him and his wife student visas. The young family arrived in Manchester in August 2023, and quickly applied for asylum. Kassas could finally imagine a safe and stable future, but his relief was short-lived.

His application, along with that of tens of thousands of other asylum-seekers across Europe, is now suspended.

The governments of the UK, Austria, Germany, Greece and Sweden and others have announced a pause in the processing of all Syrian asylum requests to allow authorities to reassess the situation on the ground now that the threat of Assad is gone.

But new risks are emerging. The United States, UN, and several countries consider the main group now governing Syria, Hayat-Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a designated terrorist organization. In the wake of the rebels’ lightning advance on the capital, more than a million people fled their homes; most are now internally displaced, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

UNHCR has said the suspensions are acceptable, as long as no asylum-seekers are forcibly returned to Syria and that they continue to enjoy protections wherever they reside.

Kassas says he fears retribution if he returns to Syria.

He worked as a paramedic and human rights defender in his home province of Daraya, a Damascus suburb, during the civil war. His job was to document potential war crime violations by any party to the conflict – rebel, government or otherwise – and report the cases to international agencies, a role he says puts him at particular risk.

“I do not want my family, my sons, to become the victims of a revenge killing,” Kassas said. “Just because the Syrian president fled the country, that doesn’t mean his soldiers and secret service officers suddenly become peaceful angels.”

He welcomed a second son, born in England, two weeks before his dream of a Syria free of Assad came true.

But that dream has turned into a nightmare for his family. Both his right to work and right to rent permits are set to expire next month, and he worries he could lose his job and his apartment in Manchester if they are not renewed, with his asylum application on hold. He feels under threat, again.

“I chose to take the risk of being a human rights defender and an activist, and I was willing to sacrifice myself to build a better country,” Kassas said. “But I will not let my wife and kids pay for the decisions that I made.”

Malaysia has agreed in principle to resume the search for the wreckage of missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370, its transport minister said on Friday, more than 10 years after it disappeared in one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.

MH370, a Boeing 777 carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

Transport Minister Anthony Loke said the proposal to search a new area in the southern Indian Ocean came from exploration firm Ocean Infinity, which had also conducted the last search for the plane that ended in 2018.

The firm will receive $70 million if wreckage found is substantive, Loke told a press conference.

“Our responsibility and obligation and commitment is to the next of kin,” he said.

“We hope this time will be positive, that the wreckage will be found and give closure to the families.”

Malaysian investigators initially did not rule out the possibility that the aircraft had been deliberately taken off course.

Debris, some confirmed and some believed to be from the aircraft, has washed up along the coast of Africa and on islands in the Indian Ocean.

More than 150 Chinese passengers were on the flight, with relatives demanding compensation from Malaysia Airlines, Boeing, aircraft engine maker Rolls-Royce and the Allianz insurance group among others.

Malaysia engaged Ocean Infinity in 2018 to search in the southern Indian Ocean, offering to pay up to $70 million if it found the plane, but it failed on two attempts.

That followed an underwater search by Malaysia, Australia and China in a 120,000 square kilometer (46,332 sq mile) area of the southern Indian Ocean, based on data of automatic connections between an Inmarsat satellite and the plane.

At least one person has been killed and several embassies have been damaged in an early morning Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.

The Kyiv City Military Administration confirmed the death in a post on Telegram, adding that 12 others have been injured. Of those injured, five were hospitalized while the rest were treated at the scene.

According to Ukraine’s Air Force Command, Russia fired five ballistic missiles at Kyiv at around 7 a.m. on Friday. Ukrainian air defenses shot down all five missiles. In addition, 40 UAVs were shot down, and another 20 drones did not reach their targets, according to the command. However, falling debris caused damage and injuries in the city center, officials said.

In one district, an office building, road surface and gas pipe were damaged, and five cars caught fire, Serhiy Popko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, said on Telegram. In another district, a fire broke out at the site of a building under construction.

Several embassies housed in the same building were damaged, according to Ukraine’s foreign ministry, with a spokesperson, Heorhii Tykhyi, calling the attack “barbaric.”

“These are the embassies of Albania, Argentina, Palestine, North Macedonia, Portugal and Montenegro,” Tykhyi told a media briefing. “Windows and doors were smashed in the premises.”

Portugal said the facility suffered light damage and summoned the Russian chargé d’affaires to protest.

Russia’s defense ministry said it launched long-range missiles at Ukrainian military targets on Friday, in response to a Ukrainian attack targeting a chemical plant in Russia’s Rostov region earlier this week. That attack was carried out using American-made ATACMS missiles, the ministry said.

“In response to the actions of the Kyiv regime, supported by Western curators, this morning a group strike with long-range precision weapons was launched against the SBU command post, the Kyiv Luch design bureau, which designs and manufactures Neptune missile systems, Olkha ground-based cruise missiles, and the positions of the Patriot anti-aircraft missile system,” Russia’s Ministry of Defense wrote on Telegram.

“The strike targets were achieved. All objects were hit,” it added.

This story has been updated with additional information.