International News from Thursday, December 26th, 2024

An Azerbaijan Airlines flight that crashed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday was downed by a Russian air defence system, four sources in Azerbaijan with knowledge of the investigation told Reuters.

Survivors and families of victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami 20 years ago visited mass graves, lit candles and comforted one another across Southeast and South Asia in ceremonies on Thursday to mark the disaster that killed some 230,000 people.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday that it had foiled several plots by Ukrainian intelligence services to kill high-ranking Russian officers and their families in Moscow using bombs disguised as power banks or document folders.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Kurdish armed groups in Syria will either lay down their weapons or "be buried", amid hostilities between Turkey-backed Syrian fighters and the group members since the fall of Bashar al-Assad this month.

Five Palestinian journalists were killed when their marked media van was struck by an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza's Nuseirat on early Thursday, the enclave's health authorities said.