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At least 10 civilians dead in suspected Jordanian air raids in Syria
An estimated 10 civilians have been killed in air strikes targeting the neighbouring towns of Arman and Malh in the southeast Syrian province of Sweida, according to local media.
Jordanian forces are believed to be behind Thursday’s attacks, though its government has yet to confirm any involvement.
Sweida 24, a news platform based in its namesake city, said warplanes carried out simultaneous strikes on residential neighbourhoods after midnight local time (21:00 GMT).
The attack in Malh caused material damage to some houses. The second strike in Arman, however, collapsed two houses and killed at least 10 civilians, including four women and two girls, both under the age of five.
Jordan is thought to have carried out previous raids in Syria, mostly near the countries’ shared border, in an effort to disrupt weapons smuggling and drug-trafficking operations.
But inhabitants of the towns struck on Thursday questioned the choice of targets.
“What happened was a massacre against children and women,” Murad al-Abdullah, a resident of Arman, told Al Jazeera. “The air strikes that targeted the villages are far from being identified as fighting drug traffickers.”
Al-Abdullah said the bombing was not limited to houses of people suspected to be involved in drug trafficking. He noted other homes were damaged as well, terrorising villagers while they were asleep and causing needless civilian deaths.
“It is unreasonable for two girls who are no more than five years old to be involved in drug trafficking,” al-Abdullah said.
Tribes and residents of the villages near the Jordanian border issued separate statements this week disavowing any involvement in drug smuggling.
The statements also pledged to lend a hand to Jordan to eliminate criminal networks trafficking narcotics and other drugs across the border. In turn, they asked Jordan to suspend its bombings of civilian sites.
The spiritual leader of the Druze religious group in Syria, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajri, appealed to Jordan to prevent further civilian bloodshed.
“The attacks should be heavily focused towards the smugglers and their supporters exclusively,” al-Hajri said in a public statement.
Al-Abdullah, the Arman resident, also called on Jordan to collaborate with Syrian locals to stop the trafficking operations.
“We are a society that does not accept the manufacture or trade of drugs, and the Jordanian government should have communicated with our elders to cooperate in combating drug traffickers, instead of bombing residential neighbourhoods,” al-Abdullah said.
Suspected attacks aimed at drug-trafficking operations
Thursday’s attack is believed to be the third time this year that Jordanian planes have carried out air raids on Syrian territory.
A previous attack occurred on January 9, resulting in the deaths of three people in the countryside of Sweida, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based rights monitor.
The Observatory said that five smugglers were also killed in a border attack on January 7. Fighting that day took place sporadically over 10 hours.
By the end of the raid, Jordanian forces had arrested 15 suspects. They also claimed to have recovered 627,000 pills of Captagon, an illicitly manufactured amphetamine, and 3.4kg of cannabis.
“What Jordan is doing can certainly delay drug-smuggling operations but unfortunately, cannot stop them completely. The border with Syria is 375km (233 miles) long, and smuggling operations are carried out by professional groups, not some random individuals carrying out bags of drugs to cross the border,” said Essam al-Zoubi, a lawyer and human rights activist.
Drug enforcement officials in the United States and other Western countries have said that war-torn Syria has become a major hub in the Middle East for the drug trade.
The country, for instance, has become the primary manufacturer for Captagon, a multibillion-dollar business. Experts have said smugglers are using Jordan as a route through which Syrian drugs can reach the oil-rich Gulf states.
Al-Zoubi and other human rights advocates have warned the Syrian government itself is involved in the drug trade, in an effort to shore up its war-drained finances.
Reports indicated that the Fourth Armoured Division of the Syrian Army has played a role in overseeing the country’s drug operations, alongside the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah, an ally of the Syrian government.
“The officials responsible for drug smuggling in Syria are Hezbollah of Lebanon, the Fourth Division, and the security apparatuses of the Syrian regime that control southern Syria,” al-Zoubi said.
Jordan and its allies have also taken other approaches to stopping the drug trade.
In March last year, for instance, the US Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on six people, including two relatives of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, for their role in producing and trafficking Captagon. Some of those sanctioned had ties to Hezbollah as well.
But al-Zoubi warns that even targeted attacks on Syrian drug dealers will not be enough to stop the trade.
“It does not matter to the drug officials from Hezbollah or the Fourth Division if traders are killed, as the trades themselves will continue regardless of the people,” al-Zoubi said, pointing to an example in May 2023.
Jordanian planes, at the time, had carried out air raids in the Sweida countryside, targeting the house of one of the most famous drug traffickers in Syria, Marai al-Ramthan. He was ultimately killed in the attack.
But, al-Zoubi said, his death “did not limit drug trafficking but, in fact, increased it”. Other smugglers used his demise as an opportunity to expand their trade in his absence.
Omar Idlibi, director of the Doha office at the Harmoon Center for Contemporary Studies, said that geopolitical turmoil in the region has also allowed trafficking to flourish.
“Drug-smuggling operations to Jordan did not exist before 2018, that is, before the Syrian regime and its Iranian allies regained control of southern Syria from the opposition factions,” he told Al Jazeera.
Idlibi explained that the launch of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has had a direct effect on the expanding drug operations.
As it focused on Ukraine, Russia withdrew some of its troops in Syria, allowing Iranian militias and Hezbollah forces to spread. Those groups then turned some of the Syrian army’s headquarters into logistical centres for the manufacture, transport and smuggling of drugs to Jordan.
Russia’s need for military equipment from Iran also prompted it to turn a blind eye to the drug-smuggling activity in Syria, Idlibi explained.
“Everyone knows that the Syrian regime and Iran are behind the terrorist activity on the Syrian-Jordanian border, and unless it is terminated from the source, it will continue at different rates,” Idlibi said.
“Respect the grind you never see,” Kerr Kriisa wrote in an Instagram post on Oct. 30, captioning a series of stylized photos showing him clutching a basketball and flexing his muscles in the jersey of his new team, the University of Cincinnati. Presumably, the well-traveled guard was referring to the unseen work of preparing for another college basketball season at his fourth school in four years, following stints at Arizona, West Virginia and Kentucky.
But according to a federal grand jury, Kriisa might as well have been referring to a much more sinister kind of hidden hustle.
On Monday, federal prosecutors unsealed a grand jury indictment charging the Estonian-born basketball player with orchestrating a yearslong wire fraud scheme that used fabricated personal crisis, false identities and other deceptions to induce two victims to send him roughly $2.2 million.
The indictment, returned in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia—where Kriisa played for the Mountaineers for the 2023-24 season—traces the alleged scheme back to at least 2022, when he was heading into his junior year at Arizona. The following year, after transferring to West Virginia, Kriisa would face a nine-game suspension for violating NCAA rules governing impermissible benefits while with the Wildcats.
Those unrelated NCAA infractions, however, pale in comparison to the federal allegations he now faces.
Prosecutors’ timeline suggests Kriisa’s alleged criminal conduct tracked closely with his college basketball career, with many of the acts occurring during the heart of the season.
Sportico was unable to identify an attorney representing Kriisa and his agent did not respond to an email request for comment.
According to the indictment, his alleged scheme involving the first victim began in August 2022 and continued through April 2025, when he was transferring from Kentucky. Prosecutors allege that Kriisa began targeting a second victim on Nov. 18, 2025, three days before Cincinnati lost to No. 6 Louisville in a game in which Kriisa, then a starter, shot 2-for-7 from the field.
Much of the alleged activity involving the second victim occurred in late December, as Cincinnati went on holiday break. On Dec. 29, prosecutors allege, Kriisa sent the second victim an email while posing as a fictional person named “Irene.” That same day, Cincinnati played Lipscomb, with Kriisa coming off the bench for the first time that season. He scored 15 points on 5-of-8 shooting from 3-point range.
Prosecutors allege Kriisa sent another email as “Irene” on Jan. 28, the same day Cincinnati beat Baylor. Kriisa played limited minutes that game while still recovering from an injury he suffered earlier that month. The five charged wire-fraud counts stemmed from emails and text messages Kriisa sent Feb. 1 to Feb. 4, a day before Cincinnati lost at home against West Virginia, his former team. Kriisa played 15 scoreless minutes that game, a loss, while posting the worst +/- of any player on either team.
The indictment says that the victim who was the recipient of those messages received them in Morgantown, W.Va., where WVU is based, but does not explain how Kriisa was connected to them.
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An island-wide blackout plunged Cuba into darkness Monday as the country’s deepening energy crisis continues to strain its fragile power system.
The outage affected roughly 10 million people before limited electricity service was restored in some areas.
“A total disconnection of the National Electric Power System is occurring,” Cuba’s state-run Electric Union said Monday morning. “The causes are being investigated.”
Cuba has faced increasingly frequent power outages in recent years as the country struggles with chronic fuel shortages and deteriorating electrical grids. The crisis worsened when President Donald Trump imposed additional sanctions in January and threatened tariffs on countries that provide oil to the island.
MILLIONS LOSE POWER ACROSS CUBA AS TRUMP SANCTIONS CONTINUE TO FUEL ONGOING ENERGY CRISIS
People walk on the street during a blackout in Havana, Cuba, Monday, July 6, 2026. (Ramon Espinosa)
During Monday’s blackout, public transportation was largely halted, and officials said tens of thousands of surgeries were canceled nationwide, according to The Associated Press (AP).
Authorities later said one generating unit had resumed operations roughly two hours after the collapse.
“Microsystems are already operational throughout the country, to ensure protection for vital services,” the Electric Union said.
RUSSIAN ‘DARK FLEET’ TANKER BELIEVED TO BE DELIVERING OIL TO CUBA, DETECTED OFF US COAST AMID TRUMP BAN
A child walks with a bottle of oil past a solar panel set up on the street to charge batteries during a blackout in Havana, Cuba, Monday, July 6, 2026. (Ramon Espinosa)
The energy minister said officials were working to restore power while accusing the U.S. of contributing to Cuba’s energy struggles.
“Vital services continue to be protected, amidst this complex situation exacerbated by the energy blockade we face,” Vicente de la O Levy said.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel also blamed U.S. policies, describing the energy blockade as a “genocidal” measure imposed by Washington.
“While the U.S. tries to induce a social explosion through asphyxiation by blocking fuel access to #Cuba, the UNE mobilizes to reverse the SEN outage,” Díaz-Canel said, referring to Cuba’s National Electric Power System.
“What the electrical workers are doing in the midst of a genocidal energy blockade is heroic.”
A woman with her son signals a car on a dark street during a blackout in Bauta municipality, Artemisa province, Cuba, on March 18, 2024. (YAMIL LAGE/AFP via Getty Images)
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Cuba’s energy crisis intensified earlier this year after a U.S. military operation captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and halted Venezuelan oil exports, cutting off a key source of fuel for the island.
While Cuba produces only about 40% of the fuel it needs, a Russian tanker delivered roughly 730,000 barrels of oil to the country in March, supplies that were depleted by the end of April, according to The AP.
To conserve fuel, the Cuban government has imposed scheduled power outages that have lasted more than 24 consecutive hours in some areas, the outlet said.
A blackout in early March affected Cuba’s western provinces, while a separate outage in mid-March plunged the entire island into darkness.
People in Cuba already faced an ongoing economic and humanitarian crisis, largely due to a US blockade.
Published On 7 Jul 2026
Cuba has suffered its third nationwide power blackout since the start of the year, as the country’s fuel reserves diminish and its electric grid crumbles due to an energy crisis precipitated by the US fuel blockade.
The blackout in the country of nearly 10 million people was reported on Monday by the state-run Electric Union, which said that the cause is under investigation.
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Cuba’s Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O Levy said protocols were quickly activated to restore electricity throughout Cuba after the outage.
“Vital services continue to be protected, amidst this complex situation exacerbated by the energy blockade we face,” he said.
Grid operator UNE said it was providing electricity to some vital services, including hospitals and food production centres, but by late afternoon was able to serve only 1 percent of the capital, Havana’s, demand.
Cuba was already struggling with fuel supplies before US President Donald Trump cut off oil deliveries from Venezuela to the island in January. But Trump’s actions, including threatening tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba, have made things significantly worse, and deepened the island’s financial crisis. As a result, blackouts and power cuts have accelerated.
Since January, Washington has only allowed one oil tanker, from Russia, to pass its blockade and dock in Cuba, as part of a sanctions campaign aimed at ending more than six decades of communist government in Havana.
Trump has pointed to the US abduction of Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, in January, and his replacement with a successor that can be pressured to work with the US, as a potential blueprint for Cuba.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel accused the US of trying to “incite social unrest by strangling Cuba’s fuel supply”.
“The actions of electrical workers in the midst of a genocidal energy blockade are heroic,” he wrote on social media.
The blackout is the eighth on the island of 9.6 million people since late 2024. It comes as the state imposes power cuts across the country – over 30 hours straight in parts of Havana and over 70 hours in some rural areas – in a desperate attempt to preserve fuel.
“Living like this is agony,” Meyboll Font, a 51-year-old self-employed social media community manager, told the AFP news agency.
Font said her Havana neighbourhood has been surviving on just “three or four hours of power a day”, but that the blackout was worse because “you never know when it [electricity] will return”.
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