A pair of explosions rocked the Syrian capital of Damascus near the downtown Four Seasons hotel, where French President Emmanuel Macron was staying during a state visit, Syrian state media reported Tuesday.

Eighteen people, including four police officers, were injured by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on Tuesday, Syria’s interior ministry reported through state outlet SANA.

According to the ministry, both bombs exploded after security forces had discovered them, “while preparations for the disposal operation were underway.”

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The bombs were placed inside a car and a garbage can near the hotel where Macron was staying during his visit, the first Syrian state visit by the leader of a Western country since Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa took over for the now-deposed former President Bashar al-Assad in 2025.

A spokesman for Élysée Palace said Macron was not in his hotel during the explosions and didn’t even hear them. He continued his visit with al-Sharaa, according to both Élysée Palace and SANA.

While not commenting on the explosions directly, Macron posted a statement on X shortly after the incident.

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“Nothing can smother the aspiration of Syrian women and men to live in a fully sovereign, safe, pluralistic, and united Syria. This morning I met Syria in all its diversity. I saw dignity, courage, and determination. My visit continues,” he wrote.

Syria’s Ministry of the Interior confirmed the explosions but stressed that they were outside the security perimeter designated for Macron.

“We confirm that the explosion site is outside the security perimeter designated for the French president’s residence. It posed no direct threat to the residence or the official visit program, which is proceeding as planned,” the ministry announced through SANA.

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Macron is the first Western leader to meet with al-Sharaa in Damascus since he became the country’s president in 2025. Some have criticized Western leaders, including President Donald Trump, who hosted al-Sharaa in the White House in November, for normalizing relations with al-Sharaa given his past as a fighter for the al Qaeda terrorist group.

Tuesday’s explosions in Damascus were also the second and third major blasts in Damascus in less than a week.

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On Monday, France’s government condemned what it called a “terrorist attack” after an explosive device killed at least nine people in a Damascus cafe on July 2.

Syrian authorities are still investigating the attack and have not publicly ascribed it to any group or individual, according to The Washington Post.

Fox News Digital contacted the Syrian Foreign Ministry and Élysée Palace for confirmation and further details.

Published on
07/07/2026 – 15:11 GMT+2

NATO must become more European to reduce its long-standing reliance on the US security umbrella, Ursula von der Leyen and Mark Rutte said on Tuesday as leaders of the 77-year-old alliance gathered in Ankara, Turkey, for their annual summit.

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“We both know how important close cooperation between the European Union and NATO is,” the European Commission president said alongside the NATO secretary general at an industrial forum ahead of the summit.

“But to make this possible, what we need is interoperability.”

Rutte echoed von der Leyen’s remarks, highlighting the “clear division of labour” between the two organisations: NATO oversees the command structure, capabilities and standards, while the EU is responsible for industry, investment and regulation.

Twenty-three of the EU’s 27 member states are also members of NATO.

“We cannot continue, as we did, being over-reliant on the United States. We need a much stronger Europe within a stronger NATO,” Rutte said, hailing an “unparalleled” transformation driven by closer EU-NATO cooperation.

“To stay transatlantic, we have to become more European.”

The Ankara summit comes after months of growing tensions across the Atlantic, fuelled by the White House’s unilateral decision to strike Iran and its gradual reduction of military assets stationed in Europe.

Rattled by the deepening fractures, Europeans are determined to show US President Donald Trump that they are pulling their weight and stepping up their defence investment at a rapid pace, a trend often described as the “Europeanisation of NATO”.

But while some nations, such as Poland, the Baltics and the Nordics, have drastically increased their military spending towards the new 5% of GDP target, others, such as Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic, still lag far behind.

On Tuesday, von der Leyen touted the financial plans that her Commission has put forward to ramp up homegrown defence capabilities: €150 billion under the SAFE loan programme and €135 billion provisionally allocated in the next EU budget.

“In this geostrategic and geopolitical environment, we need a massive surge in defence investment,” she said.

“With this taxpayers’ money, we want, of course, a return on investment. And we want good jobs in Europe. We want research and development in Europe. So that’s important for us,” she added.

Rutte said NATO requires a “huge increase” across its entire defence industrial base, on both sides of the Atlantic, to keep up with Russia’s all-consuming war machine.

“Russia has the whole of its economy now on a war footing. The car industry in Russia is producing for the war effort, and that means that we’ve got to do this also in Europe, Canada and the US,” Rutte said.

“We have to defend ourselves. It’s the first task for every government. And the threat is there. Russia are working with North Korea, Iran and China. Let’s not be naive.”

“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.