Pro-Palestinian activists broke into Britain’s largest air base and damaged two military aircraft in central England early Friday.

Palestine Action, a UK-based group that aims to disrupt the operations of weapons manufacturers supplying the Israeli government, posted footage of the action to its X account.

The video shows two people riding on electric scooters on the tarmac of RAF Brize Norton, in Oxfordshire.

The activists can be seen spraying red paint into the turbine engines of two Airbus Voyagers, which they said were targeted for their alleged role in carrying military cargo and for their use in refueling Israeli, American and British military aircraft and fighter jets.

“Britain isn’t just complicit, it’s an active participant in the Gaza genocide and war crimes across the Middle East,” a Palestine Action spokesperson said in a statement.

“By decommissioning two military planes, Palestine Action have directly intervened in the genocide and prevented crimes against the Palestinian people,” it added.

The incident raises wider questions as to how the activists – who have not been apprehended – managed to get into the airbase undetected. RAF Brize Norton has approximately 5,800 service personnel, 300 civilian staff and 1,200 contractors.

In a statement, the Ministry of Defence strongly condemned the “vandalism of Royal Air Force assets” and said that it was working with police who were investigating the breach.

In a statement posted to X, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the incident “an act of vandalism” and said it was “disgraceful.”

Ten months after the luxury superyacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily in a sudden storm, salvage crews managed to lift it 50 meters (164 feet) from the seabed on Friday afternoon, the company running the $30 million recovery operation said.

The superyacht was scheduled to be lifted at the weekend, but salvage crews from TMC Marine said the process went faster than anticipated.

The top of the hull is now visible above the surface and TMC Marine said it will be lifted fully out of the water on Saturday.

The 56-meter (184-foot) superyacht went down in less than a minute when hurricane-force winds swept through the area on August 19, 2024. Seven people, including British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, died. Fifteen people survived, including Lynch’s wife, whose company owns the $40 million vessel, the ship’s captain and all but one crew member.

A Dutch salvage worker also died in an underwater explosion when the salvage operation began in May, prompting the company to replace most of the human divers with underwater robots.

That change in strategy led to “accelerated progress” in the operation to attach the lifting straps to the hull, which was originally scheduled to finish by the end of the month, the company said.

Marcus Cave, head of naval architecture and a director of TMC Marine, said in a statement Friday: “The salvage team has made very substantive progress in the last 10 days. They are now preparing for the final, complex and delicate lifting operation, to bring Bayesian to the surface and ultimately into port.

“This is a challenging programme of activity, that will be progressed in a measured and systematic way.”

Earlier this week, salvage workers used a remote-controled, diamond-wire precision-cutting tool to remove the vessel’s 72-meter (236-foot) mast.

Once the mast was removed, the salvage company was able to finish attaching eight steel lifting slings to the hull, and partially parbuckled the ship to an upright position on the seabed.

Final stabilizers, hoses and other rigging were attached before the yacht was lifted by one of Europe’s most powerful floating cranes, which had been brought in for the job.

The Bayesian sank with 18,000 liters of fuel on board, which has not been removed. Oil booms were laid around the work site to protect the area from potential pollution.

On Friday afternoon, the top of the yacht, now covered in clay and algae, emerged out of the water. It is now being held in an upright position to allow water to drain out before it is taken to the Sicilian port of Termini Imerse on Monday.

There, it will be placed in a specially built steel cradle and sequestered while investigators carry out forensic investigations that may reveal the definitive cause of the accident.

The ship’s captain, James Cutfield, and two crew members are currently under investigation for their role in the deadly accident, and investigators need to examine the ship to determine whether human error or a design flaw led to the sinking.

They will also secure any possessions, including what are believed to be watertight safes in which Lynch kept encrypted hard drives.

Remote-controlled submersibles were previously used to recover the yacht’s anchor and boom, which were brought to the surface in May. An uninflated lifeboat and deck furniture have also already been recovered.

Lynch had organized the cruise to celebrate his acquittal in June 2024 on 15 felony charges in a United States court tied to the $11 billion sale of one of his companies to Hewlett-Packard.

His co-defendant, Stephen Chamberlain, also acquitted on all charges, died on the same day the Bayesian went down, two days after he was struck by a car while out jogging in the United Kingdom.

Lawmakers in Britain have narrowly approved a bill to legalize assisted dying for terminally ill people, capping a fraught debate in Parliament and across the country that cut across political, religious and legal divides.

MPs passed the bill by 314 votes to 291, in their final say on the question. The bill – which has split lawmakers and sparked impassioned conversations with their constituents the breadth of Britain – will now move to the House of Lords for its final rounds of scrutiny.

Friday’s vote puts Britain firmly on track to join a small club of nations that have legalized the process, and one of the largest by population to allow it.

It allows people with a terminal condition and less than six months to live to take a substance to end their lives, as long as they are capable of making the decision themselves. Two doctors and a panel would need to sign off on the choice.

Canada, New Zealand, Spain and most of Australia allow assisted dying in some form, as do several US states, including Oregon, Washington and California.

A charged debate

Friday’s vote in Parliament coincided with a charged public debate about whether the state should be dictating the choices available to Britons in the final moments of their lives.

Proponents included Esther Rantzen, a BBC TV presenter with advanced lung cancer, who argued that the choice would save millions from unnecessary suffering.

“If we don’t vote to change the law today, what does that mean?,” asked Kim Leadbeater, the MP who introduced the bill last year. “It means we will have many more years of heartbreaking stories from terminally ill people and their families, of pain and trauma, suicide attempts, PTSD, lonely trips to (clinics in) Switzerland, police investigations.”

The option, she said, is “not a choice between living and dying: it is a choice for terminally ill people about how they die.”

But opponents have criticized the bill on religious and ethical grounds, and raised issues with a legislative process they accuse of being opaque.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown argued that fixing Britain’s strained end-of-live care system should be prioritized, writing in a rare intervention in The Guardian that the bill “would privilege the legal right to assisted dying without guaranteeing anything approaching an equivalent right to high-quality palliative care for those close to death.”

Seriously ill people “need the health and social care system fixing first,” Labour MP Vicky Foxcroft said in Parliament Friday. “They want us as parliamentarians to assist them to live, not to die.”

More scrutiny expected

Friday’s debate was concluded with a free vote, meaning that MPs were allowed to decide for or against the bill according to their conscience, and free from any party-line whipping. It was the third and final time MPs cast a vote on the topic, after an earlier reading in November.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer was among those who voted in favor of the bill, despite objections from some in the opposing camp that he abstain to prevent influencing other lawmakers.

Even though the bill passed, some of its critics were emboldened by Friday’s results; the effort lost the support of 16 MPs compared to November, after months of controversy over changes made to the bill during its committee oversight stage.

Most notably, an earlier provision that stipulated each case of assisted dying must be approved by two doctors and then a judge was removed, amid concerns over courts being clogged up. The bill was tweaked to instead require the approval of two doctors and a three-person panel.

“We clearly won the argument,” Tim Farron, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats who had opposed the bill, wrote on X on Friday following the vote.

“With a tiny majority and growing opposition from expert groups, the Lords will now rightly feel that they have the right to disagree,” Farron said in a now-deleted post. “To my pleasant surprise, this is not over!”

A handful of countries allow some form of assisted dying, but the particulars of the law differ widely. Britain’s proposed bill is broadly in line with the Oregon model, and does not go as far as Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada, which allow assisted death in cases of suffering, not just for terminally ill people. It differs from euthanasia, the process in which another person deliberately ends someone’s life to relieve suffering.

It is currently a crime to help somebody die in England and Wales, punishable by up to 14 years in prison. Performing euthanasia on a person, meanwhile, is considered murder or manslaughter.

Fearing the repercussions of a total regime collapse in Iran, Gulf Arab states have intensified their outreach to the Trump administration and Tehran over the past week.

The United Arab Emirates, a US ally that has long been opposed to an unsupervised Iran nuclear program, has been in contact with officials in Tehran and Washington to avoid further escalation, according to a top official, amid fears that instability in Iran could affect the region.

“We’re following the situation very closely… our diplomacy is working hard like many other countries,” Anwar Gargash, adviser to the UAE president, said on Friday. “Concerns have to be resolved diplomatically… there are many issues in the region (and) if we choose to tackle everything with a hammer, nothing will be left unbroken.”

Israel began an unprecedented attack on Iran last week, killing its top military brass as well as several nuclear scientists and destroyed part of its nuclear program. Iran has responded with a barrage of missile strikes on Israeli cities.

Gargash, who delivered a letter from US President Donald Trump to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in March calling for nuclear talks, said any military escalation to the conflict will be “detrimental” for the whole region.

“This is setting us back. The language of conflict is overpowering the new language of de-escalation and economic prosperity for the region,” Gargash said.

Across the Gulf, growing anxiety about the conflict is driving efforts to prevent further escalation.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke with Trump and called for a de-escalation hours after Israel struck Iran on June 13. The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, also spoke to the president and called for the crisis to be resolved “through diplomatic means.”

“We have been making all the possible communication between all the parties regionally and abroad. These talks between us have been about finding a way out of the rabbit hole when it comes to this escalation,” the Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari said Tuesday.

Last month, Trump was feted with grand welcomes and trillion-dollar deals when he visited three Gulf Arab nations for the first presidential visit of his second term. At the time, Trump praised the “birth of a modern Middle East” and signaled his intent to sign a deal with Iran to prevent it from building a nuclear bomb.

But after Israel struck and killed Iran’s military leadership and nuclear scientists, Trump shifted his rhetoric, teasing a possible US military intervention on Iran.

The president’s threats have his Arab allies worried and fearing Iranian reprisal attacks against the US on their soil, where the US has a significant military presence. Major exporters of energy, the Gulf states also fear that Iran may shut the Strait of Hormuz on its southern shore, through which a third of seaborne oil passes.

Nightmare scenario

Gulf Arab states, long critical of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its support for proxy militias across the Middle East, have in recent years softened their stance toward Tehran, pivoting toward diplomacy and rapprochement to avoid conflict.

Experts warn that a US attack on Iran could draw it into a quagmire even more challenging than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – a drawn-out confrontation that could last the duration of Trump’s presidency and exact a heavy toll on American lives and resources at Israel’s behest.

“I don’t think anyone wants to see Iran slide to chaos, I think there is a broader desire and preference to deal with one bad actor rather than multiple bad actors,” he said.

“If there is in fact a diplomatic breakthrough… where Iran’s nuclear ambitions towards a nuclear weapon at least are capped, Iran is much weakened and stability returns, that’s a very positive outcome for (Gulf states),” he said.

“I would have to say, though, that the concern is that (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu drags the region and drags President Trump into further escalation by perhaps taking out Iran’s ability to export oil,” he added. “That might then take us in a much more negative direction in terms of blowback against Gulf (oil) facilities.”

Trump’s announcement on Thursday of a two-week diplomatic window now offers his Gulf Arab allies breathing space to push for de-escalation, following a week of unprecedented regional clashes that left the Middle East rattled and on edge.

As US President Donald Trump weighs joining Israel’s assault on Iran, questions are mounting over whether such an intervention could trigger regime change in Tehran – an outcome that risks splintering the country and sending shockwaves across the region.

Home to long-simmering separatist movements that have vied for power and independence, Iran could face internal fragmentation and chaos if its government falls, experts warn.

After reportedly rejecting an Israeli plan to kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump stated this week that Iran’s Supreme Leader is an “easy target.”

“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Tuesday. “He is an easy target but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not ruled out targeting Khamenei either, saying that the death of the Supreme Leader is “not going to escalate the conflict, it’s going to end the conflict.”

On Thursday, Defense Minister Israel Katz went further, declaring that Khamenei cannot be allowed to “continue to exist” after an Iranian missile struck a hospital in Israel.

Iran is a nation of more than 90 million people and home one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations. Its borders have remained more or less stable for about 100 years. The Islamic Republic has managed to preserve those frontiers despite a diverse population of ethnic and religious groups, many of whom have sought autonomy at various points.

But the comments from Israeli and US officials have prompted speculation over what Iran might look like if Khamenei is killed – with experts warning that the country could face a range of scenarios, including regime collapse or even civil war.

Why regime failure in Iran may lead to chaos

The 86-year-old cleric has ruled Iran for more than 35 years as its highest authority, rising to power a decade after the 1979 Islamic Revolution overthrew a US-backed monarch.

Over the years, he consolidated power and ruled with an iron grip under strict Islamic law. He crushed wave after wave of protests demanding social freedoms – each with increasing ferocity – and expanded Iran’s reach far beyond its borders through a network of proxy militias.

With his fate in question, attention is turning to who might succeed him, and how that uncertainty could unleash greater unrest.

The Supreme Leader is elected by the 88-member Assembly of Experts for life and doesn’t officially name a successor. It is unclear who might replace Khamenei, but that process may take place as separatist groups who have long resented the Islamic Republic seek to take advantage of what they may see as an opportunity.

Israel has already killed several of Iran’s key military figures, and experts say that the regime is now at its weakest.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute in Washington, DC, said that regime change would require Israel or the United States having a figure in mind to replace Khamenei and send troops to the country.

The figure Israel is likely to favor is Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of the deposed Iranian monarch who was ousted in 1979. Pahlavi has voiced support for Israel’s actions, drawing praise from some in the Iranian diaspora and accusations of betrayal from many others.

“Soon in Tehran,” Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli posted on X on Friday, along with a picture of himself shaking hands with a smiling Pahlavi. Pahlavi told BBC News on Sunday that Israel’s conflict with Iran was an opportunity to bring down the Iranian regime.

If the Supreme Leader is killed and the Guardian Council delays naming a successor, the risk of instability could grow, experts say.

A possible outcome of Khamenei’s potential killing is total regime collapse, Parsi said.

Several scenarios could ensue if the Iranian regime falls, none of which is expected to be to the liking of the US or neighboring states, experts said.

Hamed Mousavi, associate professor of International Relations at the University of Tehran, warned that military intervention “rarely leads to democratization.”

One outcome could be that other elements in the Iranian military assume power. They are unlikely to seek diplomatic routes with Israel or the US, but could take a more hawkish approach that sees possession of a nuclear bomb as the only deterrent to more attacks, Parsi said.

Military factions that could take over are “not going to be the type of regime that the US may have had in mind,” Parsi said.

Another possible scenario is descent into chaos, as Iran’s multiple ethnic groups vie for power.

Iran’s fractious social fabric

Iran has a diverse population, including Persians, Azeris, Arabs, Baloch and Kurds. Under Khamenei’s decades-long rule, the Islamic Republic largely managed to contain civil and ethnic unrest, despite the mistreatment faced by some groups.

Minorities faced discrimination in “their access to education, employment, adequate housing and political office,” according to Amnesty International last year. “Continued underinvestment in regions populated by ethnic minorities exacerbated poverty and marginalization,” it said.

Azeris make up around 16% of Iran’s overall population, according to Minority Rights Group. The Shiite group is the largest and most well-integrated minority in the Islamic Republic but has nonetheless faced inequity.

Arabs constitute up to 4 million people, and they have also been subjected to marginalization over the years.

A group of tribes speaking the Balochi language, the Baloch people make up nearly 5 million of Iran’s population. The predominantly Sunni group extends into neighboring Pakistan and Afghanistan, raising the possibility of separatist conflict spilling over the borders.

The “Army of Justice” organization, a Baloch Sunni militant group, has shown support for Israel’s strikes on Iran, saying in a statement: “It is clear that the current attack is not on Iran, but on the Velayat-e-Faqih (ruling) regime , it is God’s will that the ground has been prepared for us, the people of Iran, to make the best use of this vacuum.”

Kurds make up some 10% of Iran’s population and are mostly settled along the borders with Iraq and Turkey. They have been subject to “deep-rooted discrimination,” Amnesty said.

The Kurdistan Freedom Party, a nationalist and separatist militant group in Iran, published a statement backing Israel’s strikes, saying it supports “the process of destroying Iran’s military and security capabilities.”

A Kurdish rebellion in Iran would also be a major concern for neighboring Iraq and Turkey, both of which have large Kurdish minorities that have sought independence.

Another exiled group that has garnered support from US conservatives is the Mujahadin-e Khalq (MeK), a shadowy dissident group that was once a US-designated terrorist organization but today counts prominent anti-Iran politicians as key allies. Iran accuses it of terrorism, saying it carried out a series of attacks in the 1980s. The MeK denies those charges.

It is one of the best-organized opposition groups confronting the Islamic Republic, but it has little support among Iranians, largely due to its violent past and for having supported Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during his almost decade-long war with Iran.

If Iran’s regime falls, “there would be support for ethnic separatist groups by the Israelis, and perhaps the US,” Parsi said. This would lead to a situation where remnants of the state are going to be consumed with fighting separatists.

Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, executive director of the Nonviolent Initiative for Democracy and a former Iranian lawmaker who opposes the current regime, expressed fears that Iran may descend into civil conflict if the current rule falls.

“Iran believes in civilian dialogue,” he said. “Directly or indirectly is not important.”

“President Trump can easily stop the war by only one telephone (call) to (the) Israelis,” he said, repeating the Iranian position that talks were impossible while Israeli bombs were striking Iran.

Farahani said that Iran would not countenance halting nuclear enrichment – which Tehran insists is for peaceful purposes – but added that concessions were possible.

“Maybe it can be lower but we don’t stop it,” he said.

Iran says it needs enriched uranium for peaceful purposes, while also manufacturing large quantities of near-weapons-grade material.

Trump’s decision to open a two-week negotiating window before deciding on striking Iran has offered a slim – if improbable – path to a peace deal between Iran and Israel.

Talks are taking place in Geneva between the foreign ministers from Iran, Britain, France, and Germany, along with the European Union’s foreign policy chief, the first confirmed face-to-face meeting of its kind since the conflict began.

After days of increasingly aggressive messages from the Trump administration, it has opened the possibility that military action can be averted.

Indeed, Trump’s own camp appears to be starkly divided on whether to pursue direct strikes against Iran.

“If America gets involved in the war,” Farahani said, “there are so many options and all (of) those options are on the table.”

Pro-government protests Friday on the streets of Tehran saw an outpouring of anger at both Israel and the United States.

Chants of “death to Israel, death to America” – a staple at such events – rang out, while Iranians spoke of their fury at the bombing campaign.

US President Donald Trump’s self-imposed two-week delay to decide whether to strike Iran has sparked confusion and conjecture in Israel.

Some of Israel’s most senior officials had openly pushed for US involvement, arguing that American military involvement can shorten the conflict and allow Israel to achieve its goal of removing what is has long perceived as an existential threat of a nuclear Iran armed with ballistic missiles.

But after Trump’s new timeline, Israel’s political leaders are being careful in their statements, not wanting to be seen as pushing the president into the exact type of Middle East conflict he has long sought to avoid. Netanyahu and others are more cautious now in their public messaging, extolling the potential benefits of US involvement without calling for it.

US involvement would dramatically change the nature of the conflict, Israel has argued, including a far greater chance of successfully striking Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility, which is hidden deep in a mountain south of Tehran. Such a decisive strike would likely require 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs carried only by American bombers.

“There is an understanding that the Israelis will go for Fordow anyway, but it can be much nastier and less decisive without the Americans,” said Yaki Dayan, the former Israeli consul general in Los Angeles.

After the first week of Israel’s strikes in Iran, the Israeli military no longer has the element of surprise, and the country’s political leadership must decide how far to go with the campaign, a decision that relies heavily on what Trump decides to do.

Israel has followed closely the debate within Trump’s MAGA base between the more isolationist wing that opposes US involvement in a new Middle East war and the camp that sees this as the best opportunity for decisive military action against Iran.

Publicly, Netanyahu has effusively praised Trump. On Wednesday, the Israeli leader said the two speak “frequently.” In a pre-recorded video statement, Netanyahu said, “I think President Trump for his backing.”

But Trump has deviated from the US’ traditional pro-Israel footing in the Middle East, including on negotiations with Iran, a ceasefire deal with the Houthis, and a trip to the region that skipped Israel. The White House decisions have exposed sharp divides between the two leaders.

Even so, the two governments have maintained an ongoing dialogue since Israel began attacking Iran. Dayan said that coordination between Netanyahu and Trump is “much better than people think,” but acknowledged that Trump makes decisions unilaterally, after consulting only a small circle of advisers.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was meeting his counterparts from the UK, Germany and France on Friday in Switzerland, which will allow the US to gauge the viability of a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear program. On Thursday, the White House said the contact between the US and Iran “has continued” without offering any details of the communications, even as Trump weighs military strikes.

Trump’s ‘smoke and mirrors’

But the government has not signaled any sense of hysteria about Trump’s decision to hold off on a strike on Iran for two weeks.

“He wouldn’t give himself a deadline that he would have to keep to if he hadn’t already made the decision,” the official said, while acknowledging this interpretation is the most favorable to Israel.

“If you follow the statements for the last two or three weeks, it’s been a lot of zigzagging,” said another Israeli official.

What seemed like a certainty to Israeli officials just 48 hours ago – that Trump would order US military involvement – now appears far less assured. Trump went from saying “we now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran” – taking credit for Israel’s military successes – to giving himself two more weeks to make what could be one the most fateful foreign policy decisions of his presidency.

Israel launched the operation against Iran without a commitment from the US that it would take part in the campaign, officials have said, but the belief was that the headlines of Israel’s military accomplishments could entice Trump to authorize US military involvement.

But as the campaign enters its second week, Israel’s “pace of success is slowing down,” the official said. And as Israel continues its operations over Iran – roughly a thousand miles away – the likelihood of error is increasing, which could affect not only Israel’s actions, but also reduce the chance of US involvement.

“Every day that this goes on, there’s a greater chance that something goes wrong,” the official said, without elaborating.

Pinkas said Trump’s deadline to make a decision underscores that the American leader “cannot be deciphered.” It also raises the possibility that “maybe Netanyahu overplayed his cards here,” he added.

Suga, a rapper and songwriter in the global K-pop sensation BTS, has been discharged from South Korea’s mandatory military service, marking the official return of all seven members from their enlistment duties.

The label confirmed that Suga completed his alternative service duties on Wednesday after using up his remaining leave. His official discharge date is Saturday.

BTS’ management agency, Big Hit Entertainment, had said earlier that no events were planned for Suga’s release out of concern for overcrowding.

It is a momentous occasion for fans of the K-pop group BTS. The seven singers of the popular K-pop band plan to reunite as a group sometime in 2025 now that they’ve finished their service.

Last week, BTS superstars RM and V were discharged from South Korea’s military after fulfilling their mandatory service. Jimin and Jung Kook were discharged a day later. All four were enlisted in December 2023.

Six of the group’s seven members served in the army, while Suga fulfilled his duty as a social service agent, an alternative form of military service.

Jin, the oldest BTS member, was discharged in June 2024. J-Hope was discharged in October.

In South Korea, all able-bodied men aged 18 to 28 are required by law to perform 18-21 months of military service under a conscription system meant to deter aggression from rival North Korea.

The law gives special exemptions to athletes, classical and traditional musicians, and ballet and other dancers if they have obtained top prizes in certain competitions and are assessed to have enhanced national prestige. K-pop stars and other entertainers aren’t subject to such privileges.

However, in 2020, BTS postponed their service until age 30 after South Korea’s National Assembly revised its Military Service Act, allowing K-pop stars to delay their enlistment until age 30.

There was heated public debate in 2022 over whether to offer special exemptions of mandatory military service for BTS members, until the group’s management agency announced in October 2022 that all seven members would fulfill their duties.

Heineken has lost operational control and withdrawn its staff from its facilities in conflict-affected areas of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the Dutch brewer said on Friday.

The beverages giant said in March that its operations in three eastern cities would remain suspended until it was safe to reopen, after some of its breweries were hit and its depots raided during fighting between the army and rebels.

But on Friday, the beer maker said the situation had deteriorated further, and that armed personnel had taken control of its facilities in Bukavu and Goma – eastern Congo’s two biggest cities, now under rebel control – and nearby areas.

“The conditions required to operate responsibly and safely are no longer present and as of 12th June 2025, we have lost operational control,” it said in a statement.

Heineken’s Congo unit, Bralima, still operates in other parts of the country not affected by the conflict, the company said, adding that it would continue assessing the evolving situation.

The group owns four breweries in Congo, producing Heineken beer as well as other popular brands like Primus. The Bukavu facilities employed around 1,000 people both directly and indirectly, it had said previously.

“Our top priority is the safety and wellbeing of our employees,” its Friday statement said. “We have withdrawn all remaining staff from these sites and we have continued to support them financially.”

Nearly 14% of Heineken’s total revenues come from its businesses in the Middle East and Africa, where Congo, with its population of over 100 million, is a large market.

Its operations in the cities of Goma, Bukavu and Uvira had together previously accounted for roughly a third of Heineken’s business in Congo.

Fighting in eastern Congo escalated this year as the M23 rebel group staged a rapid advance that raised fears of a wider conflict.

Congo says Rwanda is supporting M23 by sending troops and arms. Rwanda has long denied helping M23.

The two countries and the United States said on Wednesday that their technical teams initialed a draft peace agreement that is expected to be signed next week.