Belarusians are voting in a closely managed presidential election that is all but certain to extend the rule of Alexander Lukashenko, in power since 1994 and Europe’s longest-serving leader.

The last time Belarus held a presidential election in 2020, Lukashenko claimed a landslide victory with more than 80% of the vote. The opposition cried foul, claiming that Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was the rightful winner. Hundreds of thousands protested in the capital, Minsk, sparking the harshest crackdown in the country’s post-Soviet history.

This year, with voting underway, Tsikhanouskaya is not asking Belarusians to take to the streets again. The costs are too high, she says.

She should know. Since the brutal regime response in 2020, Tsikhanouskaya has lived in exile with her two children. Human rights activists say Belarus is holding more than 1,200 political prisoners, including Tsikhanouskaya’s husband, Sergei, whom she has been unable to contact for nearly two years.

Tsikhanouskaya only ran in 2020 after her husband was jailed and prevented from running. Perhaps underestimating the political novice, Lukashenko allowed Tsikhanouskaya to run against him – an oversight that led to the greatest threat he faced in his decades-long rule.

Now, Lukashenko is facing only token challengers, one of whom has said he is running “not instead of, but alongside the president.” For the first time, no independent observers will monitor the vote and polling stations abroad will not be open, depriving some 3.5 million citizens outside the country of their vote.

While not calling for large-scale demonstrations, Tsikhanouskaya has urged Belarusians to voice their dissent at the ballot box.

“We’re asking those forced to take part in this sham election to vote against all candidates,” she wrote on Telegram.

Tsikhanouskaya’s opposition movement has said the “elections” are merely “a meticulously orchestrated charade designed to perpetuate the illegitimate dictator’s grip on power.” The European Parliament and US State Department have also labelled the election a “sham.”

“Repression is born of weakness, not strength. The unprecedented measures to stifle any opposition make it clear that the Lukashenko regime fears its own people,” the State Department said last week.

After casting his ballot Sunday, Lukashenko told journalists he did not care whether the West recognizes Belarus’ election or not.

Lukashenko, a 70-year-old former Soviet collective farm boss, survived the scare in 2020 in part thanks to his longtime ally Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose support has become existential for the Belarusian regime.

After state media employees resigned in solidarity with the opposition, Putin sent Kremlin propagandists to replace them. Since then, Minsk’s dependence on Moscow has only deepened.

But Moscow has been exacting a price for its support. Russia used Belarus as a launch pad for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and Lukashenko has since allowed Russia to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian soil. In December, Lukashenko said he was also preparing to receive Russia’s new ballistic missile, the “Oreshnik,” first used in a strike on Ukraine late last year.

Although Lukashenko is “more dependent on Russia and on Putin personally than ever before,” there may be limits to this alliance, said Gould-Davies, now a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank.

“Belarus has provided a wide range of valuable services to Russia, but the thing of course that it hasn’t done is send its own forces (to Ukraine),” he said, suggesting he may fear a backlash among his own troops or wider population if he did so.

“Ordinary Belarusians, emphatically, do not see this as their war, and they could not be persuaded that it is, no matter how much propaganda the Belarusian state were to pump out to them,” he said.

Since 2020, Lukashenko’s regime has stepped up its efforts to stamp out dissent. By the end of December 2024, Belarus was holding 1,265 political prisoners, according to Viasna, a human rights group.

Among them is Ales Bialiatski, the founder of Viasna who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, alongside human rights groups from Russia and Ukraine, for his documentation of rights abuses. The oldest prisoner is Mikhail Liapeika, 76, who was sent for compulsory psychiatric treatment after insulting Lukashenko.

Pavel Sapelka, a lawyer with Viasna, has said many detainees are held in conditions and subjected to treatment that amounts to “torture.”

Lukashenko will be 74 if he completes his seventh term in office. But he has given no indication that he intends to step down. “As long as I have health, I will stay with you,” he said during a visit to a church outside Minsk earlier this month.

Last week, Lukashenko mocked opposition leaders he said were waiting for him to “drop dead.”

“They say: ‘He is about to die, his voice is not the same, he has trouble speaking.’ Don’t hold your breath,” Lukashenko said.

Three people were killed and 31 others injured by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese government said, as residents of villages near the border defied orders by Israel’s military not to return to their homes.

“One citizen was martyred in Houla, and nine others were injured and transferred to the Tebnine Governmental Hospital, where they are receiving treatment,” Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health said in a statement on Sunday.

The statement said that eight people had also been injured in Kfar Kila and transferred to the Marjayoun Governmental Hospital for treatment.

Two people were killed in the towns of Blida and Aitaroun, according to the health ministry, after the Israeli military launched attacks on Lebanese citizens attempting to enter towns still occupied by Israeli forces.

Lebanon’s president Joseph Aoun said he was “monitoring this issue at the highest levels” in a statement.

“Lebanon’s sovereignty and the unity of its territory are not subject to compromise,” he said and promised residents of the south he would “ensure your rights and dignity.”

The deaths come as Israel’s military ordered residents of dozens of southern Lebanese villages not to return to their homes earlier in the morning as a deadline expired Sunday to withdraw forces from the area under a ceasefire agreement that ended months of conflict with Hezbollah.

“Urgent!! A new reminder to the residents of southern Lebanon: Until further notice you are prohibited from moving south to the line of villages and their surroundings,” Avichay Adraee, Arabic-language spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), wrote on X.

The post included a map of southern Lebanon with an area along the border with Israel shaded red and a list of more than 60 villages residents were prohibited from accessing.

“The Defense Forces do not intend to target you and therefore at this stage you are prohibited from returning to your homes from this line south until further notice. Anyone who moves south of this line puts themselves at risk,” Adraee said.

Israel’s government said Friday that the military would not withdraw from Lebanon by Sunday’s deadline, in violation of a ceasefire agreement.

Israel was expected to withdraw all of its forces from southern Lebanon as part of the deal, but the Israeli government said some its forces would remain, blaming Lebanon for failing to uphold its end of the agreement.

South Korean prosecutors have indicted the impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol on insurrection charges over his brief declaration of martial law, making him the first sitting president in the country’s history to be indicted.

President Yoon attempted to impose martial law in early December, a move that plunged the country into political turmoil and was overturned within hours by parliament.

Yoon – who denies wrongdoing – has been in custody since being arrested last week.

The embattled president had been holed up in his fortified residence for weeks surrounded by his Presidential Security Service team before eventually leaving his residential compound with investigators in a motorcade.

The country’s Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO) first attempted to detain him earlier this month, but it failed after an hours-long showdown in which soldiers and members of the presidential security detail blocked some 80 police and investigators from approaching the presidential compound.

He could face life in jail or the death penalty if convicted, although South Korea has not executed anyone in decades.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

At least 70 people were killed after a drone strike targeted the last functioning hospital in the besieged capital of Sudan’s North Darfur state late Friday, according to local officials and the World Health Organization.

At the time of the attack, the hospital was “packed with patients receiving care,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Saturday, with Sudan’s foreign ministry saying that the victims of the strike were primarily women and children.

The attack on the Saudi Teaching Maternal Hospital in El Fasher marks the latest escalation in a string of violence in Sudan’s 20-month civil war – a brutal power tussle between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) that has triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and has killed more than 20,000 people and displaced over 11 million others, according to the United Nations.

Friday’s airstrike is one of many attacks that have resulted in multiple civilian casualties. Last month, more than 100 people were killed after bombs hit a crowded market in Kabkabiya, a town in North Darfur.

Ghebreyesus did not name who was responsible for Friday’s attack.

The SAF and the RSF, both headed by two of Sudan’s most powerful generals, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – also known as Hemedti – frequently accuse each other of carrying out drone attacks on civilian areas.

Darfur Governor Mini Minnawi blamed the RSF for the hospital attack, saying: “It exterminated all the patients who were inside it.”

Sudan’s foreign ministry also accused the RSF of the strike, describing the attack as a massacre.

“More than 70 civilians receiving treatment, most of them women and children, were victims of the massacre when the militia attacked the hospital’s accident department with drones,” it said in a statement.

The Saudi hospital, El Fasher’s remaining public facility with the capacity to perform surgery and treat the wounded, has previously come under fire. Last August, a patient carer was killed when an air strike hit the hospital’s surgical ward. Five others were injured in that attack.

The RSF controls large swathes of Darfur, including much of the country’s western and central regions as it viciously competes for control of the region with the Sudanese military. El Fasher is the last major town in Darfur yet to be captured by the RSF.

WHO chief Ghebreyesus said Friday’s hospital attack is making life for people in the region even more difficult as it “comes at a time when access to health care is already severely constrained” in North Darfur “due to the closure of health facilities following intense bombardments.”

Ghebreyesus called on warring parties to cease fighting and to leave Sudan’s health facilities alone, adding that, “above all, Sudan’s people need peace. The best medicine is peace.”

Congo has severed diplomatic ties with Rwanda as fighting between Rwanda-backed rebels and government forces rages around the key eastern city of Goma, leaving at least 13 peacekeepers and foreign soldiers dead and displacing thousands of civilians.

The M23 rebel group has made significant territorial gains along the border with Rwanda in recent weeks, closing in on Goma, the provincial capital that has a population of around 2 million and is a regional hub for security and humanitarian efforts.

Congo, the United States and U.N. experts accuse Rwanda of backing M23, which is mainly made up of ethnic Tutsis who broke away from the Congolese army more than a decade ago. It’s one of about 100 armed groups that have been vying for a foothold in the mineral-rich region, where a long-running conflict has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.

The Congolese Foreign ministry said late Saturday it was severing diplomatic ties with Rwanda and pulling out all diplomatic staff from the country “with immediate effect.”

Rwanda’s government denies backing the rebels, but last year acknowledged that it has troops and missile systems in eastern Congo to safeguard its security, pointing to a buildup of Congolese forces near the border. U.N. experts estimate there are up to 4,000 Rwandan forces in Congo.

Rwanda’s foreign minister, Olivier Nduhungirehe, told The Associated Press on Sunday that the decision to sever diplomatic ties was a unilateral move by Congo “that was even published on social media before being sent to our embassy.”

“For us, we took appropriate measures to evacuate our remaining diplomat in Kinshasa, who was under permanent threat by Congolese officials. And this was achieved on Friday, one day before the publication of this so-called note verbale on social media,” he said.

The U.N. Security Council moved up an emergency meeting on the escalating violence in eastern Congo to Sunday. Congo requested the meeting, which had originally been scheduled for Monday.

On Sunday morning, heavy gunfire resonated across Goma, just a few kilometers (miles) from the front line, while scores of displaced children and adults fled the Kanyaruchinya camp, one of the largest in eastern Congo, right near the Rwandan border, and headed south to Goma.

“We are fleeing because we saw soldiers on the border with Rwanda throwing bombs and shooting,” said Safi Shangwe, who was heading to Goma.

“We are tired and we are afraid, our children are at risk of starving,” she added.

Some of the displaced worried they will not be safe in Goma either.

“We are going to Goma, but I heard that there are bombs in Goma, too, so now we don’t know where to go,” said Adèle Shimiye.

Hundreds of people attempted to flee to Rwanda through the “Great Barrier” border crossing east of Goma on Sunday. Migration officers carefully checked travel documents.

“I am crossing to the other side to see if we will have a place of refuge because for the moment, security in the city is not guaranteed,” Muahadi Amani, a resident of Goma, told the AP.

Earlier in the week, the rebels seized Sake, 27 kilometers (16 miles) from Goma, as concerns mounted that the city could soon fall.

Congo’s army said Saturday it fended off an M23 offensive with the help of allied forces, including U.N. troops and soldiers from the Southern African Development Community Mission, also known as SAMIDRC.

Seven South African troops with SAMIDIRC, as well as two serving with the U.N. peacekeeping force, have been killed in recent days, South Africa’s ministry of defense said in a statement Saturday.

A U.N. official told The Associated Press that a Uruguayan peacekeeper was also killed on Saturday. The official spoke on on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak on the matter publicly. Meanwhile, the U.N. in Malawi said that three Malawian peacekeepers were killed.

Since 2021, Congo’s government and allied forces, including SAMIDRC and U.N. troops, have been keeping M23 away from Goma.

The U.N. peacekeeping force entered Congo more than two decades ago and has around 14,000 peacekeepers on the ground.