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Jul 18, 2026 - World

About 10,000 people in nearly two dozen villages in southern Iran were without drinking water while the region was under an excessive heat warning on Saturday, after the US struck a water desalination plant in the village of Bonji in one of its latest attacks on Iranian civilian infrastructure.Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting said the drinking water supply was expected to be restored within a week, and emergency supply operations had begun.Drop Site News reported comments from the deputy governor for political and security affairs in Hormozgan province, who said several missiles had hit power infrastructure and water desalination plants in the region near the Strait of Hormuz, which President Donald Trump has demanded control over as he’s ramped up attacks on Iran in recent days, despite a ceasefire and a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to end hostilities that was agreed to in June.On Saturday, Iranian officials said the country was suspending its commitments to the MOU after the US violated the agreement repeatedly over the past week.“The US has violated and suspended all its commitments within the framework of the Islamabad MOU,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi. “We also likewise have suspended all of our commitments as a result; we are no longer implementing those commitments.”He added that Tehran is now “busy defending the country.”A representative for Hormozgan province, Ahmad Moradi, told Iran’s Tasnim news agency that over the past two nights, “about seven to eight people” have been killed in US attacks, all of whom were civilians. One attack targeted a bridge and hit two family cars. The neighborhood of Tappeh Allaho Akbar in Bandar Abbas was also hit, killing a woman and injuring a one-year-old, whose wounds required doctors to amputate.At least 116 telecommunication towers were out of service in southern Iran Saturday, Al Jazeera reported.The Iranian Embassy in India posted a video of the destruction of a bridge and also condemned the US attack on a maritime surveillance tower at the Chabahar Port, which US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth boasted about on social media on Thursday.“For a state that once cast itself as the global champion of order, liberalism, and the war on terrorism, proudly displaying images of destroyed bridges and civilian infrastructure has become its only remaining ‘victory,’” said Esmaeil Baqaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Saturday. “Yet with the collapse of every bridge, every tower, and every civilian facility, it is not merely steel and concrete that is being reduced to rubble. It is America’s moral standing—along with the entire architecture of international law and the civilizational claims of the West—that is crumbling before the world’s eyes.”According to Drop Site, US attacks have targeted nine bridges, two airports, a railroad junction, and a road tunnel since Wednesday. At least 41 Iranians have been killed and 408 have been wounded in US attacks so far this month, with Iranian authorities reporting that at least three women and one child are among those killed.In a letter to United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, Amir-Saeid Iravani, Iran’s permanent UN representative, wrote on Saturday that US attacks had “targeted and caused extensive damage to ports, transportation networks, communications facilities, logistics hubs, radar installations, coastal defense systems and other infrastructure indispensable to the civilian population, and to the functioning of the national economy.”“The continued commission of these unlawful armed attacks poses a grave threat to international peace and security, freedom of navigation, regional stability, and the security of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,” wrote Iravani.Iran has retaliated against the US this week by striking American allies, including Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan. Kuwait’s government Saturday said a power plant and water treatment plant had been attacked for the second time in two days, as well as an oil facility.Two US soldiers were killed and a third was missing after an Iranian attack on a US military base in Jordan—the first American service members to be killed from hostile fire since an initial ceasefire was brokered in April.Roxane Farmanfarmian, a professor of Middle East politics at the University of Cambridge, told Al Jazeera that Iranian forces are “using Kuwait, in particular, as an example of what they can do in retaliation.”“The US is clearly hitting the south in Iran and hitting airports, desalination plants, and bridges, and so the same kinds of things are being hit now in Kuwait to show what kind of effect Iran really can have on those countries that are hosting American bases,” she said.Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, echoed Iranian officials’ condemnation of the US attack on the southern water desalination plant on Saturday, saying it was “not a legitimate military target.”“It is a war crime to target it,” he said.

Jul 18, 2026 - World

Poor air quality from wildfires continues to plague New York City as several neighborhoods hit by thunderstormsSaturday is delivering a double dose of dangerous weather across the north-eastern US, with smoky skies from Canadian wildfires giving way to severe thunderstorms that have already triggered a flash flood warning as torrential rain pounds parts of the region.After a brief break on Friday, smoke from the wildfires moved back into New York City and surrounding communities on Saturday, sending air quality back into unhealthy levels. Continue reading...

Jul 18, 2026 - World

News that two service members had been killed by direct Iranian fire rocked the nation on Saturday. U.S. Central Command announced the two service member's death, a third's disappearance and four medical evacuations one day after a base was attacked in Jordon. "Out of respect for the families, CENTCOM will withhold additional information, including the identities of the fallen warriors, until 24 hours after the next of kin have been notified," the statement read.Sixteen U.S. service members have been killed and more than 430 wounded since the war began, the Associated Press reported. "The battle over the Strait of Hormuz has intensified in a conflict increasingly focused on control of the essential waterway that previously carried a fifth of the world’s crude oil," the Associated Press reported. "The strikes threaten civilians and infrastructure, including desalination plants for drinking water, while the global economy again is on alert."Americans responded to the news with words of outrage and despair. "Really awful, dark, foreboding developments in the Middle East over the last 24 hours," wrote MS NOW analyst Sam Stein. "Hard to see how you deescalate from here."Political strategist Mike Nellis condemned President Donald Trump for mounting an attack on Iran without approval from Congress."I will ask again: for what?" Nellis wrote. "Trump has no plan, no clear mission, and he’s getting our sons and daughters killed for his own vanity." Nellis later added, "I’ll tell you what: if Barack Obama had launched an illegal war, 16 U.S. service members were dead, and another was missing in action, the MAGA media machine would be frothing at the mouth. Right now? Quiet as a church mouse. F---ing cowards."Political podcaster Shaykh Sulaiman said simply, "Due to Trump’s illegal war."

Jul 18, 2026 - World

Kyiv's forces have pressed their aerial campaign against targets inside Russia.

Jul 18, 2026 - World

The U.S. military is reporting the first U.S. troop deaths from direct Iranian fire since the war's early days