Iran’s Army says its air defense forces have shot down an American MQ-9 unmanned strategic aircraft over the country’s central city of Isfahan and a LUCAS drone over Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf.

In a statement on Tuesday, Iran’s Army said that Isfahan air defenses managed to successfully shoot and destroy a US-made MQ-9 Reaper, which belonged to the American-Israeli aggressors, over the city in the early hours of the day.

MQ-9 is an unmanned aerial vehicle designed for long-endurance surveillance.

In a separate statement, Iran’s Army said that its air defenses also managed to shoot and destroy a Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) over Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf at 10:30 a.m. local time.

The LUCAS drones are made in the United States but they are in fact a reverse-engineered copy of the kamikaze Iranian drone called Shahed.

With the latest interceptions, the number of hostile drones destroyed by the Iranian Armed Forces’ integrated air defense network since the beginning of the ongoing US-Israeli war of aggression has reached 147.

The United States and Israel started a fresh round of aerial aggression on Iran on February 28, some eight months after they carried out unprovoked attacks on the country.

The attacks led to the martyrdom of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, as well as military commanders.

Hundreds of civilians, including women and children, have also been killed in the war so far.

Iran began to swiftly retaliate against the strikes by launching barrages of ballistic missile and drone attacks on the Israeli-occupied territories as well as on US bases in regional countries.

Chinese authorities have banned entombing cremated remains in cheap apartments, a practice that had gained popularity as mourners took advantage of the subdued housing market to dodge rising funeral costs.

“Bone-ash apartments” are units in often barely occupied residential complexes used by some families as resting places for their loved ones’ remains.

They can be cheaper than a public cemetery plot, according to local media, as well as giving families more control over the site.

Acquiring one “kills two birds with one stone”, Carsten Herrmann-Pillath from Germany’s Erfurt University told AFP.

“It’s an investment and eases the (process of carrying out) ritual practices.”

But regulations that came into force on Monday explicitly ban “the use of residential dwellings specifically for the interment of ashes”.

Bone-ash apartments are often identifiable by sealed-off windows or closed curtains, according to Chinese media reports.

A resident quoted by the Communist Party-run Legal Daily newspaper described peeking inside an apartment in his estate to see two candlesticks around a black box and a black-and-white portrait, a typical arrangement in China for commemorating the dead.

The ban comes days before the Qingming Festival, also known as Tomb Sweeping Day, when families traditionally visit relatives´ graves to tidy them and make ritual offerings.

Human remains are only permitted to be buried in designated areas such as public cemeteries, according to the State Council, China’s cabinet.

Demand for cemetery plots is increasing though, as China´s population ages and deaths outpace births.

In 2020, funerals cost nearly half of the country’s average annual salary, according to a survey by British insurance firm SunLife.

On Tuesday, China’s market watchdog announced new rules to tackle fraud and a lack of transparency in funeral pricing to “reduce the burden of funerals on the masses”.

The price of apartments meanwhile has continued to fall as consumer confidence remains low and a long-running property sector crisis lingers.

Debt and stalled construction have plagued leading firms since 2020, when curbs on excessive borrowing and speculation dramatically narrowed access to credit.

At least 70 people were killed and 30 injured in an attack near Petite-Rivière in Haiti’s breadbasket Artibonite region, a human rights group said Monday, far higher than official estimates, which put the death toll at around 16.

Residents and officials told local media the attack began in the early hours of Sunday in rural communities around Jean-Denis, and continued into the early hours of Monday, with gang members storming the area and setting homes on fire.

The Defenseurs Plus rights group said it estimated the violence had displaced 6,000 people. The UN estimated that more than 2,000 people left their homes in the days following raids by armed gangs nearby.

Police initially reported 16 dead and 10 injured, while a preliminary report from civil protection authorities said 17 had died and 19 were wounded, mostly men.

A spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General told a press briefing that the organisation’s office in Haiti, BINUH, was closely monitoring the events and that estimates ranged from 10 to 80 people killed. He called for a thorough investigation.

“The lack of a security response and the abandonment of Artibonite to armed groups demonstrate a complete abdication of responsibility by the authorities,” Defenseurs Plus said in a joint statement with the Collective to Save the Artibonite.

An audio message circulated on social media was attributed to Gran Grif leader Luckson Elan. In the message, Elan appears to say the attack was retaliation for attacks on their base in Savien by a rival armed group.

The Artibonite department, a key agricultural area, has seen some of Haiti’s worst violence. Gang conflict has extended beyond the capital, Port-au-Prince, despite more aggressive policing and promises of more foreign support for Haiti’s security forces.

Ongoing operation
Haiti’s National Police said it deployed three armoured vehicles, which were slowed by holes that gang members had dug in the road.

Officials said the armed group was fleeing the area when police arrived, and several houses were already burned down.

The injured were then taken to a local hospital, and the dead to two morgues, said police, adding they have launched an operation to track down the gang members who fled.

Defenseurs Plus estimated 50 houses were burned down.

Close to 20,000 people have been killed in Haiti since 2021, according to a recent UN report, with the death toll rising each year, as increasingly independent and powerful armed gangs have clashed with security forces and local vigilante groups.

Gran Grif and Viv Ansanm, which groups hundreds of gangs in the capital, have been designated terrorist organisations by Washington.

The groups have been accused of mass killings, gang rapes, arson, theft and trafficking guns, drugs and organs.

This month, the US offered a reward of up to $3 million for information on their financial activities.

The weekend’s attack marks the latest of a series of massacres in the area, largely attributed to Gran Grif.

In October 2024, a Gran Grif attack on the nearby town of Pont-Sonde left 115 dead, as armed men shot residents door to door.

More than 1.4 million people – around 12% of the Caribbean’s most populous nation – have been displaced by the conflict with armed gangs, worsening an economic crisis and access to food.