AL-MANAGIL, Sudan: After annual rains that have left dozens dead in Sudan, thousands of people in the farming town of Al Managil and surrounding villages have lost homes and property in what they say is the worst flooding in a decade.

“We’ve lost everything,” said 29-year-old Butheyna Alhadi, speaking to Reuters amid the ruins of her family home.

“Five families lived here and now it’s destroyed. We have no shelter and we’ve lost all our property.”

WASHINGTON: US military airstrikes in eastern Syria were a message to Iran and Tehran-backed militias that targeted American troops this month and several other times over the past year, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, told reporters that the US airstrikes overnight on facilities used by militias backed by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard demonstrated that “the United States will not hesitate to defend itself against Iranian and Iran-backed aggression when it occurs.”

AL-AGHAWAT, Iraq: Younes Ajil turns on the tap in his home but nothing comes out: Dozens of villages are without running water in drought-hit Iraq, surviving on sporadic tanker-truck deliveries and salty wells.

For everything from drinking to bathing and washing dishes and clothes, Ajil and his eight children wait at their home in Al-Aghawat for trucked-in water from the Diwaniyah provincial authorities once or twice a week.

In burning summer temperatures that at times approach 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit), he said he hasn’t bathed for four days.

 ALGIERS/PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron hopes his three-day trip to Algeria from Thursday will end a diplomatic row and allow him to develop his relationship with young Algerians, but the North African country’s leaders may prove hard to win over.

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune wants solid investment commitments — which seem unlikely to be announced this week — and for Macron to atone for comments he made last year about Algeria’s history and its ruling elite.

TEHRAN: Iran’s armed forces will on Wednesday launch large scale drone drills across the country involving 150 unmanned aerial vehicles to show off its “power,” state media reported Tuesday.

“The accuracy and power of weapons … the capabilities of guidance and control systems and the combat capabilities of drones are among the things that will be tested and evaluated in this exercise,” deputy coordinator of the armed forces Admiral Habibollah Sayyari told the state broadcaster.