International news from Tuesday, May 5th, 2026

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday dismissed Iran's military capability and said Tehran "should wave the white flag of surrender" but is too proud to do so.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday that the ceasefire with Iran was not over, even as the US and Iran exchanged fire in the Gulf as they wrestled for control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Israeli strikes killed at least two Palestinians and wounded several others in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, health officials said.

A Russian overnight missile and drone attack on Ukrainian gas production facilities killed five people, including two rescue workers, Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday, as Kyiv and Moscow exchanged rival ceasefire proposals.

Two cases of the deadly hantavirus have been confirmed, and five more are suspected among people who were on a luxury cruise ship now held in the Atlantic near Cape Verde, the World Health Organisation said in its most detailed update on the outbreak.

Two people were killed and three others were seriously injured on Monday when a car drove into a central pedestrian zone of the eastern German city of Leipzig, Mayor Burkhard Jung said, the latest in a spate of such incidents in recent years in Germany.

President Vladimir Putin has declared on Monday a two-day ceasefire in the conflict with Ukraine on May 8-9 to mark Russia’s World War Two victory, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy countered with his own proposed pause in fighting starting earlier, on the night of May 5‑6.

A midmorning Russian missile attack on the town of Merefa, in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region, killed seven people and wounded more than 30, including a 2-year-old boy, Ukrainian officials said on Monday.

A small airplane with five occupants crashed into a building on Monday in the city of Belo Horizonte in southeastern Brazil, killing three people, local officials and firefighters said.

A blast at a fireworks factory in China has killed at least 26 people and injured 61, flattening buildings and sending towering clouds of smoke into the sky, and prompting President Xi Jinping to order a thorough investigation, state media reported on Tuesday.

The US military said on Monday it destroyed six Iranian small boats and intercepted Iranian cruise missiles and drones as Tehran sought to thwart a new US naval effort to open shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.