Zimbabwe on Sunday prepared to inaugurate a president for the second time in nine months as a country recently jubilant over the fall of longtime leader Robert Mugabe is now largely subdued by renewed harassment of the opposition and a bitterly disputed election.
The military-backed President Emmerson Mnangagwa, now facing another swearing-in, faces the mammoth task of rebuilding a worsening economy and uniting a nation deeply divided by a vote that many hoped would deliver change.
The 75-year-old Mnangagwa, who took power from his mentor Mugabe with the military's help in November, said "my door is open and my arms are outstretched" to main opposition leader Nelson Chamisa after the Constitutional Court on Friday rejected opposition claims of vote-rigging and upheld the president's narrow July 30 victory.
People queue to enter the stadium for the inauguration ceremony of Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, at the National Sports Stadium in Harare, Sunday, Aug. 26, 2018. This is the second swearing-in of Mnangagwa in just nine months as a country once jubilant over the fall of longtime leader Robert Mugabe is now more subdued after the reemergence of harassment of the opposition.(AP PhotoTsvangirayi Mukwazhi)
"It is time to move forward together," said Mnangagwa, who has promised democratic and economic reforms.
Chamisa on Saturday said he respectfully rejects the court ruling and called the inauguration "false."
"They know they can't invite me to a wedding where I was the one supposed to be receiving the gifts," he said. His spokesman Nkululeko Sibanda on Sunday said "we haven't received any formal invitation" to the inauguration.
People queue to enter the stadium for the inauguration ceremony of Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, at the National Sports Stadium in Harare, Sunday, Aug. 26, 2018. This is the second swearing-in of Mnangagwa in just nine months as a country once jubilant over the fall of longtime leader Robert Mugabe is now more subdued after the reemergence of harassment of the opposition. (AP PhotoTsvangirayi Mukwazhi)
The 40-year-old Chamisa has called for dialogue with Mnangagwa but suggested that talks on power-sharing first must acknowledge the opposition leader's alleged victory. "You cannot steal my goats and then ask me to come and share them with you. Give me the goats first, then we can talk about sharing," he said.
Ruling party spokesman Paul Mangwana criticized Chamisa for saying he will snub the inauguration.
"He should grace the event. It is important for nation-building at this critical time. The problem is the (Movement for Democratic Change party) did not give us a good opposition leader, they gave us a schoolboy, so he is playing schoolboy politics," Mangwana told The Associated Press.
Upbeat supporters of the president and ruling ZANU-PF party streamed into the 60,000-seat National Sports Stadium in the capital, Harare, many wearing pro-Mnangagwa regalia.
Some said they woke up before dawn to catch buses and trucks ferrying them from villages hundreds of kilometers from the capital.
State-run media said the heads of state of South Africa, Congo and Zambia also were attending. Botswana's former leader and a sharp critic of Mugabe, Ian Khama, attended Mnangagwa's first inauguration in November but will miss this time "due to prior commitments," Botswana's government said.
The mood was less enthusiastic in downtown Harare, an opposition stronghold. "He is not my president, why should I go?" asked one resident, Emmanuel Mazunda.
Zimbabwe's economy is in a tailspin. Analysts say Mnangagwa's immediate tasks should include solving severe cash shortages and high unemployment that has forced thousands of people into the streets as vendors. Millions of others have fled the country over the years.
The government badly needed a credible election to end its status as a global pariah, have international sanctions lifted and open the door to investment.
Final reports are pending from dozens of Western election observers invited for the first time in nearly two decades. Observers noted few issues on election day but expressed concern about the "excessive use of force" two days later, when six people were killed as the military swept into the capital to disperse protests.
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TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Airstrikes hit two bridges and a train station in Iran on Tuesday, and Iranian officials urged young people to form human chains to protect power plants, as U.S. President Donald Trump warned that a “whole civilization will die tonight” if Tehran does not meet his latest deadline for the Islamic Republic to agree to a deal that includes reopening the crucial Strait of Hormuz.
Trump has extended previous deadlines but suggested the one set for 8 p.m. in Washington was final, and the rhetoric on both sides reached a fever pitch, leaving Iranians on edge. Trump threatened to destroy all of Iran’s power plants and bridges if Tehran does not allow traffic to fully resume in the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil transits in peacetime. Iran’s president said 14 million people, including himself, have volunteered to fight.
It was not clear if the latest airstrikes were linked to Trump’s threat to attack bridges. At least two of the targets were connected to Iran’s rail network, which Israel earlier signaled it might attack. Israel has increasingly carried out strikes that it says are aimed at delivering a blow to Iran’s economy.
Iran, meanwhile, fired on Israel and Saudi Arabia, prompting the temporary closure of a major bridge.
While Iran cannot match the sophistication of U.S. and Israeli weaponry or their dominance in the air, its chokehold on the strait is causing major damage to the world economy and raising the pressure on Trump both at home and abroad to find a way out of the standoff.
Officials involved in diplomatic efforts said talks were ongoing — but Iran has rejected the latest American proposal, and it was unclear if a deal would come in time to head off Trump’s threatened attacks. World leaders and experts warned that strikes as destructive as Trump threatened could constitute a war crime.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” if a deal isn’t reached, Trump said in a post Tuesday morning, while keeping open the possibility of an off-ramp, saying that “maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen.”
Earlier, Iranian official Alireza Rahimi issued a video message calling on “all young people, athletes, artists, students and university students and their professors” to form human chains around power plants.
Iranians have formed human chains in the past around nuclear sites at times of heightened tensions with the West. This time though, it was unclear who would heed the call, and one major power plant in Tehran apparently had been closed off for security purposes at the time the demonstration was to start.
President Masoud Pezeshkian posted on X that 14 million Iranians had answered state media and text message campaigns urging people to volunteer to fight — and said he would join them — while a general from the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard urged parents to send their children to man checkpoints.
The Guard, meanwhile, warned that Iran would “deprive the U.S. and its allies of the region’s oil and gas for years” and expand its attacks across the Gulf region if Trump carries out his threat.
In Tehran, the mood was bleak. A young teacher said that many opponents of Iran's Islamic system had hoped Trump's attacks would quickly topple it.
Now, as the war drags on, she fears U.S. and Israeli attacks will spread chaos. “If we don’t have the internet, and if we don’t have electricity, water, and gas, we’re really going back to the Stone Age, as Trump said,” she said told The Associated Press, speaking anonymously for her safety.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot joined a growing chorus of international voices and calling for restraint, saying attacks targeting civilian and energy infrastructure “are barred by the rules of war, international law.”
“They would without doubt trigger a new phase of escalation, of reprisals, that would drag the region and the world economy into a vicious circle,” the minister said on France Info television.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres also warned the U.S. that attacks on civilian infrastructure are banned under international law, according to his spokesperson.
Such cases are notoriously difficult to prosecute, and Trump told reporters he’s “not at all” concerned about committing war crimes.
A series of intense airstrikes pounded Tehran, including in residential neighborhoods. Such strikes in the past have targeted Iranian government and security officials.
Israel’s military said it attacked an Iranian petrochemical site in Shiraz, the second day in a row it hit such a facility. Israel also issued a Farsi-language warning telling Iranians to avoid trains throughout the day, likely telegraphing intended strikes on the rail network.
Iranian officials later said that a railway bridge, a train station and a highway bridge had been hit in airstrikes. Neither the United States not Israel immediately claimed the attacks.
Another strike hit the Khorramabad International Airport in western Iran, and an attack on an unidentified target in Alborz province, northwest of Tehran, killed 18 people, according to state media. A total of 15 people were killed in other strikes, Iranian media reported.
Early Tuesday, Tehran launched seven ballistic missiles at Saudi Arabia, which authorities said rained debris near energy facilities as they were intercepted.
The attacks prompted Saudi Arabia to temporarily close the King Fahd Causeway, the only road connection between Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, and the Arabian Peninsula.
Iran also fired on Israel, with reports of incoming missiles in Tel Aviv and Eilat.
More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran since the war began, but the government has not updated the toll for days.
In Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, more than 1,400 people have been killed. and more than 1 million people have been displaced. Eleven Israeli soldiers have died there.
In Gulf Arab states and the occupied West Bank, more than two dozen people have died, while 23 have been reported dead in Israel, and 13 U.S. service members have been killed.
Iran choked off shipping through the strait after Israel and the U.S. attacked on Feb. 28, starting the war. That stranglehold and Iran’s attacks on the energy infrastructure of its Gulf Arab neighbors have sent oil prices skyrocketing, raising the price of gasoline, food and other basics far beyond the Middle East.
In spot trading Tuesday, Brent crude, the international standard, was above $108 per barrel, up around 50% since the start of the war.
On Monday, Tehran rejected a 45-day ceasefire proposal and said it wants a permanent end to the war. But as Trump's deadline neared Tuesday, an official said indirect communications between the United States and Iran remained underway. The official said mediators from Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey “are racing against time” to reach a compromise before the deadline.
He said Iran has linked the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to sanctions relief, and the U.S. was open to easing some sanctions, especially on Iran's oil sector, in part to stabilize the global oil market.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing diplomacy.
Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Rising from Bangkok and Magdy from Cairo. John Leicester in Paris, Rod McGuirk in Melbourne, Australia, and Natalie Melzer in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
People take cover in a bomb shelter as air raid sirens warn of incoming Iranian missile strikes in Ramat Gan, Israel, Tuesday, April 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
Bystanders watch from a distance as rescue teams and first responders work at the site of a strike that, according to a security official at the scene, destroyed half of the Khorasaniha Synagogue and nearby residential buildings in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, April 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
A first responder leaves the site of a strike that, according to a security official at the scene, destroyed half of the Khorasaniha Synagogue and nearby residential buildings in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, April 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
People drive their motorbikes past a billboard that shows a graphic depicting Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei in downtown Tehran, Iran, Monday, April 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Displaced people wait to receive donated food beside the tents they use as shelters after fleeing Israeli bombardment in southern Lebanon, in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, April 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
A man inspects the damage to cars and an apartment building struck by an Iranian missile in Ramat Gan, Israel, Monday, April 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
