The U.S. would join a very short list of nations that carry out capital punishment in public if it goes forward with plans to live-stream a military execution this year.
Only two countries carried out the death penalty in public last year, according to Amnesty International's tracking of 2,700 executions in 17 countries.
Iran executed 11 people publicly and Afghanistan killed six, the human rights organization said.
The Pentagon announced Thursday that it would live stream the Dec. 3 execution by firing squad of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood, Texas, the first military execution in more than 65 years.
Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a shooting at the Texas military base in 2009.
The U.S. has not publicly executed anyone since the 1930s as capital punishment has moved from the town square to places out of public view, typically in prison death chambers.
Over time, execution methods also have changed from hangings and an occasional firing squad to the electric chair, gas chamber and lethal injection.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who has previously been critical of public executions in Iran, approved Hasan's firing squad death, a Pentagon spokesman said Monday.
If Hasan's execution goes ahead publicly as planned, the U.S. would be in rare company with one country it is currently at war with — Iran — and another enemy it fought for years in Afghanistan — the Taliban.
In the last four years, the only public killings documented by Amnesty were in Iran and Afghanistan.
But Amnesty only reports on judicial executions and does not have numbers for China, North Korea and Vietnam, where executions are believed to be carried out. It has noted that it has received reports of public executions in North Korea that it couldn't verify.
In 2021, at least nine people were publicly executed in Yemen, Amnesty said.
Saudi Arabia also conducted public executions in the past, but not in recent years.
Iran led the report with the most executions — 2,159 — though few took place in public settings, which usually are reserved for political prisoners. They are typically carried out in public squares, where the convicted are hanged from cranes mounted on trucks.
In July, two men convicted of killing four police officers during nationwide anti-government protests in January were hanged at dawn in Alikhani Square, in the central city of Isfahan, state media reported.
Human rights organizations have condemned the resumption of public executions in Afghanistan after the Taliban-led government seized power in 2021 in the wake of the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces.
In the late 1990s during their previous rule, the Taliban regularly carried out public executions, floggings and stonings.
In December, tens of thousands of people gathered in a stadium in the eastern city of Khost to see a man convicted of killing 13 members of a family, including several children, be shot to death. It was the 11th execution carried out since the Taliban's return to power.
The victims’ kin were offered the choice of forgiving the man and sparing his life or having him shot, the Supreme Court said.
They chose the death penalty and one of their relatives pulled the trigger.
FILE - A crowd leaves a stadium after attending the public execution, carried out by Taliban authorities, of a man sentenced by the Supreme Court for killing 13 members of a family, including children, earlier this year, in the eastern city of Khost, Afghanistan, Dec. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Saifullah Zahir, File)
FILE - A Taliban policeman, center, and two other men walk past a poster stating that cameras, phones, and weapons are banned inside a stadium where a public execution was taking place in the city of Khost, eastern Afghanistan, Dec. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Saifullah Zahir, File)
Saudi Arabia's aviation authorities said Friday that attacks targeting the international airport in Riyadh and an aircraft there the previous day killed three Saudi citizens.
A U.N. human rights chief who chaired an investigation that determined Israel had committed genocide in Gaza won the Nobel Peace Prize, and residents of Yemen's capital reported explosions.
Here is the latest news from the Middle East on Friday. Read our full coverage here.
The attack on an airport in the Saudi capital and an aircraft there killed three Saudi nationals and injured other people on Thursday, Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation said.
Friday's statement from the authority did not identify those responsible for the attack, though Iran-backed Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen have claimed they targeted the airport with a ballistic missile.
According to Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation, the two strikes targeted the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and a Saudia airlines aircraft.
Several people were injured, some seriously, and were transferred to a hospital for treatment, said the authority, adding that the attacks also caused material damage. It did not specify the types of weapons used or those responsible.
The authority said it was coordinating with security agencies to assess the damage and take measures to ensure the safety of passengers and workers.
FlyDubai announced it was canceling flights to the Saudi cities of Riyadh and Yanbu through Saturday and Abha through Sunday. Pakistan International Airlines also suspended flights to Riyadh.
In Sanaa, the rebel-held capital of Yemen, residents heard heavy explosions overnight and into Friday as intense fighting between the Iran-backed Houthis and Saudi-backed government forces resumed.
In the downtown area, witnesses said they heard explosions, but their origin wasn’t clear.
The strikes were so powerful that the house shook and it felt as if the entire structure was collapsing, one Sanaa resident told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity in fear of reprisals.
Anees al-Asbahi, spokesperson for the Houthi-run Health Ministry, said on X that two of the overnight strikes on Sanaa injured six people, including a child.
The Houthis' military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, claimed Thursday that airstrikes launched from bases in Saudi Arabia targeted multiple rebel-held areas for 24 hours, including in Sanaa and the provinces of Marib, Taiz, Hajjah, Saada, Lahj, Ibb and al-Baydaa.
He did not provide any evidence for the claim and the AP couldn’t independently verify Saree’s claims.
— By Fatma Khaled
An Israeli drone strike on northeast Lebanon wounded six people, including two women, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said.
Five of the six people wounded in Friday’s drone strike near the village of Hawsh al-Sayed Ali along the border with Syria were Syrian citizens, the ministry said.
The Israeli military said it targeted a man named Yusuf Ali al-Hassoun, who planned attacks against Israeli forces in southern Syria “under the direction of the Iranian regime.” The Israeli military has occupied a strip of land in southern Syria since December 2024.
The drone strike was the first to take place deep inside Lebanon since Lebanon and Israel announced a “framework agreement” on June 26, laying out a plan for Israeli forces to withdraw from southern Lebanon in exchange for the disarmament of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group.
Over the past three years, Israel has killed dozens of Hezbollah operatives in different parts of Lebanon in drone strikes.
The South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay, who is currently an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her efforts to promote peace and international law.
Pillay chaired the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, which was created by the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council. The commission a year ago concluded Israel was responsible for genocide in Gaza, with a specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry slammed the award and said on X: “If there were an award for lies, hatred, and blood libels, Navi Pillay wouldn’t just be a contender. She’d be a frontrunner.”
A vessel was struck by an “unknown projectile” off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, the British military said on Friday, causing a fire that it said had since been extinguished.
The attack took place 13 nautical miles west of Al-Jazeera in the UAE, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center, which did not identify the vessel. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, and the status of the crew was not immediately known.
Separately, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed without providing evidence on Friday it had struck a large liquefied petroleum gas carrier attempting to use an illegal shipping route south of the Strait of Hormuz.
The British military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Iran’s claim.
Speaking Friday at a regional summit in Turkmenistan, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian called for deeper regional cooperation and said countries should strengthen their resilience against war, crises and external pressure while avoiding competition aimed at excluding one another.
Regional states should build networks for producing, transmitting and exchanging oil, gas, electricity and renewable energy rather than seeking to eliminate competitors from energy markets, he said.
“Our region, more than ever, needs resilience against war, crises, external pressure and disruptions to economic and communication routes,” Pezeshkian said. “Success in this path, more than anything else, requires linking the region’s capacities together.”
This report will be updated throughout the day as new developments emerge.
Murid Akhziq, 43, lights a fire for cooking inside his home, which was destroyed during the Israel-Hamas war, in Gaza City, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians walk along a street surrounded by buildings destroyed in Israeli military strikes during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza City, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
