NEW DELHI (AP) — Leaders of a popular Indian youth movement vowed to continue protests Sunday after being released from detention, a day after police cracked down on demonstrations against a controversial revision of voter lists. The movement is demanding the resignation of the country’s election chief.
The protests were triggered after authorities removed more than 130 million voters from the list since last year. Critics say the move is politically motivated. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Election Commission deny manipulation allegations.
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Police detain a protester during a demosntrationt demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar during a protest in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Prabhat Mehrota)
Police detain Communist Party of India (Marxist) lawmaker John Brittas during a demonstration demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar during a protest in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Sanjeev Rastogi)
Abhijeet Dipke, center, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, stands on the court premises following his release in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Prabhat Mehrota)
Police detain a protester during a demosntrationt demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar during a protest in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Prabhat Mehrota)
Security personnel detain a protester during a youth demonstration demanding the resignation of the country's election chief Gyanesh Kumar, in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Vipin)
The Cockroach Janata Party's three leaders — Abhijeet Dipke, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka — were freed on condition that they commit “no breach of peace for one year,” Ratna Singh, the movement's legal director, said in a social media post. It was unclear what the condition meant or whether it would restrict their participation in protests.
Police boarded the leaders’ flight from Mumbai after it landed in New Delhi on Saturday and took them into custody as they prepared to lead a demonstration in New Delhi.
After his release, Dipke called Modi “an embarrassment to India.”
“Never has this country seen a bigger coward and bully,” he wrote on X.
Das, a spokesperson for the movement, urged supporters to take to the streets. “A situation has been created where the state is at war with its own citizens,” he told reporters Sunday.
Following Saturday's protests, authorities launched a sweeping security crackdown in the capital, detaining more than 2,000 protesters, including several opposition lawmakers. Train services to the capital were canceled, metro stations closed and mobile internet suspended in parts of the city.
Most of those detained were released late Saturday, police said.
Small groups of protesters returned to the Indian capital on Sunday, staging marches across the city. The police quickly broke up most of the demonstrations, detaining some protesters again.
Protesters are demanding the resignation of Gyanesh Kumar, the chief election commissioner. Modi’s party has said the voter revision is needed to eliminate duplicate and ineligible entries.
The Cockroach movement began as an online satirical campaign this summer after India’s chief justice compared unemployed young people to parasites. Many young Indians embraced the remark, adopting the cockroach as a symbol of resilience.
Protests led by the group forced the resignation of Modi’s education minister in July, a rare setback for the prime minister, who has been in power for more than 12 years.
Police detain a protester during a demosntrationt demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar during a protest in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Prabhat Mehrota)
Police detain Communist Party of India (Marxist) lawmaker John Brittas during a demonstration demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar during a protest in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Sanjeev Rastogi)
Abhijeet Dipke, center, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, stands on the court premises following his release in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Prabhat Mehrota)
Police detain a protester during a demosntrationt demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar during a protest in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Prabhat Mehrota)
Security personnel detain a protester during a youth demonstration demanding the resignation of the country's election chief Gyanesh Kumar, in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Vipin)
CAIRO (AP) — Saudi Arabia on Sunday extended the closure of its main international airport as Houthi rebels threatened airstrikes across the kingdom, a day after a missile attack killed 12 people and wounded more than 300.
Saturday’s strike on the Riyadh airport marked a major escalation of the war between Yemen’s Iran’s-backed Houthis and the kingdom. President Donald Trump said he was considering whether to join Saudi strikes against the rebels, a scenario that could prompt the Houthis to halt shipping through a crucial waterway and further restrict the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf.
As international leaders spoke out condemning the attack Sunday, the Houthis reported that two airstrikes hit Yemen's capital, Sanaa, blaming Saudi Arabia. There was no immediate comment from Saudi authorities or reports of casualties.
The Houthi-run Health Ministry says 91 Yemenis have been killed and 168 injured by the Saudi-led coalition in five weeks. It said that 60% of those killed were women and children.
As Saudi authorities extended Saturday's airport closure until at least 9 p.m. Sunday, according to Flightradar24, the Houthis said the kingdom's airports were attack targets.
Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, the group's military spokesman, urged “everyone to take our warnings seriously."
The latest attack on the Saudi airport drew condemnations from Arab countries, including Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, as well as U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
“Attacks by Iran’s proxies are pushing the region into a spiral of violence," Von der Leyen wrote Sunday on X. “They are destabilizing crucial global transport and energy nodes."
The attack struck an airport complex housing terminals 3 and 4 for domestic flights, a regional official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.
The Saudi statement said the dead included four Saudi citizens, two Bangladeshi nationals, a Palestinian, a U.S. citizen, an Egyptian, a Jordanian, a Syrian and a Sudanese. It said several hospitals were treating the injured.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged in a social media post that an American citizen had been killed in the attack, which he condemned.
The Egyptian woman was a flight attendant identified as Azza Ramzy, 28, who worked for the Saudi airline Flynas, according to the Egyptian state-run Al-Qahera New television.
The attack is expected to increase Saudi pressure on allies, including the United States, to provide military support for the kingdom.
Shortly after the attack, Trump said he was evaluating whether the U.S. should join Saudi strikes against the rebels. “We may. We’re going to look at it,” he said. “We just found out about the recent attack. So we’ll make a decision. We move very quickly.”
Trump said later Saturday he planned to speak with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Asked if the U.S. might get involved, Trump responded, “We’ll find out.”
The Houthis claimed attacks earlier in the week on King Khalid International Airport that killed three Saudis, including a pilot. The airport has no military facilities.
The surge in attacks, including against other Saudi airports, military facilities and oil infrastructure, has come in the week since a Saudi-led coalition launched a major military offensive against the Houthis.
Until recently, the Houthis had been largely on the sidelines of the Iran war. Now, the rebels are a way for Tehran to pressure a key U.S. ally. Houthi attacks, along with their control of the Bab el-Mandeb waterway, also threaten to add new disruptions to the flow of oil from the region.
The Saudis and the Houthis began fighting in 2015 when the kingdom entered Yemen’s civil war on behalf of the internationally recognized government.
Relative calm after a 2022 ceasefire ended in July when the Houthis resumed attacks, saying the Saudis fired on the Sanaa airport as a plane from Iran was trying to land. That revived anger over the Saudi-led blockade that has largely isolated Houthi-run areas.
Now fighting has escalated, with the Saudi-led coalition providing air support for Yemeni government forces attempting to reverse recent Houthi gains along the Red Sea. Those gains gave the rebels better surveillance of shipping on the Bab el-Mandeb, a corridor that is a crucial alternative to the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has been attacking ships.
Saudi Arabia is running low on missile interceptors and has asked France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt to deploy air defense support to the region, regional officials told The Associated Press last month, with one noting that the U.S. has seen its own stock dwindle during the war with Iran.
This report has been corrected to show that the Egyptian killed in the strike was a woman, not a man.
Associated Press writers Victoria Eastwood in Cairo, Collin Binkley in Washington and Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut contributed to this report.
People gather outside a metro station on the road to King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026. (AP Photo)
People gather outside a metro station on the road to King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026. (AP Photo)
This image from video obtained and verified by AP shows thick black smoke and flames rising from a fire at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)
