Airstrikes carried out by Jordan on Monday night against positions in southern Syria—allegedly linked to the jihadist group Islamic State (IS)—have triggered a diplomatic rift between the two nations. The friction stems from a lack of prior coordination and the fact that the strikes resulted in civilian casualties, including children.
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On Tuesday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry criticized the Hashemite Kingdom for conducting the military operation without prior coordination, describing the action as completely unacceptable and a violation of Syria’s national sovereignty.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry also suggested that certain suspicious groups might be attempting to strain relations between Damascus and Amman, though it provided no further details regarding this claim.
Jordan framed the airstrikes as retaliation for an attack last Friday on a church in the western part of the kingdom, which left nine people dead and approximately 40 injured. Jordanian authorities attributed the attack to the Islamic State, although the organization has not yet claimed responsibility.
#Syria hardened its stance on the Jordanian attack carried out yesterday in the South.
— Qalaat Al Mudiq (@QalaatAlMudiq) October 27, 2026
While the Syrian Foreign Ministry initially expressed "reservations" about the Jordanian airstrikes in a statement last night, this morning, as the civilian death toll was confirmed, Damascus… pic.twitter.com/RvgfBLFVIV
Mohammad Momani, Jordan’s Minister of Government Communications and government spokesperson, stated on the social media platform X that the strikes were launched in response to the movements of these organizations and their acts against Jordan’s national security.
Momani expressed regret over the civilian casualties, maintaining that the armed forces had taken every possible precaution to avoid harming innocent people.
Syrian authorities confirmed that seven people were killed in the strikes, which targeted four areas in the southern province of Daraa. The victims included three children and an 80-year-old man.
Both countries have confirmed the establishment of an urgent joint committee to strengthen coordination in the fight against terrorism. Meanwhile, Momani expressed a commitment to developing bilateral ties for the mutual benefit of both nations.
#Syria | At least 14 people were killed and 11 injured in an explosion at a temporary weapons depot near Sarmada in Idlib province.
— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) September 9, 2026
Rescue teams are searching the rubble for survivors, while authorities have not yet determined the cause of the blast.#Idlib #teleSUREnglish pic.twitter.com/q5utCtzkFE
Ukrainian drones blew up a Russian ammunition depot near Khrustalnyi in occupied Luhansk Oblast overnight on 27 October, Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ reported. Drones also hit the oblast’s capital, Luhansk, for hours, and part of the city lost power. Russia’s occupation authorities have not commented.
Russia keeps pushing toward the last big Ukrainian-held cities in Donetsk Oblast. Its artillery there runs on shells kept in rear depots across occupied territory, and those depots sit within reach of Ukraine’s mid-range drones. Each depot lost behind the front pushes Russia to store and move its shells from farther back. That lengthens the supply runs Ukraine’s drones already hunt on the roads of occupied Ukraine.
The drone attack on occupied Luhansk Oblast went on for several hours, Exilenova+ said. Ukraine’s Defense Forces hit the depot near Khrustalnyi, and secondary detonations continued for more than an hour, the channel added. It posted night footage of a large fire glowing on the horizon.
An attack by strike drones has been ongoing for several hours in the occupied Luhansk region.
— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 26, 2026
The Defence Forces have blown up an ammunition depot near the village of Khrustalnyi. Secondary detonations have been ongoing for over an hour. pic.twitter.com/yEGTgrfsm7
Russia has occupied Khrustalnyi, formerly called Krasnyi Luch, since 2014. The city lies about 65 km southwest of Luhansk. It serves Russian troops as a rear and logistics hub.
The attack on the city of Luhansk lasted more than four hours, Petro Andriushchenko, head of the Center for the Study of Occupation, said. Residents reported many explosions and fires in several districts, and the power went out. The main strike hit the city’s former airfield, he added. In October 2023, Ukraine’s ATACMS missiles destroyed Russian helicopters at air bases in occupied Luhansk and Berdiansk.
On Yandex Maps, the Russian online mapping service, the struck area near Luhansk airport is blurred, Andriushchenko noted. Yandex blurs military and critical infrastructure sites this way, he wrote.
Exilenova+ also reported a series of explosions in Luhansk. The oblast had been under a mass drone attack for an hour, with dozens of hits in different towns, Ukrainian Telegram channel DroneBomber wrote late on 26 October.
Neither side’s military has mentioned the attack on Luhansk Oblast. Ukraine’s General Staff left it out of its morning report. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed it downed 222 drones over Russian regions, occupied Crimea, and the Black Sea, without listing Luhansk Oblast.
Pro-Russian local channels confirmed the attack from their side. A channel covering occupied Luhansk Oblast wrote that eyewitnesses saw a large fire and secondary detonations in Khrustalnyi. LIC, the news agency of Russia’s occupation administration in Luhansk Oblast, reported a series of powerful explosions over Luhansk and a visible glow.
Drones have now hit occupied Luhansk Oblast on three nights in seven days. On 21 October, they struck the seized telecom building in the city of Luhansk that houses the occupation’s mobile operator. Two nights later, strikes cut communications and power in part of the city.
Khrustalnyi itself burned on 12 October, when strikes hit a former motor depot housing Russian troops. Ukraine also hit an ammunition depot there in June 2022. Back then, the site supplied Russia’s offensive on Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.
Occupied Mariupol heard two waves of explosions overnight, and the power went out after the attack, Andriushchenko also said. In occupied Berdiansk, several blasts near the Ekvator shopping center preceded a large fire, he added.
On the evening of 26 October, strike drones attacked occupied Melitopol in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Exilenova+ said. Locals also reported FPV drones hitting targets in the city.
In Russia’s city of Bryansk, Governor Yegor Kovalchuk claimed a night drone attack injured six people and damaged three apartment blocks. He said a man also died when a drone-dropped explosive went off. Yevhen Balytskyi, the Russian-installed head of occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast, claimed a drone hit a Simferopol–Moscow bus near Prymorsk, killing one passenger.
As the attacks began, Russian monitoring resources tracked up to 350 Ukrainian drones in the air, DroneBomber said. Most flew over Bryansk and Oryol oblasts, with more groups near Crimea, Novorossiysk, and occupied Luhansk Oblast.
Ukraine’s drones also weigh on Russia’s road to occupied Crimea. Truck traffic on the R-280 highway from Rostov Oblast has halved to about 1,000 a day because of drone attacks. Anatolii Tsurkin, who heads a carriers’ association set up in occupied Crimea, said so.
Kyiv set aside $113 million for the first phase of a program of middle-strike drones aimed at Russia’s rear. That makes nights like this one likely to keep coming for depots, airfields, and roads across occupied Ukraine.
Russian forces launched successive attacks on Kyiv between Monday evening, 26th October, and Tuesday morning, striking a university campus, residential neighbourhoods and a major bridge across the Dnipro River, causing casualties and disrupting transport across the Ukrainian capital.
At least one person was killed and 15 injured, according to updated reports on Tuesday. The attacks damaged university buildings and student accommodation in eastern Kyiv, while a subsequent strike hit the Pivdennyi, or Southern, Bridge, interrupting road and underground railway services between the two banks of the city.
The first wave began shortly before 10pm on Monday, when Russian ballistic missiles struck the Desnianskyi district, near Lisova metro station and Kyoto Park.
Buildings belonging to the State University of Trade and Economics were damaged, including student dormitories. Residential properties, medical facilities and vehicles were also affected.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko initially reported ten injured, most of them students. Nine required hospital treatment, including three in serious condition.
In the neighbouring Dniprovskyi district, emergency workers recovered a body from a severely damaged building. Two ambulance workers responding to an emergency call were also injured.
A second wave of Russian attacks followed in the early hours of Tuesday.
The Southern Bridge was struck again, damaging infrastructure used by Kyiv’s underground railway system and forcing authorities to restrict traffic across the Dnipro.
Metro operations were disrupted on two lines. On the green line, trains operated only between Syrets and Vydubychi on the western bank and between Osokorky and Chervonyi Khutir on the eastern bank. Services across the bridge were suspended.
On the red line, Chernihivska and Lisova stations were temporarily closed, with trains operating between Akademmistechko and Darnytsia.
The bridge is one of Kyiv’s principal transport connections between its eastern and western districts, carrying both road traffic and part of the metro network.
The latest strike followed earlier damage to the same crossing on 22 October, when Russian ballistic attacks also disrupted traffic and underground services.
Repeated damage to transport crossings has complicated movement across the capital, particularly for residents travelling between the densely populated eastern districts and workplaces in central and western Kyiv.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded to Monday’s strikes by accusing Russia of targeting crowded civilian areas and warning that delays in Western air defence deliveries were increasing Ukraine’s vulnerability.
In a statement published on Telegram, he said Russian ballistic missiles had struck university grounds, Kyoto Park, areas near a metro station and residential buildings.
The president said there were no military installations near the affected sites and warned that further attacks remained possible.
He linked the casualties directly to Ukraine’s continuing difficulties obtaining sufficient air defence equipment.
“Artificial delays in providing air defence to Ukraine help terror,” Zelenskyy said.
He urged Western governments to ensure that political agreements on military assistance were implemented without administrative delays.
Zelenskyy also argued that Ukraine required weapons capable of destroying Russian ballistic missile launchers before missiles could be fired, rather than relying entirely on interception.
Such capabilities, he said, would offer a more effective means of protecting civilian lives.
His criticism came hours after he publicly disclosed that Ukraine had been waiting almost a month for US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to approve deliveries of missiles for Patriot and NASAMS air defence systems.
“In particular, we have been waiting for nearly a month for Mr Hegseth to sign off on missiles for Patriots and NASAMS,” Zelenskyy said on 26th October.
He instructed Ukrainian officials to raise the matter again with Washington.
Ukraine is seeking additional PAC-2 and PAC-3 Patriot missiles from the United States, European countries and other partners.
Some of these weapons are purchased through NATO’s Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List, or PURL, which allows allied governments to finance American military equipment destined for Ukraine.
However, US-made weapons may remain subject to American export and transfer authorisations even when European governments have agreed to finance their procurement.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged that a shipment of air-defence missiles may have been delayed, but said the delay was not politically motivated. Ukraine has said it is waiting for US approval for missiles for its Patriot and NASAMS systems, as its forces face shortages of the ammunition needed to intercept incoming attacks.
The precise effect of the outstanding approvals on Kyiv’s ability to defend itself during the latest strikes has not been established. The delay adds to the pressure on a country already trying to protect its cities and critical infrastructure with limited air-defence stocks.
Ballistic missiles present particular challenges for Ukrainian air defences because of their high speeds and the limited time available to detect, track and intercept incoming weapons.
Patriot systems equipped with appropriate interceptors are among Ukraine’s principal defences against such attacks. Their effectiveness depends not only on the availability of launchers and radar systems but also on adequate stocks of interceptor missiles.
Russia’s repeated attacks on the Southern Bridge also demonstrate the wider consequences of damage to urban infrastructure. Even when a transport crossing remains structurally intact, damage to railway equipment or nearby installations can interrupt services for thousands of passengers.
The latest bombardment followed another substantial Russian attack on Kyiv on 21st–22nd October, which killed one person and injured more than 20.
For Ukraine, the attacks have reinforced two immediate requirements: protecting essential infrastructure against further strikes and securing a reliable supply of interceptor missiles.
Whether Washington can accelerate the outstanding approvals, and whether European partners can provide additional ammunition from their own stocks, will be central to Ukraine’s air defence preparations as winter approaches.
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