Asia

Iran’s representative to the United Nations Majid Takhte Ravanchi says Afghanistan is at a critical turn and the dire situation is the direct result of the military intervention of the US and its allies and their irresponsible withdrawal.

A possible NATO plan to house Afghan refugees in central Asian countries can become a disaster for European countries, Moscow warns. Thousands of Afghans have fled the country, with many more seeking to leave, after Taliban announced assumed control of Kabul and other cities.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warns the Al-Qaeda terror group that used Afghanistan as a staging base to attack United States 20 years ago may attempt to regenerate in the war-torn country following Washington's withdrawal that has left the Taliban in power.

The Taliban are planning to organize general elections in Afghanistan which will allow various local groups and communities to cast their votes. This comesas the Taliban have introduced a caretaker government to rule the war-hit country.

North Korea has held a nighttime military parade in the capital Pyongyang to mark the founding anniversary of the nuclear-armed country.

A coalition of human rights groups is urging major broadcasters across the world to cancel plans to cover the 2022 Olympics in Beijing over alleged human rights abuses in China. Beijing has repeatedly rejected such allegations.

The Taliban caretaker government has asked the United Nations to take the group's leaders off its blacklist. Several members of the interim government in Kabul are on the UN Security Council's terrorism blacklist, including acting Prime Minister Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhund.

China says a US destroyer was “expelled” from disputed South China Sea waters after Beijing’s naval and air forces conducted whole-process tracking and monitoring and warned off it, accusing Washington of provocative actions at sea.

Images have been posted on social media showing an Afghan girl who has trekked all the way to the Iranian border to take shelter in a country where people love her and she can find a safe place to live.

Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani says leaving Kabul was "the most difficult decision of his life" as the Taliban encircled the capital, dismissing allegations that he did a runner with millions of dollars from Afghanistan.

China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin has called on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to withdraw its nuclear weapons deployed across Europe.

The Taliban on Monday named their caretaker cabinet members including an obscure figure who has a $5mn US bounty on his head. Mohammad Hassan Akhund was named as caretaker Prime Minister by the Taliban’s spokesman Zabihullah Mojahed.

The foreign ministers of Afghanistan’s six neighbors are discussing the situation in the country in a teleconference.

Two people were shot dead and eight wounded in an anti-Taliban demonstration in the western Afghan city of Herat on Tuesday, medical sources say said.

A fire at an overcrowded jail in Indonesia has killed at least 40 people, authorities confirmed on Wednesday.

The Taliban announced the names of several acting cabinet ministers of a new caretaker government in Afghanistan. Some of the ministers are wanted by the United States.

Moscow announced years of economic sanctions and political efforts by Washington have come to nothing, and work on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is now nearing the final stages of completion.

A source close to Ahmad Massoud has told Iran’s Fars News Agency that the Panshir valley is still under the control of this anti-Taliban Afghan militia commander. The source said Masoud’s fighters have surrounded the Taliban in a location and efforts are underway to persuade them to surrender.

Amid fighting in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley between the Taliban and the National Resistance Front of local leader Ahmad Masoud on Monday, reports emerged that the NRF’s spokesman Fahim Dashti has been killed.

Fighting in Afghanistan's last major holdout against the Taliban rule continued after the leader of the resistance movement in Panjshir Valley called for a “national uprising” against the militant group.

Labour leader Keir Starmer has slammed the British Prime Minister over the ongoing developments in Afghanistan, stating that Boris Johnson is “incapable of international leadership” during a heated debate in the House of Commons on Monday.

Japanese health authorities confirmed that a third man has died, one day after receiving a second dose of Moderna COVID vaccine from one of the contaminated lots which have since been recalled.

Hundreds of Afghans, mostly women, took to the streets of Kabul on Tuesday in an anti-Pakistan demonstration in which they chanted slogans against Islamabad and the country’s Intelligence service, ISI. The Taliban fired shots into the air, as the protests intensified.

Top Republican Senator Lindsey Graham believes American troops will return to Afghanistan despite the chaotic military withdrawal from the war-torn country that was completed days ago.

Washington is not going to recognize the Taliban as the new leadership of Afghanistan in the near future, US president Joe Biden stated on Monday days after the US forces chaotic withdrawal from the war-ravaged country.