Asia

Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada has made his first-ever public appearance in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. There was tight security at the event and no photographs or video have emerged.

Iran has declared its readiness to act as the hub for delivering goods into Afghanistan, Tehran’s envoy to China says. The ambassador adds his country supported the use of the Beijing-proposed Belt and Road Initiative to improve the economy and people's livelihoods in the war-torn country.

The Taliban has praised the recent meeting of foreign ministers of Afghanistan’s neighboring countries in Tehran. The new rulers of Afghanistan have once again called on the international community to recognize the group as the country’s government.

The new rulers of Afghanistan are pushing to unblock billions of dollars of Afghan central bank reserves abroad. The drought-stricken nation is facing a cash crunch, mass starvation and a new migration crisis, after the Taliban seized power in August.

The administration of US President Joe Biden is withholding information from the public that could have predicted the fall of the Afghan government to the Taliban, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), John Sopko, says.

Alireza Sharifi, a local cameraman with the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting has survived an assassination attempt in the Afghan capital Kabul.

The commander in chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says the United States pulled its troops back from Afghanistan with humiliation and now Washington has been marginalized more than ever before.

Beijing has called on Washington to “thoroughly correct its wrong policy of maximum pressure” against Tehran in order to bring the 2015 landmark agreement back on the right track. China has also welcomed Iran’s announcement of its return to the nuclear negotiations before the end of November.

Armenia’s prime minister denies media reports that the country has withdrawn forces from Syunik a province bordering Iran. Nikol Pashinian was responding to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s claim about the so-called Zangezur corridor before parliament.

Terrorists are scaling up their activities in the regions near the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin said on Wednesday at a ministerial meeting of Afghanistan's neighboring countries in Tehran.

The United States and other Western countries should lift sanctions on Afghanistan, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said. He made the remarks in an online speech on Wednesday to the second meeting of foreign ministers of Afghanistan's neighboring countries in Tehran.

The American intelligence community has assessed that terrorists in Afghanistan could attack the United States in six months if left unchecked, a senior Pentagon official says. He adds they have the intention to carry out such an assault.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureishi has called on the international community to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan.

Iran's former ambassador to Kabul says the meeting of Afghanistan's neighbors in Tehran is a show of strength put on by regional countries against the United States.

Turkey’s parliament has extended the military’s mandate to conduct cross-border operations in Syria and Iraq by two more years. Both Damascus and Baghdad have in several occasions condemned Turkey’s incursions into their soil as flagrant violations of their territorial integrity.

Iran's Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) Majid Takht Ravanchi has announced the country is hosting Afghans with “almost no new resources from the international community”, while Tehran is under US sanctions.

The Iranian president, in a meeting with the visiting Turkmen foreign minister in Tehran, said the formation of an inclusive government in Afghanistan will lead to the regional peace and stability.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has held a meeting with acting deputy prime minister of the Taliban government, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in the Qatari capital of Doha.

The Taliban might think about selling military hardware abandoned by the United States and its NATO allies in Afghanistan if humanitarian situation takes a serious turn for the worse, Russia warns.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian met with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Tuesday in Tehran.

North Korea has denounced France and Canada for sending patrol aircraft near the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang has called the move "military provocation" endangering the security situation in the region.

Sudan is facing a full military coup, the information ministry announced on Monday. Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and several other government officials have been arrested by the military. The premier has been taken to an unknown location.

Tens of millions of dirty and soiled medical gloves, some even blood-stained, have reached the United States from Thailand during the COVID pandemic, a CNN report reveals.

Former US special representative for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, believes Washington was losing the war to the Taliban and chose negotiations as an alternative. He says the United States “did not succeed” in building a democratic Afghanistan after two decades of war in the country.

Iran will host a meeting of Afghanistan’s neighbours on Wednesday without the participation of the Taliban. The new rulers of Afghanistan have not been invited to the summit, according to a Taliban spokesperson.