Category World News

Eleven military personnel have been killed in a gunfight with armed fighters in the country’s northwest, according to the Pakistani army.

The gun battle erupted early on Wednesday during an intelligence operation in the Orakzai district near the Afghan border, the army said in a news release.

During the intelligence raid, the military said, an “intense” exchange of fire broke out with “Khawarij”, a term it uses for banned groups such as the Pakistan Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

Among the dead were Lieutenant Colonel Junaid Arif and his deputy, Major Tayyab Rahat, along with nine other soldiers. The army said 19 fighters were also killed.

The Reuters news agency, citing Pakistani security officials, reported that the fighters ambushed a military convoy with a roadside bomb before opening fire.

In a statement, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif lauded security forces for their service and paid tribute to the troops who lost their lives.

In recent months, the Pakistan Taliban, which wants to overthrow the government and replace it with their hardline brand of Islamic governance, has stepped up attacks on Pakistani security forces.

United States Attorney General Pam Bondi faced fierce questioning at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, as Democrats accused her of politicising the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Republicans rallied behind her pledge to restore law enforcement’s core mission.

In her first appearance before the Republican-controlled committee since the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, Bondi on Tuesday defended the department’s direction under her leadership, saying she came into office determined to end the “weaponisation of justice” and refocus on violent crime.

She said the DOJ was now “returning to our core mission of fighting real crime”, pointing to increased federal activity in Washington, DC; and Memphis, Tennessee.

Bondi also defended the deployment of National Guard troops to cities like Chicago and Portland, saying local governments failed to protect citizens. She tied challenges in enforcing public safety to the ongoing government shutdown, blaming Democrats for undermining law enforcement readiness.

One of the critical moments of the hearing came with Bondi’s justification for prosecuting Comey, a longtime critic of US President Donald Trump. Comey faces charges of false statements and obstruction of Congress related to his 2020 congressional testimony, and is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday. Democrats pressed whether the indictment followed from independent prosecutorial judgement or political pressure. Bondi declined to answer questions about private conversations with the White House, calling them “personnel matters”.

The Jeffrey Epstein files were another flashpoint in the hearing as Bondi repeatedly refused to explain her decision to reverse course on releasing documents. She instead accused Democratic senators of having accepted campaign donations from an affiliate of the late, convicted sex offender.

Democrats also quizzed her on allegations that Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, accepted $50,000 in cash from undercover agents last year, before the current US administration came into office. Bondi said the decision to drop the inquiry preceded her tenure and declined to state whether the money had been recovered.

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the panel, repeatedly accused Bondi of using her leadership to help weaponise the DOJ. “Our nation’s top law enforcement agency has become a shield for the president and his political allies when they engage in misconduct,” he said. The Illinois senator claimed Bondi “fundamentally transformed the Justice Department and left an enormous stain on American history”.

“It will take decades to recover,” he added.

Under Bondi’s leadership, key divisions such as civil rights have seen mass departures, and career prosecutors tied to investigations into Trump or the January 6 attack on the US Capitol have been removed or reassigned.

A letter by nearly 300 former DOJ employees, released just before the hearing, warned that the administration was “taking a sledgehammer to other longstanding work” and urged a return to institutional norms.

At least 15 people have been killed after debris from a massive landslide hit a bus in India’s northern state of Himachal Pradesh, local authorities have said.

The bus was travelling on a hilly stretch near Bilaspur district when, late on Thursday, a landslide struck following days of torrential rains. At least 20 to 25 passengers were on the bus at the time. Nine men, four women and two children were among those killed, police said.

Three injured children were rescued and admitted to a local hospital for treatment, according to a statement from the office of Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, the state’s highest elected official. Rescue operations continued on Wednesday in an attempt to find other missing passengers who are believed to be dead, police said.

ANI visuals showed the bus’s mangled wreckage lying on a mountain road as rescuers dug through the debris for the people buried when the landslide struck. Other television visuals from the site showed some rescue workers clearing mounds of earth with heavy machinery while others sifted through mud-soaked belongings.

Intermittent rains have lashed the region since Monday, making the fragile mountain slopes unstable.

President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered their condolences following the landslide.

Extreme rains this year have caused flooding and landslides across the South Asian region, which includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Maldives and Nepal.

Flash floods swept away an entire village in India’s northern state of Uttarakhand in August, while at least 44 people were killed in neighbouring Nepal over the weekend due to mudslides and flooding triggered by severe rainfall.

The weekend’s heavy rainfall arrived at the end of Nepal’s monsoon season, which usually begins in June and ends by mid-September. It also left parts of the capital, Kathmandu, flooded and caused the cancellation of all domestic flights on Saturday.

More than 20 people were killed in central Myanmar after the military launched motorised paraglider attacks during an antigovernment candlelight vigil, according to Amnesty International and media reports.

The attacks hit a village in Myanmar’s Sagaing Region twice on Monday night as community members gathered to mark a Buddhist festival and call for the release of political prisoners, among other demands, the reports said.

“This would be the latest in a long line of attacks that stretch back almost five years to the start of the 2021 military coup,” said Amnesty International Myanmar Researcher Joe Freeman.

“As the military attempts to solidify power with a stage-managed election later this year, it is intensifying an already brutal campaign against pockets of resistance,” he said.

The attacks on Chaung-U Township came in two waves at 8pm (13:30 GMT) and then again at 11pm (16:30 GMT), killing between 20 and 32 people and injuring dozens more, according to The Irrawaddy, an independent news outlet based in Thailand.

The official death toll has not been confirmed, but the use of motorised paragliders is a known tactic from Myanmar’s military to drop munitions on civilian locations, according to the UN Human Rights Office.

Myanmar has been torn by civil war since 2021 between the military-led government, armed opposition groups, and ethnic armed organisations following a military coup that removed a democratically elected leadership.

The conflict has killed more than 75,000 people and displaced more than 3 million, according to UN estimates.

The military has frequently attacked ethnic minority civilians or communities like Chaung-U Township that are near strongholds of armed groups, according to rights groups.

A 2024 BBC investigation estimated that the military only controlled about 20 percent of the country, while armed opposition and ethnic armed groups controlled about 40 percent of Myanmar’s territory, with the rest territory contested by the various forces.

The military government lifted a long-running state of emergency in July and called for elections at the end of the year, but critics, like the government of Japan, say a peace process is first needed before Myanmar can restore a “democratic political system”.

Amnesty International’s Freeman called for more action from international groups like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the UN.