Russian forces began an assault Saturday on two key cities in the eastern Donetsk region and kept up rocket and shelling attacks on other Ukrainian cities, including one close to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s military and local officials said.

Both cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka have been considered key targets of Russia’s ongoing offensive across Ukraine’s east, with analysts saying Moscow needs to take Bakhmut if it is to advance on the regional hubs of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

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The Israeli army carried out airstrikes Friday evening on targets in the Gaza Strip, announcing operation “Breaking Dawn” against the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad. Reports said head of the group’s northern command Taysir al-Jabari was killed in the aerial strikes. Two anti-missile cells were apparently also hit in the strikes.

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Clashes between Taliban forces and Iran border guards on Sunday have left at least one dead on the Afghanistan side, an Afghan police official said.

“We have one killed and one wounded; the cause of the clash is not clear yet,” the police spokesman of the southern Afghan province of Nimroze, Bahram Haqmal, told Reuters.

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Myanmar’s resistance forces have vowed to eradicate the junta and bring justice for the execution of four anti-regime activists.

The junta hanged former lawmaker of the National League for Democracy (NLD) Ko Phyo Zeya Thaw, veteran democracy activist Ko Jimmy and two other men, Ko Aung Thura Zaw and Ko Hla Myo Aung both from Hlaing Tharyar Township in Yangon, during the weekend without notifying their families. It was the first time in four decades that political dissidents have been executed in Myanmar.

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Russian forces launched a missile attack on the Kyiv area for the first time in weeks Thursday and pounded the northern Chernihiv region as well, in what Ukraine said was revenge for standing up to the Kremlin.

Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, announced a counteroffensive to take back the occupied Kherson region in the country’s south, territory seized by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces early in the war.

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