| FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK TWITTER FLIPBOARD TELEGRAM |
Taiwan’s foreign minister accused China on Tuesday of using U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taipei as a pretext for launching large-scale military drills in preparation for an eventual invasion.
Speaking to reporters, Foreign Minister Joseph Wu called Beijing’s military exercises in response to Pelosi’s trip a “serious provocation” and an attempt to overturn the status quo in the sensitive Taiwan Strait.
Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have agreed a ceasefire, raising hopes of an end to the most serious flare-up in hostilities between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip for more than a year.
The agreement, brokered by Egyptian officials, took effect at 11.30pm local time on Sunday, and followed three days of fighting during which Israeli forces bombarded sites in Gaza and Islamic Jihad militants fired hundreds of rockets into Israel.
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.
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.
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.
