International

18-03-2026 PARIS: French anti-terror prosecutors have opened an investigation into two brothers suspected of plotting a “lethal and anti-Semitic” attack. They say the men described as Moroccan-Italian nationals aged 20 and 22 were picked up last week in a car in northern France. Officers found a loaded semi-automatic weapon, a …

18-03-2026 KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused European allies of seeking to “blackmail” Kyiv into reopening a pipeline transporting Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia. He said restoring the flow of Russian crude oil through Ukraine into the European Union (EU) would be like lifting economic sanctions on Moscow. …

18-03-2026 GAZA STRIP/ RAMALLAHL: Israeli forces killed 16 Palestinians in the ​Gaza Strip and the West Bank, health officials said, in one of the heaviest death tolls in a single day ‌in weeks, as Israel continued to launch attacks on Lebanon and Iran. Medics and the interior ministry of the …

18-03-2026 Bureau Report NEW DELHI: India has sought safe passage for 22 of its vessels stranded west of the Strait of Hormuz, a foreign ‌affairs ministry spokesperson said on Saturday, after Iran allowed a few Indian ships to sail through, in a rare exception to the blockade. Randhir Jaiswal told …

18-03-2026 DAMASCUS: Syrians across the country marked the 15th anniversary of the peaceful protests that launched their uprising against Bashar al-Assad, an Arab Spring-inspired revolt that ultimately ended more than five decades of family rule after a lightning offensive toppled the president in late 2024. The uprising’s long arc reached …

17-03-2026 GAZA STRIP: With the eyes of the world on the United States and Israel’s war in Iran, Israeli strikes and raids in Gaza and settler attacks and military operations in the occupied West Bank have continued unabated. Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 72,000 people in …

17-03-2026 Bureau Report + Agencies NEW DELHI/ TEHRAN: A chartered plane arranged by Iran departed southern India late on Friday carrying some sailors from a naval vessel that had docked in the country, as well as the bodies of crew members killed in a US attack off Sri Lanka, two …

17-03-2026 MOGADISHU: Somalia has warned that its territory cannot be used as a launching pad for military operations, after two media reports that said Israel is planning to establish a military base in the breakaway region of Somaliland, directly across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen. “Somalia does not want …

17-03-2026 By SJA Jafri + Bureau Report ISLAMABAD/ KABUL: Afghanistan’s Taliban government has accused Pakistan of targeting civilian homes in overnight air attacks, killing four people in the capital and two in the east, as fighting between the two neighbors entered its third week, overshadowed by the United States-Israel war …

17-03-2026 Bureau Report NEW DELHI: As the United States-Israeli war on Iran completes two weeks, it has triggered a global energy crisis, even as Iran’s retaliation threatens to pull the rest of the Middle East into the conflict. The Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20 to 30 percent of …