Pakistan launched airstrikes and sent ground troops into Afghan provinces along its border on Sunday, killing dozens of civilians, the BBC reported, citing Taliban officials.

Afghanistan’s Taliban government condemned the “cowardly act” and called it “a crime and atrocity”.

At least 100 people have been killed or wounded, Taliban officials told BBC Pashto.

Twenty-nine militants were killed in strikes targeted at their hideouts, Pakistan’s information minister Attaullah Tarar said, adding that the strikes were a response to “recent terrorist attacks against innocent people”.

Pakistan has long accused Afghanistan of harbouring terrorists who carry out attacks on its soil, a claim the Taliban government rejects.

Kabul, in turn, has previously accused Islamabad of carrying out unprovoked attacks in which civilians were killed – though Pakistan says it only targets militants.

The two countries had agreed to a ceasefire last October following weeks of deadly clashes. As with past internationally-mediated truce deals, however, that ceasefire has since fallen apart.

Afghanistan’s Taliban government says the strikes hit civilian homes, while Pakistan says they were targeted at militant hideouts in Afghanistan’s Paktia, Paktika and Kunar provinces.

Casualties were concentrated in Mandikhel, a village in the Paktika province, Taliban officials say.

The attacks on Sunday come a day after three members of the Sindh Rangers, a Pakistani paramilitary force, were killed at their headquarters in Karachi, according to Pakistan’s military. Three militants also died in the suicide attack, and Pakistani officials said they had arrested a fourth, who was an Afghan.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter faction of the TTP, claimed responsibility for Saturday’s attack.

Both the TTP – also known as the Pakistan Taliban – and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar are banned in Pakistan, and by the United Nations, because of their involvement in past attacks.

Intermittent border clashes and airstrikes in the border area have killed dozens of people in recent months, according to officials in both countries.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in Beijing on Monday, the Chinese and Belarusian state news agencies reported.

China and Belarus should maintain strategic communication, and promote the continuous progress of bilateral relations that are already running at a high level to better benefit the peoples of the two countries, Xi stressed, according to a readout published by Xinhua.

China supports Belarus in safeguarding its national sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and in pursuing a development path that suits its own national conditions, Xi said, expressing China’s willingness to continue to offer assistance within its capacity for the development of Belarus.

The two countries should mobilize resources from various sectors to advance Belt and Road cooperation, and enhance coordination and cooperation within multilateral frameworks to serve as a stabilizing force in a turbulent world, Xi said.

The Belarusian state news agency, BelTA, quoted Lukashenko as saying that he greatly values Xi Jinping’s positive assessment of Minsk–Beijing ties. “This is exactly what we discussed with you and, perhaps, even dreamed about to some degree on the threshold of this broad-based cooperation between Belarus and China,” Lukashenko emphasized. As one example of successful Minsk-Beijing cooperation, Aleksandr Lukashenko pointed to the Great Stone Industrial Park, where Chinese companies make up the lion’s share of foreign investment. “We are ready to act in this regard,” he said.

Lukashenko also spoke about industrial cooperation between Belarus and China.

Earlier, 2026-2027 had been declared the Years of Industrial Cooperation between Belarus and China. “I am grateful to you for supporting an initiative for the development of industry and industrial cooperation between our two countries this year and next year. In all areas of economic development, Belarus makes use of your technologies,” President Lukashenko noted. “We are satisfied with the level of these technologies and the quality of the products we are receiving today.”

“We regularly share our views with you on international issues and the regional situation. I make it a point to keep you updated on all of this. I think it is essential that we maintain and deepen these contacts in the future,” the president said.

The Belarusian president thanked the Chinese president for the meeting. Xi Jinping asked whether Lukashenko had flown to Beijing directly from Minsk. “No, I came here from the Moscow region. We held talks with President Putin, and after that I flew to Beijing,” the Belarusian leader said.

The Democratic Republic ‌of Congo said late ⁠on Sunday that confirmed Ebola cases in the ‌country ⁠had reached 1,274, including ⁠360 deaths, Reuters reported.

Health officials earlier said that ⁠intensified epidemiological and biological surveillance had enabled earlier detection of ⁠cases.

An unassuming-looking fossil that spent 40 years lying forgotten in a drawer has turned out to be the first dinosaur bone ever found in Antarctica, the BBC reported.

The specimen was unearthed in 1985, but the team that discovered it was not sure what it was – so it was stored away in the geology collection of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in Cambridge.

Now the fossil has been studied by palaeontologists who have confirmed that it is a tail bone from a type of dinosaur called a Titanosaur – this group contained the largest dinosaurs to ever walk the Earth.

The discovery helps to reveal more about how these beasts lived in a part of the world where the fossil record is sparse.

Dr Mark Evans, the collections manager at BAS, recently spotted the fossil amongst thousands of specimens brought back from expeditions to Antarctica over the decades.

“It’s only when you start thinking ‘what’s in this drawer’, that sometimes you come across something and you think, ‘Ah, this looks interesting’,” he said.

The specimen was originally collected on James Ross Island and its discovery was recorded in a field notebook kept by geologist Dr Mike Thomson.

Alongside a tiny, neat sketch of the fossil dated 9 December 1985 he has written “vertebra of large reptile”, noting it was about 10cm wide.

Evans says the team that found it probably thought the fossil belonged to a marine reptile.

But as soon as he saw it, Evans realised the vertebra looked very dinosaur-like. And the date of its discovery meant it would have been the first dinosaur fossil found on the continent.

More than 100 species of Titanosaur have now been identified around the world.

All are four-legged plant eaters, with very long necks that helped them reach up into trees and long counter-balancing tails. The very biggest Titanosaurs were more than 115ft (35m) long and weighed about 60 tonnes.

From the size of this tail bone, the scientists estimate the Antarctic Titanosaur was about 23ft (7m) in length.

“Maybe it was a juvenile dinosaur, or maybe it was a genuinely small one – one that was actually bucking the trend for the rest of the group as a smaller adult,” Prof Paul Barrett from the Natural History Museum (NHM) said.

A total of 124 commodity vessels transited through the Strait of Hormuz since Thursday, CNN reported citing Kpler, a data intelligence firm that tracks global shipping and commodity flows.

The number of ships that passed through the strait in four days is now similar to the number of vessels transiting in a single day before the war. Kpler data showed over 100 ships used to pass through the strait daily before the war began.

Kpler’s data tracked commodity ships such as tankers, dry bulk, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) vessels but not shipping containers.

Maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies travel, remains stalled as renewed tensions flared in the region. In recent days, the US and Iran exchanged fire near the Strait of Hormuz and US military sites in Gulf nations were targeted.

While a Trump administration official said Sunday “vessels can move freely” in the strait, the situation remains tense in the waterway, leaving commercial vessel operators and their crews facing uncertainty and risk.