Sri Lanka has begun mass cremations to clear a backlog of dead bodies from Covid-19 as cases surge across the island, officials said yesterday.

Nepal’s indigenous peoples have been subjected to human rights violations including torture and unlawful killings under the country’s conservation policies, Amnesty International and a local activist group said yesterday.

Rohingyas have no desire to be citizens of Bangladesh and their only goal is to go back to Myanmar, said Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights today in response to recent World Bank report that suggested refugee integration in 14 of the host countries.

Indian security agencies have apprehended 740 infiltrators along the India-Bangladesh border within the first six months of this year, Indian Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt told Rajya Sabha today.

Taliban fighters overran three provincial capitals including the strategic northeastern city of Kunduz on Sunday, local officials said, as the insurgents intensified pressure on the north and threatened further cities.

Myanmar protesters yesterday marked the anniversary of a 1988 pro-democracy uprising that brought Aung San Suu Kyi to prominence, with flash mobs and marches of defiance against the ruling junta. 

The Taliban tightened the noose around northern Afghanistan yesterday, capturing three more provincial capitals as they take their fight to the cities after seizing much of the countryside in recent months.

Taliban fighters have seized key government buildings in the northeastern Afghan city of Kunduz, leaving government forces hanging onto control of the airport and their own base, a provincial assembly lawmaker said on Sunday.

The United States on Saturday condemned a thwarted plot to attack Myanmar's U.N. ambassador in New York, saying it fits a "disturbing pattern" of authoritarian leaders and their supporters seeking to persecute opponents around the world.

The Brunei diplomat appointed by a Southeast Asian regional bloc as its special envoy to Myanmar yesterday said he should be given full access to all parties when he visits the strife-torn country, where the military overthrew an elected government. 

The Taliban seized the stronghold of a notorious Afghan warlord yesterday, officials said, the second provincial capital to fall to the insurgents in under 24 hours. 

An Afghan Air Force pilot was killed by a bomb in a Kabul district on Saturday, officials said, in an attack claimed by the Taliban.

The Taliban captured an Afghan provincial capital and assassinated the government’s top media officer in Kabul yesterday, dealing twin high-profile blows to the Western-backed administration. 

Taliban fighters on Friday assassinated the Afghanistan government's top media and information officer in the capital Kabul, an act condemned by the senior U.S. diplomat in the country as an affront to human rights and free speech.

The city of Zaranj in Afghanistan's Nimroz province fell to the Taliban on Friday, provincial police said, making it the first provincial capital the insurgents have captured as they step up offensives.

Dozens of people attacked a Hindu temple in central Pakistan over blasphemy allegations, police said yesterday, in the latest incident of religious-fueled violence targeting a minority group in the Islamic republic.

Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations, who has refused to leave his post despite being fired after the February coup, has alerted the world body to a “reported massacre” by the military junta.

A Myanmar militia force fighting the army in a central part of the country and residents have found at least 40 bodies in jungle areas in recent weeks, including some showing signs of torture, said a militia member and Myanmar's U.N. envoy.

Pakistan deployed paramilitary forces in a central town on Thursday to check communal unrest after a mob ransacked and set fire to a Hindu temple.

Russia will deploy four Tu-22M3 supersonic strategic bombers in drills near the Afghan border in Uzbekistan, Interfax news agency cited the Russian defence ministry as saying on Thursday.