Southeast Asian leaders sharply criticised Myanmar’s junta as a regional summit opened yesterday without a representative from the country, following its top general’s exclusion for ignoring a peace roadmap agreed six months ago.

"This winter, millions of Afghans will be forced to choose between migration and starvation unless we can step up our life-saving assistance," said David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme.

Afghanistan will shortly collapse into chaos unless the international community acts rapidly, Swedish and Pakistani ministers have warned. 

Myanmar’s military rulers yesterday pledged to cooperate “as much as possible” with a peace plan agreed with Asean, despite a stern rebuke of the regional bloc for excluding the country’s top commander from a summit this week. 

A radical Islamist party yesterday said seven of its supporters have died in clashes with authorities in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore after two police officers were killed in the unrest. 

The Islamic State militant group’s Afghan branch said it was behind an explosion that brought down electricity lines and plunged Kabul into darkness.

A group of Afghan women urged the United Nations to block the Taliban from gaining a seat at the world body, calling for better representation for their country during a visit to the organisation’s New York headquarters on Thursday.

Myanmar has spiralled into civil war following a military coup, the outgoing UN special envoy on Myanmar said on Thursday, warning that the chance to return to democracy is disappearing and signalling that further targeted sanctions could be helpful.

Since Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, Nargis Nayeel Sadat, 22, a business entrepreneur and women activist based in Kabul, is on the run along with her mother to save their lives after a Taliban court found her guilty. 

The Taliban struck several journalists to prevent media coverage of a women’s rights protest in Kabul yesterday.

Former Taliban fighter Mohammad Ishaq, who spent years battling Western troops and local forces in Afghanistan, lost his leg in combat and is now learning to walk with a new limb. Standing near him at a Kabul clinic is one of the soldiers he defeated.

The Taliban praised suicide bombers who died during the war against the former government and its Western allies and offered their families sums of cash and promises of land, the movement's interior ministry said in a statement.

The mainstream Indian print media today editorially commented on the attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, opining they reflect a “conspiracy to instigate the violence.”

The Pakistan Navy detected and blocked an Indian submarine from entering Pakistani waters on October 16, the military's media wing revealed on Tuesday.

Myanmar’s military government has freed hundreds of political prisoners from the notorious Insein prison, including Aung San Suu Kyi’s party spokesman and a famous comedian Zarganar, local media reported.

One of the most senior figures in Afghanistan’s Taliban government has hailed the sacrifices of suicide bombers at a meeting with families of the “martyrs” in Kabul.

Congress leader Milind Deora has called for amendment to India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) to “protect Bangladeshi Hindus”.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by the Pakistani Taliban as a schoolgirl, has urged Afghanistan’s new rulers to let girls return to school.

Afghanistan will kick off its first countrywide polio immunisation campaign in years next month to protect millions of unvaccinated children, the UN said yesterday.

Myanmar’s shadow government, formed by opponents of ruling military, yesterday welcomed the exclusion of junta leader Min Aung Hlaing from an upcoming regional summit, but said it should be the legitimate representative.