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A vast Russian overnight attack on Ukraine killed three people and wounded nearly 30, officials said Saturday, with more than 600,000 households left without power after strikes on the grid as the US attempts to broker peace talks. “While everyone is discussing points of peace plans, Russia continues to pursue its ‘war plan’ of two points: to kill and destroy,” Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha wrote Saturday morning as Kyiv residents surveyed the damage after a heavy night of explosions that mostly targeted the capital. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched around 36 missiles and nearly 600 drones in the attack. Moscow has conducted regular large-scale bombardments of Ukraine’s power infrastructure since 2022, but the latest campaign this autumn has pushed Ukrainian cities including Kyiv into a torrid situation, with many households only getting eight hours of power on some of the worst days of blackouts. The deafening roar of generators and the stench of diesel fumes now fill the capital’s avenues, and people use torches at night as streetlights are often out. Ukraine’s energy ministry said the overnight attack had hit power facilities in Kyiv and five other Ukrainian regions. More than 500,000 of the households which lost power were in the capital. Ukraine has been negotiating with the United States on the terms of a peace agreement that Washington is seeking to broker between Kyiv and Moscow to end Russia’s nearly four-year-long war.Kyiv and its European allies say they want peace but pushed back against some of the original terms pushed by the US, with Ukraine unwilling to withdraw from land it currently holds and resisting any restriction on its future ability to join alliances. Yermak was Zelensky’s most important ally but in Kyiv, his opponents say he has accumulated power, gate-keeps access to the president and ruthlessly sidelines critical voices. A former film producer and copyright lawyer, he came into politics with Zelensky in 2019, having previously worked with the now-president during his time as a popular comedian. Yermak was widely considered the second-most influential man in the country and even sometimes nicknamed “vice-president”. “Yermak doesn’t allow anyone to get to Zelensky except loyal people,” a former senior official who worked with Zelensky and Yermak told AFP, describing him as “super paranoid”. “He definitely tries to influence almost every decision,” they added. A senior source in Zelensky’s party said Yermak’s influence over the president was akin to “hypnosis”. Speaking after the raid on Yermak, the European Union backed the work of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies. “We have a lot of respect for those investigations which show that the anti-corruption bodies in Ukraine are doing their work,” said European Commission spokeswoman Paula Pinho. Zelensky had in the summer tried to strip the independence of NABU and SPO, triggering rare wartime protests and forcing him to walk back the decision after criticism from the EU. Yermak had been a stalwart by Zelensky’s side throughout the war. The two men are seen together on official photos of almost all presidential events. According to media reports, their beds stand side by side in the presidential office’s underground bunker, and in their free time, they play table tennis, watch movies or work out. But he is widely unpopular in society and distrusted by two-thirds of the population, according to a March 2025 poll by the Razumkov Centre, an NGO. Ukrainian political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko told AFP before Yermak’s removal that he needed to go to shore up Kyiv’s position in talks with the United States. Alluding to the vulnerability of the moment, Zelensky also stressed that he could not afford to make political missteps at this moment. “Russia really wants Ukraine to make mistakes,” he said. 

Killing of commander has deepened fears of new escalationIsrael has kept up strikes since US-brokered truce a year agoAnalyst says Israel could be using AI to identify future targetsHundreds gathered in Beirut's southern suburbs Monday to mourn Hezbollah's top military commander Haytham Ali Tabtabai and four other fighters from the Lebanese group killed in an Israeli strike on the city's outskirts the previous day.The targeted assassination by Israel - a type of operation that had become rarer since a ceasefire was agreed last year - came a day after Lebanon marked its Independence Day and deepened fears of a renewed Israeli escalation. As the mass funeral snaked its way through neighbourhoods in the Lebanese capital's southern suburbs Monday, chants rang out against Israel and the United States. Both countries have been pressuring Lebanon to move faster to disarm Hezbollah, in line with the 2024 ceasefire agreement."We will not leave our weapons, we will not leave our land!" the mourners chanted. Top Hezbollah political officials attended the funeral in person but it was unclear if any military officials were present.The November 2024 US-brokered ceasefire was meant to end a year of fighting between Hezbollah and the Israeli military, triggered by Hezbollah's rocket fire on Israeli posts a day after the October 2023 storming of Israel by its Palestinian ally Hamas. During that war, Israel killed Hezbollah's then-leader Hassan Nasrallah, his expected successor and much of the group's top military brass.Tabtabai, 57, rose through the ranks swiftly to fill roles left by slain commanders, according to the Israeli military and a Lebanese security source. After the truce, he was appointed the group's top military official and sat on its Fighter Council, the body responsible for military operations.A Lebanese security source said Israel now appeared to be targeting the group's "next generation" after having killed most of the group's founding leadership."Israel is peeling them off layer by layer," said a Western diplomat who works on Lebanon.Israel has sustained near-daily strikes on Lebanon since the truce, targeting what it says are Hezbollah arms depots, fighters and efforts by the group to rebuild. It has ratcheted up the strikes in recent weeks.Israel has also continued to gather intelligence on Hezbollah's activities using surveillance drones, a Lebanese security source said. Monday, Israeli drones flew over Beirut, Lebanon's south and its eastern Bekaa Valley, according to the source.Israel's advanced capabilities have worried Hezbollah's supporters. Malek Ayoub, a retired military analyst, told Hezbollah's Al Manar television station Monday that Israel could be using facial recognition technology to identify Hezbollah figures from the station's coverage of Tabtabai's funeral."Artificial intelligence can identify any of those faces to build Israel's bank of targets," Ayoub said.

A suicide bombing killed three Pakistani paramilitary personnel Monday at a security headquarters in Peshawar city, officials said, the latest deadly violence in the province bordering Afghanistan.Witness Bilal Ahmed, a hospital employee, said he was on his way to work when he heard a "large blast" from the border force facility, located on one of the city's busiest routes and across the street from a shopping mall.An AFP reporter saw body parts of a suspected bomber lying outside the main gate on Saddar Road, which was riddled with shrapnel holes. A single discarded black shoe was left nearby.Rescue workers made their way through the scene, which was peppered with shattered glass from a vehicle.One assailant detonated explosives at around 8:10am, just before rush hour, killing "three FC (Federal Constabulary) personnel deployed at the gate", said Peshawar police chief Mian Saeed.Security forces shot dead two other suspected attackers, Saeed said.Four people were wounded in the attack, he added.Security personnel in high-visibility jackets cordoned off the road, while armed forces in camouflage began combing the area, AFP correspondents saw."The attack has concluded, and a clearance operation is under way to determine whether any unexploded ordnance is present," Zulfiqar Hameed, the police chief of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told AFP.The province, whose capital is Peshawar, borders Afghanistan and has seen repeated bouts of militant violence which has intensified since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021.Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned Monday's attack and said that "the perpetrators of this incident should be identified as soon as possible and brought to justice."He also praised the "timely action" of security forces for averting greater loss of life."We will thwart the evil designs of terrorists who attack Pakistan's integrity," said Sharif.No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Pakistan's state-run broadcaster PTV reported that the assailants had been identified as Afghan nationals.Pakistan has blamed previous attacks on militants, particularly the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which it claims operate from Afghan soil.Kabul denies the charge, saying Islamabad must address its own security failings.On November 11, a suicide bomber killed 12 people outside a court building in the capital Islamabad, an attack Pakistan said was planned from Afghanistan. A faction of the Pakistani Taliban claimed that assault.Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have sharply deteriorated in recent months.Deadly cross-border clashes last month killed more than 70 people on both sides, in the South Asian neighbours' worst fighting in years.The two countries agreed to a fragile ceasefire but failed to finalise its terms after several rounds of talks, each blaming the other for the impasse.

Gaza's civil defence agency said 21 people were killed and dozens more wounded in multiple Israeli air strikes Saturday, as Hamas and Israel again traded allegations of violating the fragile ceasefire. Saturday was one of the deadliest days since the US-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas came into effect on October 10, after two years of war.Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency which operates under Hamas authority, said there were "21 martyrs this evening in five separate Israeli air strikes, in a clear violation of the ceasefire in Gaza".They included seven killed and more than 16 injured in a strike on a house in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, and four killed and several injured in an air strike on a residential apartment in the Al-Nasr district, west of Gaza City, he said.The first reported strike targeted a vehicle in the Al-Rimal neighbourhood in western Gaza City. Five people were killed and several injured, said Bassal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office accused Hamas of breaching the truce agreement. "We again call on the mediators to insist that Hamas fulfil its side of the ceasefire." In a statement, Hamas said the "escalation" of Israeli violations were "attempts to undermine the ceasefire".

Heavy rain, severe flooding and landslides in Vietnam have killed at least 90 people in the last week, authorities said Sunday, leaving others stranded on rooftops and mountain roadways blocked. Relentless rain has lashed south-central Vietnam since late October and popular holiday destinations have been hit by several rounds of flooding, with economic losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.Whole sections of coastal Nha Trang city were inundated last week, while deadly landslides struck highland passes around the Da Lat tourist hub. In the hard-hit mountainous province of Dak Lak, 61-year-old farmer Mach Van Si said the floodwaters left him and his wife stranded on their sheet-metal rooftop for two nights."Our neighborhood was completely destroyed. Nothing was left. Everything was covered in mud," he told AFP on Sunday. By the time they climbed a ladder to their roof, Si said he was no longer scared. "I just thought we were going to die because there was no way out," he said. More than 60 deaths, of the 90 recorded since November 16, were in Dak Lak, where tens of thousands of homes were inundated, the environment ministry said in a statement.At the Tuy Hoa market in the province, the floodwaters have receded but Vo Huu Du, 40, said some of the hats, bags and shoes she sells were still soaked or lying in mud. "My goods look like one big soggy mess," she told AFP. "I don't even know where to start." She and other vendors once considered five centimetres (two inches) off the ground a safe level to raise their merchandise to avoid flood damage -- but no more."All these years, the highest water level back in 1993 only reached our ankles," said Du. "But now the water has come in over one metre (three feet) high." "All the vendors are devastated, not just me," she added. Ceramics seller Nguyen Van Thoai, 60, gestured to piles of damaged goods to be cleared from paths between vendor stalls, calling it "a real loss"."I don't even know where to put all this market stock," he said. "We might need to clean it for a month and still won't be done." More than 80,000 hectares (200,000 acres) of rice and other crops across Dak Lak and four other provinces were damaged in the last week, with over 3.2 million livestock or poultry killed or washed away by floodwaters.Authorities have used helicopters to airdrop aid to communities cut off by flooding and landslides, with the government deploying tens of thousands of personnel to deliver clothing, water-purification tablets, instant noodles and other supplies to affected areas, state outlet Tuoi Tre News said.Several locations on national highways remained blocked on Sunday due to flooding or landslides, according to the environment ministry, and some railway sections were still suspended. The ministry estimated economic losses of $343mn across five provinces due to the floods.Natural disasters have left 279 people dead or missing in Vietnam and caused more than $2bn in damage between January and October, according to the national statistics office. The Southeast Asian nation is prone to heavy rain between June and September, but scientists have identified a pattern of human-driven climate change making extreme weather more frequent and destructive.

An Israeli strike in southern Lebanon killed one person Saturday, Lebanon's health ministry said, in the latest attack despite a nearly year-long ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah group. In a statement, the ministry attributed the death to "an Israeli enemy strike" on a vehicle in Zawtar al-Sharqiyah.The ministry also reported that a grenade dropped by an Israeli drone in the southern town of Shaqra wounded five people. Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) reported several more strikes elsewhere in the south and east, but no casualties reported so far.The Israeli military said it struck "several Hezbollah launchers that were recently identified and placed in military sites in southern Lebanon". The army also hit "two Hezbollah military sites... including weapons storage facilities and additional military structures", according to its statement. It did not immediately comment on the deadly incident in Zawtar al-Sharqiyah.The NNA identified the man killed as Kamel Reda Qarnabash, saying he was driving at the time. The Israeli army earlier Saturday had said that it killed a Hezbollah member in a strike the day before. "In a targeted strike the (Israeli army) eliminated a Hezbollah fighter in the Froun area in southern Lebanon" on Friday, the military said in a statement.It alleged the Hezbollah member had "advanced fighter attacks against the State of Israel" and its forces. The Lebanese health ministry said Friday that an Israeli strike on a vehicle in Froun killed one person. Lebanon has accused Israel of violating the ceasefire agreement reached in November 2024 — which sought to halt more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah — by continuing its strikes and maintaining forces inside its territory.Israel has said Hezbollah is working to rebuild its military capabilities, accusing the group of breaking the ceasefire terms. According to the health ministry, more than 330 people have been killed in Lebanon and 945 wounded since the ceasefire.An Israeli strike on Tuesday night on the Ain al-Hilweh camp for Palestinian refugees in southern Lebanon killed 13 people. On Friday, Israel said it had targeted "fighters" from the Palestinian Hamas group, allied with Hezbollah, in the strike on the camp on the outskirts of the coastal city of Sidon. Israel's military "is operating against Hamas's establishment in Lebanon", it said in Friday's statement.A secondary school in the camp said in a statement on its Facebook page on Thursday that two of its students were killed, publishing an image of two adolescent boys. The US has sought to pressure the Lebanese government to make Hezbollah hand over its weapons, which the group has so far refused to do.

Standing beside the mound of rubble that was once his home, Ahmed Salim cannot hold back the tears as he struggles to retrieve the bodies of loved ones trapped underneath tonnes of debris. Over 30 people were killed when his home was struck, he told AFP, among them "my wife, my children, my mother, my father". "I'm the only one who survived," he said, pointing to the pile of broken concrete and twisted metal that was once a five-storey building in Gaza City's Zeitoun neighbourhood.The building was destroyed on December 24, 2024 and he has been waiting ever since to retrieve their bodies and give them a proper burial. "The only thing that matters to me is to be able to bury them," the 43-year-old said. After two years of war between Israel and Hamas that ravaged the Gaza Strip, thousands of other Palestinians are in a similar situation. According to UN data, as of late September, the Israeli military had damaged or destroyed around 83 % of the buildings in Gaza that stood prior the war.The densely-populated Palestinian territory is covered in 61.5mn tonnes of debris: nearly 170 times the weight of New York City's Empire State Building. Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza's civil defence agency, estimates that about 10,000 bodies are buried under the rubble. "We cannot extract thousands of bodies without heavy machinery. We need the means to lift the roofs and the tonnes of cement," said Bassal, whose organisation conducts search and rescue operations in Gaza.Iyad Rayan holds out the same hope as Salim: burying his wife and children with dignity. "My wife, my son Samir and my daughter Lana are still here under the rubble," he told AFP by the wreckage of his Gaza City home, which he said was destroyed in early October this year. "I want to send an appeal to the whole world: help me retrieve them," the 55-year-old said. Amal Abdel Aal is waiting for heavy equipment to enter the Gaza Strip so the bodies of her son and brother can be recovered.They have been under the rubble in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City since the early days of the two-year war. "They never leave my thoughts. My heart aches at the thought of dogs reaching their bodies and eating them," said the 57-year-old woman now living in southern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter during the war. "I will only find relief when I have buried them, even if only a single bone remains." After the ceasefire began on October 10, Israel allowed Egyptian bulldozers to enter Gaza to help recover the remains of hostages, to be returned under the US-brokered truce deal."The world is unfair. We see bulldozers digging to retrieve the Israeli prisoners, while no one cares about the thousands of our martyrs," said Abdel Aal. 'SADNESS, LOSS AND PAIN' The October 2023 Hamas storming of Israel resulted in the war. Israel's retaliatory assault on Gaza killed more than 69,500 people, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the UN considers reliable.Since the ceasefire, Palestinians have been able to recover around 500 bodies in areas that emergency workers could access following the partial withdrawal of Israeli forces, Bassal said. The halt in fighting allowed Amer Abu al-Tarabish to return to Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, he said, to extract the bodies of his parents from the ruins of their family home "with my bare hands". "My parents, my brother and his children, his wife, my uncle, his wife and their children... Thirty people remained under the rubble for more than a year," he said. "I pulled out their bodies intact; they were not decomposed," he recounted, adding that he was "overwhelmed by sadness, loss and pain". "I was able to bring them out one by one, say goodbye to them, and imprint their faces in my memory before burying them." For other Gaza residents, even this small consolation may never come.Bassal noted that thousands of people had been reported missing, especially during major population displacements as the fighting shifted. "We don't know whether they were killed or arrested" by Israeli forces, he said. As for families who buried their loved ones hastily during the war, many consider those graves to be temporary, or feel that proper rites have not yet been observed. Mohammed Naim, 47, said his family had to bury 43 relatives in just seven graves. "We placed the remains of each family in a single grave," he said. "But we swore over their graves that we would exhume them and rebury them, with dignity, in Gaza City."

At least 25 Palestinians were killed in four Israeli airstrikes Wednesday in a part of Gaza under Hamas control since a shaky ceasefire took effect in October, health authorities said. Medics said 10 people were killed in the Gaza City suburb of Zeitoun, two in Shejaia suburb to the east and the rest in two separate attacks in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.**media[383862]**The Israeli military said its forces struck Hamas targets across Gaza after members of the Palestinian fighters fired on its troops in violation of the nearly six-week-old ceasefire. No Israeli forces were injured. Repeated shooting incidents have pointed to the fragility of the ceasefire.Israel and Hamas have traded blame for what both call violations of the US-brokered truce, the first stage of President Donald Trump's 20-point plan for a post-war Gaza. All three attacks were far beyond an agreed-upon imaginary "yellow line" separating the areas under Israeli and Palestinian control, according to medics, witnesses and Palestinian media.**media[383863]**The Zeitoun attack was on a building belonging to Muslim religious authorities and the Khan Younis attack was on a UN-run club, both of which house displaced families. The October 10 ceasefire in the two-year Gaza war has eased the conflict, enabling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to Gaza’s ruins.Israel has pulled troops back from city positions, and aid flows have increased. But violence has not completely halted. Palestinian health authorities say Israeli forces have killed 305 people in strikes on Gaza since the truce, nearly half of them in one day last week when Israel retaliated for an attack on its troops. Israel says three of its soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire began.

A landslide on Indonesia’s Java island has killed at least 11 people, an official said Saturday, updating a previous tally as rescuers scrambled to find 12 others who are still missing. The landslide, caused by heavy rainfall, hit three villages in Central Java province on Thursday, burying some houses and damaging others.“As of Saturday afternoon, the number of victims who were found dead is 11, while 12 more are still being searched for,” local search and rescue chief Muhammad Abdullah told AFP. More than 700 personnel from the search and rescue office, military and police as well as volunteers were involved in the operation. A spokesman for the national disaster agency had previously reported that two bodies were found on Thursday. Another was recovered on Friday and eight more on Saturday, according to Abdullah.The government has deployed excavators and tracking dogs to assist the search. The national weather service had warned earlier this week of extreme conditions that could cause hydrometeorological disasters, with heavy rainfall expected across several regions on Indonesia in the coming weeks. The annual monsoon season, typically between November and April, often brings landslides, flash floods and water-borne diseases. Climate change has impacted storm patterns, including the duration and intensity of the season, resulting in heavier rainfall, flash flooding and stronger wind gusts. Earlier in November, flash floods and landslides in a remote area of Papua killed at least 15 people.

US President Donald Trump said on Friday he thought Thailand and Cambodia were "going to be fine" after he sought to mediate a flare-up in their border dispute, but the Thai leader continued to demand an apology from Phnom Penh. Thailand this week suspended a US-brokered ceasefire deal and demanded an apology over allegations that Cambodia had laid fresh landmines that injured Thai soldiers, which Cambodia denies.Long-running tensions over a disputed border between the two Southeast Asian nations erupted into five days of fighting in July, when at least 48 people were killed and an estimated 300,000 temporarily displaced, before Trump and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim brokered the ceasefire."I spoke to the prime ministers of both countries and they’re doing great. I think they’re going to be fine," Trump told reporters on Friday evening. But Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said on Saturday that Bangkok would not adhere to the agreement until Cambodia admitted its violation and issued an apology for the latest incident.Anutin posted on Facebook after speaking to Trump and Malaysia's Anwar that Thailand has the right to take any action necessary to protect its sovereignty and ensure the safety of its people and property from foreign threats. He said he asked Trump and Anwar, who has been a mediator in the dispute, to tell Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet to abide by the agreement and not to interfere in the removal of mines.Hun Manet said in a Facebook post on Saturday that Phnom Penh would continue to implement the deal and hoped both sides would continue to work together in accordance with the agreed principles and mechanism. Trump also engaged with Malaysia on Friday, a White House official said.Anwar posted on X that Cambodia and Thailand were ready to "continue choosing the space for dialogue and diplomatic efforts as an effective path to resolution."

Nine people were killed and 31 injured when confiscated explosives accidentally blew up at a police station in Indian-administered Kashmir, police said Saturday, just days after a car blast in Delhi killed a dozen people.The incident happened in Nowgam and the explosives at the police station were recovered from Faridabad in the northern state of Haryana earlier this week, just hours before the powerful blast in Delhi that killed 12 people.Samples from the recovered material were being sent for further forensic examination since Thursday, the region's director general of police Nalin Prabhat said, and the procedure was being handled with "utmost caution" due to its "unstable and sensitive nature"."However, unfortunately during this course (on Friday) around 11:20 pm, an accidental explosion has taken place. Any other speculation into the cause of this incident is unnecessary," he told reporters.The victims included police personnel, forensic team members and two crime photographers and other members from the local administration."The building of the police station has been severely damaged and the adjacent buildings have been affected," he added.Local media reported that the militant organisation People's Anti-Fascist Front (PAFF), said to be close to the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) group, had taken responsibility for the explosion, but the region's police dismissed the claims.Attacks blamed on JeM include the 2001 assault on India's parliament, and the 2019 Pulwama suicide bombing, which killed 40 security personnel."The claim of PAFF or any other Pakistani terrorist group is patently false, baseless and mischievous!" the Jammu and Kashmir police said in a post on X.The explosion comes just days after powerful blast on Monday killed at least 12 people and wounded 30 others in the Indian capital New Delhi.It was the most significant security incident since April 22, when 26 mainly Hindu civilians were killed at the tourist site of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, triggering clashes with Pakistan.India's government on Wednesday vowed to bring the "perpetrators, their collaborators, and their sponsors" of the deadly car blast in the heart of the capital to justice and called it an act of terrorism.ash/mtp

A suicide bomber killed 12 people in Pakistan's capital Tuesday in a sharp escalation of militant violence that the defence minister said had pushed the country into a "state of war".Pakistani government ministers accused neighbouring Afghanistan of complicity in the bloodshed — an accusation Kabul denied — and vowed retaliation if Afghan authorities failed to rein in the militants Islamabad says were responsible."We are in a state of war," said Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif after the attack, the first strike on civilians in Islamabad in a decade. "Bringing this war to Islamabad is a message from Kabul, to which Pakistan has the full power to respond."Pakistan is locked in confrontation with Kabul and New Delhi, fighting a four-day war with India in May and then last month carrying out airstrikes in Afghanistan, including Kabul, in response to what it said was the presence of Pakistani militants there. Subsequent skirmishes on the Pakistan-Afghan border were followed by unsuccessful peace talks.No group claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attack, in which a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a busy lower court in Islamabad. It happened hours after militants stormed a school near the Afghan border on Monday, killing three people.Attackers were still holed up inside the compound late Tuesday, with around 500 students and staff trapped in another part of the complex.The main Pakistani jihadist group, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, otherwise known as the Pakistani Taliban, denied involvement in the attacks.Pakistani Taliban militants have in recent years focused attacks on security forces. Civilians had not been hit in Islamabad for a decade, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a group that tracks attacks.**media[380275]**Islamabad says that the Pakistani Taliban and other militants are based in Afghanistan, with the support of India."We are totally clear that Afghanistan has to stop them. In case of a failure, we have no option but to take care of those terrorists who are attacking our country," Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said, speaking at the scene of the court bombing.Naqvi said that the school assailants were in contact with their handlers in Afghanistan during the attack. He said the authorities are investigating the backers of the court bombing, adding that an attack in Islamabad "carried a lot of messages". The Taliban administration in Kabul said in a statement that it "expresses its deep sorrow and condemnation" of the attacks. A spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on Pakistan's accusations. Kabul denies that its territory is used for attacks on other countries. India denies supporting militants against Pakistan. The attacks in Pakistan came a day after an explosion in the Indian capital, which killed eight people."These targets are clearly an attempt to spread panic in society," said Muhammad Saeed, a retired three-star general."The terrorists have a huge country supporting them and another country providing them space," he added, referring to India and Afghanistan.Abdul Basit, Senior Associate Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore, said that in recent weeks, new militant factions had emerged, which appeared aimed at allowing the TTP plausible deniability for attacks."They are sending a signal: if there will be strikes in Kabul, Islamabad will not be safe," said Basit. "And they are signalling that they can change their modus operandi to indiscriminate violence."The suicide bombing outside an Islamabad court wounded 27 people, in addition to at least 12 killed, Interior Minister Naqvi said. The court bomber blew himself up near the entrance at around lunchtime.Images on local media showed people covered in blood lying next to a police van. A vehicle was seen on fire and another car was badly damaged. Police cordoned off the site.Naqvi said the bomber had tried to enter the court building on foot but, unable to find a way in, detonated the device outside, close to a police vehicle. Several of the wounded were in critical condition, a hospital source said.The attack on the school in Wana, in the north west, began Monday, when a suicide vehicle rammed the main entrance, killing three people, Naqvi said.Militants then entered the school, which is run by the military but educates civilians. By Tuesday evening, three militants were still inside the compound, security officials said, with rescue operations under way for the students trapped in another part of the school.Analysts said that it seemed to be an attempt to replicate a 2014 attack on another army-run school in the north west, in which more than 130 children were killed.