World Echo

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged South Korea not to take ​sides between Beijing and Washington, saying the US should abandon its "hostile" policy toward ‌North Korea to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Wang made the remarks in a meeting with South Korea's National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac in Seoul on Thursday, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported, where ​he also met South Korean President Lee Jae Myung. "The fundamental solution to the tensions on ​the Korean Peninsula lies in addressing the root causes of the problem ⁠and urging the United States to abandon its hostile policy toward North Korea," Xinhua cited Wang as saying. China hopes South Korea will "achieve genuine strategic autonomy, refrain from bloc confrontation and ​taking sides, and develop relations with major powers including China and the United States in parallel and without contradiction," Wang said. The remarks came after US Preside...

Russian ballistic missiles ‌killed 12 people and injured more than 30 in Kyiv early on Thursday, authorities said, damaging buildings and severing power supply to some parts of the Ukrainian capital. A fire broke out, and the upper floors of a nine-storey residential block were destroyed in the ​city's Solomianskyi district, where seven people were killed, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, calling for Friday to be ​observed as a day of mourning. Two other districts also suffered damage, Klitschko said on the ⁠Telegram messaging app, with non-residential facilities, warehouses, a school and a children's hospital hit. Power company DTEK said it restored ​electricity to more than half of the roughly 90,000 homes left without power in the capital following the attack. Russia ​has stepped up air attacks on Ukraine in recent months, trying to exploit its smaller neighbour's critical shortage of interceptors to down ballistic missiles. Read: Russia hits steel plant i...

Multiple users, including Saudi-based accounts, have been sharing a video on social media platform X since August 15, 2026, showing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi claiming he had warned Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu about the recently signed Makkah pact. However, the clip is doctored through AI. On August 7, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement in the holy city, aimed at strengthening the collective security of the three countries. The agreement provides for an attack against one member state to be treated as an attack against all. How it started On August 15, an X user based in Saudi Arabia, who had a history of sharing AI-generated content, posted a video of Modi speaking during India’s 80th Independence Day celebrations. The caption read: “‘Breaking: Indian Prime Minister Modi says that he warned Netanyahu before the KSA-Turkey-Pakistan alliance. ‘I told Netanyahu that this alliance will be formed, bu...

Iran has considered striking US military assets in Europe if US President Donald Trump escalates the war, as Tehran weighs options to expand the conflict beyond the Middle East, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. Citing two people close to the Iranian government, the British daily said Iranian forces had assessed potential strikes on US assets in southeastern European countries, including Bulgaria, which last month approved the use of its Bezmer air base by US refuelling aircraft. Cyprus, where a British air base was hit by a drone in March, has also been considered among potential targets in the event of a renewed US offensive, according to one of the sources. Iranian forces have separately examined the possibility of targeting subsea fibre-optic cables in the Strait of Hormuz in the event of further escalation, the report said. One source told the Financial Times that Tehran was preparing options to expand the conflict if Trump followed through on previous threats to...

Gaza remained the world’s deadliest place for humanitarian workers for the third consecutive year, with 186 aid personnel killed in 2025, the United Nations humanitarian office said Wednesday. Sudan ranked second, with 71 aid workers killed during the year, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement marking World Humanitarian Day. Worldwide, 907 humanitarian workers were killed, injured or kidnapped in 2025, setting another record for violence against aid personnel, according to figures from Humanitarian Outcomes’ Aid Worker Security Database. Although the annual death toll fell slightly to 350, the UN humanitarian office said the overall level of violence showed no sign of easing. A further 322 aid workers were injured and 235 kidnapped. Read: UN urges support for Afghan women “More than 1,000 aid workers have been killed in just three years and that is utterly unacceptable,” said Tom Fletcher, UN under-s...

Syria on Tuesday strongly condemned Israeli airstrikes targeting Abu al-Duhur Military Airbase in the eastern countryside of Idlib province as a “flagrant violation” of the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. In a statement, the Foreign Ministry called the attack “an unjustified act of aggression, a flagrant violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and a dangerous escalation that threatens security and stability in the region.” “The continuation of these Israeli attacks since December 8, 2024, at a time when Syria has exercised restraint and worked to consolidate stability and avoid escalation, once again demonstrates the Israeli occupation’s attempts to undermine these efforts and drag the region toward further tension and instability,” the ministry said. 📍 Israeli warplanes carry out four airstrikes on the abandoned Abu al-Duhur military airport in Syria’s Idlib province 💢 No ...