clashes

Protesters in Iran defied a government crackdown on Saturday night, taking to the streets despite reports suggesting hundreds of people have been killed or wounded by security forces in the past three days.

Videos verified by the BBC and eyewitness accounts appeared to show the government was ramping up its response.

Iran’s attorney general said anyone protesting would be considered an “enemy of God” – an offence that carries the death penalty.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to hit Iran “very hard” if they “start killing people”. Iran’s parliament speaker warned that if the US attacks Iran, Israel and all US military and shipping bases in the region would be legitimate targets.

The protests were sparked by soaring inflation, and have spread to more than 100 cities and towns across every province in Iran. Now protesters are calling for an end to the clerical rule of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei has dismissed demonstrators as a “bunch of vandals” seeking to “please” Trump.

Trump on Saturday said the US “stands ready to help” as Iran “is looking at FREEDOM”.

As protests intensify, the number of deaths and injuries continues to rise. BBC sources and US-based Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRANA) have reported more than 100 people, including security personnel, killed.

Staff at several hospitals told the BBC they have been overwhelmed with the injured and dead, with BBC Persian verifying 70 bodies brought to one hospital in Rasht city on Friday night and a health worker reporting around 38 people dying at a Tehran hospital.

Iran’s police chief said on state TV that the level of confrontation with protesters had been stepped up, with arrests on Saturday night of what he called “key figures”. He blamed a “significant proportion of fatalities” on “trained and directed individuals”, not security forces, but did not give specific details.

More than 2,500 people have been arrested since protests began on 28 December, according to a human rights group.

The BBC and most other international news organisations are unable to report from inside Iran, and the Iranian government has imposed an internet shutdown since Thursday, making obtaining and verifying information difficult.

Nonetheless, some video footage has emerged, and the BBC has spoken to people on the ground.

Several videos, confirmed as recent by BBC Verify, show clashes between protesters and security forces in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city.

Masked protesters are seen taking cover behind bins and bonfires, while a row of security forces is seen in the distance. A vehicle that appears to be a bus is engulfed in flames.

Multiple gunshots and what sounds like banging on pots and pans can be heard.

A figure standing on a nearby footbridge appears to fire multiple gunshots in several directions as a couple of people take cover behind a fence on the side of the boulevard.

In Tehran, a verified video from Saturday night shows protesters also taking over the streets in the Gisha district.

Other verified videos from the capital show a large group of protesters and the sound of banging on pots in Punak Square, and a crowd of protesters marching on a road and calling for the end of the clerical establishment in the Heravi district.

Internet access in Iran is largely limited to a domestic intranet, with restricted links to the outside world. But during the current round of protests, authorities have, for the first time, not only shut down access to the worldwide internet but also severely restricted the domestic intranet.

An expert told BBC Persian the shutdown is more severe than during the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising in 2022.

Alireza Manafi, an internet researcher, said the only likely way to connect to the outside world was via Starlink satellite internet, but warned users to exercise caution, as such connections could potentially be traced by the government.

On Saturday, Trump wrote on social media: “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!”

He did not elaborate, but US media reported that Trump had been briefed on options for military strikes in the country. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported the briefings had taken place, with WSJ describing them as “preliminary discussions”. An unnamed official told the WSJ there was no “imminent threat” to Iran.

Last year, the US conducted airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

As dawn broke on Sunday in Iran, Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah (king), who lives in the US and whose return protesters have been calling for, posted a video to X.

Its caption said: “Your compatriots around the world are proudly shouting your voice… In particular, President Trump, as the leader of the free world, has carefully observed your indescribable bravery and has announced that he is ready to help you.”

He added: “I know that I will soon be by your side.”

He claimed the Islamic Republic was facing a “severe shortage of mercenaries” and that “many armed and security forces have left their workplaces or disobeyed orders to suppress the people”. The BBC could not verify these claims.

Pahlavi encouraged people to continue protesting on Sunday evening, but to stay in groups or with crowds and not “endanger your lives”.

Amnesty International said it was analysing “distressing reports that security forces had intensified their unlawful use of lethal force against protesters” since Thursday.

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said those speaking out against Khamenei’s government should not face “the threat of violence or reprisals”.

At least 78 protesters and 38 security personnel have been killed in the past two weeks, HRANA reported.

BBC Persian has confirmed the identities of 26 people killed, including six children.

A hospital worker in Tehran described “very horrible scenes”, saying there were so many wounded that staff did not have time to perform CPR, and that morgues did not have enough room to store the bodies.

They said many people died “as soon as they reached the emergency beds… direct shots to the heads of the young people, to their hearts as well. Many of them didn’t even make it to the hospital.”

The protests have been the most widespread since an uprising in 2022 sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman who was detained by morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly.

More than 550 people were killed and 20,000 detained by security forces over several months, according to human rights groups.

Additional reporting by Soroush Pakzad and Roja Assadi

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Aleppo governor says the last fighters from the SDF have left the city after the Syrian army took control of the Sheikh Maqsoud neighbourhood.

The last fighters from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have left the city of Aleppo, according to officials, following a ceasefire deal that allowed evacuations after days of deadly clashes.

Aleppo Governor Azzam al-Gharib told Al Jazeera early on Sunday that Aleppo has become “empty of SDF fighters” after government forces coordinated their withdrawal on buses out of the city overnight.

SDF commander Mazloum Abdi (also known as Mazloum Kobani) said the group had reached an understanding through international ⁠mediation on a ceasefire and the safe evacuation of civilians and fighters.

“We have reached an understanding that leads to a ceasefire and securing the evacuation of the dead, the wounded, the stranded civilians and the fighters from the Ashrafieh and Sheikh Maqsoud neighbourhoods to northern and eastern Syria,” he said in a post on X.

“We call on the mediators to adhere to their promises to stop the violations and work towards a safe return for the displaced to their homes,” he added.

The development came after the Syrian army took over the Kurdish-majority neighbourhood of Sheikh Maqsoud following days of clashes that broke out when talks to integrate the SDF into the national army collapsed.

At least 30 people were killed in the clashes, while more than 150,000 were displaced.

More soon…

Violence, designation of ‘closed military zones’ and evacuations of civilians follow collapse of talks aimed at ending standoff over absorption of semiautonomous Kurdish forces by state institutions.

The Syrian army has declared Aleppo’s Kurdish areas “closed military zones” and ordered civilians to leave as clashes with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) extended into a second day.

The Syrian Army Operations Command told Al Jazeera that all SDF military positions in Aleppo neighbourhoods are legitimate targets as sporadic fighting between the government forces and Kurdish-led SDF continued on Wednesday after violence flared the previous day.

The clashes, which killed nine people on Tuesday, according to officials, are the fiercest fighting since the two sides failed to implement a March deal to merge the United States-backed semiautonomous Kurdish administration and military force with Syria’s new government.

The Syrian army announced that two neighbourhoods in Aleppo would become “closed military zones” from 3pm (12:00 GMT). In the meantime, it said, it would operate “humanitarian corridors” to allow civilians to leave.

All “military sites of the SDF organisation within the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighbourhoods of Aleppo are a legitimate military target for the Syrian Arab Army, following the organisation’s major escalation towards the neighbourhoods of Aleppo city and its perpetration of numerous massacres against civilians,” the Army Operations Authority said in a statement.

The SDF noted a large deployment of Syrian army vehicles near the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyah neighborhoods, labelling it a “dangerous indicator that warns of escalation and the possibility of a major war”.

The army, meanwhile, said it “urges our civilian population in the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighbourhoods of Aleppo to immediately stay away from the SDF positions”.

The state news agency SANA reported that the Syrian Civil Defence Forces and Syrian Arab Red Crescent are providing aid to people evacuating.

The Civil Defence said it had evacuated 850 civilians from Aleppo by about midday, citing deteriorating humanitarian conditions and shelling by the SDF.

A Syrian security source reported to Al Jazeera that prisoners have escaped from al-Shafiq prison, which is run by the SDF, to safe areas in Aleppo. He did not specify the number of prisoners that absconded.

Sectarian tensions

Both sides have blamed the other for sparking the violence, which broke out after talks this week between government officials and the main SDF commander stalled with “no tangible results” achieved, according to state media.

The incorporation of the SDF, which controls large chunks of Syria’s north and northeast, into state institutions has remained a subject of consternation since President Ahmed al-Sharaa took office a year ago.

The deal reached in March, in which the SDF agreed “all civil and military institutions in northeastern Syria” would be merged into “the Syrian state, including border crossings, the airport, and oil and gas fields”, has yet to be carried out.

Al-Sharaa’s efforts to amalgamate power and quell sectarian tensions among the numerous groups across Syria after the fall of longtime leader Bashar al-Assad have not been helped by Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has carried out persistent raids and bombardments in a bid to demilitarise southern Syrian regions bordering Israel.

Over the past year, Israel has launched more than 600 air, drone and artillery attacks across Syria, averaging nearly two a day, according to a tally by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

Marie Forestier, a nonresident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council’s Syria Project, told Al Jazeera that the distance between Syrian, Israeli and US goals is “very difficult”, especially given that “Israel is doing everything to destabilise Syria.”

Syrian government troops have been deployed to coastal cities after demonstrations sparked by a mosque explosion escalated into deadly clashes. Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar explains what we know.

Gamal Mansour of the University of Toronto says Syria’s authorities are still in a fragile state-building phase, and the clashes in coastal Syria have exposed gaps in control.

The deployment comes after deadly unrest amid protests by the Alawite minority in the coastal cities.

Syrian government troops have been deployed to the coastal cities of Latakia and Tartous after demonstrations led to deadly clashes in which at least three people were killed and 60 were injured.

It’s the latest turmoil to challenge President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s fledgling government, which has been pushing to stabilise the nation and reintegrate internationally after 14 years of ruinous civil war.

Syria’s Ministry of Defence announced on Sunday that army units with tanks and armoured vehicles had entered the centre of the cities in the country’s west in response to attacks by “outlaw groups” against civilians and security forces, with a mission to restore stability.

Syria’s state news agency SANA, quoting officials, reported that the attacks were carried out by “remnants of the defunct regime” of former President Bashar al-Assad during protests in Latakia.

SANA said 60 people were wounded by “stabbings, blows from stones, and gunfire targeting both security personnel and civilians”.

Clashes reportedly broke out as the protesters were confronted by pro-government demonstrators, and masked gunmen opened fire on security personnel.

The Ministry of Interior said in a statement that a police officer had been among those killed. An Al Jazeera team confirmed that gunfire was directed at Syrian security forces at the Azhari roundabout in Latakia, while two security personnel were also wounded in Tartous after unknown assailants threw a hand grenade at the al-Anaza police station in Baniyas.

Alawite protests

The violence has flared as thousands of Alawite Syrians took to the streets across the religious minority’s heartland in central and coastal parts of Syria on Sunday to protest against violence and discrimination.

The protests were called for by Ghazal Ghazal, an Alawite spiritual leader living outside the country, who had issued a call to “show the world that the Alawite community cannot be humiliated or marginalised” after the deadly bombing of a mosque in Homs on Friday.

The bombing, which killed eight people and was claimed by a Sunni group known as Saraya Ansar al-Sunna, was the latest act of violence against the religious minority, to which the ousted former President al-Assad also belongs and which had huge prominence under his rule.

The protesters also demanded that the government implement federalism – a system that would see power decentralised from Damascus in favour of greater autonomy for minorities – and the release of Alawite prisoners.

“We do not want a civil war, we want political federalism. We do not want your terrorism. We want to determine our own destiny,” Ghazal, head of the Islamic Alawite Council in Syria and abroad, said in a video message on Facebook.

‘We want federalism’

One of the antigovernment protesters on Sunday, Ali Hassan, said the demonstrators sought an end to the ongoing violence against the Alawite community.

“We just want to sleep in peace and work in peace, and we want federalism,” he said. “If this situation continues like this, then we want federalism. Why is it that every day or every other day, 10 of us are killed?”

A counterprotester, Mohammad Bakkour, said he had turned out to show his support for the government.

“We are here to support our new government, which from the very first day of liberation called for peace and for granting amnesty to criminals,” he said, accusing the antigovernment protesters of seeking to “sabotage the new path toward rebuilding the nation”.

“The entire people are calling for one people and one homeland, but they do not want one people or one homeland – they want sectarianism, chaos, problems, and federalism for their personal interests.”

Hundreds of people take to the streets in Tartous and Latakia to demand the release of former soldiers who served ousted leader Bashar al-Assad.

A ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia has come into effect along the border, where almost three weeks of deadly clashes have forced nearly one million people from their homes.

In a joint statement, the defence ministers of the two countries agreed to freeze the front lines where they are now, ban reinforcements and allow civilians living in border areas to return as soon as possible.

The ceasefire took effect at noon local time (05:00 GMT) on Saturday. Once it has been in place for 72 hours, 18 Cambodian soldiers held by Thailand since July will be released, the statement said.

The breakthrough came after days of talks between the two countries, with diplomatic encouragement from China and the US.

The agreement prioritises getting the displaced back to their homes, and also includes an agreement to remove landmines.

Thailand’s Defence Minister Natthaphon Narkphanit described the ceasefire as a test for the “other party’s sincerity”.

“Should the ceasefire fail to materialise or be violated, Thailand retains its legitimate right to self-defence under international law,” he told reporters.

UN human rights chief Volker Türk said he hopes the ceasefire will “pave the way” for peace, while an EU spokesperson urged “good faith” in its implementation.

Thailand had been reluctant to accept the ceasefire, saying the last one was not properly implemented. They also resented what they saw as Cambodia’s efforts to internationalise the conflict.

Unlike the last ceasefire in July, US President Donald Trump was conspicuously absent from this one, although the US State Department was involved.

That ceasefire agreement collapsed earlier this month, when fresh clashes erupted. Both sides blamed each other for the breakdown of the truce.

The Thai army said its troops had responded to Cambodian fire in Thailand’s Si Sa Ket province, in which two Thai soldiers were injured.

Cambodia’s defence ministry said it was Thai forces that had attacked first, in Preah Vihear province, and insisted that Cambodia did not retaliate.

Clashes have continued throughout December. On Friday, Thailand carried out more air strikes inside Cambodia.

The Thai Air Force said it had hit a Cambodian “fortified military position” after civilians had left the area. Cambodia’s defence ministry said the strikes were “indiscriminate attacks” against civilian houses.

How well the ceasefire holds this time depends to a large extent on political will. Nationalist sentiment has been inflamed in both countries.

Cambodia, in particular, has lost many soldiers and a lot of its military equipment. It has been driven back from positions it held on the border, and suffered extensive damage from the Thai air strikes, grievances which could make a lasting peace harder to achieve.

Disagreement over the border dates back more than a century, but tension increased early this year after a group of Cambodian women sang patriotic songs in a disputed temple.

A Cambodian soldier was killed in a clash in May, and two months later, in July, there were five days of intense fighting along the border, which left dozens of soldiers and civilians dead. Thousands more civilians were displaced.

Following intervention by Malaysia and President Trump, a fragile ceasefire was negotiated between the two countries, and signed in late October.

Trump dubbed the agreement the “Kuala Lumpur Peace Accords”. It mandated both sides to withdraw their heavy weapons from the disputed region, and to establish an interim observer team to monitor it.

However, the agreement was suspended by Thailand in November after Thai soldiers were injured by landmines, with Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul announcing that the security threat had “not actually decreased”.

Tensions are flaring along the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border in Central Asia with the Tajik government reporting multiple armed incursions this month, straining its fragile relationship with Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders.

More than a dozen people have been killed in attacks by men whom Tajik authorities call “terrorists” and the resulting clashes with Tajik forces, officials in Dushanbe and Beijing said. Victims include Chinese nationals working in remote areas of the mountainous former Soviet republic.

In the latest fighting this week, at least five people were killed in Tajikistan‘s Shamsiddin Shokhin district, including “three terrorists”, officials said.

Tajikistan has long opposed the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, a country it shares a largely unsecured 1,340km (830-mile) border with.

Despite cautious diplomatic engagement between the two countries to adjust to new regional realities, analysts said, the frequency of the recent border clashes risks eroding the Taliban’s credibility and raises questions about its capacity to enforce order and security.

Here is all we know about the clashes along the Tajik-Afghan border and why they matter:

What’s happening on the Tajik-Afghan border?

The border runs along the Panj river through the remote, mountainous terrain of southern Tajikistan and northeastern Afghanistan.

On Thursday, Tajikistan’s State Committee for National Security said in a statement that “three members of a terrorist organisation” crossed into Tajik territory on Tuesday. The committee added that the men were located the following morning and exchanged fire with Tajik border guards. Five people, including the three intruders, were killed, it said.

Tajik officials did not name the armed men or specify which group they belonged to. The officials, however, said they seized three M-16 rifles, a Kalashnikov assault rifle, three foreign-made pistols with silencers, 10 hand grenades, a night-vision scope and explosives at the scene.

Dushanbe said this was the third attack originating from Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province in the past month that has resulted in the deaths of its personnel.

These attacks, Tajik officials said on Thursday, “prove that the Taliban government is demonstrating serious and repeated irresponsibility and non-commitment in fulfilling its international obligations and consistent promises to ensure security … and to combat members of terrorist organisations”.

The Tajik statement called on the Taliban to “apologise to the people of Tajikistan and take effective measures to ensure security along the shared border”.

Tajikistan has not suggested what the motive for the attacks may be, but the assaults have appeared to target Chinese companies and nationals working in the area.

How is China involved in all this?

Beijing is Tajikistan’s largest creditor and one of its most influential economic partners with a significant footprint in infrastructure, mining and other border-region projects.

China and Tajikistan also share a 477km (296-mile) border running through the high-altitude Pamir Mountains in eastern Tajikistan, adjacent to China’s Xinjiang region.

Two attacks were launched against Chinese companies and nationals in the last week of November. On November 26, a drone equipped with an explosive device attacked a compound belonging to Shohin SM, a private Chinese gold-mining company, in the remote Khatlon region on the Tajik-Afghan border, killing three Chinese citizens.

In a second attack on November 30, a group of men armed with guns opened fire on workers employed by the state-owned China Road and Bridge Corporation, killing at least two people in Tajikistan’s Darvoz district.

Tajik officials said those attacks had originated from villages in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province but did not disclose any affiliation or motive behind the attacks.

Chinese nationals have also come under attack in Pakistan’s Balochistan province and along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

China’s embassy in Dushanbe advised Chinese companies and personnel to evacuate the border area. Chinese officials demanded “that Tajikistan take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of Chinese enterprises and citizens in Tajikistan”.

Who is carrying out these attacks?

While the attackers have not been identified, analysts and observers believe the attacks carry the hallmarks of the ISIL (ISIS) affiliate in Khorasan Province (ISKP), which, they said, aims to discredit Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders.

“The ISKP has attacked foreigners inside Afghanistan and carried out attacks on foreigners inside Afghanistan as a key pillar of their strategy,” said Ibraheem Bahiss, a Kabul-based analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank.

“The aim is to shatter the Taliban’s image as a security provider with whom the regional governments should engage,” Bahiss told Al Jazeera.

How has the Taliban reacted to these attacks?

Kabul expressed its “deep sorrow” over the killings of Chinese workers on November 28.

The Taliban blamed the violence on an unnamed armed group which, it said, is “striving to create chaos and instability in the region and to sow distrust among countries”, and it assured Tajikistan of its full cooperation.

After this week’s clashes, Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s interior minister, said Kabul remains committed to the 2020 Doha Agreement, its deal with the United States for a phased foreign troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in exchange for Taliban commitments to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a base for attacking other countries.

Addressing a police cadet graduation ceremony at the National Police Academy in Kabul on Thursday, Haqqani said Afghanistan posed no threat to other countries and the door to dialogue remains open.

“We want to address problems, distrust or misunderstandings through dialogue. We have passed the test of confrontation. We may be weak in resources, but our faith and will are strong,” he said, adding that security had improved to the extent that Taliban officials now travel across the country without weapons.

The Taliban insists that no “terrorist groups” are operating from Afghanistan. However, in a recent report, the United Nations sanctions-monitoring committee cited the presence of multiple armed groups, including ISKP, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, al-Qaeda, the Turkistan Islamic Party, Jamaat Ansarullah and Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan.

Jamaat Ansarullah is a Tajik group linked to al-Qaeda-aligned networks and active primarily in northern Afghanistan near the Tajik border.

How are relations between Tajikistan and the Taliban?

For decades, the relationship between Tajikistan and the Taliban has been defined by deep ideological hostility and ethnic mistrust with Dushanbe one of the group’s fiercest critics in Central Asia.

In the 1990s, Tajikistan aligned with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, led by Afghan military commander and former Defence Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud.

After the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, Tajikistan stood as the lone holdout among its neighbours in refusing to officially recognise the new government.

However, pragmatic diplomatic engagement quietly began about 2023, driven by economic necessity and shared security fears over the presence of ISKP. Stepping up the restoration of relations, a high-level Tajik delegation visited Kabul in November, the first such visit since the Taliban’s return to power.

But the two governments continue to trade accusations that the other is harbouring “terrorists”, the major thorn remaining in their bilateral relationship, and that drug smuggling is occurring across their border.

The Tajik-Afghan border has long been a major trafficking route for Afghan heroin and methamphetamine into Central Asia and onwards to Russia and Europe, exploiting the area’s rugged terrain and weak policing.

“The rising frequency [of the clashes] is new and interesting and raises a point: whether we might be seeing a new threat emerging,” Bahiss said.

Badakshan province, from which Tajik authorities said the attacks on Chinese nationals originate, presents a complex security situation for the Taliban as it has struggled to stem the threat from armed opposition groups, Bahiss added.

This security issue has been further complicated by the Taliban’s crackdown on poppy cultivation in the province, he said. The Taliban has faced resistance to this policy from farmers in the north. This is largely because the terrain of Badakshan means poppies are the only viable cash crop.

How is the Taliban faring with other neighbours?

Since the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021, some of its neighbours have maintained a pragmatic transactional relationship while others have not.

Relations with Pakistan, previously its patron, have particularly deteriorated. Islamabad accuses Kabul of harbouring fighters of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistan Taliban. Tensions over this issue boiled over in November when Pakistan launched air strikes in Kabul, Khost and other provinces, prompting retaliatory Taliban attacks on border posts.

Dozens of people were killed before a ceasefire was brokered by Qatar and Turkiye. However, both sides have engaged in fighting since, blaming each other for breaking the fragile truce.

The Taliban denies Islamabad’s allegations and has blamed Pakistan for its “own security failures”.

Meanwhile, the Taliban is now invested in developing a new relationship with Pakistan’s archrival, India, with delegations visiting Indian cities for trade and security discussions. New Delhi was earlier part of the anti-Taliban alliance. However, that approach has changed with the deteriorating ties between Pakistan and the Taliban.

A mother and her teenage son died in fighting between the Syrian military and Kurdish-led SDF forces in Aleppo. The violence began shortly after talks in Damascus on integrating SDF forces into the army. Al Jazeera’s Ayman Oghanna is in Aleppo, where a truce has been called.

At least two people have been killed in clashes in Aleppo between Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that control the country’s northeast. Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa signed a deal in March with the SDF to integrate the group into the country’s state institutions by the end of this year.

Fighting has resumed hours before the countries’ foreign ministers meet in Malaysia to discuss steps to de-escalate hostilities.