Category: 2. World

Deadly clashes erupted along the Thai-Cambodian border, killing at least 11 civilians and one soldier, all on the Thailand side, as a diplomatic crisis deepens between the Southeast Asian neighbours.

Violence intensified on Thursday when both nations exchanged gunfire, with accusations of who initiated the fighting. Diplomatic ties have severely deteriorated since Wednesday, leading Thailand to seal all land border crossings with Cambodia.

The situation has been worsening since a May confrontation that killed one Cambodian soldier, with nationalist sentiments inflaming tensions on both sides.

Thai military sources reported the heaviest casualties in Si Sa Ket province, where six people died during an attack on a petrol station. At least 14 others sustained injuries across three border provinces.

The fighting escalated as Thai forces launched air attacks against Cambodian military positions, while Cambodia reported Thai jets bombing a road near the historic Preah Vihear temple.

Thai Ministry of Defence spokesperson Surasant Kongsiri confirmed ongoing fighting in at least six border areas. Thursday’s initial clash occurred near the ancient Ta Muen Thom Temple on the border between Thailand’s Surin province and Cambodia’s Oddar Meanchey province.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet declared that while his nation has consistently pursued peaceful solutions, “we have no choice but to respond with armed force against armed aggression”.

Earlier on Thursday, Cambodia downgraded diplomatic relations with Thailand to their lowest level, expelling the Thai ambassador and recalling all Cambodian embassy staff from Bangkok. This action followed Thailand’s withdrawal of its ambassador and expulsion of the Cambodian ambassador on Wednesday in protest of a landmine explosion that injured five Thai soldiers.

Regarding Thursday’s initial confrontation, the Thai army reported that it detected an unmanned aerial vehicle before spotting six armed Cambodian soldiers approaching Thailand’s position. Despite Thai soldiers’ verbal attempts to defuse the situation, the Cambodian forces allegedly opened fire first.

A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed in a remote area of Russia’s far eastern Amur region on Thursday, killing all on board, authorities said.

The plane, a Soviet-made twin-propeller Antonov-24, went down in remote, thickly forested terrain, leaving a column of smoke pouring from the crash site and no signs of survivors, according to state media and videos published by investigators.

The Angara Airlines flight was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at around 1pm local time (0400 GMT).

A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 15 kilometres south of Tynda’s airport.

Videos published by Russian investigators showed smoke rising from the crash site and what appeared to be fragments of the plane strewn across the forest floor.

A search and rescue team arrived only hours after the crash at the remote, hard-to-reach site and found no evidence of survivors, according to the state news agency TASS.

Investigators did not say what caused the crash.

Weather conditions at the time of the incident were poor, Angara Airlines CEO Sergei Salamanov told Russia’s REN TV channel.

“The commander made the decision to carry out the flight,” he was quoted as saying.

Tynda, home to around 30,000 people, lies in an area of thick taiga forest about 200km from the Chinese border.

At least one Chinese national was on the flight, state media in China reported.

Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a message of condolence to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

“I would like to express my deep condolences to the victims and sincere sympathy to the families of the victims,” Xi said, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

The plane dropped from radar while attempting a second approach to land at Tynda, regional prosecutors said.

The forest terrain complicated search efforts, a rescuer told the TASS agency.

“The main search operations are being conducted from the air,” it said.

Angara Airlines, a small regional carrier based in the Russian city of Irkutsk, did not immediately release a statement on the crash.

Five children

Russia’s aviation watchdog has not yet given a definitive number of people on board.

The Amur region’s governor, Vasily Orlov, said the plane was carrying 43 passengers and six crew members.
Among the passengers were five children, he said.

The TASS agency cited emergency services as saying the plane was carrying 40 passengers and six crew.

Aviation authorities have opened an investigation.

The plane appeared to have been manufactured almost 50 years ago, during the Soviet era, according to civil aviation database Russianplanes.net.

In 2021, the aircraft’s airworthiness certificate was extended until 2036, data from the site showed.
AFP was not able to immediately verify this information.

The Antonov-24 is a popular, Soviet-designed turboprop plane that first entered into service in 1959.

Russia has taken steps to switch from Soviet aircraft to modern jets in recent years, but ageing light aircraft are still widely used in far-flung regions, with accidents frequent.

The incident comes just days after a Bangladesh air force training jet crashed into a college and school campus in the capital, Dhaka, on Monday, killing 31 and injuring more than 170 people.

India has resumed issuing tourist visas to Chinese nationals after a five-year gap as the two countries continue to explore ways to mend their strained relationship.

The Indian embassy in Beijing made the announcement on Wednesday via the Chinese social media app Weibo, the state-owned Global Times newspaper reported.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said the development was a “positive move” and added that China was willing to work with India to improve the “facilitation of people-to-people exchanges”.

India suspended visas to China, restricted investments and banned several Chinese apps after the 2020 military clashes in Galwan Valley killed at least 20 Indian soldiers.

The site of the clash was on the de facto border – the Line of Actual Control or LAC – between the two countries.

India and China share a border that is more than 3,440km (2,100 miles) long and have overlapping territorial claims.

The two countries had suspended flights and visa services to each other during the pandemic and they remained halted as political tensions skyrocketed in the summer of 2020 following the clash.

But relations have gradually improved. From 2022, China began resuming visa services for Indians and there has been a further upswing since a round of high-level talks between the two sides last year.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Brics summit in Russia last year, where the two leaders agreed to boost communication to resolve conflicts and improve ties.

In June, India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri met China’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Sun Weidong in Delhi, where the two discussed resuming direct flights, sharing data on transnational rivers and improving “people-centric engagements”.

This year between January and April, China issued 85,000 visas to Indians.

In their Weibo post on Wednesday, the Indian embassy said Chinese citizens could begin applying for tourist visas from 24 July in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, in South China’s Guangdong Province.

The move comes ahead of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) defence summit, set to be held in China in August.

Media reports have speculated that Modi may attend the summit. If he does, it will be his first visit to the country since the 2020 clashes.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and top EU officials mark 50 years of diplomatic ties in Beijing at a rocky time in relations.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has said Europe and China must make the “correct strategic choices” in the face of recent global challenges during a summit with top European Union officials, which comes at a particularly rocky time in their relationship.

“Faced with the rapidly evolving global changes of a century and the international situation of intertwined turmoil, Chinese and European leaders must … make correct strategic choices that meet the expectations of the people and stand the test of history,” Xi said, according to state news outlet CCTV.

Xi’s remarks on Thursday followed a meeting with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa, who are in Beijing for the 25th EU-China summit.

The EU and China are marking 50 years of diplomatic relations amid thorny disagreements ranging from the EU-China trade deficit to Beijing’s ongoing support for Russia’s war machine.

The event is the first in-person summit for Chinese and EU leaders since 2023, and more modest than initial plans for a two-day meeting in Europe.

While expectations were low heading into the meeting, the EU and China are expected to sign an agreement on climate change and carbon emissions, Reuters news agency reported, citing European diplomats.

Chinese state media and officials have also billed the summit as a chance for Beijing and the EU to normalise relations at a time of global uncertainty, stirred by United States President Donald Trump and others.

Von der Leyen cast the EU-China meeting in a similarly positive light in a post on X on Thursday.

“This Summit is the opportunity to both advance and rebalance our relationship. I’m convinced there can be a mutually beneficial cooperation,” she wrote. “One that can define the next 50 years of our relations.”

📍Touchdown in Beijing, as we mark 50 years of ties between Europe and China.

This Summit is the opportunity to both advance and rebalance our relationship.

I’m convinced there can be a mutually beneficial cooperation.

One that can define the next 50 years of our relations. pic.twitter.com/0SA3YS4k6V

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) July 24, 2025

India has pushed hundreds of ethnic Bengali-speaking Muslims into Bangladesh without due process, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday, accusing the government of flouting rules and fuelling bias on religious lines.

The Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has long taken a hardline stance on immigration — particularly from Muslim-majority Bangladesh — with top authorities referring to them as “termites” and “infiltrators”.

Critics also accuse the government of sparking fear among India’s estimated 200 million Muslims, especially among speakers of Bengali, which is widely spoken in both eastern India and Bangladesh.

HRW, a New York-based nonprofit, said that India forcibly expelled more than 1,500 Muslim men, women, and children to Bangladesh between May 7 and June 15, quoting Bangladeshi authorities.

“India’s ruling BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) is fuelling discrimination by arbitrarily expelling Bengali Muslims from the country, including Indian citizens,” Elaine Pearson, Asia director at the nonprofit, said.

“The Indian government is putting thousands of vulnerable people at risk in apparent pursuit of unauthorised immigrants, but their actions reflect broader discriminatory policies against Muslims.”

New Delhi insists that the people deported are undocumented migrants.

However, claims by authorities that the expulsions were to manage illegal immigration were “unconvincing”, Pearson added, because of “their disregard for due process rights, domestic guarantees, and international human rights standards”.

‘They were holding guns’

HRW said that it had sent the report’s findings and questions to the country’s home ministry but had received no response.

The report documented the experiences of 18 people.

A 51-year-old daily wage worker told HRW that he “walked into Bangladesh like a dead body” after India’s Border Security Force (BSF) took him to the border after midnight.

“I thought they (the BSF) would kill me because they were holding guns and no one from my family would know,” the report quotes the worker as saying.

Bangladesh, largely encircled by land by India, has seen relations with New Delhi turn icy since a mass uprising in 2024 toppled Dhaka’s government, an ally of India.

India also ramped up operations against migrants in the wake of the attack in India-occupied Kashmir in April that killed 26 people, mainly Hindu tourists.

New Delhi, without evidence, accused Pakistan of supporting the attack, an allegation denied by Islamabad.

In an unprecedented countrywide security drive, Indian authorities detained thousands, with many of them being eventually pushed across the border to Bangladesh.

“The government is undercutting India’s long history of providing refuge to the persecuted as it tries to generate political support,” Pearson said.

India has also been accused of forcibly deporting Muslim Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, with navy ships dropping them off the coast of the war-torn nation.

The Emergencies Ministry says the plane dropped off radar near the Amur region, bordering China.

A Russian passenger plane with 49 people on board has crashed in the country’s far east, leaving no survivors, according to preliminary information, local news agencies reported.

The Ministry of Civil Defence, Emergencies and Disaster Relief said on Thursday that the An-24 plane, operated by Siberia-based airline Angara, dropped off radar screens while approaching its destination, Tynda, a town in the Amur region bordering China.

Russian rescuers found the fuselage of the plane in flames, the Emergencies Ministry said, and debris from the plane was located in Amur, Interfax news agency reported.

“An Mi-8 helicopter operated by Rosaviatsiya [Russia’s civil aviation authority] has spotted the burning fuselage of the aircraft,” the ministry said on Telegram.

According to TASS news agency, an error by the plane’s crew while landing amid poor visibility is one of the possible reasons for the crash.

Regional Governor Vasily Orlov said that, according to preliminary data, there were 43 passengers, including five children, and six crew members on board.

The Emergencies Ministry put the number of people on board somewhat lower, at about 40.

Flying in Russia can be particularly dangerous in the vast country’s isolated hinterland, such as the Arctic and the far east, where weather conditions are frequently extreme.

While Russian aviation safety standards have improved in recent years, accidents, especially involving ageing planes in far-flung regions, are not uncommon.

In 2021, an ageing Antonov An-26 transport plane crashed in the Russian far east, killing six people. All 28 people on board an Antonov An-26 twin-engine turboprop also died in a crash in Kamchatka in July that year.

The country also frequently experiences non-fatal accidents that result in rerouted flights and emergency landings, usually stemming from technical issues.