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pakistan
Hundreds Reportedly Killed as 'Open War' Breaks Out Between Pakistan and Afghanistan
A spokesperson for the head of the United Nations implored both sides to "seek to resolve any differences through diplomacy."
Feb 27, 2026
This is a developing story... Please check back for updates...
Pakistan's defense minister said Friday that his country and Afghanistan are in an "open war" after Afghan forces attacked Pakistani border troops in what Kabul characterized as retaliation for recent airstrikes.
Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, responded to the attack on its border troops with airstrikes on at least three Afghan provinces early Friday, reportedly killing more than 220 people. A spokesperson for Afghanistan's Taliban government said its forces killed dozens of Pakistanis in Thursday's onslaught.
Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Pakistan on Friday, said that "we were able to see and hear outgoing fire from the Pakistani side that appears to be heavy artillery, which means that the clashes are still continuing."
Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, said the UN chief is alarmed by the escalating hostilities and urged the "parties to continue to seek to resolve any differences through diplomacy."
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'Intellexa Leaks' Reveal Wider Reach of Predator Spyware
“This investigation provides one of the clearest and most damning views yet into Intellexa’s internal operations and technology," said Amnesty International Security Lab technologist Jurre van Bergen.
Dec 04, 2025
Highly invasive spyware from consortium led by a former senior Israeli intelligence official and sanctioned by the US government is still being used to target people in multiple countries, a joint investigation published Thursday revealed.
Inside Story in Greece, Haaretz in Israel, Swiss-based WAV Research Collective, and Amnesty International collaborated on the investigation into Intellexa Consortium, maker of Predator commercial spyware. The "Intellexa Leaks" show that clients in Pakistan—and likely also in other countries—are using Predator to spy on people, including a featured Pakistani human rights lawyer.
“This investigation provides one of the clearest and most damning views yet into Intellexa’s internal operations and technology," said Amnesty International Security Lab technologist Jurre van Bergen.
🚨Intellexa Leaks:"Among the most startling findings is evidence that—at the time of the leaked training videos—Intellexa retained the capability to remotely access Predator customer systems, even those physically located on the premises of its govt customers."securitylab.amnesty.org/latest/2025/...
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— Vas Panagiotopoulos (@vaspanagiotopoulos.com) December 3, 2025 at 9:07 PM
Predator works by sending malicious links to a targeted phone or other hardware. When the victim clicks the link, the spyware infects and provide access to the targeted device, including its encrypted instant messages on applications such as Signal and WhatsApp, as well as stored passwords, emails, contact lists, call logs, microphones, audio recordings, and more. The spyware then uploads gleaned data to a Predator back-end server.
The new investigation also revealed that in addition to the aforementioned "one-click" attacks, Intellexa has developed "zero-click" capabilities in which devices are infected via malicious advertising.
In March 2024, the US Treasury Department sanctioned two people and five entities associated with Intellexa for their alleged role "in developing, operating, and distributing commercial spyware technology used to target Americans, including US government officials, journalists, and policy experts."
"The proliferation of commercial spyware poses distinct and growing security risks to the United States and has been misused by foreign actors to enable human rights abuses and the targeting of dissidents around the world for repression and reprisal," the department said at the time.
Those sanctioned include Intellexa, its founder Tal Jonathan Dilian—a former chief commander of the Israel Defense Forces' top-secret Technological Unit—his wife and business partner Sara Aleksandra Fayssal Hamou; and three companies within the Intellexa Consortium based in North Macedonia, Hungary, and Ireland.
In September 2024, Treasury sanctioned five more people and one more entity associated with the Intellexa Consortium, including Felix Bitzios, owner of an Intellexa consortium company accused of selling Predator to an unnamed foreign government, for alleged activities likely posing "a significant threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States."
The Intellexa Leaks reveal that new consortium employees were trained using a video demonstrating Predator capabilities on live clients. raising serious questions regarding clients' understanding of or consent to such access.
"The fact that, at least in some cases, Intellexa appears to have retained the capability to remotely access Predator customer logs—allowing company staff to see details of surveillance operations and targeted individuals raises questions about its own human rights due diligence processes," said van Bergen.
"If a mercenary spyware company is found to be directly involved in the operation of its product, then by human rights standards, it could potentially leave them open to claims of liability in cases of misuse and if any human rights abuses are caused by the use of spyware," he added.
Dilian, Hamou, Bitzios, and Giannis Lavranos—whose company Krikel purchased Predator spyware—are currently on trial in Greece for allegedly violating the privacy of Greek journalist Thanasis Koukakis and Artemis Seaford, a Greek-American woman who worked for tech giant Meta. Dilian denies any wrongdoing or involvement in the case.
Earlier this week, former Intellexa pre-sale engineer Panagiotis Koutsios testified about traveling to countries including Colombia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mexico, Mongolia, the United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan, where he pitched Predator to public, intelligence, and state security agencies.
The new joint investigation follows Amnesty International's "Predator Files," a 2023 report detailing "how a suite of highly invasive surveillance technologies supplied by the Intellexa alliance is being sold and transferred around the world with impunity."
The Predator case has drawn comparisons with Pegasus, the zero-click spyware made by the Israeli firm NSO Group that has been used by governments, spy agencies, and others to invade the privacy of targeted world leaders, political opponents, dissidents, journalists, and others.
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Nearly 200 Killed in One Day in Pakistan Flooding Fueled by Climate Crisis
"The death toll may rise as we are still looking for dozens of missing people," said a spokesperson for an emergency agency in northwestern Pakistan.
Aug 15, 2025
Five people on a helicopter rescue team were among nearly 200 people killed by extreme rainfall and flooding in Pakistan in a single day on Friday—the country's latest emergency caused by increasingly severe monsoon seasons, which scientists say are being fueled by the human-caused climate crisis.
The vast majority of deaths were recorded in mountainous areas in the northwestern region, with at least 171 people killed on Friday in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
As the Associated Press reported, "cloudbursts," or sudden and intense downpours over small areas, have become increasingly common in India and northern Pakistan in recent years and have caused landslides and flooding.
Pakistan has faced more extreme heatwaves and abnormal torrential downpours during its monsoon season, which typically occurs from June-September. Glaciers like those in the Gilgit-Balistan region, which hold 75% of Pakistan's stored water supply, have also been melting faster due to higher temperatures—another cause of flash floods. Several landslides have been reported along the Karakoram Highway in that region, which is heavily used by tourists and for trade.
International scientists at the World Weather Attribution said last week that rainfall in Pakistan from June 24-July 23 was 10-15% higher than it would have been without planetary heating linked to fossil fuel emissions, which have steadily risen since the 1950s with wealthy countries including the United States being the biggest contributors.
The death toll from the current ongoing extreme weather, which is expected to continue in the coming days, will likely rise significantly, said officials on Friday.
Authorities suspended an annual Hindu pilgrimage to a Sufi shrine in the northwestern Buner district, which began July 25 and was supposed to continue until early September.
About 78 people have been killed in Buner, mostly by floodwaters that swept them away and houses that collapsed.
Officials were helping nearly 4,000 pilgrims evacuate the area on Friday, building makeshift bridges to help people cross waterways and using dozens of excavators to move boulders, uprooted trees, and other debris.
"The death toll may rise as we are still looking for dozens of missing people," provincial emergency service spokesperson Mohammad Suhail told the AP.
A merchant in the Buner district told the New York Times that he had lost thousands of dollars in goods.
"Everything I had, groceries, edible items, is destroyed," Syed Mehmood Bacah said. "I could not save anything."
The disaster comes three years after Pakistan's worst monsoon season on record, in which flooding killed more than 1,700 people and caused an estimated $40 billion in damages.
Pakistan has become the world's fifth-most vulnerable country to climate disasters despite contributing only about 1% of the world's fossil fuel emissions.
The National Disaster Management Authority said the total number of rain-related deaths has now reached at least 556 since June 26, with more than 700 people injured.
Northern India has also been affected by flash flooding this week, with at least 44 people killed and more than 100 others injured in the Indian-controlled part of Jammu and Kashmir.
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