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Thousands of Trucks Stuck as Partial Iran-Pakistan Trade Resumes

Cargo trucks remain halted at the Gabd-Rimdan border crossing in Pakistan's Balochistan province on October 21, 2026, following the temporary suspension of trade between Pakistan and Iran. (AFP)
Cargo trucks remain halted at the Gabd-Rimdan border crossing in Pakistan's Balochistan province on October 21, 2026, following the temporary suspension of trade between Pakistan and Iran. (AFP)
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Thousands of Trucks Stuck as Partial Iran-Pakistan Trade Resumes

Cargo trucks remain halted at the Gabd-Rimdan border crossing in Pakistan's Balochistan province on October 21, 2026, following the temporary suspension of trade between Pakistan and Iran. (AFP)
Cargo trucks remain halted at the Gabd-Rimdan border crossing in Pakistan's Balochistan province on October 21, 2026, following the temporary suspension of trade between Pakistan and Iran. (AFP)

Thousands of trucks remain stranded on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border despite the resumption of limited overland trade between the two countries, southwest Pakistan business representatives told AFP on Monday.

Mir Naveed Jan Kalmati, president of the chamber of commerce for Gwadar city on Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast, said the frontier with Iran was "only partially open" to trade, with a vast backlog of vehicles at the border.

There were "three to four thousand trucks on the Iranian side and two to three thousand trucks on the Pakistani side," Kalmati said.

Only certain vehicles were being allowed across the border to clear the backlog after a week-long closure, he said.

Iran's ambassador to Pakistan, Reza Amiri Moghadam, said on X on Sunday there were no restrictions on the Iranian side, including for the export of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

He blamed the closures on "changes in the implementation of Pakistan's E-Form procedure for imports from Iran", which he said "have created a situation in which traders are effectively and literally unable to dispatch cargo from Iran to Pakistan".

Kalmati said companies on both sides of the border were urging authorities to allow the complete resumption of trade.

He said his members and drivers were "frustrated, they want to go back home, they want to continue their business".

Fida Ahmad Dashti a businessman in Kech district in Pakistan's southwest Balochistan province, said he had been told that only vehicles with paperwork prepared before October 16 were being allowed to cross the border.

Two other businessmen based in Balochistan confirmed their drivers had said only vehicles with documents prepared before October 16 were being allowed across the frontier.

The Gwadar Chamber of Commerce said in a statement on Saturday the suspension of the import of LPG and the "abrupt closure of the border" had led to "disrupting the national LPG supply chain, and causing prices to skyrocket".

Pakistan has attempted to mediate a peace deal in the Middle East war with Iran and its army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, was due to travel to Tehran on Monday, his second visit to the country in less than a week.

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World

Israeli President Says He Won’t Bow to US Pressure on the Next Govt

Israeli President Isaac Herzog addresses a press conference with his Hungarian counterpart Andras Baka (not pictured) at the presidential Sandor Palace in Budapest on October 20, 2026. (AFP)
Israeli President Isaac Herzog addresses a press conference with his Hungarian counterpart Andras Baka (not pictured) at the presidential Sandor Palace in Budapest on October 20, 2026. (AFP)
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Israeli President Says He Won’t Bow to US Pressure on the Next Govt

Israeli President Isaac Herzog addresses a press conference with his Hungarian counterpart Andras Baka (not pictured) at the presidential Sandor Palace in Budapest on October 20, 2026. (AFP)
Israeli President Isaac Herzog addresses a press conference with his Hungarian counterpart Andras Baka (not pictured) at the presidential Sandor Palace in Budapest on October 20, 2026. (AFP)

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said on Monday he won’t bend to pressure from US President Donald Trump on which party he will select first to form a government after Tuesday's national elections.

Herzog’s role is largely ceremonial. No single party is expected to outright win control of the country’s parliament, or Knesset.

The president is expected to tap the leader of the party with the most support to try to build a governing coalition, a process that could drag out for days or weeks, or fail entirely and force Israelis to return to the polls to vote again.

Herzog's remarks came after Trump reiterated his endorsement for Netanyahu, who is in a tight race to remain in power.

Herzog told the MS NOW cable news network that neither Trump nor anyone else “can intervene" and that it was up to him to see “what the facts are.”

World

Nigeria Evacuates Ebola Patient to Switzerland

An ambulance is stationed outside the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria, October 25, 2026. (Reuters)
An ambulance is stationed outside the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria, October 25, 2026. (Reuters)
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Nigeria Evacuates Ebola Patient to Switzerland

An ambulance is stationed outside the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria, October 25, 2026. (Reuters)
An ambulance is stationed outside the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria, October 25, 2026. (Reuters)

The only confirmed case in Nigeria of Africa's latest deadly Ebola outbreak was evacuated Monday by air from Abuja, the capital, to Switzerland, where she has citizenship.

The patient, the 42-year-old wife of a Swiss embassy staff worker based in Abuja, had been traveling in Uganda with her husband before returning to Nigeria.

Her condition was "much improved, stable, conscious, communicating, and her clinical laboratory test results closing towards baseline", said Nigerian health minister Muhammad Ali Pate in a statement.

"This does not mean she is not still infectious," he added.

Fifty-three of the patient's contacts have been identified by the Nigerian health authorities.

The World Health Organization has warned that Africa is facing a "complex" Ebola outbreak, with the virus now present in the west, east and center of the continent.

The outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, for which there is no vaccine or specific treatment, has been ravaging the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has recorded more than 4,600 deaths since May.

Health authorities in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, successfully stemmed a previous Ebola outbreak a dozen years ago.

But some experts are worried about how much the illness could have spread in the time between the woman's arrival on October 3 and her diagnosis, announced October 20.

World

Russia Says It Caught Ukrainian Agents Preparing Close Range Drone Attack on Moscow’s Air Defenses

A bus rolls along a street in central Moscow on October 19, 2026. (AFP)
A bus rolls along a street in central Moscow on October 19, 2026. (AFP)
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Russia Says It Caught Ukrainian Agents Preparing Close Range Drone Attack on Moscow’s Air Defenses

A bus rolls along a street in central Moscow on October 19, 2026. (AFP)
A bus rolls along a street in central Moscow on October 19, 2026. (AFP)

Russia's ‌FSB security service has thwarted a planned Ukrainian drone attack from inside Russia on a key element of Moscow's air defense system and on an electricity facility, the FSB said on Monday, saying it had arrested two men involved in the plot.

The two men, who the FSB said were from the South Caucasus region and had been ‌acting under ‌instructions from Ukraine's SBU security service, ‌had ⁠retrieved First Person ⁠View drones and explosives from two Russian regions, delivered them to the Moscow region, and configured and activated the drones, the FSB said.

The drones were to be remotely controlled from Ukraine, it said.

"It has been ⁠established that one of the ‌suspects was recruited by ‌an SBU officer and, on that officer’s instructions and ‌in return for a promised monetary ‌reward, travelled to Russia to prepare and carry out a sabotage and terrorist attack. To this end, he enlisted the help of an acquaintance ‌from his close circle," the FSB said.

"The suspects were detained by FSB ⁠officers ⁠while preparing to carry out a terrorist attack on an electricity infrastructure facility and on one of the key components of Moscow's missile defense system," it said.

There was no immediate comment from the SBU or from Ukraine, which has intensified its attempted drone attacks on the Russian capital in recent months, as Russia has stepped up its own attacks on Ukrainian power and other infrastructure targets.