Pakistan and Afghanistan exchanged cross-border attacks overnight in a dramatic escalation of tensions that led Pakistan’s defense minister to say on Friday that the two countries are in a state of “open war.” 
  
Afghanistan launched a cross-border attack on Pakistan late Thursday, saying it was in retaliation for deadly Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan border areas Sunday. Pakistan then carried out airstrikes in Kabul and two other Afghan provinces early Friday, saying it targeted military installations. 
  

A United Nations investigative body has warned that South Sudan risks “a return to full-scale war” unless it can urgently put an end to entrenched impunity and widespread abuses amid escalating violence in the world’s youngest country. 
  

Colombia is at risk of “reverting to the serious human rights situation” it faced before a peace deal with the nation’s largest rebel group improved security conditions, the United Nations warned Thursday, adding that an uptick of violence in rural areas could also “undermine” the nation’s upcoming elections. 
  

Deadly attacks by Sudanese paramilitary forces on a town in Sudan’s western Darfur region have displaced more than 3,000 people in the past few days, a doctors group said Thursday as the war in the African country nears its three-year mark with no end in sight. 
  
The statement from the Sudan Doctors Network, which tracks the country’s brutal war, followed a statement earlier this week on Facebook in which the group said that the latest attack on Misteriha in North Darfur province left at least 28 people dead and 39 wounded. 
   

Palestinians across Gaza have woken up to heavy rains that flooded their makeshift tents as they brave the winter with little to no protection. 
  
The enclave was hit by a winter storm late Monday through Tuesday—the first since the start of the holy month of Ramadan—with Gaza’s civil defense units reporting multiple distress calls overnight. 
 
Rescue teams provided emergency assistance to several families whose tents were flooded in the al-Mawasi camp west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. 
  

A special commission of Venezuela’s National Assembly announced Tuesday that over 3,200 people have been fully released since the amnesty law took effect four days ago. This group includes both former detainees and those previously under house arrest or other restrictive measures. 
  
Lawmaker Jorge Arreaza, who leads the commission overseeing the amnesty law, said in a news conference that authorities have already received 4,203 applications for the program. 
  

Willy Ngoma, a spokesperson for the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels fighting in eastern Congo, has been killed in a drone strike, a U.N. official and a rights group said Tuesday, escalating tensions over the region’s conflict after peace negotiations stalled. 
  
Ngoma, a senior officer who was deeply involved in M23’s operations, was said to have been killed in a predawn drone strike near the North Kivu province’s mining town of Rubaya. 
   

An attack by Sudanese paramilitary forces on a stronghold of a Darfur tribal leader left at least 28 people dead, a doctors group said Tuesday, the latest in a devastating war with no resolution in sight. 
  
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on Monday rampaged through the town of Misteriha in North Darfur province, according to the Sudan Doctors Network, which tracks the country’s ongoing war. 
  

A group of 11 South African men allegedly lured to fight alongside Russian soldiers in the war against Ukraine are expected to return home soon, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Tuesday. 
  
It will bring to 15 the number of South African nationals to have returned after four men arrived in Johannesburg last week following months fighting on the front lines in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. 
  
They were allegedly deceived into traveling to Russia under the pretense that they would receive security training. 
  

At least four people have been killed in the latest wave of Russian attacks in Ukraine, according to local officials, on the eve of the fourth anniversary of Europe’s biggest war since World War II. 
  
In the south, two people were killed on Monday night when Russian drones hit industrial, energy and civilian infrastructure in the region of Odesa, Governor Oleh Kiper said on the Telegram messaging app.