Tribal clashes killed at least 11 people in northwestern Pakistan on Saturday and injured eight, including women and children, a local official said. Tensions rose in Kurram district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, after two people were critically injured in a shooting incident between rival tribes. It wasn't immediately clear what caused the shooting. Vehicles were targeted in different areas of the district, leading to more casualties, said senior official Javedullah Khan. Khan said efforts were being made to secure travel routes and restore normalcy. The injured were taken to a hospital. Pir Haider Ali Shah, a former parliamentarian and member of a tribal council, said elders had arrived in Kurram to mediate a peace agreement between the tribes. Read: Gunmen kill 20 miners and wound others in an attack in southwest Pakistan “The recent firing incidents are regrettable and have hampered efforts for lasting peace,” he said. Last month, at least 25 people were killed in days of clashes between armed Shiites and Sunni Muslims over a land dispute. Although both live together largely peacefully in the country, tensions have existed for decades between them in some areas, especially in Kurram, where Shiites dominate in parts of the district. Also Saturday, a separatist group in the southwest claimed responsibility for an attack that killed 21 people. The Baloch Liberation Army said its fighters targeted a coal mine in Duki district with heavy weapons, rocket launchers and grenades late Thursday night. It gave higher casualty figures of 30 dead and 18 injured. It also said that Pakistani security personnel were disguised as workers, without giving evidence. It threatened more assaults unless the military withdrew from the province. Read more: Suspected militants shoot police in vehicle in northwest Pakistan, killing 2 officers Balochistan is home to several groups that demand independence from the federal government, accusing it of exploiting the oil- and mineral-rich province at the expense of locals.

The director of a hospital in a disputed city in the Somaliland region says at least 145 people have been killed in more than two months of fighting between anti-government fighters and Somaliland security forces after local elders declared their intention to reunite with Somalia. Abdimajid Sugulle, with the public hospital in Las-Anod, told The Associated Press on Saturday that more than 1,080 other people have been wounded and over 100,000 families have fled the city of Las-Anod since late December. Most civilians have fled, he said. The director accused Somaliland forces of destroying the hospital’s laboratory, blood bank and patient ward in mortar attacks. “The Somaliland forces who are positioned outside the town have been shelling civilian residents and medical facilities indiscriminately. No single day passes without shelling and casualties,” he told the AP by phone. Somaliland’s defense ministry has denied shelling the hospital, and the government has asserted it has a “continuous commitment” to a cease-fire it declared on Feb. 10. “Indiscriminate shelling of civilians is unacceptable and must stop,” the United Nations and international partners warned last month. Somaliland separated from Somalia three decades ago and seeks international recognition as an independent country. Somaliland and the Somali state of Puntland have disputed Las-Anod for years, but the eastern city has been under Somaliland’s control. The U.N. mission in Somalia and the U.N. human rights office had said the violence in Las-Anod killed at least 80 people between Dec. 28 and Feb. 28 and more than 450 noncombatants were wounded, including medical personnel. The U.N. has called for respect for medical workers and unhindered humanitarian access. The conflict in Las-Anod began when an unidentified gunman killed a popular young politician in Somaliland’s opposition party as he left a mosque. Protests followed against Somaliland officials and forces in the city. Somaliland’s government has blamed the unrest on fighters with “anti-peace groups and terrorism” and alleged that the al-Shabab extremist group, affiliated with al-Qaida, has supported some attacks.

Russian troops handed control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant back to the Ukrainians and left the heavily contaminated site early Friday, more than a month after taking it over, Ukrainian authorities said, as fighting raged on the outskirts of Kyiv and other fronts. Ukraine's state power company, Energoatom, said the pullout at Chernobyl came after soldiers received “significant doses" of radiation from digging trenches in the forest in the exclusion zone around the closed plant. But there was no independent confirmation of that. The withdrawal took place amid growing indications the Kremlin is using talk of de-escalation in Ukraine as cover while regrouping, resupplying its forces and redeploying them for a stepped-up offensive in the eastern part of the country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian withdrawals from the north and center of the country were just a military tactic and that the forces are building up for new powerful attacks in the southeast. “We know their intentions,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation. “We know that they are moving away from those areas where we hit them in order to focus on other, very important ones where it may be difficult for us.” Also read: Russian forces leaving Chernobyl after radiation exposure “There will be battles ahead,” he added. Meanwhile, a convoy of 45 buses headed to Mariupol in another bid to evacuate people from the besieged port city after the Russian military agreed to a limited cease-fire in the area. But Russian forces blocked the buses, and only 631 people were able to get out of the city in private cars, according to the Ukrainian government. Twelve Ukrainian buses were able to deliver 14 tons of food and medical supplies to Mariupol, but the aid was seized by Russian troops, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said late Thursday. The city has been the scene of some of the worst suffering of the war. Tens of thousands have managed to get out of Mariupol in the past few weeks by way of humanitarian corridors, reducing its population from a prewar 430,000 to an estimated 100,000 as of last week, but other relief efforts have been thwarted by continued Russian attacks. A new round of talks was scheduled for Friday, five weeks into the war that has left thousands dead and driven 4 million Ukrainians from the country. Also read: Heavy fighting rages near Kyiv as Russia appears to regroup The International Atomic Energy Agency said it had been informed by Ukraine that the Russian forces at the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster had transferred control of it in writing to the Ukrainians. The last Russian troops left the Chernobyl plant early Friday, the Ukrainian government agency responsible for the exclusion zone said. Energoatom gave no details on the condition of the soldiers it said were exposed to radiation and did not say how many were affected. There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin, and the IAEA said it had not been able to confirm the reports of Russian troops receiving high doses. It said it was seeking more information. Russian forces seized the Chernobyl site in the opening stages of the Feb. 24 invasion, raising fears that they would cause damage or disruption that could spread radiation. The workforce at the site oversees the safe storage of spent fuel rods and the concrete-entombed ruins of the reactor that exploded in 1986. Edwin Lyman, a nuclear expert with the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists, said it “seems unlikely" a large number of troops would develop severe radiation illness, but it was impossible to know for sure without more details. He said contaminated material was probably buried or covered with new topsoil during the cleanup of Chernobyl, and some soldiers may have been exposed to a “hot spot” of radiation while digging. Others may have assumed they were at risk too, he said. Early this week, the Russians said they would significantly scale back military operations in areas around Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv to increase trust between the two sides and help negotiations along. But in the Kyiv suburbs, regional governor Oleksandr Palviuk said on social media Thursday that Russian forces shelled Irpin and Makariv and that there were battles around Hostomel. Pavliuk said there were Ukrainian counterattacks and some Russian withdrawals around the suburb of Brovary to the east. Chernihiv came under attack as well. At least one person was killed and four were wounded in the Russian shelling of a humanitarian convoy of buses sent to Chernihiv to evacuate residents cut off from food, water and other supplies, said Ukrainian Human Rights Commissioner Lyudmyla Denisova Ukraine also reported Russian artillery barrages in and around the northeastern city of Kharkiv. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said intelligence indicates Russia is not scaling back its military operations in Ukraine but is instead trying to regroup, resupply its forces and reinforce its offensive in the Donbas. “Russia has repeatedly lied about its intentions,” Stoltenberg said. At the same time, he said, pressure is being kept up on Kyiv and other cities, and “we can expect additional offensive actions bringing even more suffering.” The Donbas is the predominantly Russian-speaking industrial region where Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces since 2014. In the past few days, the Kremlin, in a seeming shift in its war aims, said that its “main goal” now is gaining control of the Donbas, which consists of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, including Mariupol. The top rebel leader in Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, issued an order to set up a rival city government for Mariupol, according to Russian state news agencies, in a sign of Russian intent to hold and administer the city. With talks set to resume between Ukraine and Russia via video, there seemed little faith that the two sides would resolve the conflict any time soon. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that conditions weren’t yet “ripe” for a cease-fire and that he wasn’t ready for a meeting with Zelenskyy until negotiators do more work, Italian Premier Mario Draghi said after a telephone conversation with the Russian leader. In other developments, Ukraine’s emergency services said the death toll had risen to 20 in a Russian missile strike Tuesday on a government administration building in the southern city of Mykolaiv. As Western officials search for clues about what Russia's next move might be, a top British intelligence official said demoralized Russian soldiers in Ukraine are refusing to carry out orders and sabotaging their equipment and had accidentally shot down their own aircraft. In a speech in Australia, Jeremy Fleming, head of the GCHQ electronic spy agency, said Putin had apparently “massively misjudged” the invasion. The Pentagon reported Thursday that an initial half-dozen shipments of weapons and other security assistance from the U.S. have reached Ukraine as part of an $800 million aid package President Joe Biden approved this month. The shipments included Javelin anti-tank weapons, Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems, body armor, medical supplies and other materials, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said. U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the war is going because they are afraid to tell him the truth. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the U.S. is wrong and that “neither the State Department nor the Pentagon possesses the real information about what is happening in the Kremlin.”

Britain's Defense Ministry says fighting northwest of Kyiv has continued with the bulk of Russian ground forces now around 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the center of the city. Also read: Ukraine says shelling damaged cancer hospital A daily intelligence update says elements of the large Russian military column north of Kyiv have dispersed. It says this is likely to support a Russian attempt to encircle the Ukrainian capital. According to the brief, it could also be an attempt by Russia to reduce its vulnerability to Ukrainian counterattacks, which have taken a significant toll on Russian forces. Also read: Russia-Ukraine war: Key things to know about the conflict The update says that beyond Kyiv, the cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol remain encircled and continue to suffer heavy Russian shelling.

At least 23 people were killed in Colombia this weekend and 20 had to flee their homes as fighting between rebel groups intensified in the eastern state of Arauca, Colombia's Defense Minister said Monday. The killings mark a setback for Colombia's government, which was able to bring down homicide rates in much of the country following a 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. But it is now struggling to control violence in rural pockets of the country where smaller rebel groups and drug trafficking organizations are fighting over smuggling routes, coca fields, illegal mines and other assets. Arauca is home to some of Colombia’s largest oil wells and is also crossed by a pipeline that is regularly attacked by rebel groups that steal its oil. The state borders Venezuela and drug trafficking groups have been fighting over its smuggling routes for decades. Also read: 2 US men, ex-Colombia soldiers held in Haiti assassination In a statement Monday, Colombia’s army said the latest outbreak of violence was caused by fighting between the National Liberation Army, or ELN, guerrilla group and former members of the FARC who refused to join the peace deal. The army said that both groups are currently fighting for dominance over the area’s drug trade. Juan Carlos Villate, a human rights officer in the town of Tame, told Colombia’s Blu Radio that he received reports of civilians who were dragged out of their homes and executed on Sunday by members of armed groups. Villate said that he had reports of 50 people who went missing and 27 who were killed over the weekend. Human Rights Watch said it has received reports of 24 deaths, as well as forced displacements and abductions. “It appears that the alliance between the ELN and dissidents with the 10th Front of the FARC in the zone has broken," said the group's Colombia expert, Juan Pappier. Arauca last year received hundreds of refugees who fled from neighboring Venezuela following fighting between the Venezuelan army and FARC splinter groups that also operate on the Venezuelan side of the border. President Ivan Duque said on Monday that he would send more troops to the area and increase surveillance flights to intercept armed groups and monitor their activity along the border with Venezuela. Duque accused Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro of providing shelter to some of these rebel groups and said Colombia would fight them “with all its might." While Colombia's overall murder rate has gone down since the peace deal was signed, homicides and forced displacement have also gone up in some rural pockets of the country that were previously dominated by the FARC and where smaller groups, including the ELN, are now fighting for territorial control. Also read: Rights group: Colombian police cause deaths of 20 protesters The ELN guerrillas initiated peace talks with the Colombian government in 2017, but those broke down following an attack on a police academy that killed 23 people.

Fighting erupted anew Sunday between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over the disputed separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh and a top territorial official said 16 people were killed and more than 100 wounded, while Azerbaijan’s president said his military has suffered losses.