A three-year-old party led by rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah looked set to sweep Nepal’s general election yesterday, trouncing established rivals in a result analysts likened to a “tsunami”.

Counting for the House of Representatives continues

Shah's rise challenges Nepal's traditional political elite

Nearly six months after a wave of unprecedented youth-led protests and the deaths of 77 people forced Nepal’s then prime minister to quit, people began voting yesterday in a general election that will choose a new parliament in the Himalayan nation.

Queues began at dawn on the streets of the capital Kathmandu and in the usually sleepy eastern town of Jhapa

Sushila Karki, the interim prime minister, has urged people to vote "without any fear"

AFP journalists in Kabul heard multiple explosions and gunfire yesterday, as Afghan and Pakistani troops keep up their border battles.

Quake's epicentre was at a depth of 13 kilometres, agency says

Here are five key dates to explain the dramatic political developments in the Himalayan nation of 30 million people

Afghan and Pakistani troops battled along their border, Afghan residents and officials told AFP yesterday, with the fighting coming alongside multiple strikes including the former US air base at Bagram.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the accident was "deeply distressing" and wished a speedy recovery to the survivors

Fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban military entered its third day yesterday as foreign governments expressed increasing concern and called for urgent talks.

Detained at Phulbari border for illegal intrusion

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers had said on Friday they were willing to negotiate after Pakistan bombed their forces in major cities

Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Afghan forces killed 55 Pakistani soldiers and captured several others, while putting the death toll among Afghan troops at 13

Pakistan bombed government targets in the Afghan capital Kabul and in Kandahar, where its Taliban leadership is based, officials from both countries said yesterday, with Pakistan’s defence minister calling the conflict “open war”.

Pakistan has been the Afghan Taliban’s closest friend for decades. It was Islamabad that helped give birth to the Taliban in the early 1990s – as a way to give Pakistan “strategic depth” in its rivalry with India. What’s gone wrong?

Nepal’s former police chief ordered the use of lethal force during the September 2025 anti-corruption protests, a BBC investigation revealed.

Pakistani air strikes hit a weapons depot on the western outskirts of Kabul overnight, triggering hours of secondary explosions that rattled homes across the Afghan capital and left residents fearing further violen

Both sides report heavy losses, issue conflicting tolls