Good morning and welcome back to FirstFT Asia. In today’s newsletter:
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Pakistan’s deadly air strike on Kabul
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Top US counterterrorism official resigns over Iran war
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How MBS’s bet on Iran backfired
Afghanistan has accused Pakistan of killing 400 people in an air strike on a hospital in Kabul that has fuelled fears of escalating conflict between the Asian neighbours. Here’s what you need to know.
What happened: Hamdullah Fitrat, deputy spokesperson for Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, said the Pakistani military carried out the strike on Monday night that destroyed “large sections” of the capital’s Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital, a 2,000-bed facility dedicated to treating drug addicts. “Unfortunately, the death toll has so far reached 400, while around 250 others have been reported injured,” he wrote in a post on X yesterday.
The number of dead could not be independently verified, but Jacopo Caridi, Afghanistan country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, said after visiting the site yesterday that the toll was almost certainly in the hundreds.
Mosharraf Zaidi, spokesperson for Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, denied the Afghan claims of civilian casualties, describing them in a post on X as part of the “Taliban’s constant lies”. But he said Pakistan’s strikes against Afghanistan would continue until “the elimination of terrorists and their infrastructure”.
What’s driving the violence? The attack may be one of the deadliest yet in a conflict that began last year after relations between Pakistan and the Taliban deteriorated. Islamabad is battling two increasingly violent insurgencies in border regions that it claims receive support from Kabul. The Taliban denies the allegations.
The most recent strikes come despite shuttle diplomacy by China, a security and economic partner of Pakistan that has grown close to the Taliban in recent months. Read the full story.
Here’s what else we’re keeping tabs on today:
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Economic data: Japan reports trade figures for February. Hong Kong publishes monthly jobs data.
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Disney’s new boss: Josh D’Amaro becomes Disney CEO at the company’s AGM in Los Angeles, succeeding Bob Iger, who will continue to serve as senior adviser and board member until he retires at the end of the year.
Five more top stories
1. Israel said it had killed Ali Larijani, Iran’s top security official and one of the leaders steering the Islamic republic since the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the war. Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said yesterday that Larijani was killed in an overnight strike and pledged to continue the campaign of assassinations. Here are more details.
2. Nvidia is making fresh preparations to start selling its AI chips in China after receiving “many” US government approvals and product orders from Chinese customers within the past two weeks. Read what chief executive Jensen Huang said about Nvidia’s China business at the company’s annual GTC conference.
3. Australia’s central bank has raised interest rates for the second time in as many months, pointing to the impact of the conflict in the Middle East on its inflation expectations. The move precedes a number of key interest rate decisions this week.
4. Lawyers for Elon Musk sought to negotiate a settlement of a Securities and Exchange Commission case accusing him of failing to properly disclose his Twitter stake without involving the Wall Street watchdog’s lawyers, court records show. Here’s what we know about the settlement talks.
5. A Belgian aristocrat who served as diplomat and European commissioner will have to face trial regarding his possible involvement in the murder of Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese prime minister and independence leader assassinated in 1961. Count Étienne Davignon, 93, is the only remaining survivor among the 10 Belgians accused of involvement in the murder.
News in-depth
In the span of a few years, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman went from warning against “appeasement” of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — who he called the “Hitler of the Middle East” — to embarking on a historic détente with Tehran. But with the outbreak of war in the Gulf, Prince Mohammed’s bet on engagement with the Islamic republic has backfired.
We’re also reading . . .
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US-China relations: Beijing is not going to bail Trump out in the Middle East, writes Edward Luce. The question is whether Xi Jinping wants to see the US president backed into a corner.
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Hong Kong art: Philip Tinari, the new head of art at Tai Kwun, spoke to the FT about the city’s resilience, bringing Matisse to Beijing — and what gets past the censors.
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Russian espionage: Moscow has increased satellite dish activity on buildings it owns in Vienna, turning the city into the Kremlin’s largest covert signals intelligence platform in the west.
Chart of the day
The FT’s annual ranking of High-Growth Asia-Pacific Companies is here. See which company topped the list.
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Take a break from the news . . .
From vintage Issey Miyake and Comme des Garçons in London, Miriam Haskell jewellery in New York and curated art books in Tokyo, we pick these excellent spots for second-hand shopping around the globe.
