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Ukrainian soldiers are fighting tense battles in the country’s east where Russian forces have exploited dense fog on the frontline to expand their efforts to capture more territory.

Top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said the Russian army overran three settlements in the southern Zaporizhzhia region and Ukrainian units are locked in “grueling battles” to repel the thrust.

Dense fog and weather conditions have allowed Russian troops to infiltrate Ukrainian positions in Zaporizhzhia.

The fiercest battles are still in the besieged Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, he said.

This comes as Ukrainian forces pulled back from several positions in the southern Zaporizhzhia region amid heavy fighting and adverse weather.

Russia is taking advantage of the weather to advance in small groups, moving on foot or motorcycles, with the adverse weather preventing Ukrainian forces from deploying drones against them.

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Venezuela said late Tuesday that it is launching a “massive deployment” of nearly 200,000 soldiers in response to the U.S. sending its largest aircraft carrier into the waters near Latin America and rising tensions between the two countries.

Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said officials were placing “the entire country’s military arsenal on full operational readiness,” with preparations including the “massive deployment of ground, aerial, naval, riverine and missile forces.”

Padrino said Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro directly ordered the massive deployment as part of the special operation, with land, air, naval and reserve forces to carry out war drills through Wednesday to “optimize command, control and communications” and ensure the country’s defense.

He said the move was in response to the “imperialist threat” posed by the U.S. buildup of warships and troops in the Caribbean Sea.

The Venezuelan military exercises also will reportedly involve the Bolivarian Militia, a civilian reserve force created by former President Hugo Chávez.

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A suicide bomber struck outside the gates of a district court in Islamabad on Tuesday, detonating his explosives next to a police car and killing 12 people, Pakistan's interior minister said, the latest in an uptick in violence across the country.

Witnesses described scenes of mayhem in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, which also wounded 27 people. The blast was heard for miles away and came at a busy time of day when the area outside the court is typically crowded with hundreds of visitors attending court hearings.

A breakaway faction of the Pakistani Taliban, the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar group, claimed responsibility for the attack. But shortly after, Sarbakaf Mohmand, a commander from the group, sent WhatsApp messages insisting they had not made any such claim.

His group quit the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, after the head of Jamaat-ul-Ahrar was killed in a blast in Afghanistan in 2022. Though some members recently rejoined TTP, others keep their distance, indicating continuing differences among the insurgents.

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UNICEF said on Tuesday essential items including syringes to vaccinate children and bottles for baby formula are being denied entry into Gaza by Israel, preventing aid agencies from reaching those in need in the war-devastated territory.

As UNICEF undertakes a mass children's vaccination campaign with a fragile ceasefire in place, it said it faces serious challenges getting 1.6 million syringes and solar-powered fridges to store vaccine vials into Gaza. The syringes have awaited customs clearance since August, UNICEF said.

"Both the syringes and the ... refrigerators are considered dual-use by Israel and these items we're finding very hard to get them through clearances and inspections, yet they are urgent," UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires said.

"Dual-use" refers to items Israel deems to have possible military as well as civilian applications.

COGAT, the arm of the Israeli military that oversees aid flows into Gaza, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It has previously said it is not limiting the entry of food, water, medical supplies and shelter items. It has also accused Hamas of stealing humanitarian supplies, accusations the Palestinian militant group denies.

UNICEF launched the first of three rounds of catch-up immunisations on Sunday to reach over 40,000 children under three who missed routine vaccines against polio, measles and pneumonia, following two years of war in Gaza.

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Maryna Mytsiuk spends her free time at a shooting range outside Kyiv, hyper-focused on hitting her targets. She's got to practice. She's waiting for a call that, any day, will send her to war.

"Of course, I'd like to be in a combat position," said Mytsiuk, a 27-year-old folklore scholar who speaks Japanese and works at a nonprofit. "With my build and height, I'm not a natural fit for that … so I'm training very hard."

She is among a growing number of Ukrainian women joining the military as Russia's full-scale war on the country nears its fourth year, and troops remain in short supply. This comes as an end to the fighting appears no closer than it was when President Trump took office in January vowing to quickly broker peace.

Mytsiuk said the Ukrainian military has become much more receptive to women since the early days of the full-scale invasion, when Ukrainian men were lining up at recruitment centers to become soldiers.

She wanted to sign up, too, but was told she would be best off in the kitchen, she said, "where I could make dumplings."

Mytsiuk, however, plowed ahead. She enrolled at a military university for a second degree, graduating this summer. She looked into several brigades and applied to those with special forces units. She had difficult conversations with her mother and her boyfriend, a soldier. Both strongly oppose her decision.

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The US navy has announced that the USS Gerald R Ford, regarded as the world’s newest and largest aircraft carrier, has entered the area of responsibility of the US Southern Command, which covers Latin America and the Caribbean.

The deployment of the ship and the strike group it leads – which includes dozens of aircraft and destroyer ships – had been announced nearly three weeks ago, and its arrival marks an escalation in the military buildup between the US and Venezuela.

The regime of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, meanwhile, announced what it called a “massive deployment” of land, sea, air, river and missile forces, as well as civilian militia, to counter the US naval presence off its coast.

The US carrier joins other warships, a nuclear-powered submarine and aircraft based in Puerto Rico, forming the largest US military presence in the region in decades – seen as the biggest since the invasion of Panama in 1989.

Donald Trump has sought to justify the massive military buildup as part of his “war on drugs”, targeting traffickers allegedly smuggling narcotics through Caribbean and Pacific waters. That campaign has included airstrikes on boats that have so far killed at least 76 people in South American waters since September.

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