A man was arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences after a car crashed into a number of cyclists and pedestrians before hitting security barriers outside the UK Parliament on Tuesday, the police said.

Armed police swooped on the scene moments after the vehicle collided with the barriers at 7.37 a.m, pointing their weapons at the vehicle before a male driver in his late 20s emerged.

He was detained and taken to a police station in south London where he remains in custody, the Guardian reported.

London Ambulance Service said it had taken two patients to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries after cyclists and pedestrians were hit. A third patient with minor injuries was assessed at the scene. No one else was in the car and no weapons were found, the police said.

The decision to treat the incident as “terrorist” was made for several reasons, including CCTV recovered by the police showing the vehicle driving at pedestrians and civilians, outside an iconic site, which is seen as a high-profile target for terrorist attacks, reports said.

According to the BBC, witnesses said the silver Ford Fiesta, which was traveling westbound, appeared to deliberately hit members of the public as it swerved into the opposite lane.

Westminster tube station was closed and streets around Millbank, Parliament Square, and Victoria Tower Gardens were cordoned off. The nearby Strutton Ground was also closed to the public.

“My thoughts are with those injured and my thanks to the emergency services for their immediate and courageous response,” said Prime Minister Theresa May.

The Houses of Parliament, as it is known, are surrounded with security barriers of steel and concrete. The measures were extended after the Westminster Bridge attack in March 2017 when a Khalid Masood ploughed a car into crowds on the bridge, killing four people.

Masood abandoned his car and then stabbed and killed an unarmed police officer, Keith Palmer, before he was shot by police in a courtyard outside Parliament.

At least five people were killed and three injured in a firing inside a tribal court in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa district on Tuesday.

The incident took place in Battagram district after a fight between two groups, one of whom opened fire, reports Xinhua news agency.

The assailants fled the scene.

At least 17 Afghan soldiers were killed after Taliban militants overran an Army base in the northern part of the country following a three-day intense fighting, officials said on Tuesday.

The clashes started last Saturday after hundreds of Taliban militants stormed and besieged Camp-e-Chenayeeha base in the remote Ghormach district of Faryab province in which about 106 Army soldiers were stationed, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Taliban attack in the north coincided with clashes in the southeastern province of Ghazni, which lies on the main highway linking Kabul with the south. Hundreds of people have been killed or injured during clashes there since last week. Heavy clashes and airstrikes were reported on Tuesday as fighting in the city entered the fifth day.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has warned that residents of Ghazni were struggling to access basic services and medical care.

“The besieged soldiers showed stiff resistance and fought back the attackers for the past three days but the base was captured by militants as the soldiers received no help or supplies despite repeated requests,” said Sebghatullah Selaab, an official from the provincial council.

He said 15 soldiers were injured and five others were captured by the militants while several soldiers fled to nearby villages or mountains.

The Taliban seized 14 armoured military vehicles, heavy guns, weapons and ammunition after the seizure of the base in the province, 425 km northwest of Kabul.

The Taliban-led insurgency has been on the rampage since the beginning of 2015 when the Afghan security forces assumed full responsibilities of security from the US and NATO troops.

The Indian Army said on Tuesday that two Pakistani soldiers were killed in retaliatory fire on the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir.

On Monday, an Indian soldier was killed in the LoC’s Tangdhar sector in unprovoked firing from the Pakistani side.

Defence Ministry spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia told IANS: “The Indian Army responded to the unprovoked ceasefire violations and repeated attempts to facilitate infiltration by the Pakistan Army in Tangdhar.

“Our troops carried out calibrated operations last night in which two Pakistani soldiers were killed.”

A Bangladesh court on Monday sentenced five convicts to death for crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War.

The International Crimes Tribunal’s three-member panel of judges led by Justice Shahinur Islam announced the verdict, reports bdnews24.

The five were sentenced for killing 17 people, vandalism, arson, abduction and torture in Itabaria village of Patuakhali during war.

They were also sentenced to death for the rape of at least 15 women from the same village.

The court said that the convicts had used rape as a weapon and that their victims had to live with the repercussions of those attacks for the rest of their lives.

“These women are our true war heroes. It is time to recognise them,” the tribunal said in the verdict.

The convicts will however be able to appeal against the ruling at the Supreme Court within a month of the verdict.

According to the prosecution, all the convicts were supporters of Conventional Muslim League prior to 1971, but they were involved with the local wing of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) at the time of their arrests in 2015.

The Tribunal had indicted them on March 8, 2017.

The inaugural session of Pakistan’s 15th National Assembly (NA) was underway here on Monday during which 331 members of the Lower House of Parliament took oath after their election in the July 25 general elections.

Outgoing NA Speaker Ayaz Sadiq administered the oath to the members in the 342-member house, reports Dawn news.

Prime Minister-in-waiting and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan and other prominent political leaders, including Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shahbaz Sharif, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and former President Asif Ali Zardari, were present in the assembly for the oath-taking.

Television footage showed the PTI chief shaking hands with Bilawal, who is entering the NA for his maiden term.

After administering the oath to the MNAs, the Speaker will prorogue the NA session until August 15, when the new speaker and deputy speaker of the assembly will be elected.

The nomination papers for the same will be submitted on Tuesday.

Sessions are also set to begin in the provincial assemblies of Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan for the MPAs-elect to take oath.

Imran Khan will take the oath as Pakistan’s Prime Minister on August 18, a senior Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader said today.

Senator Faisal Javed also tweeted that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party led by Khan has invited Indian cricketers Kapil Dev, Navjot Singh Sidhu and Sunil Gavaskar to attend the oath taking ceremony of the cricketer-turned-politician.

“Imran Khan to take oath as Prime Minister of Islamic Republic of Pakistan on the 18th Aug 2018 inshALLAH (if God wills)”, Javed tweeted. His tweet came after President Mamnoon Hussain summoned a session of the National Assembly on August 13 during which the newly-elected members will take oath.

The PTI’s parliamentary committee on Monday officially named party chairman Khan as their parliamentary leader and nominee for the next prime minister of Pakistan. The PTI, which secured 116 general seats in the National Assembly in the July 25 polls is the largest party in the lower house of parliament.

Geo News reported that President Mamnoon Hussain has decided to postpone his visit to Scotland in order to administer the oath to the next prime minister. Mamnoon was scheduled to visit Edinburgh from August 16 to August 19. “The president will now embark on his trip after the oath-taking ceremony,” the report said.

Earlier in the day, the Election Commission of Pakistan accepted the unconditional written apology from Khan for violating the secrecy of the ballot, removing the last possible hurdle in his swearing-in. The 65-year-old leader had contested from five constituencies and won all of them.

Yesterday, PTI spokesperson Fawad Chaudhry said, “Imran Khan will be elected prime minister of the country ‘within the first round’ of vote in the parliament.” He further claimed that his party has the support of 180 members in the National Assembly. The party needed the support of 172 lawmakers in the house of 342 to form the government.

As many as 28 independent winning candidates of the National Assembly yesterday notified the election commission of joining the PTI, giving a major boost to Khan’s party which can now claim seats reserved for women and minorities. There are a total of 70 nominated seats in the National Assembly.

Tibetans are ready to be a part of China if guaranteed full rights to preserve their culture, the Dalai Lama said on Friday.

“Tibetans are not asking for independence. We are okay with remaining with the People’s Republic of China, provided we have full rights to preserve our culture,” the 83-year-old spiritual leader said at “Thank You Karnataka” event here in the city.

Organised by the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), the event was a part of “Thank You India – 2018” held by the Tibetan community across India to mark 60 years of its exile in the country.

“Several of Chinese citizens practicing Buddhism are keen on Tibetan Buddhism as it is considered scientific,” the Nobel laureate said.

Born in Taktser hamlet in northeastern Tibet, the Dalai Lama was recognized at the age of two as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso. He fled to India from Tibet after a failed uprising against the Chinese rule in 1959.

China annexed Tibet in 1950, forcing thousands of Tibetans, including monks, to flee the mountain country and settle in India as refugees.

Since then, India has been home to over 100,000 Tibetans majorly settled in Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh among other states.

The Taliban launched a massive offensive in Afghanistan’s Ghazni city on Friday amid reports of multiple casualties even as heavy fighting continued between the government forces and militants.

Afghan soldiers fought back as militants converged from four sides of the city, resulting in several deaths on all sides, Ghazni provincial government spokesman Mohammad Arif Noori said.

Sporadic gunfire could still be heard in the provincial city as Afghan forces exchanged fire with militants. The spokesperson said that a group of Taliban fighters who had made their way into the city were holed up near the provincial police headquarters and were firing on the building, CNN reported.

Noori claimed that Ghazni security forces managed to drive out most of the Taliban forces from the city centre but as per reports, residents in several neighbourhoods said that heavy fighting was ongoing around them.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement to the media that the Taliban entered Ghazni city around 1 a.m. and captured a number of strategic sites within the city.

“Hundreds of Mujahedeen entered the city, captured the police headquarters and all six police districts and an important military base, Bala Hesar,” he said.

“Attacks were underway on the governor’s office, the National Directorate for Security (Afghan intelligence agency) headquarters and other government offices,” he said, adding that more than 140 Afghan soldiers were killed.

One resident Nasir Ahmad Faqiri told the New York Times that the militants were fighting with “their whole power”.

“There are Taliban militants in all roads and streets of the city, but they are facing strong resistance from government forces,” he said.

The Ghazni attack was the second assault on an Afghan city this year. In May, insurgents overran the western city of Farah, but they left a day later amid counterattacks from the Afghan government and American airstrikes.

The Afghan government had unilaterally called off a ceasefire with the militant group that it had in place for Eid ul-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

In a tweet, US Forces Afghanistan called the attack a “failed attempt to seize terrain”, saying that Afghan forces were able to maintain control of government buildings.

“US Forces responded with close-air support this morning in #Ghazni. Afghan forces held their ground and maintain control of all (government) centres. Another failed attempt by Taliban to seize terrain, while creating strategically inconsequential headlines,” it read.

An earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale struck Indonesia’s Lombok Island on Thursday, less than a week after a major earthquake in the region left at least 168 people dead, more than 1,500 injured and 156,000 affected.

The US Geological Survey said the hypocentre was located at a depth of 10 km and 23 km from Mataram, the capital of the province, reports Efe news.

The quake caused people to rush out of their houses and damaged some buildings, National Agency for Disaster Management (BNPB) spokesperson Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.

In an earlier tweet, Sutopo had raised the death toll from the 6.9 magnitude quake that struck the island on Sunday to 168, adding that official data on casualties was slow due to the verification process.

He referred to informal figures provided by other entities, which in one case put the number of deaths at 381.

The agency also reported that 1,467 people have been hospitalised and more than 156,000 displaced.

The search and rescue teams on Thursday continue to try to locate victims or survivors under the rubble of thousands of demolished buildings.

The Sunday quake occurred a week after another 6.4-magnitude tremor struck Lombok and left 16 people dead, 355 injured and 1,500 buildings destroyed.

The Indonesian archipelago is situated along the so-called “Pacific Ring of Fire”, an area known for its intense seismic and volcanic activity, which produce about 7,000 earthquakes each year, most of which are of moderate magnitude.