LIVE: Iran closes Strait of Hormuz again after Israel attacks in Lebanon kill 182 people

India's Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri met senior US officials and discussed ways to further deepen the defence and trade relations and exchanged views on the developments in the Indo-Pacific and West Asia.

On a three-day visit to Washington DC, Misri met undersecretaries Michael Duffey and Elbridge Colby in the Department of Defence, and undersecretaries Jeffrey Kessler and William Kimmitt in the Department of Commerce.

“Sustaining the momentum of India-US defence exchanges, Foreign Secretary Shri Vikram Misri had another wide ranging conversation with Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby @USWPColby at the Pentagon, covering the ongoing developments in the Indo-Pacific region and West Asia,” the Indian Embassy in the US said in a post on X.

Misri also had a “fruitful interaction” with Duffey, the Under Secretary in the Department of Defence for Acquisition and Sustainment, at the Pentagon.

The two principals discussed ways to further deepen the defence industrial, technology and supply chain linkages between India and the US, in line with the ambitious goals laid out in the Framework for the bilateral Major Defence Partnership signed last year, the embassy said.

Misri also met undersecretaries Jeffrey Kessler and William Kimmitt in the Department of Commerce. Kessler is the Under Secretary for Bureau of Industry and Security, while Kimmitt is the Under Secretary for International Trade Administration.

Misri is visiting the US to review bilateral trade and defence relations and discuss global developments, including the crisis in West Asia.

More than 1,000 humanitarian workers have been killed across the globe in the past three years, nearly triple the death count in the previous three years, the UN said on Wednesday.

“This is not an accidental escalation – it is the collapse of protection,” UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told the UN Security Council.

Of the more than 1,010 humanitarian workers killed from 2023 to 2025, he said, over 560 were in Gaza and the West Bank, 130 in Sudan, 60 in South Sudan, 25 in Ukraine and 25 in Congo. That compares with 377 killed from 2020 to 2022.

The surge in deaths occurred during the war between Israel and Hamas, which began in October 2023. A ceasefire has been in effect since October 2025, although shootings and airstrikes have persisted.

Last year alone, Fletcher said, at least 326 aid workers were recorded as killed in 21 countries. In 2024, a record 383 were killed in global hotspots while distributing food, water, shelter and medicine.

“They died in clearly marked convoys and on missions coordinated directly with authorities," the undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs said.

The Security Council was meeting on a resolution it adopted in May 2024 that strongly condemned attacks on humanitarian workers and UN personnel and demanded that all combatants protect them in accordance with international law.

Israeli strikes on Wednesday killed an Al Jazeera correspondent in Gaza, according to the network and health officials there, as well as two Lebanese journalists in that country, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists and one of their networks.

Mohammed Wishah was targeted in a drone strike in west Gaza City. The Israeli military's Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, said on X that Wishah was a member of Hamas, reposting a 2024 tweet that described him as a “prominent commander” in its military wing, among other positions.

In Lebanon, where Israeli strikes targeting Hezbollah killed more than 180 people Wednesday, Ghada Dayekh, a presenter with Sawt Al-Farah, and Suzan Khalil, a reporter and presenter on Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV and Al-Nour Radio, also died.

The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Food Programme have said that the war in West Asia has triggered one of the largest disruptions to global energy markets and will inevitably lead to rising food prices and food insecurity.

In a joint statement, the heads of the three organisations said the burden of rising food prices will fall most heavily on the world’s most vulnerable populations.

“The Middle East war is upending lives and livelihoods in the region and beyond. It has already triggered one of the largest disruptions to global energy markets in modern history.

“Sharp increases in oil, gas, and fertiliser prices, together with transport bottlenecks, will inevitably lead to rising food prices and food insecurity,” said the joint statement issued after a meeting of the heads of the three institutions on Wednesday.

They said the three organisations will continue to monitor the developments closely and coordinate the use of all available tools to support those impacted by the crisis.

“The burden will fall most heavily on the world’s most vulnerable populations, particularly in low‑income, import‑dependent economies. Spikes in fuel prices and potential sharp increases in food prices are especially concerning where fiscal space is constrained and debt burdens are already high, reducing governments’ ability to protect vulnerable households,” the statement said.

US President Donald Trump repeated his complaint about NATO after a closed-door meeting with the alliance's Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Wednesday for discussions that had been expected to be aimed at soothing Trump's anger with the military alliance over the Iran war.

Ahead of the private meeting, Trump had suggested the US may consider leaving the trans-Atlantic alliance after NATO member countries ignored his call to help as Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping waterway, and sent gas prices soaring.

Afterward, he issued an all-caps comment on social media suggesting he remained aggrieved.

“NATO WASN'T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON'T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN,” Trump said in his post.

The White House did not immediately offer any further updates.

The Congress in 2023 passed a law that prevents any US president from pulling out of NATO without its approval.

Trump has been a long-time critic of NATO and in his first term had suggested he had the authority on his own to leave the alliance, which was founded in 1949 to counter the Cold War threat posed to European security by the Soviet Union.

On Wednesday, Trump also seemed to be angry about NATO's stance on Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of NATO member Denmark. Trump had pressed for US control over Greenland earlier this year before backing off after talks with Rutte.

“REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!” Trump posted Wednesday.

US President Donald Trump initially said Iran proposed a “workable” 10-point plan that could help end the war the US and Israel launched on February 28. But when a version in Farsi emerged that indicated Iran would be allowed to continue enriching uranium – which is key to building a nuclear weapon – Trump called it fraudulent without elaborating.

US Vice-President JD Vance later said the deal was being misrepresented within Iran, though he did not offer details.

The White House also said Vance would lead the American negotiating team in talks in Pakistan aimed at finding a permanent end to the war. Pakistan said the talks could begin in Islamabad as soon as Friday.

Meanwhile, Israeli Chief of Staff Lt Gen Eyal Zamir said Israel will continue to “utilise every operational opportunity” to strike Hezbollah.

The Israeli military said it struck more than 100 targets within 10 minutes on Wednesday across Lebanon, the largest wave of strikes since March 1.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the Israeli attacks as “barbaric”.

Hezbollah has not confirmed if it will abide by the ceasefire, though the group has said it was open to giving mediators a chance to secure an agreement.

To end the war with the United States and Israel, Iran is demanding the right to collect tolls in the Strait of Hormuz as a precondition for reopening the waterway vital to world oil supplies.

Yet, collecting tolls in the strait would violate a basic and enduring principle of international maritime trade: freedom of peaceful navigation. It's an ancient idea that was codified by the United Nations' Convention on the Law of the Sea, which took effect in 1994.

Opening the strait would save the global economy from supply constraints that have pushed energy and fertiliser prices sharply higher since the war began on February 28.

But agreeing to Iranian toll-collecting would cement the Islamic Republic's control over the strait through which 20 per cent of the world's oil is shipped – and enrich the country against whom the war was launched.

US President Donald Trump has made reopening the strait a priority. But the White House said Wednesday he is opposed to tolls, and analysts say the Gulf's oil producers are, too.

Analysts say they have seen no change in traffic through the strait since the ceasefire was announced, despite claims to the contrary from the White House.

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanon, Iranian-state media reported.

“Aggression towards Lebanon is aggression towards Iran,” Gen. Seyed Majid Mousavi, Iran's Revolutionary Guard aerospace commander, wrote on X. He warned that Iranian forces were preparing a “heavy response” without revealing details.

Lebanon's health ministry said that Israeli strikes on Wednesday killed 182 people, the highest single-day death toll in the Israel-Hezbollah war.

Israel launched a barrage of strikes in central Beirut and elsewhere in the country as a shaky ceasefire took effect between the US and Iran.

Iranian officials have maintained that the deal was supposed to include Lebanon, while Israel and the US have insisted that it does not.

Another 890 people were wounded in the strikes, the ministry said. Altogether, 1,739 people have been killed and 5,873 wounded in Lebanon in just over five weeks since the outbreak of the war.

Worried about surging oil prices and surprised by a resilient Iranian regime, the White House pushed Pakistan to broker a temporary ceasefire with Tehran, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

For weeks the Trump administration was leaning on Islamabad to convince the Iranians to agree to a pause in fighting where it would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the newspaper said, quoting “people familiar with the talks”.

“Pakistan’s crucial role, as a Muslim-majority neighbour and intermediary, was to sell it to Tehran,” the report said.

US President Donald Trump, worried about surging oil prices and surprised by a resilient Iranian regime, was eager for a ceasefire since at least his first threat on March 21 to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants, according to five people familiar with the Pakistan-led back channel, the Times reported.

It said Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir and other senior Pakistani officials began passing messages between Iranian political and military figures and the White House soon after Trump issued his first ultimatum to open the strait.

The FT report said that Munir embarked on a flurry of calls to top US officials, including Trump, Vice President J D Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff as Trump ratcheted up pressure to “obliterate” Iran and set April 7 as the deadline.

“The US and Pakistan believed Iran was more likely to accept the US-backed offer if it was delivered by a Muslim-majority neighbour state that had emphasised its neutrality throughout the conflict,” the report said.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif made the two-week proposal public on social media after Munir spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

Sharif, who framed the deal as Pakistan’s initiative, mistakenly included a subject line at the top of his post: “draft — Pakistan’s PM message on X”, it said.