Tajikistan officials on Sunday said they “neutralised” four “terrorists” who crossed over from neighbouring Afghanistan in an area where deadly incidents have been on the rise in recent weeks, state media reported.

Tajikistan, in Central Asia, shares a mountainous border with Afghanistan and has had tense relations with the Afghan Taliban regime.

According to Tajik security services cited by the state-owned Khovar news agency, “four terrorists were neutralised” after they refused to put down arms in the southern Khatlon region.

Tajik authorities have reported at least five deadly incidents on the mountainous border, which is some 1,350 kilometres (840 miles) long, since November.

An AFP count using official data found that 16 people have been killed in total.

These include Tajik border guards, Chinese workers and what Dushanbe calls “smugglers” and “terrorists”.

After attacks on Chinese nationals in November, Tajik authorities urged the Afghan Taliban regime to take measures to prevent destabilisation of the volatile border region, where drug traffickers and militant groups are active.

Unlike other Central Asian leaders who are strengthening ties with the Taliban, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon — in power since 1992 — openly criticises Afghanistan’s authorities.

He has urged the Taliban to respect the rights of ethnic Tajiks, estimated to represent around a quarter of Afghanistan´s population.

But Tajikistan is also taking steps towards cooperation with Kabul, through electricity supplies, the opening of border markets and meetings between Taliban and local Tajik officials.

Relations between the two nations took a hit after five Chinese nationals were killed, and several were wounded in two separate attacks along Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan in late November and early December.

According to a UN report in December, a militant group, Jamaat Ansarullah, “has fighters spread across different regions of Afghanistan” with a primary goal “to destabilise the situation in Tajikistan.”

Dushanbe has previously voiced concerns about the presence in Afghanistan of members of Daesh in Khorasan.

• Italy’s PM calls Trump’s tariffs threats “mistake”.
• Ireland says Trump’s stance deeply regrettable.
• Macron asks EU to activate “anti-coercion instrument”.
  

The countries targeted by US President Donald Trump’s threat of tariffs over their opposition to his designs on Greenland will “stand united” in their response, they said in a joint statement Sunday.

“Tariff threats undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral,” Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden said.

“We will continue to stand united and coordinated in our response. We are committed to upholding our sovereignty,” they said.

Ireland’s Foreign Affairs Minister earlier described the tariffs being threatened by Trump over European allies’ stance on Greenland as “completely unacceptable”.

The decision “is completely unacceptable and deeply regrettable,” said Helen McEntee”.

“Ireland has been crystal clear that the future of Greenland is a matter to be determined by Denmark and by the Greenlandic people, in line with well-established democratic principles and international law,” she added.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron’s team said that he will ask the European Union to activate its powerful “anti-coercion instrument” if the US imposes tariffs in the standoff over Greenland.

The bloc’s weapon — never used before and dubbed its trade “bazooka” — allows for curbing imports of goods and services, and has been invoked as a way to push back over tech and trade, and now the Danish territory the US president wants to acquire.

Italy’s prime minister called Trump’s threat to slap tariffs on opponents of his plan to seize Greenland a “mistake”, adding she had told him her views.

“I believe that imposing new sanctions today would be a mistake,” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told journalists during a trip to Seoul.

“I spoke to Donald Trump a few hours ago and told him what I think, and I spoke to the Nato secretary general, who confirmed that Nato is beginning to work on this issue.”

However, the far-right prime minister — a Trump ally in Europe — sought to downplay the conflict, telling journalists “there has been a problem of understanding and communication” between Europe and the US related to the Arctic island.

Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of up to 25% on all goods sent to the US from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland over their objections to his moves.

Meloni said it was up to Nato to take an active role in the growing crisis.

“Nato is the place where we must try to organise together deterrents against interference that may be hostile in a territory that is clearly strategic, and I believe that the fact that Nato has begun to work on this is a good initiative,” she told reporters.

Meloni said that “from the American point of view, the message that had come from this side of the Atlantic was not clear”.

“It seems to me that the risk is that the initiatives of some European countries were interpreted as anti-American, which was clearly not the intention.”

Meloni did not specify to what exactly she was referring.

Trump claims the United States needs Greenland for its national security.

A shark mauled a boy swimming in Sydney Harbour on Sunday, leaving him in a critical condition with serious leg injuries, authorities said.

The predator bit the boy, believed to be about 13 years old, during the late afternoon off Shark Beach, New South Wales state police said.

“The injuries are consistent with what is believed to have been a large shark,” police said in a statement.

Officers pulled the boy from the water off the harbour beach within minutes of being alerted to the incident, police said.

They gave the boy first aid for “serious” leg injuries while he was aboard a police boat, applying two medical tourniquets.

Paramedics transported him to Sydney Children´s Hospital, where he was said to be in a critical condition.

“Swimmers are advised to avoid entering nearby waters at this time,” police said.

Shark Beach, in Sydney´s eastern suburb of Vaucluse, was closed and police evacuated nearby beaches in the harbour, the state government said.

Wildlife experts were working to identify the shark species involved, it said in a statement.

“This is a tragic shark attack on a young boy having a swim on a Sunday afternoon near a harbour beach in Sydney´s east,” New South Wales Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty said.

“Our thoughts are with the young boy and his family. I understand there were also other young people with him at the time of the attack, our thoughts are also with them.”

There have been more than 1,280 shark incidents around Australia since 1791, of which more than 250 resulted in death, according to a database of the predators´ encounters with humans.

Increasingly crowded waters and rising ocean temperatures that appear to be swaying sharks´ migratory patterns may be contributing to a rise in attacks despite overfishing depleting some species, scientists say.

A great white shark mauled surfer Mercury Psillakis to death at a popular northern Sydney ocean beach in September.

Two months later, a bull shark killed a woman swimming off a remote beach north of Sydney.