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Police in Sri Lanka opened fire on crowds protesting at fuel shortages during the economic crisis, leaving one man dead and 11 others wounded, BBC reported.

The casualties in the central town of Rambukkana came after live ammunition was used by police for the first time since protests erupted in early April.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets since Sri Lanka ran out of money for vital imports.

They want President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign but he is refusing to quit.

His appointment of a new cabinet on Monday angered many Sri Lankans. There were protests in a number of areas on Tuesday after Sri Lanka's main fuel retailer put prices up by nearly 65%.

The Rambukkana crowds had been protesting for about 15 hours demanding fuel, BBC Sinhala's Ranga Sirilal reports.

"Police had to fire to control the protesters. They set fire to some tyres too, so police had to fire to disperse them," police spokesman Nihal Talduwa told the BBC.

The authorities say the crowd threw stones and other objects at police, injuring a number of them. 

Two of the injured protesters are reported to be in a critical condition. The man who died was likely to have been shot, Mihiri Priyangani, director of the Kegalle Teaching Hospital, told Reuters news agency. 

"We are suspecting gunshot injuries but need a post-mortem to confirm the exact cause of death."

Thousands of angry motorists and bus drivers have been burning tyres and blocking the nearby highway linking the capital Colombo with the city of Kandy.

The island nation is grappling with its worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1948.

It is caused in part by a lack of foreign currency, which has meant that Sri Lanka cannot afford to pay for imports of staple foods and fuel, leading to acute shortages and very high prices, according to BBC.

With power cuts lasting half a day or more, public anger has soared.

The demonstrations mark a massive turnaround in popularity for Mr Rajapaksa who swept into power in 2019, promising stability and a "strong hand" to rule the country.

Critics say corruption and nepotism - his brothers and nephews occupied several key ministerial portfolios - are the main reasons for the crisis.

The new cabinet contained several party stalwarts, but was shorn of Rajapksa family members, apart from the president's elder brother Mahinda who kept his job as prime minister, BBC reported.

Ukraine's allies have pledged to send more weapons to help it defend against a renewed Russian offensive, BBC reported.

The US and others vowed to send artillery, anti-tank and air Defence aid to Kyiv during a 90-minute video call on Tuesday. 

Ukraine says it needs the weapons to help defend itself as Russia launched a new campaign in the country's east.

Clashes there have marked what Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky said was the start of the "battle for the Donbas". 

The eastern Donbas - which comprises the Luhansk and Donetsk regions - is where Russia is concentrating its efforts.

According to Ukraine, Russian forces have been attacking Ukrainian positions along the entire 300-mile (480km) front line since Monday.

It was amid these renewed attacks that Western leaders met to discuss further military assistance for Ukraine, according to BBC.

Following the meeting, the US defence department said additional military aircraft and aircraft parts had been sent to Ukraine to increase their fleet size and repair others in Ukraine's arsenal that were damaged.

The US defence department added that the US had not provided aircraft to Kyiv itself, and did not provide details on which countries have provided the aircraft.

President Zelensky has been appealing to the US for Soviet-made air defence systems and fighter jets as an alternative to a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

Last month, the US refused a proposal by Poland to provide it with MiG-29 fighter jets, which it would then transfer to Ukraine.

President Joe Biden, speaking to reporters after the meeting between Western allies, added that the US is planning to provide a further military aid package to Ukraine of a similar size to the $800m (£615m) aid package he announced last week, according to US media.

He said Washington would also be sending Ukraine more artillery - heavy guns deployed in land warfare.

Other countries also pledged to help Ukraine with further military assistance during the meeting.

"They [Ukraine] need support with more artillery, that is what we will be giving them," said the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson in parliament after the meeting, BBC reported.

In Berlin, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany was providing finance to enable Ukraine to buy anti-tank weapons and ammunition from German arms manufacturers. 

Meanwhile, the Czech Republic said it would repair Ukrainian tanks and armoured vehicles when they are damaged in combat.

Further economic sanctions against Russia was another topic on the agenda.

The arms pledges follow persistent calls from President Zelensky for allies to increase their weapons supplies to Kyiv.

"We need heavy artillery, armed vehicles, air defence systems and combat aircraft — anything to repel Russian forces and stop their war crimes," Mr Zelensky said on Twitter last week. "Nobody will stop Russia except Ukraine with heavy weapons".

Russia fiercely opposes such assistance.

"The United States and Western states under its control are doing everything to drag out the military operation for as long as possible," Russia's defence chief Sergei Shoigu said.

The leaders also discussed how to provide security guarantees to Ukraine after the war even if it is not a member of Nato, a French presidential advisor said.

Nato is a military alliance whose 30 members - including the US, UK and Germany - have agreed to come to one another's aid in the event of an armed attack against any one of them.

Since Ukraine is not a Nato member, the alliance isn't obliged to come to its defence. 

Its members fear that involving themselves in direct armed confrontation could lead to an all-out conflict between Russia and the West.

Instead, Nato members have supplied Ukraine with millions of dollars worth of military aid since Russia launched the invasion, according to BBC.

Russia assaulted cities and towns along a boomerang-shaped front hundreds of miles long and poured more troops into Ukraine on Tuesday in a potentially pivotal battle for control of the country’s eastern industrial heartland of coal mines and factories, Associated Press reported.

If successful, the Russian offensive in what is known as the Donbas would essentially slice Ukraine in two and give President Vladimir Putin a badly needed victory following the failed attempt by Moscow’s forces to storm the capital, Kyiv, and heavier-than-expected casualties nearly two months into the war.

The eastern cities of Kharkiv and Kramatorsk came under deadly attack. Russia also said it struck areas around Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro west of the Donbas with missiles. Multiple explosions were heard early Wednesday in the southern city of Mykolaiv, the regional governor said. A hospital was reported shelled earlier in the nearby town of Bashtanka.

In Mariupol, the now-devastated port city in the Donbas, Ukrainian troops said the Russian military dropped heavy bombs to flatten what was left of a sprawling steel plant and hit a hospital where hundreds were staying.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Moscow’s forces bombarded numerous Ukrainian military sites, including troop concentrations and missile-warhead storage depots, in or near several cities or villages. Those claims could not be independently verified, according to the Associated Press.

In what both sides described as a new phase of the war, the Russian assault began Monday along a front stretching more than 300 miles (480 kilometers) from northeastern Ukraine to the country’s southeast. Ukraine’s military said Russian forces tried to “break through our defenses along nearly the entire front line.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian military was throwing everything it has into the battle, with most of its combat-ready forces now concentrated in Ukraine and just across the border in Russia.

“They have driven almost everyone and everything that is capable of fighting us against Ukraine,” he said in his nightly video address to the nation.

Despite Russian claims of hitting only military sites, they continue to target residential areas and kill civilians, he said.

“The Russian army in this war is writing itself into world history forever as the most barbaric and inhuman army in the world,” Zelenskyy said.

Weeks ago, after the abortive Russian push to take Kyiv, the Kremlin declared that its main goal was the capture of the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years, Associated Press reported.

A Russian victory in the Donbas would deprive Ukraine of the industrial assets concentrated there, including mines, metals plants and heavy-equipment factories.

A senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagon’s assessments of the war, said the Russians had added two more combat units, known as battalion tactical groups, in Ukraine over the preceding 24 hours. That brought the total number of units in the country to 78, all of them in the south and the east, up from 65 last week, the official said.

That would translate to about 55,000 to 62,000 troops, based on what the Pentagon said at the start of the war was the typical unit strength of 700 to 800 soldiers. But accurately determining Russia’s fighting capacity at this stage is difficult.

A European official, likewise speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss military assessments, said Russia also has 10,000 to 20,000 foreign fighters in the Donbas. They are a mix of mercenaries from Russia’s private Wagner Group and Russian proxy fighters from Syria and Libya, according to the official.

While Ukraine portrayed the attacks on Monday as the start of the long-feared offensive in the east, some observers noted that an escalation has been underway there for some time and questioned whether this was truly the start of a new offensive.

The US official said the offensive in the Donbas has begun in a limited way, mainly in an area southwest of the city of Donetsk and south of Izyum, Associated Press reported.

Justin Crump, a former British tank commander now with the strategic advisory company Sibylline, said the Ukrainian comments could, in part, be an attempt to persuade allies to send more weapons.

“What they’re trying to do by positioning this, I think, is ... focus people’s minds and effort by saying, ‘Look, the conflict has begun in the Donbas,’” Crump said. “That partly puts pressure on NATO and EU suppliers to say, ‘Guys, we’re starting to fight now. We need this now.’”

President Joe Biden is expected to announce a new weapons package in the coming days that will include additional artillery and ammunition, according to a US official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, according to the Associated Press.

Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla has said that Nepal and Bangladesh are among the top ten export destinations for India.

He said India’s total exports to these two countries amount to over 16 billion dollars.

Speaking at a program organized by the Bharat Chamber of Commerce on 'Post-Covid Economic Recovery', the Indian foreign secretary said Nepal is India’s ninth-largest export market and an important destination for Indian investments. Indian firms account for over 30% of the total FDI stock in Nepal, worth nearly USD 600 million.

There are about 150 Indian ventures operating in Nepal in the manufacturing, services, power sector and tourism industry, he said.

A number of reforms have been undertaken in recent years in Nepal which are expected to improve the ease of doing business in that country.

Some upcoming areas that may be attractive to Indian industry include vehicle assembly, hydropower, medicinal and aromatic plants, and pharmaceuticals, the top Indian diplomat said. He said, “Nepal is a close neighbor and economic partner of India. It is India’s ninth-largest export market and an important destination for Indian investments.”