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A bicycle rider died after being hit by a bus at Suda in Bedkot Municipality-7, Kanchanpur on Wednesday.

The deceased has been identified as Bimala Joshi (30).

Police said that the bus (Na 4 Kha 8077) heading towards Dhangadhi from Mahendranagar hit Joshi while she was crossing the road this morning.

The District Police Office, Kanchanpur has taken driver Rajendra Prasad Joshi (40) of Bhimdutta Municipality-7 under control after the incident.

Following the incident, locals obstructed the road demanding stern action against the driver.

Police said that they are looking into the case.

An earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, killing at least 255 people, authorities said, Associated Press reported.

Information remained scarce on the magnitude 6 temblor that struck Paktika province, but it comes as the international community largely has left Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover of the country last year amid the chaotic withdrawal of the US military from the longest war in its history.

That likely will complicate any relief efforts for this country of 38 million people.

The state-run Bakhtar news agency reported the death toll and said rescuers were arriving by helicopter. The news agency’s director-general, Abdul Wahid Rayan, wrote on Twitter that 90 houses have been destroyed in Paktika and dozens of people are believed trapped under the rubble.

Footage from Paktika province near the Pakistan border showed victims being carried into helicopters to be airlifted from the area. Images widely circulating online from the province showed destroyed stone houses, with residents picking through clay bricks and other rubble, according to Associated Press.

“A severe earthquake shook four districts of Paktika province, killing and injuring hundreds of our countrymen and destroying dozens of houses,” Bilal Karimi, a deputy spokesman for the Taliban government, separately wrote on Twitter. “We urge all aid agencies to send teams to the area immediately to prevent further catastrophe.”

Neighboring Pakistan’s Meteorological Department put the earthquake at a magnitude 6.1. Tremors were felt in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and elsewhere in the eastern Punjab province.

The European seismological agency, EMSC, said the earthquake’s tremors were felt over 500 kilometers (310 miles) by 119 million people across Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

Mountainous Afghanistan and the larger region of South Asia, where the Indian tectonic plate collides with the Eurasian plate to the north, has long been vulnerable to devastating earthquakes.

In 2015, a major earthquake that struck the country’s northeast killed over 200 people in Afghanistan and neighboring northern Pakistan. A similar 6.1 earthquake in 2002 killed about 1,000 people in northern Afghanistan. And in 1998, a 6.1-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tremors in Afghanistan’s remote northeast killed at least 4,500 people, Associated Press reported.

The airlines companies have agreed to operate the domestic flights in a regular manner.

Earlier, the companies had announced to suspend domestic flights from today in protest against the government’s decision requiring them to operate from their base station.

The airlines companies agreed to operate the domestic flights on regular basis following talks with the government last night.

The Tribhuvan International Airport Office stated that the domestic airlines have started their flights since the morning today. TIA Office spokesperson Tek Nath Sitaula said that the domestic airlines have been operating regular flights since the morning.

Buddha Air’s information officer Deependra Kumar Karna said the airlines started regular domestic flights from 11 am.

Further talks are being held today between the Airlines Operators Association of Nepal and the related government bodies regarding the demands put forth by the former.

The talks last night was held at the initiation of the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers. High officials of the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) director general Pradip Adhikari and AOAN president Capt Rameshwor Thapa among other airlines operators participated in the talks.

Singapore has confirmed an imported case of monkeypox, the health ministry said late on Tuesday, the first such case reported in Southeast Asia during this year's outbreak of the viral disease, Reuters reported.

The patient, who tested positive on June 20, is a 42-year-old British man who works as a flight attendant and had flown in and out of Singapore around mid-June, the health ministry said in a statement.

He is in stable condition in a ward at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases in Singapore, the ministry said.

Thirteen close contacts of the man were identified as of Tuesday, and all will be placed under quarantine for 21 days since their last contact with him, the statement added.

Contact tracing is ongoing for affected flights and for the duration of the man's stay in Singapore.

The last monkeypox case detected in the Southeast Asian city-state was three years ago, according to Reuters.

Australia, which on May 20 reported its first case, had confirmed eight as of June 10.

More than 35 countries where monkeypox is not endemic have reported outbreaks of the viral disease, and confirmed cases now exceed 2,500, Reuters reported.