New Delhi, Aug 26: A strong earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale hit Zhongba County, Xigaze prefecture in Tibet on Monday, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center.

There were no reports of casualties, it said. The quake occurred at 9:22 p. m. The epicenter was about 10 km underground at 31 degrees north and 83.6 degrees east. According to a Zhongba county government worker, the quake was strongly felt in some townships and cracks had appeared in some buildings. There were no reports of casualties.

Special personnel have already been sent to carry out relief work and assess the situation after the quake.

The tremor was also felt in Gerze and Coqen counties, the regional earthquake bureau reported.

Jammu, Aug 26: Four Border Security Force (BSF) personnel were injured on Tuesday when Pakistan troops opened fire at the BSF posts along the border in Sabzian area of Poonch District this morning.

The wounded have been admitted to hospital and their condition is stated to be out of danger.

Under the cover of the indiscriminate firing which took place between 12.30 a. m. to 2:00 a. m. on intervening night of Monday-Tuesday a big group of militants managed to cut open the fence and three to four militants of them have sneaked into the Indian side. The Army has been alerted.

Jakarta - Indonesia issued a tsunami warning Tuesday after a powerful earthquake struck parts of the western tip of Java and southern Sumatra province of Lampung, seismologists said.

The quake, measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale, struck under the Indian Ocean at about 10:07 am (0307 GMT), occurred at a depth of 20 kilometres, Indonesia's National Meterology and Geophysics Agency said in a short message.

The quake was located at about 125-kilometres north-west of Ujungkulon in the south-western tip of Java, about 630 kilometres south-west of Jakarta.

Almaty, Aug. 26: The five republics of Central Asia and Russia need to consider adopting a united approach to ward off external threats, particularly from the West, said a Kazakh professor of history.

Speaking to ANI on the sidelines of a Central Asian and Caucasian security cooperation moot, Professor Marat E. Shaikhutdinov, Director of the Institute of World Economy and Politics (IWEP), said that recent conflict between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia had left the leaderships and people of Central Asia quite concerned about Central Asian and Euro- Asian security.

Almaty (Kazakhstan), Aug. 25: Lauding the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) for laying the framework for realizing a shared vision of peace and prosperity in the Asian region, India's Minister of State for External Affairs, Anand Sharma, said on Monday that there is a need for the 20 CICA member states to take stock of "complex transnational threats and security challenges, and craft appropriate security responses that go beyond traditional solutions.

Participating in a Foreign Ministers' summit meeting of CICA here, Sharma said that of the many threats confronting Asia, "none is as dangerous as that of terrorism".

Islamabad, Aug 25: Pakistan’s Interior Ministry has reportedly banned the local unit of the Taliban – the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan – and also decided to freeze its bank accounts.

People associated with the group would be arrested, and the bank accounts of the TTP would be frozen, the Dawn quoted sources in the Interior Ministry as saying.

Earlier, on Sunday the TTP had unilaterally announced a ceasefire with security forces and offered peace talks with the government. However, their request was turned down by the Pakistan government.