Tehran, Sep 6: The navy of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) said Saturday it had targeted three oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and three US-affiliated vessels elsewhere in retaliation for the US attacks on Iranian tankers earlier in the day.

The three tankers that were struck in the strait were crossing the waterway through the “unauthorized” route, the navy said in a statement published on the IRGC’s official news outlet Sepah News, adding the other three vessels were hit in other regions.

The navy also urged all vessels in the Gulf and near the Strait of Hormuz to refrain from being “deceived” by the US Army and any suspicious movement to transit the waterway through “unauthorized” routes, otherwise they will be targeted, Xinhua news agency reported.

Earlier in the day, Iran’s state-run IRIB news agency reported that three Iranian oil tankers were attacked by the US Army off Iran’s southern coasts.

Following the incident, Ebrahim Zolfaghari, spokesman of Iran’s main military command, Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, warned the United States against continuing its attacks on Iranian vessels as well as the naval blockade against the country.

“If the malice and insecurity against and harassment of Iranian ships, as well as the anti-Iran naval blockade continue, the strikes by the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran against US military vessels in the region will become more severe than before, and there is a possibility of their expansion,” Zolfaghari said in a statement carried by Iranian media.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said Friday that the US military may soon strike Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain — a fortified site near Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility — while trying to downplay the conflict with Iran as “small potatoes.”

“We may hit Pickaxe very soon,” Trump told reporters at the White House, referring to the underground facility where Washington says Iran has moved some of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

Meanwhile, Trump tried to downplay the conflict with Iran, arguing that it was not a war. “It’s a military conflict, but it’s very intermittent,” Trump said, though he has repeatedly described the conflict as a “war” while avoiding the term at times.

“I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing,” Trump claimed.

Following the US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, Tehran restricted passage through the Strait of Hormuz, barring vessels linked to the United States or Israel, while US forces imposed a naval blockade targeting vessels traveling to or from Iranian ports and coastal areas.

Washington, Sep 5: Minority women and girls in Pakistan continue to face severe gender-based persecution, including acid attacks, workplace harassment, blasphemy allegations and honour killings, while many remain vulnerable to sexual violence and exploitation in debt-bonded labour, particularly at brick kilns, a report has stated.

International sanctions against Pakistan over reported human rights abuses, including the abduction, forced conversion and forced marriage of women and minority girls, remain legally and politically possible under existing mechanisms, Turkish journalist Uzay Bulut wrote in American media outlet ‘PJ Media’.

“Individual countries or unions (like the United States, Canada, the UK, and the European Union) have global human rights sanction frameworks. These laws allow governments to freeze assets and impose travel bans on specific officials, judges, or police commanders complicit in abuses, without punishing the entire civilian population,” Bulut stated.

“International bodies can also restrict trade benefits. For example, the EU monitors human rights compliance under trade arrangements like the Generalized Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+), which gives developing countries duty-free access to markets. Violations can lead to the suspension of these trade preferences,” she added, highlighting the escalating violence against women across Pakistan.

Bulut noted that hundreds of Christian and Hindu girls and young women abducted by Muslim men continue to await the day they can return to their families.

She cited a report titled ‘Stolen Girls’ presented by the advocacy organisation Jubilee Campaign at the European Parliament on July 14, which documented 210 cases of abduction, forced religious conversion, child marriage and sexual violence against Christian and other minority girls across Pakistan between 2019 and 2025.

Referring to the report, Bulut said that the “cases reflect a broader pattern of abuse facilitated by fraudulent documentation, manipulation of legal processes and institutional failures”

The analyst further said that the findings found that the average age of victims was 12.8 years and the average age of perpetrators stood at 35.8 years. Several of the documented cases, she said, involved an age gap of more than 30 years between the victim and perpetrator.

Last week, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers urged Pakistan to protect an 18-year-old Christian woman, Neha Faqir, who was allegedly abducted, converted to Islam and denied a private meeting with her family.

Representative Chris Smith, Republican co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, said the case of Neha Faqir raised serious concerns about religious freedom and the rights of minority women in Pakistan.

“The circumstances surrounding Neha Faqir’s disappearance and subsequent conversion raise profoundly troubling questions about her safety, freedom of religion, and ability to exercise her rights without coercion or intimidation,” said Smith.

Smith and 10 other members of Congress sent a letter on August 20 to Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Law and Justice, Azam Nazeer Tarar. They urged “the Government of Pakistan to take appropriate action to ensure a just resolution of this matter.”

The lawmakers asked Pakistani authorities to act through the country’s judicial system to “ensure Ms Faqir’s physical safety and well-being; ensure she has confidential access to independent legal counsel and an opportunity to communicate freely and privately with her family; and ensure that any further judicial proceedings are conducted under conditions that allow her to express her wishes freely and without intimidation or undue influence.”

Kathmandu, Sep 5: A Nepali woman and a Chinese national were rescued alive from two separate flood-affected areas on Saturday, 11 days after deadly floods struck areas along the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river corridors in Nepal, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said.

A 64-year-old woman, Chandrika Shrestha, was rescued on Saturday from the house of Anand Shrestha in flood-affected Betrawati Bazaar in Nuwakot district.

Shrestha, a resident of Bidur Municipality-10 in Nuwakot, was rescued by a team of the Armed Police Force, Nepal, led by Inspector Suman Bik. She was found unconscious, the PMO said.

Following the rescue, she was taken by helicopter to the Nepali Army’s Maithili Barracks in Trishuli. After receiving initial treatment, she will be taken to Kathmandu for further medical care, if necessary, the PMO said.

Meanwhile, a Chinese national was rescued from a tunnel of the flood-affected 216-MW Upper Trishuli 1 Hydropower Project in Rasuwa district, 11 days after the deadly floods struck the area.

The Nepali Army, in coordination with a disaster expert team from South Korea, rescued the Chinese national from Audit 4 of the project’s tunnel, the PMO said in a social media post.

The survivor was subsequently taken to the Maithili Barracks in Trishuli, Nuwakot, for further medical assessment and care.

The rescue was part of intensified ongoing efforts to locate and evacuate people believed to be trapped inside hydropower project tunnels following devastating floods that swept through the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river systems last week.

Several hydropower projects and other infrastructure along the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river corridors were badly damaged, while several workers employed at hydropower projects in the affected areas remain out of contact.

According to the Independent Power Producers’ Association, Nepal (IPPAN), a representative body of private-sector power developers in Nepal, the under-construction Upper Trishuli 1 Hydropower Project has reported the highest number of people out of contact among 11 flood-affected hydropower projects in the Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts.

As many as 936 people employed at 11 hydropower projects remain out of contact, including 551 from the Upper Trishuli 1 project, IPPAN said on Friday evening.

On Friday, the Nepali Army rescued two Nepali nationals alive after they had been trapped inside the tunnel of the 60-MW Upper Trishuli 3A Hydropower Project in Nuwakot district.

The Nepali Army has been conducting search and rescue operations in coordination with foreign technical teams, including experts from India, China and South Korea, to reach people stranded inside underground structures at several hydropower projects.