NATO signed on Tuesday a $1.2-billion contract to make tens of thousands of artillery rounds to replenish the dwindling stocks of its member countries as they supply ammunition to Ukraine to help it defeat Russia's invasion.

The contract will allow for the purchase of 220,000 rounds of 155-millimeter ammunition, the most widely sought after artillery shell, according to NATO's support and procurement agency. It will allow allies to backfill their arsenals and to provide Ukraine with more ammunition.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi will pay an official one-day visit to Turkey on Wednesday for talks focused on the regional repercussions of the Israel-Hamas war, a diplomatic source told AFP.

A complex Russian missile attack targeted Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv on Tuesday morning, killing at least six people, wounding dozens and damaging residential buildings, officials said.

In the capital of Kyiv, at least one person was killed, according to city administration chief Roman Popko. Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said 18 people were injured, including a 13-year-old boy. Residential infrastructure was damaged in at least four districts.

At least fifty people were injured after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck along the mountainous China-Kyrgyzstan border on Tuesday, authorities said.

The major quake was registered just after 2:00 am (1800 GMT Monday) at a depth of 13 kilometres in China's Xinjiang region, about 140 kilometres west of the city of Aksu.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk arrived in Ukraine's capital Monday for talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on how Poland can keep supporting the country's almost two-year war with Russia and resolve a dispute between the neighboring nations over grain shipments and trucking.

Tusk, who returned to power in Poland last month and is keen to show that a change in government won't bring a change in Ukraine policy, was also due to meet with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday opened a controversial Hindu temple built on the ruins of a historic mosque in the northern city of Ayodhya, in a political triumph for the populist leader who is seeking to transform the country from a secular democracy into a Hindu state.

The temple is dedicated to Hinduism's Lord Ram and fulfills a long-standing demand by millions of Hindus who worship the revered deity and extoll him for the virtues of truth, sacrifice and ethical governance. Modi's party and other Hindu nationalist groups who seized on the demand have portrayed the temple as central to their vision of reclaiming Hindu pride, which they say was suppressed by centuries of Mughal rule and British colonialism.

Iran's foreign minister will visit Pakistan next week, the two countries said Monday, following unprecedented attacks on either side of the border last week that appeared to target Baluch militant groups with similar separatist goals.

The countries accuse each other of providing a haven to the groups in their respective territories.

Pakistan and Iran "agreed to de-escalate" tensions Friday, Islamabad said, after trading deadly airstrikes on militant targets in each other's territory this week.

The rare military actions in the porous border region of Baluchistan -- split between the two nations -- had stoked regional tensions already enflamed by the Israel-Hamas war.

A ghost of elections past in the form of ex-president Donald Trump haunted the annual schmoozefest of the world's political and business elites in Davos.

While the American reality television star-turned-politician was on the other side of the Atlantic, the biggest names in business, finance and politics at the Swiss Alpine resort could not escape him after he stormed to victory on Monday in the Iowa caucuses.

The Sunni Islamist political organization Hizb ut-Tahrir has been formally banned in the UK, the interior ministry said on Friday.