Turkey's top diplomat stressed Monday the regional defense pact with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia was not aimed at any particular country and open to others, including Egypt.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that the United States will hit back against Iranian attacks on U.S. targets in the Middle East, as the war flared after a prolonged pause, according to Fox News.

"We're going to hit them hard," Trump said, according to a Fox News reporter who said he talked to Trump briefly.

Japan plans to use drones, artificial intelligence and new methods of warfare as it adapts its defense strategies to suit changing times, according to details of an 8.9 trillion yen ($55.6 billion) budget request for the coming fiscal year disclosed by the Defense Ministry on Monday.

The preliminary total is only a small increase from the 8.8 trillion yen ($55 billion) defense budget requested for this fiscal year. It will be much higher eventually, but further details will come later this year after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's government approves the new security and defense strategy aimed at strengthening Japan's counterstrike capability.

The leaders of China, Russia and India are among the heads of state gathering in Kyrgyzstan this week for the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a group billed as a counterweight to U.S. global influence.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are scheduled to attend the events in Bishkek, the capital of the Central Asian nation.

Iceland's voters rejected restarting negotiations to join the European Union in a referendum that pitted concerns about geopolitical stability against keeping national control of Iceland's prized fisheries, officials said Sunday.

Opponents defeated the measure by a margin of 52.8% to 47.2%, the National Electoral Commission said. The result puts the divisive issue to rest for now — more than a decade after a euroskeptic government ended EU talks that had begun after the 2008 financial crisis.

Rescuers were trying to find trapped workers in at least a dozen hydroelectric plant sites Monday after catastrophic flooding in Nepal and Tibet killed at least 900 people and left more than 4,700 missing.

Multiple foreign teams were assisting local rescuers to find workers in multiple tunnels at Nepal's power plants on the rivers that flooded last Wednesday.

Iran's supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei on Sunday called on Muslim countries in the region to unite against the United States and Israel, in a written message issued six months on from the start of the Middle East war.

Khamenei, in power since shortly after his father Ali Khamenei was killed at the start of the war on February 28, has yet to be seen in public since his appointment, and authorities have not released any video or audio of him.

The death toll from a Russian strike on an arms depot near Kyiv has risen to 38, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday.

The strike on the Ukrainian military depot storing ammunition, drones and explosives triggered a huge explosion and fire, and secondary detonations that sent flames shooting into the surrounding area.

Iran has left the door open to diplomacy, six months into a war with the United States that has upended the Middle East, but only if Washington abandons its pressure campaign.

President Donald Trump said Friday his administration has reached a huge oil deal with Venezuela that gives the United States majority control of 65 billion barrels of proven petroleum reserves.