By Napat Wesshasartar and Artorn Pookasook
BAN SAI, Thailand, March 13 (Reuters) - Thousands of miles from the Middle East in Thailand's rural northeast, Sommai Butdee waits for news of her nephew, one of three crew members missing from the Thai-flagged vessel after it was struck with two projectiles earlier this week as it travelled through the Strait of Hormuz.
COLOMBO, March 13 (Reuters) - The bodies of 84 Iranian sailors killed in a U.S. submarine attack on a warship off Sri Lanka's coast last week will be repatriated, a Iran embassy source and local media in Sri Lanka reported on Friday.
(Reporting by Uditha Jayasinghe, writing by Hritam Mukherjee; Editing by YP Rajesh)
By Ismail Shakil and Gleb Bryanski
March 13 (Reuters) - The United States issued a 30-day waiver for countries to buy sanctioned Russian oil and petroleum products currently stranded at sea, in what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said was a step to stabilize global energy markets roiled by the Iran war.
Oil prices eased on Friday morning in Asia after the U.S. waiver announcement, which, according to Russia's presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev, would affect 100 million barrels of Russian crude, equal to almost a day's worth of global output.
By Christine Chen, James Redmayne and Joanna Plucinska
SYDNEY/LONDON, March 13 (Reuters) - In the remote Western Australian town of Dardanup, accountant Natasha Earle and her family are feeling the financial pain of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
Their "once-in-a-lifetime" five-week trip to Europe - booked last May on Emirates and taking them to London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Rome - has been upended by the conflict, and is costing roughly A$10,000 ($7,000) more as they reroute to avoid disruptions from drone and missile fire in the Middle East.
JAKARTA, March 13 (Reuters) - A summit of eight major Muslim developing countries, including Iran, that was to be held in Jakarta next month has been delayed due to the war in the Middle East, an official with Indonesia's foreign ministry said on Friday.
The D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation, which groups Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey, was established in 1997 to improve cooperation between the countries stretching from Southeast Asia to Africa.
By Mohammad Yunus Yawar
KABUL, March 13 (Reuters) - Pakistan bombed the fuel depot of private airline Kam Air near Afghanistan's Kandahar airport, the Taliban said on Friday, a significant escalation in the worst conflict in years between the neighbours despite China's efforts to mediate.
Following Beijing's stepped up mediation efforts, no Pakistani air strikes were reported by either side in over a week until the bombing in Kandahar. Ground clashes along the 2,600 km (1,600 mile) border had also tapered off, although there had been intermittent bouts of fighting.
Sri Lanka on Friday repatriated the remains of 84 Iranian sailors who perished when their frigate was sunk nine days ago by a US submarine, local officials said.
The seamen were killed when the IRIS Dena was torpedoed on March 4 just off the coast of Sri Lanka, in an incident that extended the Middle East war to the Indian Ocean.
An Airbus A340 chartered by Iran "left a short while ago carrying the remains of the sailors," an airport official at Mattala International Airport in the island's south told AFP by telephone.
WASHINGTON, March 13 (Reuters) - A complex tug-of-war inside the White House is driving U.S. President Donald Trump's shifting public statements on the course of the Iran war, as aides debate when and how to declare victory even as the conflict spreads across the Middle East.
Turkey's defence ministry on Friday said a ballistic missile from Iran had been shot down in Turkish airspace by NATO forces in the third such incident of the Middle East war.
"A ballistic munition launched from Iran and entering Turkish airspace was neutralised by NATO air and missile defence assets deployed in the eastern Mediterranean," a ministry statement said.
Hours earlier, sirens wailed at Turkey's southern Incirlik airbase, a key NATO facility where US troops are stationed, state news agency Anadolu reported.
By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, March 12 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said that he thinks new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, whose father, the former supreme leader, was killed on the first day of the U.S. and Israel's war on Iran, is alive but "damaged."
Khamenei has not been seen by Iranians since his selection on Sunday by a clerical assembly, and his first comments were read out by a television presenter on Thursday.
