HEADLINES

• China called for an immediate stop to military operations and a resumption of negotiations to uphold peace and stability in the Middle East. IN DETAIL BELOW

• An Iranian warship has sunk off the coast of Sri Lanka, with the Sri Lankan authorities saying on Wednesday they had rescued 32 people who were on board. IN DETAIL BELOW

• Russia accused the United States of using an imaginary threat from Iran as a pretext to overthrow its constitutional order. IN DETAIL BELOW

• The Syrian land and sea ports authority has closed its border crossing with Lebanon for departures after receiving a warning from Israel that Israeli forces may target the crossing.

• Cyprus said a suspect object had been detected close to Lebanese airspace on Wednesday, and a government source said two Greek F-16 fighter jets had been scrambled to intercept it, although the alert was later called off.

• A Saudi defense spokesperson has reported an attempted drone attack on Aramco's Ras Tanura refinery. 

• Several people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a four-storey residential building in the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek, the state news agency NNA reported early on Wednesday.

• The Central Intelligence Agency's station at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia was hit on Monday by a suspected Iranian drone, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

• The Russian Foreign Ministry warned on Wednesday that Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant was under threat from U.S.-Israeli air strikes and that explosions could be heard just kilometres away from its perimeter. 

• Damage is visible at two buildings near the Isfahan nuclear site in Iran, but there is no damage to facilities containing nuclear material and no risk of radiological release at this time, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Wednesday.

• A drone targeted the headquarters of an Iranian Kurdish opposition group in Iraq's Kurdistan region on Wednesday, security sources said, without immediately providing details on any casualties or damage.

• Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran's late Supreme Leader, has survived the US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran in which his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed, according to two Iranian sources.

• France and the UK have begun chartering flights to remove their citizens from Middle Eastern countries in the wake of the war. IN DETAIL BELOW

• The European Union has told its member countries it does not see any immediate effect from the conflict in Iran on the security of natural gas supply, according to EU officials.

• The Kremlin says European countries have not contacted Russia about resuming or increasing energy supplies due to the situation in Iran.

• Italy's energy minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said the country can reactivate some coal-fired power stations if conflict in the Middle East should lead to an energy crisis.

• Indonesia's foreign minister said talks on U.S. President Donald Trump's Gaza 'Board of Peace', of which the Southeast Asian nation is a key troop-contributing member, are on hold due to the Middle East war.

• A committee of UN experts said on Wednesday it was "deeply disturbed" by the deaths of children amid escalating violence across the Middle East, particularly the bombing of a girls school in Iran.

• Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Wednesday doubled down on his opposition to the attack on Iran by the United States and Israel, warning that the conflict risked triggering a major global disaster.

• France's Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on Wednesday that a meeting of G7 finance ministers and central bank governors will be held "early next week" to assess the situation in the wake of the US and Israel's conflict with Iran.

China calls for halt

A Chinese spokesman said on Wednesday that Beijing calls for an immediate stop to military operations, preventing further escalation of tensions, and resuming dialogue and negotiations to uphold peace and stability in the Middle East.

Lou Qinjian, the spokesman for the fourth session of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC), made the statement at a news conference held one day ahead of the opening of the session.

"China is paying close attention to the Iran situation. Iran's national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity should be respected. China calls for an immediate stop to military operations, preventing further escalation of tensions, and resuming dialogue and negotiations to uphold peace and stability in the Middle East. To this end, China will continue to play its role as a responsible major country," said Lou.

"China holds that mutual respect and equality among all countries, big or small, represents the progress of history and is the foremost principle of the UN Charter. No country has the right to control global affairs or the destiny of others, or keep advantages in development all to itself. Even less should one be allowed to do whatever it likes," Lou added.

Iranian warship sinks

An Iranian warship has sunk off the coast of Sri Lanka, with the Sri Lankan authorities saying on Wednesday they had rescued 32 people who were on board and recovered several bodies from the sea.

Sri Lankan Foreign minister Vijitha Herath told parliament that the ship, identified as IRIS Dena, had sunk.

Sources in Sri Lanka's navy and defense ministry said the vessel had been attacked by a submarine and at least 101 people were missing in the incident that took place off Sri Lanka's Indian Ocean coast.

The defense sources said it was unclear who attacked the ship.

A Sri Lankan navy spokesman said the report of 101 people being missing was not true and rejected any reports on the cause of the ship sinking.

The spokesman said 32 people injured in the incident had been rescued by the Sri Lankan navy and were under treatment at a state-run hospital in the southern port city of Galle.

European flights

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said several repatriation flights for French nationals in the Middle East were planned for Wednesday.

"One will depart from the United Arab Emirates, another from Egypt to repatriate vulnerable ones from Israel," Barrot told France 2 TV.

Barrot declined to say how many people would be on the flights. Around 400,000 French nationals are in the region.

Barrot also confirmed that French Rafale fighter jets had taken out Iranian drones targeting the UAE as part of Iran's strikes on Gulf countries following U.S and Israeli attacks.

A British chartered flight will leave Oman on Wednesday evening, prioritising vulnerable UK nationals who want to leave the region after the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East, the British Foreign Office said.

British Airways, which is currently unable to fly from Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Amman and Tel Aviv, said it would also operate a flight from Oman in the early hours of Thursday local time.

Hundreds of thousands of Europeans have been stranded in the Gulf states since Iran responded to US and Israeli strikes by attacking its neighbours. 

Kremlin condemnation

Russia has said Washington's calls for Iranians to seize power from their leaders were "cynical and inhumane."

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the U.S. had used negotiations with Iran, which were taking place as recently as last week, as a cover to disguise a plan for regime change there.

"There is no doubt that the imaginary, invented Iranian threat, repeatedly stated over many years, was merely a pretext for the implementation of a long-cherished plan to violently overthrow the constitutional order of a sovereign state... that Washington and Tel Aviv dislike," Zakharova told reporters.

Without mentioning U.S. President Donald Trump by name, Zakharova alluded to his call for Iranians to take power from the clerical leadership.

"It is even more cynical and inhumane to hear calls for the Iranians to seize power, as the West says, when the West is literally tearing ripping these hands from the Iranians," she said.