Iran on Wednesday announced 143 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, raising the official death toll to 2,077 in one of the world's worst-hit countries.

At least 25 worshippers were killed and eight others injured when heavily armed suicide bombers blasted their way into a prominent gurdwara on Wednesday in the heart of Afghanistan's capital of Kabul, in one of the deadliest attacks on the minority Sikh community in the strife-torn country.

The COVID-19 outbreak in the United States has the potential to exceed that in Europe, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday as the number of reported US cases surges.

 A 7.5-magnitude quake hit off Russia's Kuril Islands on Wednesday, the US Geological Survey said. The quake hit at a depth of 59 kilometres (37 miles), USGS added.

 Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, a man in China's southwestern Yunnan province has died of hantavirus, a disease spread by rodents, official media here reported on Tuesday.

China on Tuesday announced that it will lift the three-month lockdown on more than 50 million people in the central Hubei province, the epicentre of the deadly coronavirus outbreak, on Wednesday as the COVID-19 began to abate.

India, which led the world in eradicating two silent killers -- smallpox and polio -- in the past, has a tremendous capacity in eradicating the deadly coronavirus pandemic that has now claimed nearly 15,000 lives globally, according to a top WHO official.

Deaths from the coronavirus pandemic have topped 15,000 across the globe, according to an AFP tally on Monday from official figures.