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Tokyo (AFP) – Japan's cabinet approved a bill Friday allowing hunters to shoot bears in populated areas at their own discretion after human encounters with the wild animals hit record levels.

Across the country, 219 people were attacked by bears in 12 months to April 2024, with six human fatalities -- the highest since statistics began nearly two decades ago.

Climate change affecting bear food sources and hibernation times, along with depopulation caused by an ageing society, are causing the animals to venture into towns more frequently.

The revised wildlife protection and management law allows "emergency shootings" following complaints that hunters were hampered by red tape.

The environment ministry hopes to present the bill to parliament in the coming months and get it enacted before autumn, when bear sightings typically surge, an environment ministry official told AFP, declining to be named.

Currently, shooting animals such as bears or wild boar in residential areas is forbidden.

Even when bears hole themselves up in populated areas, hunters are not allowed to shoot without being given the green light by police.

Even then, police "can only issue such a command in an extremely dire situation, such as when a person is seconds away from being attacked", the ministry official said.

Under current rules, "you'd have to wait until someone is actually in danger to get police approval", he said.

In December, a bear rampaged through a supermarket in northern Japan for two days before being lured out with food coated in honey.

It wounded a 47-year-old man before shoppers were evacuated and the bear laid waste to the meat department.

More than 9,000 bears were killed in Japan in the 12 months leading to April 2024.

Tāplejung (Nepal) (AFP) – They appear tranquil soaring above Himalayan forests, but a string of cable car projects in Nepal have sparked violent protests, with locals saying environmental protection should trump tourism development.

In Nepal's eastern district of Taplejung, the community has been torn apart by a $22-million government-backed project many say will destroy livelihoods and damage ancient forests they hold as sacred.

Across Nepal, five cable car projects have opened in the past two years -- and 10 more are under development, according to government figures.

Critics accuse the government of failing to assess the environmental impact properly.

Around 300,000 Hindu devotees trek for hours to Taplejung's mountaintop Pathibhara temple every year -- a site also deeply sacred to the local Limbu people's separate beliefs.

In 2018, Chandra Prasad Dhakal, a businessman with powerful political ties who is also president of Nepal's Chamber of Commerce and Industry, announced the construction of a 2.5-kilometre-long (1.5-mile) cable car to the temple.

The government calls it a project of "national pride".

Dhakal's IME Group is also building other cable cars, including the 6.4-kilometre-long Sikles line in the Annapurna Conservation Area, which the Supreme Court upheld.

The government deemed the project a "national priority", thereby exempting it from strict planning restrictions in protected areas.

The Supreme Court scrapped that controversial exemption last month, a move celebrated by environmentalists.

But activists fear the project may still go ahead.

Taplejung is deeply sacred to local Mukkumlung beliefs, and residents say that the clearance of around 3,000 rhododendron trees -- with 10,00 more on the chopping block -- to build pylons is an attack on their religion.

"It is a brutal act," said protest chief Limbu. "How can this be a national pride project when the state is only serving business interests?"

Saroj Kangliba Yakthung, 26, said locals would rather efforts and funding were directed to "preserve the religious, cultural and ecological importance" of the forests.

The wider forests are home to endangered species including the red panda, black bear and snow leopard.

"We worship trees, stone and all living beings, but they are butchering our faith," said Anil Subba, director of the Kathmandu-based play "Mukkumlung", which was staged for a month as part of the protest.

The hundreds of porters and dozens of tea stall workers that support trekking pilgrims fear for their livelihoods.

"If they fly over us in a cable car, how will we survive?" said 38-year-old porter Chandra Tamang.

The government says the cable car will encourage more pilgrims by making it easy to visit, boosting the wider economy in a country where unemployment hovers around 10 percent, and GDP per capita at just $1,377, according to the World Bank.

"This will bring development," said resident Kamala Devi Thapa, 45, adding that the new route will aid "elderly pilgrims".

The cable cars symbolise Nepal's breakneck bid to cash in on tourism, making up more than six percent of the country's GDP in 2023, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC).

Beyond the Pathibhara project, the government's environmental policy is in question -- in a country where 45 percent is forest.

More than 255,000 trees have been cut down for infrastructure projects in the past four years, according to the environment ministry.

"Nepal has witnessed massive deforestation in the name of infrastructure," said Rajesh Rai, professor of forestry at Tribhuvan University. "This will have severe long-term consequences".

Unperturbed, the cable car builder assures his project will create 1,000 jobs and brushes aside criticism.

"It won't disturb the ecology or local culture," Dhakal said. "If people can fly there in helicopters, why not a cable car?"

The argument leaves Kendra Singh Limbu, 79, unmoved.

"We are fighting to save our heritage," he said.

It has split the community, local journalist Anand Gautam told AFP.

"It has turned fathers and sons against each other," Gautam said. "Some see it as progress, others as destruction".

Phnom Penh (AFP) – Cambodian deminers are to resume operations to clear unexploded munitions, after the United States granted a waiver to keep funding the work in the country, officials said on Friday.

Heng Ratana, director general of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC), told AFP on Friday that the US had granted a conditional waiver for funding to partner organisations supporting Cambodia’s demining projects.

He said he had sent deminers, who had been standing down for the past several weeks, back to the field and that operations to clear unexploded munitions would resume on Monday.

"We are happy to resume our mission to save lives," Keo Sarath, manager of CMAC's demining unit 5 headquarters, which is responsible for clearing along eastern provinces bordering Vietnam.

The United States has been a "key partner" and provided around $10 million a year to fund mine clearance in Cambodia.

Ly Thuch, a senior government minister and leading official in Cambodia's Mine Action Authority, confirmed the US embassy had informed the foreign ministry about the continuation of demining funding.

He said deminers would soon be able to resume full-scale operations.

During the Vietnam War, then-US president Richard Nixon ordered a clandestine bombing campaign over large swathes of Laos and Cambodia, which helped fuel the rise of the Khmer Rouge.

After more than 30 years of civil war ended in 1998, Cambodia was left as one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.

Deaths from the war remnants are still common, with around 20,000 people killed since 1979, and twice that number wounded.

More than 1,600 square kilometres (620 square miles) of contaminated land still needs to be cleared in Cambodia.

Cambodia had aimed to be mine-free by 2025, but the government pushed the deadline back by five years because of funding challenges and new landmine fields found along the Thai border.

Villa del Rosario (Colombia) (AFP) – Guerrilla fighters carried out four bomb attacks that wounded six people in a restive region of northeast Colombia, prompting officials to declare an overnight curfew Thursday and stoking concerns for a fragile peace process.

The police and military blamed the ELN group, with which the government called off peace talks last month, for the attacks in a cocaine-producing region near Colombia's border with Venezuela on Wednesday night.

A car bomb all but destroyed a toll booth outside the city of Villa del Rosario, while explosives were also detonated at police stations in the same city and in neighboring Cucuta, police commander General William Quintero told W Radio.

A source in the Norte de Santander departmental government, of which Cucuta is the capital, told AFP on Thursday that six people were injured.

Cucuta Mayor Jorge Acevedo announced an 11-hour curfew starting at 7:00 pm Thursday (midnight GMT), with schools shuttered on Friday.

Analysts say the security situation in Colombia has deteriorated under President Gustavo Petro's peace drive, which has seen an easing of the state's military offensive against armed groups, who are gaining strength.

Petro was elected in 2022 on promises of bringing "total peace" to a country battling to extricate itself from six decades of armed conflict between leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, drug cartels and the government.

Talks with remaining armed groups have broken down several times since a deal inked in 2016 led to the disarmament of the FARC, the biggest among the rebel armies.

The Norte de Santander department is a stronghold of the 5,800-strong National Liberation Army (ELN), which last month launched an offensive targeting rival fighters and civilians it alleged to be sympathizers in the Catatumbo region.

More than 60 people have been killed and some 50,000 driven from their homes, prompting Petro's government to suspend talks with the ELN.

The ELN has taken part in failed negotiations with Colombia's last five governments.

The country also faces a political crisis, with deeply unpopular Petro this month asking his entire cabinet to resign on the grounds they were ineffective.

One of those to quit was Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez, whom Petro replaced with Air Force General Pedro Sanchez.

On Monday, the president claimed "big mafias" were plotting to down his plane with missiles.

Moscow (AFP) – Russian military courts sentenced more than 1,000 people on terrorist charges last year, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday, referring to a massive wave of prosecutions during the Ukraine offensive.

Russia's secretive military courts prosecute captured Ukrainian soldiers, Russians accused of working with Kyiv or sabotaging Moscow's army, domestic opponents of the Kremlin, and alleged radicals and terrorist groups.

"Military courts have a key role in deciding on criminal cases with a terrorist direction," Putin said in a speech to Russia's top judges.

"Last year, around 950 such cases were looked at, 1,075 people were sentenced."

Russia regularly sentences people over opposition to the Ukraine offensive, while convicting captured Ukrainian soldiers on treason and terrorist charges.

The Geneva Conventions prohibit the prosecution of prisoners of war (POW) for taking part in armed hostilities.

Moscow has also intensified its targeting of alleged jihadist cells since the March 2024 massacre at a Moscow concert hall that killed 145 people -- an attack claimed by the Islamic State.

The crackdown at home is of a scale not seen since the Soviet era.

The OVD-Info rights group says 1,184 people have been prosecuted in Russia for their opposition to the Ukraine conflict -- including 258 for justifying "terrorism" and 58 for "acts of terrorism."

The Memorial rights group says Russia has 868 political prisoners, though its co-founder Oleg Orlov told AFP last year there were "a lot more" that campaigners did not know about.

Jailed for "discrediting" Russia's armed forces, he was then released in a prisoner exchange with the United States.

Putin on Thursday praised Russia's judges for their "dedication" in overseeing the ballooning case load.

He said Russia had created 100 courts and appointed 570 judges in occupied parts of eastern Ukraine, where Moscow has jailed an unknown number of Ukrainians for opposing Moscow's military offensive.

"They are completely integrated in the united Russian judicial system," Russia's Supreme Court chief Irina Podnosova told Putin.

She said military courts had seen a steep rise in overall cases during the Ukraine campaign.

"In 2024, they looked at 18,000 criminal (cases), 13,000 administrative (cases) and 9,000 civilian (cases)," she added.

Little is known of the fate of Ukrainians sentenced by Russian-installed courts in the four Ukrainian regions Russia annexed in 2022 -- Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia.

Russian courts are known for their low acquittal rates.

Nairobi (AFP) – Burundi has "accelerated" the withdrawal of some troops from DR Congo, a senior military source told AFP Thursday, as the UN warned the small Great Lakes nation was seeing its biggest influx of refugees from its conflict-riven neighbour in 25 years.

"Since yesterday, the army has accelerated the extraction of our soldiers deployed on the Rusizi plain in the DRC," a senior army officer told AFP on Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The officer did not specify how many troops were being withdrawn, but did note that one battalion had been sent to "secure the withdrawal of our soldiers" from an area in South Kivu.

Since October 2023, Burundi has sent more than 10,000 soldiers to help the Congolese army against the M23 and other armed groups.

However, the officer said the soldiers in the DRC were now facing "serious" re-supply issues, blaming the "disorganised" Congolese forces.

Burundian soldiers were "at a total loss", he said, adding: "they have no more ammunition, no more food and have to make do."

Earlier in the week reports that some Burundian troops were staging a "tactical withdrawal" were denied by the army.

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Interior Minister Martin Niteretse said the government intended to relocate the refugees to eastern Burundi, "in order to guarantee their safety". He added they would be granted refugee status.

Prior to the recent escalation in the conflict, the UNHCR said that Burundi was already hosting roughly 90,000 people -- mainly Congolese -- who had fled previous bouts of violence in the mineral-rich but conflict-stricken eastern DRC.

Some 500 Congolese soldiers and police also arrived in the border town of Gatumba on Wednesday, witnesses and a security source said.

The security source said they were disarmed and searched.

Bintou Keita, head of the UN's DRC peacekeeping mission (MONUSCO), expressed concern to the UN Security Council over M23's advance, which she said Wednesday is approaching the "the junction of the three borders between the DRC, Rwanda and Burundi."

Huang Xia, the UN Secretary-General's special envoy for the Great Lakes region, told the Security Council on Wednesday that M23 and its allies were continuing their advance towards "other strategic areas" in North and South Kivu, warning: "The risk of a regional conflagration is more real than ever."

Tboung Khmum (Cambodia) (AFP) – Eleven-year-old Yeat Saly lies in a hospital bed, a piece of shrapnel lodged in his forehead -- one of the many injuries inflicted by an old mortar he found near his village in Cambodia.

Parts of the kingdom are still littered with unexploded ordnance from decades of conflict, but US President Donald Trump's decision to freeze virtually all American aid has forced many long-running projects to clear the deadly debris to grind a halt.

Villagers now fear for themselves and their children unless a way is found to keep removing the leftover landmines, mortars and other lethal munitions scattered across the countryside.

Yeat Saly was herding his cows outside his village in Tboung Khmum province on February 5 when he found a metal object by a rubber tree.

"I thought it was just a piece of metal. I threw it, then it exploded into a ball of flame," he told AFP from a hospital bed.

"A piece of shrapnel is still in here," he said, touching his forehead.

He is receiving treatment for injuries to both his legs and body at a hospital in Tboung Khmum.

"I was so frightened, my ears could not hear anything. Blood was spraying from my forehead, and I rode a motorbike (back home) with one hand blocking the blood," he said.

Much of Cambodia's unexploded ordnance is a legacy of US operations during the Vietnam War.

Then-president Richard Nixon ordered a clandestine bombing campaign over swathes of Laos and Cambodia, which helped fuel the rise of the Khmer Rouge.

After more than 30 years of civil war ended in 1998, Cambodia was left as one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.

Injuries and deaths from war remnants are still common, with around 65,000 casualties, including 20,000 people killed, since 1979.

The annual additions to that count have fallen dramatically in recent years thanks to clearance programs, but more than 1,600 square kilometres (620 square miles) of contaminated land still need to be demined.

In recognition of American responsibility for causing the problem, Washington has been a key partner in Cambodia's mine clearance, providing around $10 million a year in funding.

But Trump's 90-day freeze on virtually all foreign aid has forced many demining operations in Cambodia to stop, according to officials.

Deminers in eastern Cambodia have suspended work to clear UXOs and cluster bombs, even as requests for removals have grown.

"We have received a pile of requests, and we could not respond to them. We are so upset," Moch Sokheang, who has been a deminer for 16 years.

"We worry that when villagers go into the forests, dig land to grow their crops, they may trigger explosions or children may play with them when they go herding cows," the 36-year-old added.

Cambodian demining authorities say more than 1,000 deminers and experts have been affected by the aid freeze.

Days after Trump's announcement, China -- Cambodia's close ally -- pledged $4.4 million to fund mine clearance activities.

But the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) said that aid was "not a substitute" for US funding.

Farmers in eastern Svay Reing province told AFP they must keep working their fields despite the risks.

Mao Saroeun said he was "unhappy" that deminers had been forced to suspend a search in his rice field where many US bombs fell.

"I know (about UXOs) but our livelihood is poor so we keep farming rice in UXO fields," Mao Saroeun said.

Cambodia had aimed to be mine-free by 2025, but the government pushed the deadline back by five years because of funding challenges and new landmine fields found along the Thai border.

The loss of US funding is a further setback.

"The aid freeze will cause more accidents... A lot of UXOs are still littered around," Keo Sarath, manager of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre's demining unit 5 headquarters, told AFP.

In Banteay Kraing village in Svay Rieng province, AFP journalists saw a rusty mortar left between tree trunks with police tape around the site to warn people away.

Villager Som Khatna told AFP that her husband unearthed the bomb last month when he dug a pit to lay the foundation for a house.

"I am so worried that children would come and play with it," said the 59-year-old grandmother.

Colombo (AFP) – A Sri Lankan passenger train derailed Thursday after smashing into a family of elephants, with no passengers injured but six animals killed in the island's worst such wildlife accident, police said.

The express train was travelling near a wildlife reserve at Habarana, some 180 kilometres (110 miles) east of the capital Colombo, when it hit the herd crossing the line before dawn.

"The train derailed, but there were no casualties among the passengers," police said, adding that wildlife authorities were treating two elephants who survived the crash.

Videos shot after the accident showed one elephant standing guard over an injured youngster lying beside the tracks, with the tips of their trunks curled together.

Killing or harming elephants is a criminal offence in Sri Lanka, which has an estimated 7,000 wild elephants, with the animals considered a national treasure, partly due to their significance in Buddhist culture.

Two baby elephants and their pregnant mother were killed in a similar accident by a train in the same area in September 2018.

Since then, the authorities ordered train drivers to observe speed limits to minimise injury to elephants when going through areas where they cross the lines.

The elephant deaths comes days after the authorities expressed concern over the growing impact of conflict between humans and elephants, as the ancient habitat of the animals is increasingly encroached upon.

Farmers scratching a living from smallholder plots often fight back against elephants raiding their crops.

Deputy Minister of Environment Anton Jayakody told AFP on Sunday that 150 people and 450 elephants were killed in clashes in 2023.

That is an increase on the previous year, when 145 people and 433 elephants were killed, according to official data.

Just those two years represent more than a tenth of the island's elephants.

But Jayakody said he was confident the government could find solutions.

"We are planning to introduce multiple barriers -- these may include electric fences, trenches, or other deterrents -- to make it more difficult for wild elephants to stray into villages," Jayakody said.

A study last year detailed how Asian elephants loudly mourn and bury their dead calves, in a report that details animal behaviour reminiscent of human funeral rites.

Elephants are known for their social and cooperative behaviour but calf burial had previously only been "briefly studied" in African elephants -- remaining unexplored among their smaller Asian cousins, according to the study in the Journal of Threatened Taxa.

Asian elephants are recognised as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

An estimated 26,000 of them live in the wild, mostly in India with some in Southeast Asia, surviving for an average of 60-70 years outside captivity.

Jakarta (AFP) – Indonesia's planned expansion of "captive" coal plants used to power industry is threatening its pledge to cut CO2 emissions by 2030 and close all coal-fired plants by a decade later, said a report published Thursday.

Coal-dependent Indonesia, Southeast Asia's largest economy, is one of the world's top emitters but President Prabowo Subianto last year committed to phasing out coal in just 15 years and reaching net-zero emissions by mid-century.

Indonesia's new national electricity master plan announced in November projects growth in renewables but also a sharp rise in coal generation beyond 2030, according to a report by London-based energy think tank Ember.

The new plan raises "concerns that Indonesia's latest electricity masterplan could significantly increase coal power generation", Ember said.

Jakarta previously said its renewable energy mix would reach 44 percent of its power generation by 2030.

But the new plan includes 26.8 gigawatts of new coal capacity over the next seven years, Ember said, with more than 20 GW of that coming from so-called captive coal expansion, which supplies energy to industry rather than the grid.

Indonesia currently operates 49.7 GW of coal-fired power plants, according to Ember, and the government says 253 coal-fired power plants were operational as of December.

But dozens more coal-fired plants remain under construction, including captive coal plants.

State electricity company Perusahaan Listrik Negara did not respond to a request for comment.

"Expanding captive coal while global markets shift to clean energy makes little economic sense," said Dody Setiawan, Ember's senior climate and energy analyst for Indonesia.

"Committing to a clear path for coal phase-out while prioritising renewables would help Indonesia address the multi-faceted challenges that all coal-dependent economies must face."

The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), which said much of the captive coal growth was centred on Sulawesi and North Maluku islands, issued a warning to locals.

They "will have to bear the highest health and economic burden from pollution exposure," said CREA analyst Katherine Hasan.

Indonesia secured a $20 billion Just Energy Transition Partnership with developed nations in 2022, which was supposed to speed its clean energy transition, but little of that money has been seen so far.

This month the environment ministry rushed to again pledge Jakarta's support for the landmark Paris climate deal after its climate envoy suggested the agreement was irrelevant after US President Donald Trump again withdrew from it.

The report said Indonesia needed to do much more to meet the Paris agreement target by 2050.

Around 20 people were killed in northern Mali when the vehicles they were travelling in came under attack earlier this week with local sources saying Wagner mercenaries and Mali's army were responsible.

Mali's military said there had been a "series of clashes" with "armed terrorist groups" in the area.

A relative of the driver of one of the vehicles from the northern city of Gao told French news agency AFP that the group was bound for Algeria when the deadly attack occurred.

"The driver of the first vehicle is my cousin," they said on the condition of anonymity.

"They encountered a group of Wagner mercenaries and some Malian soldiers who shot at them. In the first car, everyone died. My cousin too," they said, specifying that the passengers included migrants and nomads.

Mali's army said in a statement late on Monday that "seven terrorists" had been "neutralised" and weapons and ammunition recovered.

"Air strikes targeted a group of terrorists in the area of clashes, destroying a pick-up truck and neutralising its occupants," the army said, without commenting on the information from local sources.

A military source had earlier denied the claims, saying an investigation had begun but "the army killed no one".

"What happened is serious. These were civilians who were killed in the two vehicles in the Tilemsi region," a representative from the Gao region told AFP.

"In total, in the two vehicles, there are at least 20 dead," he said.

The separatist rebel group Front for the Liberation of Azawad (FLA) condemned the continuation of "ethnic cleansing carried out by the Bamako junta against the Azawad population".

The FLA statement claimed two vehicles "were intercepted by the terrorist coalition FAMA (Malian Armed Forces) / Wagner".

"Among the passengers, at least 24 people, including women and children, were coldly executed by the Malian army and Wagner's Russian mercenaries," the statement continued.

Mali, run by a military junta following coups in 2020 and 2021, has spent the past dozen years mired in a security crisis due to violence by groups affiliated to Al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

The military junta has been supported by Wagner mercenaries since breaking ties with former colonial ruler France.

The NGO Human Rights Watch in December denounced the "atrocities" committed against civilians by the Malian army and its Russian ally Wagner, as well as by Islamist armed groups.

The Rwanda-backed M23 armed group has summarily executed children in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The UN rights office warned the situation in eastern DRC was "deteriorating sharply, resulting in serious human rights violations and abuses".

"Our office has confirmed cases of summary execution of children by M23 after they entered the city of Bukavu last week," rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.

"We are also aware that children were in possession of weapons," she said.

She urged "Rwanda and M23 to ensure that human rights and international humanitarian law are respected".

M23 fighters and Rwandan soldiers have seized Goma and Bukavu, the capitals of North and South Kivu provinces respectively.

In South Kivu, more than 150,000 people have been forced to flee, UN refugee agency UNHCR said.

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Shamdasani also said the situation was "very chaotic", and the UN rights office was "receiving a lot of information... which we are not able to confirm or verify".

It had, however, confirmed a case of three boys, thought to be aged between 11 and 15, who had been killed in Bukavu on Sunday "during an altercation with members of M23".

The boys were allegedly wearing uniforms and carrying weapons found in an abandoned DRC army camp, firing shots and looting stores, she said.

"What appears to have happened is that they were asked to surrender their weapons and they refused to do so and they were killed," she said.

The rights office had also documented cases of "ill treatment, conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence, child and forced recruitment, intimidation and death threats", she said.

Prison breaks from South Kivu's Kabare and Bukavu jails on Friday had made matters worse.

She said the UN had received "reports that journalists, human rights defenders and members of civil society organisations have been threatened, and forced to leave".

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Hanoi (AFP) – Vietnam's parliament approved plans on Wednesday for an $8 billion rail link from its largest northern port city to the border with China, boosting links between the two communist-ruled countries and making trade easier.

The new rail line will run through some of Vietnam's key manufacturing hubs, home to Samsung, Foxconn, Pegatron and other global giants, many of whom rely on a regular flow of components from China.

The route will stretch 390 kilometres (240 miles) from the port city of Haiphong to the mountainous city of Lao Cai, which borders China's Yunnan province, and will also run through the capital Hanoi.

Construction of the railway was backed in a vote by 95 percent of parliamentarians in Vietnam's rubber-stamp National Assembly, an AFP journalist in the chamber said.

China will provide some funding through loans for the project, which is expected to cost more than $8 billion.

It is one of two railway lines to China that Vietnam plans as part of its "Two Corridors, One Belt" initiative, which connects to Beijing's Belt and Road global infrastructure programme.

A spokesperson for China's foreign ministry said on Wednesday the two countries were "working to expedite the construction of the connection line" between Lao Cai and the Chinese border city of Hekou.

Both sides had "held multiple discussions on advancing railway connectivity", Guo Jiakun told a regular news briefing but referred reporters to "relevant authorities" for details.

The approval comes just over a year after the neighbours pledged during a visit to Vietnam by President Xi Jinping to deepen ties as Beijing sought to counter growing US influence with Hanoi.

Vietnam's transport infrastructure is considered relatively weak, with a road network struggling to keep up with demand and an underdeveloped rail system.

The country is an increasingly favoured destination for foreign businesses looking for an alternative to China, but low-quality infrastructure is seen as holding back surging investment.

Dan Martin, international business adviser of Dezan Shira & Associates, said the new rail link could help smooth out bumps in international supply chains caused by the current reliance on slow and costly trucks that are "prone to border bottlenecks".

"China supplies much of the raw material that fuels Vietnam's manufacturing sector, and keeping that pipeline steady is critical," he told AFP.

"A modern rail link cuts through... inefficiencies, ensuring goods move smoothly whether they're flowing into Vietnam's factories or heading to global markets via Haiphong's port," he said.

Vietnam says a feasibility study for the Haiphong-Lao Cai railway will begin this year and it wants the line finished by 2030, although the country has a history of overruns on major infrastructure projects.

The line, spanning nine provinces and cities, will follow roughly the route of an existing rail track built during the French colonial period.

Trains can currently run on that rail at just 50 kilometres an hour (30 mph), but Vietnam says the new line will accommodate both passenger and freight cars with speeds of up to 160 kph.

Pham Thu Hang, spokesperson for the ministry of foreign affairs, said last week the rail link would "promote economic, trade, investment and tourism cooperation between the two countries as well as in the region".

It comes just three months after Vietnam approved plans for a $67 billion high-speed railway from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, another much-needed boost to infrastructure that is expected to drive growth.

That railway, which will stretch more than 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) from the capital in the north to Vietnam's business hub in the south, will reduce the current journey time by rail from 30 hours to around five.

The other line to China, which has not yet been approved by parliament, will connect Hanoi to Lang Son province, which borders China's Guangxi region, travelling through another area packed with global manufacturing facilities.

The two countries signed more than 30 agreements, including a pledge to develop rail links, during Xi's visit to Hanoi.

Vietnam has long pursued a "bamboo diplomacy" approach, striving to stay on good terms with both China and the United States.

It shares US concerns about Beijing's increasing assertiveness in the contested South China Sea but also has close economic ties with China.