Pakistan on Monday passed an amendment to a law that will extend the terms of the heads of the armed forces to five years from three, in a rowdy parliamentary session opposed by jailed ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan's party, Reuters reported.

Extending the term of commanders including Army Chief General Asim Munir would deal another blow to the embattled Khan and his party, which blames the military for his downfall.

The measure from the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who leads a coalition of parties opposed to Khan that took power after an election in February, could be aimed at shoring up support from powerful military figures.

The bill to amend the Pakistan Army Act of 1952 was moved by Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif. House Speaker Ayaz Sadiq announced in a live telecast of the proceedings that the bill had passed.

Geo TV reported that it took 16 minutes for the senate to pass the amendment into law, which Khan's party lawmaker Omar Ayub termed as bulldozing the legislation by the ruling alliance without any debate in either house.

"It is neither good for the country nor for the armed forces," Ayub said.

Khan's party's lawmakers opposed the bill during the sessions and some tore apart copies of it.

Under the new law, General Munir, who took office in November 2022 with a timeline to retire in 2025, will serve until 2027 irrespective of a retirement age of 64 for a general.

The former prime minister, who has been in jail since August last year, has been at odds with generals he blames for his 2022 ousting, after he fell out with then-army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa.

At least nine people died after Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki in eastern Indonesia erupted on Sunday, spewing explosive plumes of lava and forcing authorities to evacuate several nearby villages, officials said on Monday.

Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki, located on Flores Island in East Nusa Tenggara province, erupted on Sunday at 23.57 local time , belching a fiery-red column of lava, volcanic ash and incandescent rocks, Hadi Wijaya, a spokesperson for The Center of Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG), said on Monday.

"After the eruption, there was power outage and then it was raining and big lightning which caused panic among residents," he told Reuters, adding that the authority had raised the status of the volcano to level IV or the highest.

The agency has recommended a seven-kilometer radius must be cleared.

Fiery lava and rocks hit the nearest settlements around 4 kms from the crater, burning and damaging residents' houses, Hadi said.

As of Monday morning at least nine people had died, said Heronimus Lamawuran, a local official at East Flores area, adding the eruption had affected seven villages.

"We have started evacuating residents since this morning to other villages located around 20 kms from the crater," he said.

The nearest villages were covered by thick volcanic ash on Monday morning, Heronimus added.

The authorities are still gathering data on the number of evacuees and damaged buildings.

Indonesia sits on the "Pacific Ring of Fire", an area of high seismic activity atop multiple tectonic plates.

This eruption follows a series of eruptions of different volcanoes in Indonesia. 

In May, a volcano on the remote island of Halmahera, Mount Ibu, caused evacuation of people from seven villages.

North Sulawesi's Ruang volcano has also erupted in May and prompted authorities to evacuate more than 12,000 people.

Flash floods and cold lava flow from Mount Marapi in West Sumatra province, covered several nearby districts following torrential rain on May 11, killing more than 60 people.

Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and the U.S. with “a crushing response” over attacks on Iran and its allies.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its Oct. 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people, the Associated Press reported.

Any further attacks from either side could engulf the wider Middle East, already teetering over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict just ahead of the U.S. presidential election this Tuesday.

“The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation and to the resistance front,” Khamenei said in video released by Iranian state media.

The supreme leader did not elaborate on the timing of the threatened attack, nor the scope. The U.S. military operates throughout the Middle East, with some troops now manning a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, battery in Israel.

The 85-year-old Khamenei had struck a more cautious approach in earlier remarks, saying officials would weigh Iran’s response and that Israel’s attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed.”

But efforts by Iran to downplay the attack faltered as satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press showed attacks damaged military bases near Tehran linked to the country’s ballistic missile program, as well as damage at a Revolutionary Guard base used in satellite launches.

Iran’s allies, called the “Axis of Resistance” by Tehran, also have been severely hurt by ongoing Israeli attacks, particularly Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran long has used those groups as both an asymmetrical way to attack Israel and as a shield against a direct assault. Some analysts believe those groups want Iran to do more to back them militarily.

Iran, however, has been dealing with its own problems at home, as its economy struggles under the weight of international sanctions and it has faced years of widespread, multiple protests.

Gen. Mohammad Ali Naini, a spokesman for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard which controls the ballistic missiles needed to target Israel, gave an interview published by the semiofficial Fars news agency just before Khamenei’s remarks were released. In it, he warned Iran’s response “will be wise, powerful and beyond the enemy’s comprehension.”

“The leaders of the Zionist regime should look out from the windows of their bedrooms and protect their criminal pilots within their small territory,” he warned.

Khamenei on Saturday met with university students to mark Students Day, which commemorates a Nov. 4, 1978, incident in which Iranian soldiers opened fire on students protesting the rule of the shah at Tehran University. The shooting killed and wounded several students and further escalated the tensions consuming Iran at the time that eventually led to the shah fleeing the country and the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The crowd offered a raucous welcome to Khamenei, chanting: “The blood in our veins is a gift to our leader!” Some also made a hand gesture — similar to a “timeout” signal — given by the slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in 2020 in a speech in which he threatened that American troops who arrived in the Mideast standing up would “return in coffins” horizontally.

Iran will mark the 45th anniversary of the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis this Sunday, following the Persian calendar. The Nov. 4, 1979, storming of the embassy by Islamist students led to the 444-day crisis, which cemented the decades-long enmity between Tehran and Washington that persists today.