Analysts said that the revelation by Washington confirmed an open secret, but the timing of the announcement risked exacerbating tensions with Beijing and the risk of a weapons race in space.

The announcement marked a new stage in the major powers’ rush for military space capabilities, driven by rapid technological advancements but lacking a comprehensive legal framework.

“The US has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action,” a US Space Force spokesperson said in a statement that did not provide specifics on the weapons.

China’s foreign ministry opposed the move, warning against the “weaponisation of outer space, turning it into a battlefield, as well as an arms race there”.

“We urge the US side to stop expanding its military capabilities and preparing for war in outer space,” ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told a news briefing.

Russia called on Tuesday for space to be kept “free of any weapons”.

“We are counting on broad international consolidation to continue working toward the complete demilitarisation of space,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

What are the US capabilities?

The US statement did not provide concrete details about what weapons are deployed in space and how many.

“Space control encapsulates the mission areas required to contest and control the space domain — employing kinetic and non-kinetic means to affect adversary capabilities,” the statement said. “These capabilities can be employed for offensive and defensive purposes.”

Non-kinetic means could include lasers to blind satellites, or even electromagnetic or cyber jamming of their data links.

Why does the US want weapons in space?

For Washington, both Moscow and Beijing — its two main geopolitical rivals — pose potential threats to US interests in space.

China “develops and operates space and counterspace capabilities as part of a military modernisation strategy”, according to the US Space Force.

Russia, meanwhile, “views space as a warfighting domain and believes space supremacy will be a decisive factor in future conflicts”, it said.

The militarisation of space is as old as the space race itself — as soon as the USSR’s Sputnik was launched into orbit as the first probe in space in 1957, Washington and Moscow began exploring ways to both arm and destroy satellites.

India in March 2019 said it had destroyed a low-orbiting satellite, following in the footsteps of Russia, China and the US, in a missile test that proved the nation was among the world’s most advanced space powers.

How might China react?

Song Zhongping, an independent military commentator based in Hong Kong and former Chinese army instructor, told AFP the announcement was “no surprise at all” as the fact that the US possesses such weapons “has long been an open secret”.

“The only difference is that the US used to keep it ambiguous, whereas now it has gone public, which shows that Washington is no longer trying to hide it,” he added.

“China will not stand by and do nothing”, he warned, noting Beijing already has its own space station in orbit. “Whether China deploys weapons in space will depend entirely on whether the United States moves in that direction.”

The Wall Street Journal said Beijing supplied Iran with satellite imagery that enabled Tehran to precisely target military facilities and kill US service members in Jordan in July — a claim China has denied.

Can weapons in outer space be regulated?

The biggest worry was once about nuclear weapons in space, but the superpowers and other countries signed the Outer Space Treaty in 1967, banning weapons of mass destruction in orbit.

Since then, Russia, the United States, China and India have explored ways to fight in space outside of that treaty, including by targeting rivals’ satellites, which are key for military communications, surveillance and navigation.

“There is a regulatory vacuum because Article 4 of the 1967 treaty only forbids weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons in orbit,” said space law expert Laetitia Cesari, adding that the topic would likely be on the agenda at the next UN disarmament meeting in November.

“Moscow and Beijing have been wanting to work for about twenty years on a treaty to prevent the placement of weapons in space,” while “Western states are trying instead to work on the notion of responsible behaviour,” Cesari said.

The US announcement “will likely give impetus to the restrictive approach that Moscow and Beijing are pushing for,” she added.

Volker Turk said the remains of what appeared to be entire families were being unearthed from sites destroyed during Israeli attacks, adding that many victims were women and children.

“It is heartbreaking that the loved ones of those missing for so long are only now having their worst fears confirmed,” he said in a statement.

He said the discoveries revived concerns raised in a 2024 UN report that found Israeli strikes on residential buildings and other civilian sites during the early weeks of the onslaught may have violated international humanitarian law.

The Israeli prime minister’s office and foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Israel has repeatedly rejected allegations that it deliberately targets civilians and claims it acted in accordance with international law.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has generated around 61 million tons of wreckage and debris since October 2023 that could take seven years to clear, according to the UN.

A US-brokered ceasefire brought an end to full-scale onslaught in October 2025, but has failed to halt regular Israeli strikes.

Widespread destruction on Gaza

The Palestinian Civil Defence says more than 630 bodies and human remains have been recovered from beneath destroyed buildings across Gaza since November 2025.

Palestinian authorities estimate more than 8,000 people remain buried in the wreckage.

Turk said he feared the remains recovered so far could be “only the tip of the iceberg”, noting that large parts of Gaza had been flattened by Israeli bombing or later demolition and clearance operations.

He also accused Israel of continuing to level some areas of Gaza where its forces remain deployed, saying bulldozers were operating “with no respect for the dead under the rubble”.

More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign, according to Gaza health authorities.

The UN rights chief called for international investigators to be granted access to all parts of Gaza to help preserve evidence, citing ongoing legal proceedings examining conduct during the war.

Israel has blocked the entry of heavy machinery needed to remove rubble, according to Turk’s statement.

Francesca Albanese, the UN expert on the Palestinian territories, has said evidence should be gathered and human remains identified before full clearance starts.

This month, the Palestinian Civil Defence said 96 bodies and human remains had been recovered from a single site in the Zeitoun area of Gaza City, including 58 children and 23 women.

The August 26 fire at a nursery in Pims’ Mother and Child Hospital claimed the lives of 14 newborns. The incident raised concerns over fire safety measures and sparked calls for accountability, with criminal action being ordered against eight officials.

Headed by former interior secretary Shahid Khan, the committee was formed on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s directives on the day the fire occurred. It has presented its findings and recommendations in a 43-page report available with Dawn.

The committee concluded that “systemic and institutional failure is established, while individual responsibility varies with the strength of the evidence”.

It noted that Pims and its “senior management bear the principal institutional responsibility for failing to convert known risks, prior warnings and assigned duties into an effective safety system”.

“The electrical spark explains how the fire began; the institutional system explains why it became a catastrophe.

“Fourteen newborns were lost not because one safeguard failed, but because too many safeguards were absent, weak, delayed or never verified to be working,” the report declared.

It explained: “The causal chain is coherent. A localised electrical failure most probably started the fire; combustible and oxygen-supported conditions accelerated it; inadequate detection and protection failed to contain it; overcrowding, limited evacuation capacity and the absence of a rehearsed neonatal emergency system constrained rescue; delayed institutional activation weakened response; and longstanding governance, maintenance and regulatory failures allowed these vulnerabilities to coexist.”

The report also pointed out a “history of known but incompletely closed risks”.

It said that earlier correspondence by the Capital Development Authority (CDA), the Federal Ombudsman’s 2015 findings, Pims’ own 2025 acknowledgement of ageing fire safety infrastructure, and especially the July 6, 2026 Nursing Hostel fire had already highlighted deficiencies in detection, alarms, electrical inspection, evacuation, firefighting equipment, drills and emergency planning.

“Yet those warnings had not been converted into a comprehensive, time-bound and independently verified corrective programme before the Nursery fire,” the report regretted.

“The specific AC 2 defect may not have been foreseeable; the need for stronger fire preparedness plainly was.”

The committee said its conclusions were based on a structured 52-task investigation drawing upon forensic evidence, CCTV, call records, engineering and maintenance documents, clinical and casualty records, duty and attendance material, witness statements, contracts, regulatory records, and earlier inquiries.

Response

Citing CCTV footage, which established “an exceptionally rapid emergency”, the report said the evidence “rejects any generalised allegation that frontline personnel abandoned the newborns”.

Noting that Charge Nurse Nasreen Akhtar, Security Guard Maria Saleem and Staff Nurse Razia Noreen responded within moments, the report said that “several acted promptly and courageously in circumstances that became untenable within minutes”.

The report also highlighted the “vulnerability” of the nursery, with 15 “medically fragile, non-self-evacuating neonates were housed in a 10-bed unit, several dependent on oxygen or respiratory support”.w

Only two doctors and two nurses were immediately available, and protected evacuation resources were limited.

“No adequately documented, approved, trained and rehearsed nursery-specific fire and neonatal evacuation SOP (standard operating procedure) was demonstrated, nor was a functional automatic smoke detection, alarm or sprinkler system shown to be serving the affected area,” the report read.

It observed that combustible materials and the “oxygen-supported environment further intensified fire and smoke after ignition”.

The committee also called for the response to be distinguished between individual reaction and institutional activation.

It noted that the frontline staff acted within seconds at 6:38am, external notification was at 6:54am, and operational arrival was at 7:01am. Therefore, the principal concern was the interval between visible fire and external activation, rather than the response by the Capital Emergency Services (CES).

“Pims had not demonstrated a tested incident command system capable of immediately converting detection into alarm, external notification, evacuation, hazard isolation, access management and coordinated rescue.”

Electrical fault

“The strongest technical evidence, from the National Forensics Agency, identifies the АС Unit No. 2 electrical supply cable near/over AC Unit No. 1 as the most probable point of ignition,” the report said about the cause of the fire.

It explained that abnormal localised electrical heating — possibly from excessive current, a high-resistance connection or another localised defect — most probably caused insulation failure and ignition of nearby combustible material.

The evidence does not establish arson, multiple ignition points, an external fault of the Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco), a pre-fire oxygen leak, or an incubator or warmer as the source, the committee determined.

“The fire was therefore most probably electrical in origin, although the precise defect and the person or entity responsible for preventing it require separate determination,” the report read.

According to the inquiry panel, the maintenance record showed that the nursery ACs had been serviced, but it did not “demonstrate a sufficiently systematic and traceable electrical safety regime covering cables, terminations, insulation, earthing, breaker protection and thermal hotspots”.

“The critical distinction is that equipment being operational is not the same as its electrical installation being demonstrably fire safe. The evidence reveals a wider institutional gap between keeping equipment running and ensuring that it was safe,” the committee pointed out.

The report stressed that the engineering/electrical/HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) chain remained the “most significant unresolved technical accountability line”. It added that contractors must be examined only against the duties actually assigned to them.

According to the report, the record “does not presently establish criminal guilt against any named person”.

However, it supported focused investigation into four possible lines: culpable electrical installation or maintenance failure relating to AC 2; culpable obstruction of a mandatory emergency route; culpable failure to act despite specific prior warning; and any proved culpable delay in summoning external assistance.

“Criminal responsibility must rest on the duty owed, knowledge or foreseeability of risk, authority to act, the act or omission, degree of negligence, failed safeguard, causal contribution and applicable offence,” the report said.

It emphasised that frontline responders whose rescue conduct had been “objectively established should not be blamed merely because the outcome was catastrophic”.

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