Israel says it has reached a settlement to compensate the family of a Palestinian-American man who died earlier this year after he was detained by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank
Amirul Islam Israel pays family of dead Palestinian and America Uk India Covid Info Update Johir 2023
Six years after fleeing Yemen and arriving in Hong Kong, Suleiman* remains separated from his wife and son, uncertain if they can be reunited to start life anew somewhere else.
His claim for non-refoulement, the city’s de facto asylum status, failed in 2018. He appealed to the Torture Claims Appeal Board the same year, but has yet to learn his fate.
“Every day in Hong Kong, I die a little,” the 41-year-old told the Post.
Hong Kong passed a raft of legislative changes more than a year ago to speed up the screening of asylum seekers and prevent abuse of the process, but Suleiman and others continue to wait for the outcome of their cases.
German police said it had not excluded political motives in the suspected sabotage of communication cables on Germany's rail network on Saturday but that there was no sign of any involvement by a foreign state or terrorism.
A spokesperson for the Berlin criminal police bureau said on Sunday that it was still investigating the sabotage of radio communication cables in Berlin and Herne in North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW), which halted all rail traffic in northern Germany for around three hours on Saturday.
JERUSALEM -- Israel's Defense Ministry said Sunday that it had reached a settlement to compensate the family of a Palestinian-American man who died earlier this year after he was detained by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank.
Amirul Islam Israel pays family of dead Palestinian and America Uk India Covid Info Update Johir 2023
European carmakers expect sales in the European Union (EU) to slip 1% this year after previously expecting a return to growth. They want unspecified government help to help spur economic growth and grease the move towards electric cars with more subsidies for the charging infrastructure
Israeli authorities have arrested at least three Palestinians in connection to a deadly attack on an Israeli military checkpoint Saturday evening.
Israeli police are still conducting a manhunt for the suspected gunman in Saturday's attack, which killed an 18-year-old female soldier and left three others wounded. Israeli Defense Forces have identified the deceased soldier as Noa Lazar.
"Our hearts tonight are with the wounded and their families," said Prime Minister Yair Lapid. "Terrorism will not defeat us. We are also strong on this difficult evening."
"We will not be silent, and we will not rest until we bring the abominable killers to justice," he added.
Germany’s foreign minister is calling for European Union entry bans and asset freezes against those responsible for what she described as brutal repression against anti-government protesters in Iran.
The most sustained protests in years against Iran's theocracy are now in their fourth week. They erupted Sept. 17 after the burial of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman who died in the custody of Iran’s feared morality police. Amini had been detained for an alleged violation of strict Islamic dress codes for women.
Since then, protests spread across the country and have been met by a fierce crackdown, in which dozens are estimated to have been killed and hundreds arrested.
“Those who beat up women and girls on the street, carry off people who want nothing other than to live freely, arrest them arbitrarily and sentence them to death stand on the wrong side of history,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was quoted as telling Sunday’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
“We will ensure that the EU imposes entry bans on those responsible for this brutal repression and freezes their assets in the EU," she added. "We say to people in Iran: We stand and remain by your side.”
Baerbock didn't name any specific individuals or organizations.
On Thursday, EU lawmakers approved a resolution calling for sanctions against those responsible for the death of Amini and the subsequent crackdown.
Germany, along with fellow EU member France, is among the nations that are part of a 2015 agreement with Iran to address concerns over the Islamic Republic's nuclear program and have been attempting to revive the deal.
Talks on the deal have languished but if it's reinstated, the agreement would provide sanctions relief that would help strengthen the Iranian government.
Iran’s state TV was hijacked during a speech by the country’s supreme leader late on Saturday, with his address replaced by images of the young women that have been killed in the protests that have rocked the country over the last four weeks.
For about 15 seconds, images that were sympathetic to the nationwide women-led protest movement were aired, including photos of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei surrounded by flames as the phrases “the blood of our youth is on your hands” and “join us and rise up!” flashed across the screen.
A popular chant of protesters across the country “Woman. Life. Freedom” was woven into a song that played over the background of the hacking, which was claimed by the Edalat-e Ali (Ali's Justice) hacktivist group.
The hacking came as the demonstrations presenting the biggest threat to the Islamic regime in years entered their fourth week amid increasingly heavy crackdowns by security forces.
The protests were sparked by the death of 22-year-old Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini after she was detained by Tehran's notorious morality police, allegedly for not covering her hair properly.
Two members of Iran’s security forces were killed in the protests on Saturday, according to Iranian state media, bringing the total to an estimated 14.
Meanwhile, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights said at least 185 people have been collectively killed in the protests.
With large-scale street protests subsiding in Tehran, the youth-led demonstrations have taken over university campuses.
School girls have been seen marching down the streets waving their legally mandated hijabs in the air and shouting “death to the dictator”, while Tehran’s prestigious Sharif university remains closed after a violent crackdown on student protesters last weekend.
Tehran’s bazaars have also seen clashes as many shopkeepers joined a growing nationwide strike.
According to videos online thousands of protesters descended on Tehran’s Amirkabir University of Technology on Saturday.
At the same time, President Ebrahim Raisi visited the all-female Al Zahra university, using it as an opportunity to double down on the government’s rhetoric that the protests were being organised by foreign enemies.
"The enemy thought that it can pursue its desires in universities while unaware that our students and teachers are aware and they will not allow the enemies' vain plans to be realised," he said.
Female students chanted "get lost" at the premier in return, videos on social media show.
In the Kurdish cities of Sanandaj and Saqez, where mass demonstrations had been called for, security forces shot at protestors and fired tear gas according to the Hengaw human rights group.
One man lay dead in his car while a woman screamed "shameless", they said, after a man in Sanandaj was shot by security forces after honking his horn to show support to the protests.
Security forces continue to deny using live ammunition on the protesters.
ERUSALEM, Israel — A controversial Israeli politician this week fired back at a report claiming Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said that his potential role in a new Israeli coalition government would damage U.S. relations with the Jewish state.
The news website Axios reported that during a Sept. 5 meeting between Menendez and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the New Jersey lawmaker said he has "serious concerns" about a coalition government with "extremist and polarizing individuals like [Itamar] Ben-Gvir." Israelis go to the polls next month.
According to the Axios article, a source said, "People who were in the room saw how p---ed off Bibi [Netanyahu] got" in response to Menendez’s comments.
The controversial far-right Israeli politician in question is Itamar Ben-Gvir. His party has been gaining in the polls and could finish as high as third or fourth place in the upcoming election.
ISRAEL CALLS FOR NEW ELECTIONS ONE MONTH BEFORE BIDEN VISIT
Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J. (AP)
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Ben-Gvir, the leader of the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Strength) party said, "I am deeply concerned by reports that Senator Menendez has aimed incorrect and mistaken criticisms at the millions of Israelis who will soon vote in favor of a center-right government and me personally."
He continued, "Everyone knows that the senator is a true friend of Israel and a champion of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and more importantly, he is a man of integrity. Therefore, my sense is that he would not have made the statements reported had he been correctly informed of the positions I hold, as well as those I do not hold."
Ben-Gvir has faced criticism for tearing the Cadillac emblem off of Yitzhak Rabin the then-Israeli prime minister’s car in 1995 and stating, "We reached Rabin’s car, we will get to Rabin, too." Israeli extremist Yigal Amir, then 25, assassinated Rabin in the same year.
Critics have painted Ben-Gvir as a right-wing extremist for his connections and support of far right-wing elements in Israel, including the late Rabbi Meir Kahane whose ultra-nationalist party was outlawed from running in subsequent elections for inciting racism against Arabs. Kahane was assassinated by a terrorist in Manhattan in 1990.
In a recent interview with the Associated Press Shuki Friedman, an expert on Israel’s far right described Ben-Gvir as being "a populist demagogue … he interviews well, he is good on camera, and he has had plenty of screen time that has given him legitimacy," noted Friedman of the Jewish People Policy Institute.
ACEA, the European carmakers association known by its French acronym, joined the echo chamber forecasting sales weakness in Europe in 2022, but didn’t attempt to predict 2023. Prospects for sales of cars and SUVs are looking increasingly weak.
Professor Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, director of the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) in Duisberg, Germany, puts the outlook this way.
“The risk of Europe falling into recession is high. The Ukraine war and the associated increases in energy prices have hit industry and sent the economy into a downward spiral. Fighting inflation is the big challenge for most central banks and will increase significantly. There are few arguments for investors to encourage buying auto stocks,” Dudenhoeffer said.
Hurricane Ian’s wrath had barely subsided in Florida when advertisements for day laborers started popping up on phones across New York through online platforms like Telegram and WhatsApp.
The Spanish-language messages appeared to target recently arrived immigrants and asylum seekers who were desperate for work and had nowhere else to turn.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that it detected two missile launches Sunday between 1:48 a.m. and 1:58 a.m. from the North’s eastern coastal city of Munchon. It added that South Korea’s military has boosted its surveillance posture and maintains a readiness in close coordination with the United States.
Japanese Vice Defense Minister Toshiro Ino also confirmed the launches, saying Pyongyang’s testing activities are “absolutely unacceptable” as they threaten regional and international peace and security.
Advocates said they are worried the migrants are becoming targets of fly-by-night businesses eager to exploit people for hard work and low wages.
“This looks and smells like human trafficking,” said Ariadna Phillips, a New York community organizer with South Bronx Mutual Aid.
“They recruit them with these very flashy photographs, saying, 'You're going to make a bunch of money' and 'We're going to give you this great apartment to live in,'" Phillips added.
But when the workers arrive, it's a different story.
Less than two weeks after Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida and devastated dozens of communities, Phillips said she has already heard from several laborers whose wages have been docked to pay for their room and board. They told her that was not part of their agreement with the company.
Some of the people who were recruited had been in the United States for only a week, she said.
"I tell them to stay in New York because that's where they're going to be the safest," Phillips said. "We're a sanctuary city, and Florida was already trying to send people to Martha's Vineyard."
Gov. Ron DeSantis flew two planes of immigrants to the wealthy Massachusetts enclave last month as part of an effort to “transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations,” his communications director, Taryn Fenske, said in a statement at the time.
On Tuesday, DeSantis said at a news conference that three of four people arrested last week for "ransacking" communities following Hurricane Ian were illegal immigrants who should be immediately deported.
"They should not be here at all," he said.
His office did not return a request for comment.
On Friday, DeSantis encouraged Florida debris companies to hire locally.
"Many Floridians in Southwest Florida have had their businesses and livelihoods impacted by the storm and are looking for work — the private sector can help them get back on their feet by hiring locally for the length of recovery, which will support the local economy for at least
The same can be said for consumers. Anyone thinking of buying a new car, might well just wait another year before replacing the old one.
ACEA President and CEO of BMW Oliver Zipse didn’t say what government help he wanted, or how much should be spent on electric charging.
Philippine police killed three detained militants linked to the Islamic State group after they staged a jail rampage Sunday that saw a police officer stabbed and a former opposition senator briefly held hostage in a failed escape attempt from the maximum-security facility in the police headquarters in the capital, police said.
National police chief Gen. Rodolfo Azurin Jr. said former Sen. Leila de Lima was unhurt and taken to a hospital for a checkup following the brazen escape attempt and hostage-taking at the detention center for high-profile inmates at the main police camp in Metropolitan Manila.
One of the three inmates stabbed a police officer who was delivering breakfast after dawn in an open area, where inmates can exercise outdoors. A police officer in a sentry tower fired warning shots, and then shot and killed two of the prisoners, including Abu Sayyaf commander Idang Susukan, when they refused to yield, police said.
The third inmate ran to de Lima’s cell and briefly held her hostage, but he was also gunned down by police commandos, Azurin said.
According to earlier reports, the exercises were set to involve army personnel from CSTO members Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and focus on securing ceasefires. Observers from five further states, including Serbia, Syria and Uzbekistan, had also been invited.
In a time of violence, warfare and bloodshed, what is the use of literature? This was a question addressed at the Lviv BookForum, a three-day literary festival in the Ukrainian city, staged despite – and in defiance of – the Russian invasion.
The time is just past 1pm in Kyiv. Here is what you might have missed:
Shelling in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia has killed at least 17 people, city official Anatoliy Kurtev has said. Anton Gerashchenko, a senior presidential adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said preliminary figures suggested 17 dead and 40 wounded after an attack on residential housing. “The Russians are not able to respond on the battlefield and therefore hit the cities in the rear,” he said. The city lies 125km (80 miles) from the Russian-held nuclear power plant that is Europe’s largest.
Zelenskiy has vowed that those who ordered and issued the “merciless” strikes in Ukraine’s south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia will be held responsible. In a post on his Facebook page, he said the attack was “evil” and that everyone involved in the incident “will be held accountable”.
The damage from Saturday’s explosion on the Kerch bridge in Crimea could have a “significant” impact on Russia’s “already strained ability to sustain its forces” in southern Ukraine, the latest UK intelligence update says. The Ministry of Defence said the blast “will likely touch President Putin closely” for reasons including that it came hours after his 70th birthday, he personally sponsored and opened the bridge, and its construction contractor was a childhood friend. The ministry said the bridge’s rail crossing had played a key role in moving heavy military vehicles to the southern front during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russian divers will on Sunday examine the extent of damage from the blast on the Kerch bridge linking Crimea to Russia. Russian news agencies quoted the deputy prime minister, Marat Khusnullin, as saying the divers would start work on Sunday at 6am (0300 GMT), with a more detailed survey above the waterline expected to be complete by the end of the day.
Vladimir Putin signed a decree late on Saturday tightening security for the Kerch bridge and for energy infrastructure between Crimea and Russia after the explosion that crippled the heavily guarded bridge. Russia’s federal security service, the FSB, is in charge of the effort. By Saturday evening, Russia said the rail link across the bridge was operational again but road traffic would remain constricted.
An adviser to Zelenskiy said the explosion on the Kerch bridge was just “the beginning”. Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter: “Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything that is stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled.” Three people were killed on Saturday after a truck bomb caused a fire and the collapse of a section of the bridge, Russian officials said.
Russian troops fighting in the Mykolaiv, Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhia regions of southern Ukraine could receive all the supplies they needed via existing land and sea corridors, said Russia’s defence ministry after the Kerch bridge explosion. The road-and-rail bridge has been used to take Russian personnel and military supplies through the peninsula into other parts of Ukraine’s south.
The parliamentary leader of Zelenskiy’s party has stopped short of claiming Kyiv was responsible for the Kerch bridge blast but appeared to cast it as a consequence of Moscow’s takeover of Crimea and attempts to integrate the peninsula with the Russian mainland. “Russian illegal construction is starting to fall apart and catch fire,” David Arakhamia wrote on Telegram. “The reason is simple: if you build something explosive, then sooner or later it will explode.”
Russia has named a new senior commander of Russian forces in Ukraine. Sergei Surovikin is a notorious general who opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in the 1990s. He led the Russian military expedition in Syria in 2017, where he was accused of using “controversial” tactics including indiscriminate bombing against anti-government fighters.
Zelenskiy said Ukrainian troops were involved in “very tough fighting” near Bakhmut, a strategically important eastern town Russia is trying to take. Reuters reported that while Ukrainian troops had recaptured thousands of square kilometres of land in recent offensives in the east and south, officials say progress is likely to slow once Kyiv’s forces meet more determined resistance. Zelenskiy said in his nightly address: “We are holding our positions in the Donbas, in particular in the Bakhmut direction, where it is very, very difficult now – very tough fighting.”
Petro Kotin, the head of Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom, said the diesel generators at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant had only a limited supply of fuel. Overnight shelling cut power to the plant, which needs cooling to avoid a meltdown, forcing it to switch to emergency generators. The United Natoins atomic watchdog has renewed calls for a protection zone at the plant, condemning the shelling as “tremendously irresponsible”.
Ukraine’s GDP has shrunk by 30% in nine months, the ministry of economy said on Saturday. “Among the negative factors that affected the economy, the weather and the actions of the occupiers stand out,” it said.
France’s prestigious Bayeux War Correspondents’ Awards on Saturday largely honoured reporting on the Ukraine conflict, with Associated Press and Burkina Faso newspaper Sidwaya among the recipients. The photo prize went to Ukrainian photographer Evgeniy Maloletka for his work with video journalist Mstyslav Chernov on the fall of Mariupol for AP.
The series of explosions that rocked Kharkiv early on Saturday sparked a fire at one of the city’s medical institutions, the mayor of the eastern Ukrainian city said. Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram that the explosions were the result of missile strikes in the city centre, Associated Press reported. They also sparked a fire in a non-residential building.
The German defence minister has told Nato it must do more to bolster security, warning: “We cannot know how far Putin’s delusions of grandeur can go.” Christine Lambrecht said Germany had heard of Russian threats to Lithuania for implementing EU sanctions and that they must be taken seriously and be prepared, Reuters reported.
The UK has rejected Moscow’s call for a secret ballot in the UN general assembly next week on whether to condemn Russia’s move to annex four regions in Ukraine and requested that the 193-member body vote publicly. The general assembly is set to vote on a draft resolution that would condemn Russia’s “illegal so-called referenda” and the “attempted illegal annexation”.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is being accompanied by the destruction and pillaging of historical sites and treasures on an industrial scale, Ukrainian authorities said.
In an interview with the Associated Press (AP), Ukraine’s culture minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, alleged that Russian soldiers helped themselves to artefacts in almost 40 Ukrainian museums.
The looting and destruction of cultural sites has caused losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of euros, the minister added.
He said:
The attitude of Russians toward Ukrainian culture heritage is a war crime.
Mariupol’s exiled city council said Russian forces pilfered more than 2,000 items from the city’s museums.
Among the most precious items were ancient religious icons, a unique handwritten Torah scroll, a 200-year-old bible and more than 200 medals, the council said.
Also looted were artworks by painters Arkhip Kuindzhi, who was born in Mariupol, and Crimea-born Ivan Aivazovsky, both famed for their seascapes, the exiled councillors said.
The UN’s cultural agency is keeping a tally of sites being struck by missiles, bombs and shelling.
With the war now in its eighth month, the agency says it has verified damage to 199 sites in 12 regions.
They include 84 churches and other religious sites, 37 buildings of historic importance, 37 buildings for cultural activities, 18 monuments, 13 museums and 10 libraries, Unesco said.
Peter Beaumont reports for us from Kyiv:
At least 17 people have been killed by Russian shelling of a residential area in Ukraine’s southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, a region that the Kremlin illegally claims to have annexed despite not controlling all of it.
The overnight attack happened in the aftermath of a devastating explosion on the key bridge linking Russian-occupied Crimea to the Russian mainland, a prestige project of the president, Vladimir Putin. The blast seriously damaged the 12-mile-long (19km) structure, which serves as an important military supply route.
The Zaporizhzhia strike came as Ukrainians – jubilant over the damage to the Kerch bridge, a hated symbol of Putin’s ambitions – were bracing for a major retaliation by Moscow, which had warned Kyiv against targeting the structure
Russia has appointed a notorious general who opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in the 1990s as its first overall commander for the war in Ukraine, as the Kremlin struggles to halt a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has left its forces in disarray.
The appointment of Gen Sergei Surovikin came on the same day as Vladimir Putin was dealt a humiliating blow after an explosion on the Kerch bridge sank a section of the motorway into the Kerch Strait and caused a major fire on the railway.
Surovikin is a veteran commander who led the Russian military expedition in Syria in 2017, where he was accused o
Ukraine’s ministry of defence has posted pictures of the missile strike on the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia.
The tweet adds that if Ukrainian military forces “had modern anti-missile systems, we could have prevented such tragedies”.
At least 17 die in shelling of housing in Zaporizhzhia
Shelling in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia has killed at least 17 people, city official Anatoliy Kurtev has said.
Anton Gerashchenko, a senior presidential adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said preliminary figures suggested 17 dead and 40 wounded after an attack on residential housing. “The Russians are not able to respond on the battlefield and therefore hit the cities in the rear,” he said.
The city lies 125km (80 miles) from the Russian-held nuclear power plant that is Europe’s largest.
At least 12 people were killed and 49 hospitalised, including six children, as a result of the shelling in the city of Zaporizhzhia, the region’s governor says.
A nine-storey building was partially destroyed overnight, five other residential buildings levelled and many more damaged in 12 Russian missile attacks on the city in south-east Ukraine, Reuters quoted Oleksandr Starukh as saying.
The governor said on Telegram:
There may be more people under the rubble. A rescue operation is under way at the scene. Eight people have already been rescued.
City official Anatoliy Kurtev had said earlier that at least 17 people were killed when missiles hit a high-rise apartment complex and buildings.
Peter Beaumont in Kyiv and Pjotr Sauer report:
As a chilly autumn dawn broke on Saturday over the Kerch bridge linking Russia-occupied Crimea to the mainland, the road traffic was light.
With the sky turning pink, a few cars and several lorries were making their way across the bridge, which is about 12 miles (19km) long and before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was used by 15,000 cars a day,
A little way distant and above the cars, a long cargo train carrying tankers of fuel among its wagons was also making its way towards the peninsula across the parallel railway bridge.
The blast, when it came at 6.07am (3.07 GMT), was devastating. CCTV footage posted on Russian Telegram channels showed a car and a lorry moving almost together when a vast fireball engulfed them, orange mixed with a storm of white-hot fragments swirling around the span.
CCTV footage appears to show the moment the bridge linking Crimea and Russia was hit by a huge explosion early on Saturday morning.
The Kerch bridge, a hated symbol of the Kremlin’s occupation of the southern Ukrainian peninsula, was built in 2018.
Footage shared on Russian Telegram channels and news agencies appeared to show the moment of the explosion with two vehicles, a truck and a car, at the centre of the blast, although it was unclear whether either was responsible or simply caught up in the detonatio
Russian divers will on Sunday examine the extent of damage from the blast on the Kerch bridge linking Crimea to Russia.
Russian news agencies quoted the deputy prime minister, Marat Khusnullin, as saying the divers would start work on Sunday at 6am (0300 GMT), with a more detailed survey above the waterline expected to be complete by the end of the day.
The work came as the Kremlin-installed governor of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said:
Of course, emotions have been triggered and there is a healthy desire to seek revenge.
Cimea bridge blast could have 'significant' impact on Russian forces, says MoD
The damage from Saturday’s explosion on the Kerch bridge in Crimea could have a “significant” impact on Russia’s “already strained ability to sustain its forces” in southern Ukraine, the latest UK intelligence update says.
The Ministry of Defence said the blast “will likely touch President Putin closely” for reasons including that it came hours after his 70th birthday, he personally sponsored and opened the bridge, and its construction contractor was a childhood friend.
The ministry said the bridge’s rail crossing had played a key role in moving heavy military vehicles to the southern front during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The extent of damage to the rail crossing was uncertain, it said, but any serious disruption to its capacity would be “highly likely” to significantly affect Russian forces in Ukraine’s south.
s in Moscow and in Russian-occupied Ukraine have called for retaliation over the explosion that heavily damaged the Kerch bridge linking Crimea and Russia on Saturday.
“There is an undisguised terrorist war against us,” Russian ruling party deputy Oleg Morozov told the RIA Novosti news agency.
Agence France-Presse quoted a Russian-installed official in the occupied Ukrainian Kherson region, Kirill Stremousov, as saying:
Everyone is waiting for a retaliatory strike and it is likely to come.
Military analysts said the blast could have a major impact if Moscow saw the need to shift already hard-pressed troops to the Crimea from other regions or if it prompted a rush by residents to leave.
Mick Ryan, a retired Australian major general now with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that even if Ukrainians were not behind the blast, it constituted “a massive influence operation win for Ukraine”.
He said on Twitter:
Vladimir Putin signed a decree late on Saturday tightening security for the Kerch bridge and for energy infrastructure between Crimea and Russia after the explosion that crippled the heavily guarded bridge. Russia’s federal security service, the FSB, is in charge of the effort. By Saturday evening, Russia said the rail link across the bridge was operational again but road traffic would remain constricted.
An adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the explosion on the Kerch bridge was just “the beginning”. Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter: “Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything that is stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled.” Three people were killed on Saturday after a truck bomb caused a fire and the collapse of a section of the bridge, Russian officials said.
Russian troops fighting in the Mykolaiv, Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhia regions of southern Ukraine could receive all the supplies they needed via existing land and sea corridors, said Russia’s defence ministry after the Kerch bridge explosion. The road-and-rail bridge has been used to take Russian personnel and military supplies through the peninsula into other parts of Ukraine’s south.
The parliamentary leader of Zelenskiy’s party has stopped short of claiming Kyiv was responsible for the Kerch bridge blast but appeared to cast it as a consequence of Moscow’s takeover of Crimea and attempts to integrate the peninsula with the Russian mainland. “Russian illegal construction is starting to fall apart and catch fire,” David Arakhamia wrote on Telegram. “The reason is simple: if you build something explosive, then sooner or later it will explode.”
Russia has named a new senior commander of Russian forces in Ukraine. Sergei Surovikin is a notorious general who opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in the 1990s. He led the Russian military expedition in Syria in 2017, where he was accused of using “controversial” tactics including indiscriminate bombing against anti-government fighters.
Zelenskiy said Ukrainian troops were involved in “very tough fighting” near Bakhmut, a strategically important eastern town Russia is trying to take. Reuters reported that while Ukrainian troops had recaptured thousands of square kilometres of land in recent offensives in the east and south, officials say progress is likely to slow once Kyiv’s forces meet more determined resistance. Zelenskiy said in his nightly address: “We are holding our positions in the Donbas, in particular in the Bakhmut direction, where it is very, very difficult now – very tough fighting.”
Petro Kotin, the head of Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom, said the diesel generators at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant had only a limited supply of fuel. Overnight shelling cut power to the plant, which needs cooling to avoid a meltdown, forcing it to switch to emergency generators. The United Natoins atomic watchdog has renewed calls for a protection zone at the plant, condemning the shelling as “tremendously irresponsible”.
Ukraine’s GDP has shrunk by 30% in nine months, the ministry of economy said on Saturday. “Among the negative factors that affected the economy, the weather and the actions of the occupiers stand out,” it said.
France’s prestigious Bayeux War Correspondents’ Awards on Saturday largely honoured reporting on the Ukraine conflict, with Associated Press and Burkina Faso newspaper Sidwaya among the recipients. The photo prize went to Ukrainian photographer Evgeniy Maloletka for his work with video journalist Mstyslav Chernov on the fall of Mariupol for AP.
The series of explosions that rocked Kharkiv early on Saturday sparked a fire at one of the city’s medical institutions, the mayor of the eastern Ukrainian city said. Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram that the explosions were the result of missile strikes in the city centre, Associated Press reported. They also sparked a fire in a non-residential building.
The German defence minister has told Nato it must do more to bolster security, warning: “We cannot know how far Putin’s delusions of grandeur can go.” Christine Lambrecht said Germany had heard of Russian threats to Lithuania for implementing EU sanctions and that they must be taken seriously and be prepared, Reuters reported.
The UK has rejected Moscow’s call for a secret ballot in the UN general assembly next week on whether to condemn Russia’s move to annex four regions in Ukraine and requested that the 193-member body vote publicly. The general assembly is set to vote on a draft resolution that would condemn Russia’s “illegal so-called referenda” and the “attempted illegal annexation”.
The move by Bishkek is the latest indication that tensions may be simmering within the alliance, formed in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Last month, Armenia skipped a two-week drill held by the collective in Kazakhstan, after criticizing the bloc for failing to openly side with it after large-scale fighting erupted on its border with non-member Azerbaijan in September.
Russia and other CSTO countries effectively turned down Yerevan's request for military aid, issued hours after hostilities began, and limited their response to sending fact-finding missions to the border. Armenian authorities had accused the Azerbaijani government in Baku of using heavy artillery and combat drones to strike Armenian army positions.
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“She’s safe. We were able to quickly resolve the incident inside the custodial center,” Azurin told reporters and justified police action to shoot the inmates. “Sen. De Lima was already being held hostage so should we let that very critical situation drag on?”
Susukan, who had been blamed for dozens of killings and beheadings of hostages, including foreign tourists, and other terrorist attacks was arrested two years ago in southern Davao city.
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The settlement marks a rare case of compensation in a Palestinian claim against alleged wrongdoing by Israeli military forces and comes after U.S. criticism against Israel.
In January, Israeli troops detained Omar Asaad, 78, at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, binding his hands and blindfolding him. Israeli troops then unbound his hands and left him face-down in an abandoned building.
Asaad, who had lived in the U.S. for four decades, was pronounced dead at a hospital after other Palestinians who had been detained found him unconscious. It was unclear when exactly he died.
On Sunday, the Defense Ministry said that it had reached a settlement with Asaad’s family, which had filed a claim against the state in an Israeli court.
The ministry said that “in light of the unfortunate event’s unique circumstances," it agreed to pay the family 500,000 shekels, or about $141,000.
After an outcry from the U.S. government, the Israeli military issued a rare statement earlier this year saying the incident “was a grave and unfortunate event, resulting from moral failure and poor decision-making on the part of the soldiers.” It said one officer was reprimanded, and two other officers reassigned to noncommanding roles, over the incident.
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