World
Russians down Ukrainian drones in Crimea as war broadens
Russian authorities reported shooting down Ukrainian drones Saturday in Crimea, while Ukrainian officials said Russian forces pressed ahead with efforts to seize one of the few cities in eastern Ukraine not already under their control. The Russian military also kept up its strikes in Ukraine's north and south.
In Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, Russian authorities said local air defenses shot down a drone above the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. It was the second drone incident at the headquarters in three weeks and followed explosions at a Russian airfield and ammunition depot on the peninsula this month.
Oleg Kryuchkov, an aide to Crimea’s governor, also said Saturday that “attacks by small drones” triggered air-defense systems in western Crimea.
"Air defense systems successfully hit all targets over the territory over Crimea on Saturday morning. There are no casualties or material damage,” his boss, Sergei Aksyonov, said on Telegram.
Sevastopol governor Mikhail Razvozhaev said on Telegram that the city's air-defense systems were called into action again late Saturday.
The incidents underlined Russian forces’ vulnerability in Crimea. A drone attack on Russia's Black Sea naval headquarters on July 31 injured five people and forced the cancellation of observances of Russia’s Navy Day. This week, a Russian ammunition depot in Crimea was hit by an explosion. Last week, nine Russian warplanes were reported destroyed at an airbase on Crimea.
Ukrainian authorities have stopped short of publicly claiming responsibility. But President Volodymyr Zelenskyy alluded to Ukrainian attacks behind enemy lines after the blasts in Crimea.
Meanwhile, fighting in southern Ukrainian areas just north of Crimea has stepped up in recent weeks as Ukrainian forces try to drive Russian forces out of cities they have occupied since early in the six-month-old war.
A Russian missile attack wounded 12 people, including three children, and damaged houses and an apartment block Saturday in the town of Voznesensk in the Mykolaiv region, the Ukrainian prosecutor's office said. Two of the children were in serious condition and the governor said one had lost an eye.
Read: Doctors stay in Ukraine’s war-hit towns: ‘People need us’
A Ukrainian airstrike, meanwhile, hit targets in Melitopol, the largest Russian-controlled city in the Zaporizhzhia region, 100 kilometers (65 miles) north of Crimea, according to Ukrainian and Russia-installed local officials.
The Ukrainian military on Saturday said it had destroyed a prized Russian radar system and other equipment stationed in occupied areas in the southern Zaporizhzhia region. It was not clear if this was the strike on Melitopol.
“Tonight, there were powerful explosions in Melitopol, which the whole city heard,” the Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Ferodov, said. “According to preliminary data, (it was) a precise hit on one of the Russian military bases, which the Russian fascists are trying to restore for the umpteenth time in the airfield area.”
In the east, Ukraine’s military General Staff said Saturday that intensified combat took place around Bakhmut, a small city whose capture would enable Russia to threaten the two largest remaining Ukrainian-held cities in the eastern Donbas region.
Bakhmut for weeks has been a key target of Moscow’s eastern offensive as the Russian military tries to complete a months-long campaign to conquer all of the Donbas, where pro-Moscow separatists have proclaimed two republics that Russia recognized as sovereign states at the beginning of the war.
A local Ukrainian official reported sustained fighting Saturday near four settlements on the border of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, which together make up the contested Donbas region. Luhansk Gov. Serhii Haidai did not name the settlements. Russian forces overran nearly all of Luhansk last month and since then have focused on capturing Ukrainian-held areas of Donetsk.
Russian shelling killed seven civilians Friday in Donetsk province, including four in Bakhmut, Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote Saturday on Telegram. Taking Bakhmut would give the Russians room to advance on the province’s main Ukrainian-held cities, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Ukraine said Sloviansk and Kramatorsk were targeted Friday, along with the Kharkiv region to the north, home to Ukraine’s second-largest city.
Local authorities reported renewed Russian shelling overnight along a broad front, including the northern Kharkiv and Sumy regions, which border Russia, as well as of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region and Mykolaiv.
In other developments Saturday:
__ Pedestrians in downtown Kyiv took pictures of a large column of burned-out and captured Russian tanks and infantry carriers that was put on display on a central boulevard in the Ukrainian capital. The display comes just days ahead of Ukraine’s independence day on Aug., which also coincides with six months since the Russian invasion.
__The Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul on Saturday authorized the movement of four outbound vessels carrying 33,300 metric tons of food from Ukraine under the Black Sea Grain deal. The ships will leave Ukrainian ports on Sunday. The agency will conduct 10 more ship inspections on Sunday. The deal seeks to get tons of grain exports stuck in Ukraine by the war safely out across the Black Sea.
__ The Interior Ministry for the separatist Donetsk People's Republic said an improvised bomb exploded near the zoo in Mariupol, which the city's mayor was to visit, but the mayor was not injured. Mariupol came under rebel and Russian control after months of intense fighting that devastated the city.
US Air Force targeted in 'propaganda attack' in Kuwait
The U.S. Air Force said Saturday it was the subject of a “propaganda attack” by a previously unheard-of Iraqi militant group that falsely claimed it had launched a drone attack targeting American troops at an air base in Kuwait.
The statement by the Air Force's 386th Air Expeditionary Wing came hours after the group calling itself Al-Waretheen, or “The Inheritors," put out an online statement claiming that on Aug. 12, it targeted Kuwait's Ali Al Salem Air Base. The statement included a video showing a drone being launched from a stand, but offered no evidence of an attack or any damage done at the base.
The statement claimed the alleged attack aimed to avenge the U.S. drone strike that killed a prominent Iranian Revolution Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in January 2020.
Read: Ex-premier’s graft case a test of justice in oil-rich Kuwait
The air base is located a few dozen kilometers (miles) from the Iraqi border.
“The misinformation falsely stated an Iranian militia group used (drones) to carry out an attack on base,” the Air Force statement to The Associated Press said. “No such attack occurred.”
The statement suggests the U.S. believes that Al-Waretheen is likely an Iranian group, though it described itself as Iraqi.
The Air Force added that the online claim “only aims to deceive their audience in believing a lie" and that the Air Force and Kuwait “continue to project air power throughout the region without disruption.”
Kuwait, a small, oil-rich nation bordering Iraq and Saudi Arabia also near Iran, is considered a major non-NATO ally of the United States. Kuwait and the U.S. have had a close military partnership since America launched the 1991 Gulf War to expel Iraqi troops after Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded the country.
Some 13,500 American troops are stationed in Kuwait, which also hosts U.S. Army Central’s forward headquarters. Those forces have supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and later operations against the Islamic State group.
Kuwait did not immediately acknowledge the claimed attack. Its Information Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday night.
Kuwait’s Al-Qabas newspaper, quoting anonymous “responsible” sources, called the claims about an attack “completely untrue.”
Satellite photos from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by the AP since Aug. 12 show no apparent damage at the base.
A series of militant groups that analysts believe have ties back to Iran have claimed attacks they say targeted U.S. troops in Iraq over recent years. However, those roadside bombings targeted Iraqi contractors supplying American forces in the country.
The claim also comes as what have been described as the final round of negotiations continue between Iran and the U.S. over Tehran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers.
Pro-Trump wins in blue states threaten GOP hopes in November
Republicans have found success in Democratic strongholds like Maryland and Massachusetts when they have fielded moderate candidates who could appeal to voters in both parties. With Democrats facing headwinds this year, Republicans had hoped that strategy could pay off yet again.
But Republican voters have nominated loyalists of former President Donald Trump in several Democratic states, including Maryland and Connecticut, making the GOP’s odds of winning those general election races even longer. Massachusetts will face its own test next month as GOP voters decide between a Trump-backed conservative and a more moderate Republican for the party's gubernatorial nominee.
“It can’t continue,” said former Connecticut U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, a moderate Republican and Trump critic, referring to the GOP choosing pro-Trump candidates. "One of the things that will happen is that a lot of the Trump candidates who won the primary will lose the general election. And there are a lot of unhappy Republicans who hold office now who believe that the Senate now is in jeopardy of staying Democratic.”
Trump's influence was on full display earlier this month when his last-minute endorsement helped propel Leora Levy, a member of the Republican National Committee who opposes abortion rights, to victory in a Republican U.S. Senate primary in Connecticut over the party’s endorsed candidate, former House Minority Leader Themis Klarides. Klarides supports abortion rights and said she didn't vote for Trump in 2020.
“Sad day for CT ...,” tweeted Brenda Kupchick, the Republican first selectwoman of Fairfield and a former state representative, after the Aug. 9 race was called for Levy. Days earlier, after Trump endorsed Levy on speakerphone at a GOP picnic, Kupchick tweeted, “How is that helpful in the general election in CT?”
Kupchick's tweets sparked criticism in both GOP camps. Trump supporters accused Klarides of not being a “true conservative." Moderate Republicans predicted that Levy's nomination ensured Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal would sail to victory in November, despite a Quinnipiac poll in May registering his lowest job approval since he took office in 2011.
The last Republican to represent Connecticut in the U.S. Senate was Lowell P. Weicker Jr., who served from 1971 to 1989, though Connecticut has elected a moderate Republican governor as recently as 2006, with M. Jodi Rell.
Levy, who has never before served in elective office, contends her message of controlling high inflation and energy prices, stopping “government intrusion between parent and child” and addressing crime will resonate with a wide range of voters.
A similar dynamic has unfolded in liberal Maryland, where Dan Cox, a far-right state legislator endorsed by Trump, won the Republican primary for governor over a moderate rival backed by outgoing Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, a Trump critic. And in heavily Democratic Massachusetts, Republican voters casting ballots in the state's Sept. 6 gubernatorial primary will choose between Geoff Diehl, a Trump-backed former state representative, and Chris Doughty, a businessman with moderate views. Centrist Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, a Trump critic, decided against seeking a third term.
The Democratic nominees in Maryland and Massachusetts are viewed as strong favorites to flip the governor's mansions in those states.
Read:Trump CFO’s plea deal could make him a prosecution witness
Trump's backing has propelled his candidates to victory in top races in battleground states, too, boosting Democrats' optimism of winning the general election. In Arizona, former TV news anchor Kari Lake, who has said she would not have certified President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, defeated lawyer and businesswoman Karrin Taylor Robson, who had been endorsed by former Vice President Mike Pence and outgoing GOP Gov. Doug Ducey. In Wisconsin, Trump-backed businessman Tim Michels beat former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, who had been endorsed by Pence and the state party. Both Michels and Kleefisch, however, falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election was rigged.
In Connecticut, Levy's nomination is already being used as a rallying cry for Democrats, who contend she's out of the mainstream for a state where Republicans are outnumbered by unaffiliated voters and by Democrats. Aside from opposing abortion rights — reversing her position years ago of supporting abortion rights — Levy has spoken out against job-related COVID-19 vaccine requirements and transgender rights. Levy effusively thanked the former president during her acceptance speech, promising, “I will not let you down.”
A day after the primary, Blumenthal's campaign sent out a fundraising message that warned, “The primary results are in, and I’m officially facing off against Trump’s hand-picked candidate in the general election — a radical Republican who will be nothing but a rubber stamp on Mitch McConnell’s disastrous agenda.”
Levy, in turn, has tied Blumenthal to Biden, casting him as a “rubber stamp” for the Democratic president's “failed policies” as president and blaming Blumenthal for playing a “a key role in creating virtually every challenge our country faces today.”
“Dick Blumenthal wants this election to be a referendum on a President. Donald Trump is not on the ballot in November, but Joe Biden is,” she said in a news release issued after the primary.
Shays, who now lives in Maryland, said he believes an endorsement by Trump is disqualifying. He said he contributed to the campaign of Wes Moore, the Democrat running against Cox in Maryland, and would vote for Blumenthal if he still lived in Connecticut.
“I will vote against anyone who seeks the support of Donald Trump because that tells me so much about their character and what they intend to do if elected. That’s the bottom line to me," Shays said.
Ben Proto, chair of the Connecticut Republicans, dismissed any suggestion that the primary victory by Levy signaled a political evolution within the state GOP. Rather, he said, the party this year has “candidates across the board who hold different opinions on particular issues.”
But what they have in common, he said, is the goal of getting inflation under control, making Connecticut more affordable, addressing crime and allowing parents to be the “primary stakeholder” in their children's lives.
“At the end of the day, the issues that are important to the people of the state of Connecticut, we’re pretty solid on," he said.
Gunmen storm hotel in Somali capital, leave 20 dead
Islamic militants have stormed a hotel in Somalia's capital, engaging in an hours-long exchange of fire with the security forces that left at least 20 people dead, according to police and witnesses.
In addition, at least 40 people were wounded in the late Friday night attack and security forces rescued many others, including children, from the scene at Mogadishu's popular Hayat Hotel, they said Saturday.
The attack started with explosions outside the hotel before the gunmen entered the building.
Somali forces were still trying to end the siege of the hotel almost 24 hours after the attack started. Gunfire could still be heard Saturday evening as security forces tried to contain the last gunmen thought to be holed up on the hotel’s top floor.
The Islamic extremist group al-Shabab, which has ties with al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest of its frequent attempts to strike places visited by government officials. The attack on the hotel is the first major terror incident in Mogadishu since Somalia's new leader, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, took over in May.
In a Twitter post, the U.S. Embassy in Somalia said it “strongly condemns” the attack on the Hayat.
Read: Gunmen kill 4 in attack targeting lawmaker in NW Pakistan
“We extend condolences to the families of loved ones killed, wish a full recovery to the injured, & pledge continued support for #Somalia to hold murderers accountable & build when others destroy,” it said.
There was no immediate word on the identities of the victims, but many are believed to be civilians.
Mohamed Abdirahman, director of Mogadishu’s Madina Hospital, told the AP that 40 people were admitted there with wounds or injuries from the attack. While nine were sent home after getting treatment, five are in critical condition in the ICU, he said.
“We were having tea near the hotel lobby when we heard the first blast, followed by gunfire. I immediately rushed toward hotel rooms on the ground floor and I locked the door,” witness Abdullahi Hussein said by phone. “The militants went straight upstairs and started shooting. I was inside the room until the security forces arrived and rescued me.”
He said on his way to safety he saw “several bodies lying on the ground outside hotel reception.”
Al-Shabab remains the most lethal Islamic extremist group in Africa.
The group has seized even more territory in recent years, taking advantage of rifts among Somali security personnel as well as disagreements between the government seat in Mogadishu and regional states. It remains the biggest threat to political stability in the volatile Horn of Africa nation.
Forced to retreat from Mogadishu in 2011, al-Shabab is slowly making a comeback from the rural areas to which it retreated, defying the presence of African Union peacekeepers as well as U.S. drone strikes targeting its fighters.
The militants in early May attacked a military base for AU peacekeepers outside Mogadishu, killing many Burundian troops. The attack came just days before the presidential vote that returned Mohamud to power five years after he had been voted out.
UN: US buying big Ukraine grain shipment for hungry regions
The United States is stepping up to buy about 150,000 metric tons of grain from Ukraine in the next few weeks for an upcoming shipment of food aid from ports no longer blockaded by war, the World Food Program chief has told The Associated Press.
The final destinations for the grain are not confirmed and discussions continue, David Beasley said. But the planned shipment, one of several the U.N. agency that fights hunger is pursuing, is more than six times the amount of grain that the first WFP-arranged ship from Ukraine is now carrying toward people in the Horn of Africa at risk of starvation.
Beasley spoke Friday from northern Kenya, which is deep in a drought that is withering the Horn of Africa region. He sat under a thorn tree among local women who told the AP that the last time it rained was in 2019.
Their bone-dry communities face yet another failed rainy season within weeks that could tip parts of the region, especially neighboring Somalia, into famine. Already, thousands of people have died. The World Food Program says 22 million people are hungry.
“I think there’s a high probability we’ll have a declaration of famine” in the coming weeks, Beasley said.
He called the situation facing the Horn of Africa a “perfect storm on top of a perfect storm, a tsunami on top of a tsunami” as the drought-prone region struggles to cope amid high food and fuel prices driven partly by the war in Ukraine.
The keenly awaited first aid ship from Ukraine is carrying 23,000 metric tons of grain, enough to feed 1.5 million people on full rations for a month, Beasley said. It is expected to dock in Djibouti on Aug. 26 or 27, and the wheat is supposed to be shipped overland to northern Ethiopia, where millions of people in the Tigray, Afar and Amhara regions have faced not only drought but deadly conflict.
Ukraine was the source of half the grain that WFP bought last year to feed 130 million hungry people. Russia and Ukraine signed agreements with the U.N. and the Turkish government last month to enable exports of Ukrainian grain for the first time since Russia’s invasion in February.
But the slow reopening of Ukraine's ports and the cautious movement of cargo ships across the mined Black Sea won't solve the global food security crisis, Beasley said. He warned that richer countries must do much more to keep grain and other assistance flowing to the hungriest parts of the world, and he named names.
Read: Ukraine grain shipments offer hope, not fix to food crisis
“With oil profits being so high right now — record-breaking profits, billions of dollars every week — ... the Gulf states need to help, need to step up and do it now,” Beasley said. “It’s inexcusable not to. Particularly since these are their neighbors, these are their brothers, their family.”
He asserted the World Food Program could save “millions of lives” with just one day of Gulf countries’ oil profits.
China needs to help as well, Beasley said.
“China’s the second-largest economy in the world, and we get diddly-squat from China,” or very little, he added.
Despite grain leaving Ukraine and hopes rising of global markets beginning to stabilize, the world’s most vulnerable people face a long, difficult recovery, the WFP chief said.
“Even if this drought ends, we’re talking about a global food crisis at least for another 12 months,” Beasley said. “But in terms of the poorest of the poor, it’s gonna take several years to come out of this."
Some of the world's poorest people without enough food are in northern Kenya, where animal carcasses are slowly stripped to the bone beneath an ungenerous sky. Millions of livestock, the source of families’ wealth and nutrition, have died in the drought. Many water pumps have gone dry. More and more thousands of children are malnourished.
“Don’t forget us,” resident Hasan Mohamud told Beasley. “Even the camels have disappeared. Even the donkeys have succumbed.”
With so many in need, aid that does arrive can disappear like a raindrop in the sand. Local women who qualified for WFP cash handouts described taking the 6,500 shillings (about $54) and sharing it among their neighbors — in one case, 10 households.
“The most interesting thing we hear is people saying, ‘We’re not the only ones,’” WFP program officer Felix Okech told the AP. “'We’re the ones who have been selected (for handouts), but there are many more like us.' So that is very humbling to hear.”
In a small crowd that had gathered to listen to stories of children too weak to stand and milk gone dry, one woman at the edge of the woven plastic mat spoke up. Sahara Abdilleh, 50, said she makes perhaps 1,000 shillings ($8.30) a week from gathering firewood, scouring a landscape that gives less and less back every day. Like Beasley, she was thinking globally.
“Is there any country, like Afghanistan or Ukraine, that is worse off than us?” she asked.
Bus collision at accident site leaves 15 dead in Turkey
A passenger bus collided Saturday with emergency teams handling an earlier road accident in southern Turkey, leaving at least 15 people dead and nearly two dozen injured, officials said.
Three firefighters, two paramedics and two journalists were among those killed on the highway between Gaziantep and Nizip, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu tweeted. The other eight fatalities were on the bus, he added.
Gaziantep Gov. Davut Gul said 22 other people were injured in the incident.
The Ilhas News Agency said two of its journalists were killed after pulling over to help the victims of the initial accident, in which a car came off the highway and slid down an embankment.
Read: Traffic accident in heavy rain in Pakistan leaves 13 dead
Television footage showed an ambulance with severe damage to its rear while the bus lay on its side alongside the highway.
Turkey has a poor record of road safety. Some 5,362 people were killed in traffic accidents last year, according to the government.
At least 10 killed as gunmen storm hotel in Somali capital
At least 10 people were killed in an attack by Islamic militants who stormed a hotel in Somalia’s capital late Friday, police and eyewitnesses said.
Several other people were injured and security forces rescued many others, including children, from the scene of the attack at Mogadishu’s Hayat Hotel, they said.
The attack started with explosions outside the hotel before gunmen entered the building.
Gunfire could still be heard early Saturday as security forces tried to contain the last gunmen, who were thought to be holed up in the hotel. It was unclear how many militants remained on the hotel’s top floor.
Also read: Somali forces kill 20 al-Shabab militants in central region
The Islamic extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest of its frequent attempts to strike places that are often visited by government officials.
There was no immediate word on the identities of the victims.
“We were having tea near the hotel lobby when we heard the first blast followed by gunfire. I immediately rushed toward hotel rooms on the ground floor, and I locked,” eyewitness Abdullahi Hussein told the AP by phone. “The militants went straight upstairs and started shooting. I was inside the room until the security forces arrived and rescued me.”
He said that on his way to safety he saw “several bodies lying on the ground outside hotel reception.”
Market blast in north Syria kills 15 people, wounds dozens
A rocket attack on a crowded market in a town held by Turkey-backed opposition fighters in northern Syria killed 15 people on Friday and wounded dozens, an opposition war monitor and a paramedic group said.
The attack on the town of al-Bab came days after a Turkish airstrike killed at least 11 Syrian troops and U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, blamed Syrian government forces for Friday’s shelling, saying it was in apparent retaliation for the Turkish airstrike.
The Observatory said three children were among the 15 killed, and that there were more than 30 wounded. The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense, also known as White Helmets, had the same death toll but said 28 people were wounded. The paramedic group said its members evacuated some of the wounded and the dead bodies.
“This is the worst massacre committed by regime forces since the battles stopped between the regime and the opposition,” said the Observatory’s chief Rami Abdurrahman, referring to a cease-fire in March 2020 that ended a wide Syrian government offensive on rebel-held areas.
The U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said in a statement that its fighters did not shell al-Bab. There was no comment from the government.
Turkey has launched three major cross-border operations into Syria since 2016 and controls some Syrian territory in the north.
Although the fighting has waned over the past few years, shelling and airstrikes are not uncommon in northern Syria — the last major rebel stronghold in the country.
Syria’s conflict, which began in March 2011, has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million. President Bashar Assad’s forces have regained control of most parts of Syria over the past few years, with the help of their allies, Russia and Iran.
Also read: Market blast in north Syria kills at least 9, wounds dozens
In other developments, the Observatory and the U.S. military said a drone strike late on Thursday night in northeastern Syria killed four women and wounded several others.
The Observatory blamed Turkey for the strike, saying it targeted a facility where Syrian Kurdish women were doing sports. A female Syrian Kurdish commander with the U.S.-backed forces was visiting at the time of the attack, the Observatory said.
A U.S. military commander, Maj. Gen. John Brennan, condemned the attack and said the drone struck a group of teenage girls playing volleyball under a U.N. education and outreach program.
“Such acts are contrary to the laws of armed conflict, which require the protection of civilians,” Brennan, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force, said in a statement.
Brennan also said the “increase in military hostilities in northern Syria is creating chaos in a fragile region” and called for immediate de-escalation from all sides in the conflict, citing the still-present threat of the Islamic State group in the area.
Public health emergency declared over monkeypox in WA county
King County, which includes Seattle, on Friday officially declared the local monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency as infections continue to increase in the city and other parts of the state.
“We are fortunate to have one of the best public health organizations in the nation right here in King County, and today’s action ensures they will have all the tools needed to take on the challenge of monkeypox,” King County Executive Dow Constantine said in a written statement.
The local emergency proclamation will free up needed resources for Public Health — Seattle & King County, as well as give the department more flexibility with hiring and contracting protocols, according to the statement. The proclamation will support efforts to contain the virus, which can cause a rash, fever, headache, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes and fatigue.
Washington has reported 333 monkeypox infections, 275 of which were confirmed in King County, according to the state Department of Health. Two weeks ago, the state had confirmed 166 cases, The Seattle Times reported.
Public health officials have recorded 21 cases in Pierce County, seven in Snohomish County, five in Spokane County, five in Clark County and four in Yakima County, state health officials said.
The Washington State Department of Health reported the state’s first pediatric monkeypox case in a 17-year-old on Thursday, KING5 reported. Oregon identified its first pediatric monkeypox case on Wednesday.
Also read: Monkeypox cases cross 35,000: WHO
“It’s an important time for public health to have the flexibility it needs to be able to respond and reach the communities most impacted, including ensuring equitable access to vaccine,” Dennis Worsham, interim director of Public Health — Seattle & King County, said in the statement.
Monkeypox vaccines have been scarce, and while Constantine’s proclamation won’t bring more doses to the state in the near term, it will help public health teams more quickly deliver vaccines when larger quantities become available, according to the executive’s office.
Currently, those considered at highest risk and who are eligible for a monkeypox vaccine in King County include anyone who has had sexual or close, intimate contact with someone who has tested positive for monkeypox, among other criteria.
San Francisco and New York City were the first cities in the country to declare a health emergency over the outbreak in late July. The federal government gave a similar announcement in early August and the World Health Organization issued a global health emergency in July.
6 killed, 20 injured in India road crash
Six people have been killed and 20 others injured in a head-on collision between a tractor-trolley and a speeding truck in the western Indian state of Rajasthan, police said on Saturday.
The accident occurred in the Sumirpor area of Pali district, nearly 300 kms from state capital Jaipur late on Friday night.
"The tractor-trolley was carrying pilgrims from Jaisalmer district when the speeding truck coming from the opposite direction crashed into the vehicle at high speed," a police officer told the local media.
While six of the pilgrims died on the spot in the impact of the collision, those injured have been admitted to a nearby hospital. "The condition of some of the injured is said to be serious," the officer said.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's office tweeted to express his grief over the tragedy.
"The accident in Pali, Rajasthan is saddening. In this hour of grief, my thoughts are with the bereaved families. I pray for a speedy recovery of those injured," Modi said.
Also read: Five relatives of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput die in India accident
"A probe has been ordered into the accident," the police officer said.
Road accidents are common in India, with one taking place every four minutes. These accidents are often blamed on poor roads, rash driving and scant regard for traffic laws.
The Indian government's implementation of stricter traffic laws in recent years has failed to rein in accidents, which claim over 100,000 lives every year.