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Protests in New Delhi halt demolition in Muslim neighborhood
Authorities in New Delhi stopped a demolition drive in a Muslim-dominated neighborhood after hundreds of residents and a number of opposition party workers gathered in protest Monday.
No buildings were razed down before the bulldozers retreated.
Anti-Muslim sentiment and attacks have risen across India in the past month, including stone throwing between Hindu and Muslim groups during religious processions, followed by demolition drives in a few states where many Muslim-owned properties were razed down by local authorities.
Also read: India’s Muslims mark Eid ul-Fitr amid community violence
This was most recently seen last month in a northwest neighborhood in New Delhi where bulldozers destroyed several Muslim properties before the Supreme Court halted the drive. The demolitions were carried out days after communal violence there left several injured and sparked arrests.
Amid heavy police presence Monday, bulldozers arrived in Shaheen Bagh, a neighborhood that in 2020 became a site of intense protest after the Parliament passed a controversial bill the previous year that amended the country's citizenship law. The new law would fast-track naturalization for persecuted religious minorities from some neighboring Islamic countries, but excludes Muslims, sparking many to call it discriminatory.
It unleashed months of demonstrations from across India and Shaheen Bagh quickly became a symbol of the resistance, with the protests there led by a peaceful sit-in by Muslim women along a highway that passed through the neighborhood.
Officials have said these demolition drives target illegal buildings and not any particular religious group. But critics argue such moves are the latest attempt to harass and marginalize Muslims, who are 14% of India’s 1.4 billion population, and point to a pattern of rising religious polarization under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
As the bulldozers drove away, Mohammed Niyaz, a 47-year-old resident in the neighborhood, called it “vote-bank politics” intended to divide the Hindu and Muslim communities.
Also read: Extreme heatwave batters millions in India, Pakistan
Residents in Shaheen Bagh also questioned the timing of the move to bring in bulldozers, saying many buildings in the neighborhood have existed for decades with no interference from local authorities. Previously, officials termed the recent demolition drives as “routine exercises” to bring down illegal properties.
Sri Lanka deploys troops to capital after clash at protest
Authorities deployed armed troops in the capital Colombo on Monday hours after government supporters attacked protesters who have been camped outside the offices of the country's president and prime minster, as trade unions began a “Week of Protests” demanding the government change and its president to step down over the country’s worst economic crisis in memory.
The Indian Ocean island nation is on the brink of bankruptcy and has suspended payments on its foreign loans. Its economic woes have brought on a political crisis, with the government facing widespread protests and a no-confidence motion in Parliament.
Supporters of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa rallied inside his office earlier Monday, urging him to ignore the protesters' demand to step down and requesting he remain in office.
After the meeting, they went to the front of the office where protesters have been demonstrating for several days. Local television channel Sirasa showed pro-government supporters attacking protesters with clubs and iron bars, demolishing and later burning down their tents.
Also read: Diplomats concerned by state of emergency in Sri Lanka
After the attack, hundreds of armed soldiers were deployed in Colombo as the protesters made accusations on Sirasa TV that police did not interfere to prevent the attack, despite using tear gas and water cannons on protesters as recently as Friday.
Sirasa TV showed government lawmaker Sanath Nishantha was among the government supporters who attacked the protesters.
At the main hospital in the capital Colombo, 23 wounded people have been admitted and their condition is not critical, an official said on condition of anonymity as she is not authorized to speak to the media.
Also read: Sri Lanka leader declares emergency amid protests
The attack came as protesters marked their 31st day outside the president’s and prime minister's offices. They have been demanding that the president, his older brother Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and other powerful Rajapaksa family members quit. Similar protests have spread to other locations, with people setting up camps opposite the prime minister’s residence and in other towns across the country.
So far, the Rajapaksa brothers have resisted calls to resign, though three Rajapaksas out of the five who were lawmakers stepped down from their Cabinet posts in April.
Meanwhile, trade unions on Monday called for protests throughout this week, trade union activist Saman Rathnapriya said, and more than 1,000 unions representing health, port, education, and other key service sectors have joined the “Week of Protests" movement.
He said during the week, the workers will stage demonstrations at their workplaces across the country. At the end of the week, they will launch a huge march up to Parliament, demanding President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's removal and a new government.
For several months, Sri Lankans have endured long lines to buy fuel, cooking gas, food and medicine, most of which come from abroad. Shortages of hard currency have also hindered imports of raw materials for manufacturing and worsened inflation, which surged to 18.7% in March.
People blocked main roads to demand gas and fuel. On Sunday, local television channel Hiru showed people in some areas fighting over fuel.
Sri Lanka was due to pay $7 billion of its foreign debt this year out of nearly $25 billion it must pay by 2026. Its total foreign debt is $51 billion.
Sri Lanka’s finance minister announced earlier this week that the country’s usable foreign reserves have plummeted below $50 million.
As oil prices soar during the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Sri Lanka’s fuel stocks are running out. Authorities have announced countrywide power cuts will increase to about four a day because they can’t supply enough fuel to power generating stations.
Protesters have crowded the streets since March, maintaining that Rajapaksa and his family — who have dominated nearly every aspect of life in Sri Lanka for most of the last 20 years — are responsible for the crisis.
On Friday, Rajapaksa declared a state of emergency, which empowers him to authorize detentions, property seizure and search of any premises. He can also change or suspend any law in the interests of public security and for the maintenance of essential supplies. Diplomats and rights groups have expressed concern over the move.
Sri Lanka has been holding talks with the International Monetary Fund to get an immediate funding facility as well as a long-term rescue plan but was told its progress would depend on negotiations on debt restructuring with creditors.
Any long-term plan would take at least six months to get.
Putin to mark Victory Day as Russia presses Ukraine assault
Russian forces pushed forward Monday in their assault on Ukraine, seeking to capture the crucial southern port city of Mariupol as Moscow prepared to celebrate its national Victory Day holiday.
Determined to show a success in a war now in its 11th week, Russian troops have targeted a sprawling seaside steel mill where an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters were making what appeared to be their last stand to save Mariupol from falling.
The mill is the only part of the city not overtaken by the invaders, and its defeat would deprive Ukraine of a vital port and allow Russia to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that worsening attacks could be linked to Victory Day, which marks Russia’s greatest triumph, over Nazi Germany in 1945. Russian President Vladimir Putin may want to proclaim a win in Ukraine when he addresses troops parading on Red Square.
“They have nothing to celebrate,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said of the Russians, speaking on CNN. “They have not succeeded in defeating the Ukrainians. They have not succeeded in dividing the world or dividing NATO. And they have only succeeded in isolating themselves internationally and becoming a pariah state around the globe.”
Though fighting continues on multiple fronts, Russia is closest to victory in Mariupol.
Ukrainian fighters in the steel mill have rejected deadlines set by the Russians for laying down their arms even as attacks continued by warplanes, artillery and tanks.
“We are under constant shelling,” said Capt. Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Ukrainian Azov Regiment, a unit holding the steel mill.
Also Read: Western officials visit Ukraine after deadly school bombing
Lt. Illya Samoilenko, another member of the Azov Regiment, said there were a couple of hundred wounded soldiers at the plant but declined to reveal how many able-bodied fighters remained. He said fighters didn’t have lifesaving equipment and had to dig by hand to free people from bunkers that had collapsed under the shelling.
“Surrender for us is unacceptable because we cannot grant such a gift to the enemy,” Samoilenko said.
The last of the civilians taking shelter with fighters at the plant were evacuated Saturday. They arrived Sunday night in Zaporizhzhia, the first major Ukrainian city beyond the frontlines, and spoke of constant shelling, dwindling food, ubiquitous mold — and using hand sanitizer for cooking fuel.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, more than 60 people were feared dead after a Russian bomb flattened a school being used as a shelter in the eastern village of Bilohorivka, Ukrainian officials said.
Authorities said about 90 people were sheltering in the school’s basement when it was attacked Saturday. Emergency crews found two bodies and rescued 30 people, but “most likely all 60 people who remain under the rubble are now dead,” Serhiy Haidai, governor of Luhansk province, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Russian shelling also killed two boys, ages 11 and 14, in the nearby town of Pryvillia, Haidai said. Luhansk is part of the Donbas, the industrial heartland in the east that Russia’s forces are working to capture.
On Ukraine’s coast, explosions echoed again across the major Black Sea port of Odesa. The Ukrainian military said Moscow was focusing its main efforts on destroying airfield infrastructure in eastern and southern Ukraine.
In a sign of the dogged resistance that has sustained the fighting into its 11th week, Ukraine’s military struck Russian positions on a Black Sea island that was captured in the war’s first days. A satellite image by Planet Labs showed smoke rising from two sites on the island.
But Moscow’s forces showed no sign of backing down in the south. Satellite photos show Russia has put armored vehicles and missile systems at a small base in the Crimean Peninsula.
The most intense combat in recent days has taken place in eastern Ukraine. A Ukrainian counteroffensive in the northeast near Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, is making “significant progress,” according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank.
However, the Ukrainian army withdrew from the embattled eastern city of Popasna, regional authorities said.
Rodion Miroshnik, a representative of the pro-Kremlin, separatist Luhansk People’s Republic, said its forces and Russian troops had captured most of Popasna after two months of fierce fighting.
The Kharkiv regional administration said three people were killed in shelling of the town of Bogodukhiv, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Kharkiv.
South of Kharkiv, in Dnipropetrovsk province, the governor said a 12-year-old boy was killed by a cluster munition that he found after a Russian attack. An international treaty bans the use of such explosives, but neither Russia nor Ukraine has signed the agreement.
“This war is treacherous,” the governor, Valentyn Reznichenko, wrote on social media. “It is near, even when it is invisible.”
As Victory Day neared and the spotlight turned to Putin, Western leaders showed new signs of support for Ukraine.
The Group of Seven industrial democracies pledged to ban or phase out imports of Russian oil. The G-7 consists of the U.S., Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Japan.
Also Read: Dozens feared dead as Russian shell hits Ukrainian school
The United States also announced new sanctions against Russia, cutting off Western advertising from Russia’s three biggest TV stations, banning U.S. accounting and consulting firms from providing services, and cutting off Russia’s industrial sector from wood products, industrial engines, boilers and bulldozers.
U.S. first lady Jill Biden met with her Ukrainian counterpart. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raised his country’s flag at its embassy in Kyiv. And U2′s Bono, alongside bandmate The Edge, performed in a Kyiv subway station that had been used as a bomb shelter, singing the 1960s song “Stand by Me.”
The acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Kristina Kvien, posted a picture of herself at the American Embassy, and described plans for the eventual U.S. return to the Ukrainian capital after Moscow’s forces abandoned their effort to storm Kyiv weeks ago and began focusing on the capture of the Donbas.
Zelenskyy released a video address marking the day of the Allied victory in Europe 77 years ago, drawing parallels between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the evils of Nazism. The black-and-white footage showed Zelenskyy standing in front of a ruined apartment block in Borodyanka, a Kyiv suburb.
Zelenskyy said that generations of Ukrainians understood the significance of the words “Never again,” a phrase often used as a vow not to allow a repeat of the horrors of the Holocaust.
Dictator’s son a front-runner as Filipinos elect next leader
Filipinos began voting for a new president on Monday, with the son of an ousted dictator and a champion of reforms and human rights as top contenders in a tenuous moment in a deeply divided Asian democracy.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son and namesake of the strongman ousted in a 1986 army-backed “People Power” uprising, has led pre-election surveys with a seemingly insurmountable lead. But his closest challenger, Vice President Leni Robredo, has tapped into shock and outrage over the prospect of another Marcos recapturing the seat of power and harnessed an army of campaign volunteers to underpin her candidacy.
Eight other candidates, including former boxing star Manny Pacquiao, Manila Mayor Isko Moreno and former national police chief Sen. Panfilo Lacson have lagged far behind in voter-preference surveys.
Long lines of voters turned up early across most of the country without any major incident. But in southern Maguindanao province, a security hotspot, unidentified men fired at least three grenades Sunday night in the vicinity of the Datu Unsay town hall compound, wounding nine villagers who traveled there in advance from far-flung villages to be able to vote Monday. Two other grenades exploded shortly after in nearby Shariff Aguak town but caused no injuries, police said.
The winner will take office on June 30 for a single, six-year term as leader of a Southeast Asian nation hit hard by two years of COVID-19 outbreaks and lockdowns.
Still more challenging problems include a sagging economy, deeper poverty and unemployment, decades-long Muslim and communist insurgencies. There will likely also be questions over how to deal with calls demanding the prosecution of outgoing populist leader Rodrigo Duterte, whose anti-drug crackdown has left thousands of mostly petty suspects dead and sparked an investigation by the International Criminal Court.
Duterte’s daughter, southern Davao city Mayor Sara Duterte, has topped surveys as Marcos Jr.’s vice-presidential running mate in an alliance of the scions of two authoritarian leaders who had long been in the crosshairs of human rights groups. The tie-up has combined the voting power of their separate northern and southern political strongholds, boosting their chances but compounding worries of human rights activists.
Also Read: Philippines orders evacuation of Filipinos from Iraq
“History may repeat itself if they win,” said Myles Sanchez, a 42-year-old human rights worker. “There may be a repeat of martial law and the drug killings that happened under their parents.”
Sanchez said the violence and abuses that marked the martial-law era under Marcos and Duterte’s drug war more than three decades later victimized loved ones from two generations of her family. Her grandmother was sexually abused and her grandfather tortured by counterinsurgency troops under Marcos in the early 1980s in their impoverished farming village in Southern Leyte province.
Under Duterte’s crackdown, Sanchez’s brother, a sister and a sister-in-law were wrongfully linked to illegal drugs and separately killed, she told The Associated Press in an interview. She described the killings of her siblings as “a nightmare that has caused unspeakable pain.”
She begged Filipinos not to vote for politicians who either openly defended the widespread killings or conveniently looked away.
Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte have stayed away from such volatile issues in the three-month campaign and steadfastly stuck instead to a battle cry of national unity, even though the presidencies of their fathers had opened some of the most turbulent divisions in the country’s history.
“I have learned in our campaign not to retaliate,” Sara Duterte told followers Saturday night in the final day of campaigning, where she and Marcos Jr. thanked a huge crowd in a night of rap music, dance shows and fireworks near Manila Bay.
In a separate rally, Robredo thanked her supporters who jammed her star-studded sorties and waged a house-to-house battle to endorse her brand of clean and hands-on politics. She asked them to fight for patriotic ideals beyond the elections.
“We’ve learned that those who have awoken will never close their eyes again,” Robredo told a crowd that filled the main avenue in the capital’s Makati financial district. “It’s our right to have a future with dignity and it’s our responsibility to fight for it.”
Aside from the presidency, more than 18,000 government posts are contested, including half of the 24-member Senate, more than 300 seats in the House of Representatives, as well as provincial and local offices across the archipelago of more than 109 million Filipinos.
About 67 million have registered to cast their ballot during the 13-hour voting, an hour longer than the midterm elections in 2019 to compensate for the expected slower queues due to social distancing and other coronavirus safeguards.
Thousands of police and military personnel were deployed to secure election precincts, specially in rural regions with a history of violent political rivalries and where communist and Muslim rebels have a presence.
In 2009, gunmen deployed by the family of southern Maguindanao province’s then-governor massacred 58 people, including 32 journalists, in an attack on an election convoy that shocked the world.
Havana hotel death toll at 31 as dogs search for survivors
The death toll of a powerful explosion at a luxury hotel in Cuba’s capital increased to 31 Sunday evening as search crews with dogs hunted through the rubble of the iconic, 19th century building looking for people still missing.
The Hotel Saratoga, a five-star 96-room hotel in Old Havana, was preparing to reopen after being closed for two years when an apparent gas leak ignited, blowing the outer walls into the busy, midmorning streets just a block from the country’s Capitol building on Friday.
Several nearby structures also were damaged, including the historic Marti Theater and the Calvary Baptist Church, headquarters for the denomination in western Cuba. The church said on its Facebook page that the building suffered “significant structural damage, with several collapsed or cracked walls and columns (and) the ceiling partially collapsed,” though no church workers were hurt.
In releasing the names of those who were killed, the Health Ministry said the dead included four minors, a pregnant woman and a Spanish tourist, whose companion was seriously injured.
The ministry also said 54 people were injured, with 24 hospitalized. It previously reported 85 injured, but that tally turned out to include those killed by the explosion.
Nineteen families had reported people missing as of Saturday evening, but authorities did not say Sunday whether the number had changed.
Authorities said the cause of the explosion at the hotel owned by Grupo de Turismo Gaviota SA was still under investigation, but believed it to have been caused by a gas leak. A large crane hoisted a charred gas tanker out of the rubble Saturday.
Also Read: Explosion at luxury Havana hotel kills 22, injures dozens
Burials for victims had begun, municipal authorities said, while some people still waited for news of missing friends and relatives.
“We are hoping that something will be known about my cousin’s mother,” Angela Acosta told The Associated Press near the site of the explosion. Her relative, María de la Concepción Alard, lived in an apartment adjacent to the hotel with a black Labrador, which was rescued along with another dog Sunday.
Crews have worked to clean up streets around the hotel and by late Saturday, substantial pedestrian traffic had resumed.
“There are mothers who are without their children today,” Matha Verde, a manicurist who was walking near the Saratoga, said Sunday, when Mother’s Day was celebrated in Cuba. She said she tells women who lost their sons or daughters in the explosion that they “have to keep going.”
The explosion added to the woes of a crucial tourism industry that had been stifled by the coronavirus pandemic as well as tightened sanctions imposed by former U.S. President Donald Trump and kept in place the Biden administration. Those limited visits by U.S. tourists to the islands and restricted remittances from Cubans in the U.S. to their families in Cuba.
Tourism had started to revive somewhat early this year, but the war in Ukraine deflated a boom of Russian visitors, who accounted for almost a third of the tourists arriving in Cuba last year.
The Saratoga, which had been closed through the pandemic, was one of the elite lodgings in Havana, often hosting visiting VIPs and celebrities. Its owner is one of the Cuban military’s businesses.
Some attention in Cuba began to shift to an official visit by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who arrived Saturday night at the end of a five-country tour that began in Central America.
López Obrador met Sunday with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who awarded him the Order of Jose Marti “for his great achievements for humanity.” It is the most important award the country gives to a foreigner.
Díaz-Canel’s office stated in a tweet that López Obrador said he would insist to U.S. President Joe Biden that Cuba not be excluded from the Summit of the Americas it will host in Los Angeles in June.
Also Read: Police patrol Havana in large numbers after rare protests
López Obrador said the objectives of the trip included signing agreements on trade, health, education and cooperation with the island, while he ratified his foreign policy stance.
“We are not in favor of hegemonies,” he said. “Let no one exclude anyone because we are independent countries, we are sovereign countries, and no one can place themselves above the rights of peoples and nations.”
Díaz-Canel visited Mexico during its independence day celebrations last year. López Obrador has recently spoken out against the apparent U.S. government intention of to exclude Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from the upcoming summit.
Strong, swirling winds complicate New Mexico wildfire fight
Strong, fast winds complicated work for firefighters in northeast New Mexico on Sunday as they battled two major blazes, though the rural area’s major population center appeared to finally be safe from the worst danger.
“It’s been a challenging day. The winds have picked up; they haven’t let up,” fire spokesperson Todd Abel said Sunday evening.
The rural area’s largest town — Las Vegas, New Mexico, population 13,000 — sits on the eastern edge of the fire area and appeared safe for now thanks to fire lines dug with bulldozers and other preparations over the past week. But the northern and southern edges of the blaze were still proving tricky for firefighters to contain, particularly given winds as fast as 50 miles per hour (80 kilometers per hour), Abel said.
The fire’s perimeter stretched more than 60 miles (96 kilometers) from Las Vegas, New Mexico, on the southeast flank to near Holbrook about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of the Colorado line. The National Interagency Fire Center said early Sunday that more than 20,000 structures remained threatened by the fire, which has destroyed about 300 residences over the last two weeks. The fire center said full containment wasn’t anticipated until the end of July.
The ferocious winds were expected to continue with little break Sunday night and at least into Monday. Strong, gusty winds are in many ways firefighters’ worst nightmare, especially in conditions so hot and dry as the crews in the Southwest have been battling since early April.
In addition to fanning and spreading the flames, such winds ground airtankers and light planes that can drop water directly on the fire or lay down retardant ahead of its path to allow bulldozers and ground crews to dig firebreaks in places where there’s no highways or roads that can help stop the progression of the flames.
In extreme conditions, like the ones in New Mexico, even the helicopters that typically can get up in the air — at least during the early morning hours before winds start to pick up in the afternoon — are grounded. That means they’re unable to gather intelligence about the overnight developments critical to making new attack plans or placing new orders for firefighters, engines and more aircraft from across the region where demand grows exponentially as summer nears and the more traditional fire season begins.
Also Read: New Mexico residents brace for extreme wildfire conditions
Aircraft were able to fly early Sunday but were grounded by early afternoon, Abel said.
“It’s not good, obviously; it takes away a tool in our toolbox, but we’re not stopping,” said fire spokesperson Ryan Berlin.
Firefighters prepared to protect homes if needed in several other rural communities along the state highway that connects Las Vegas to Taos, a small community popular for outdoor recreation activities like skiing. Officials repeatedly urged people to evacuate if they have been told to do so.
“It’s a dogfight out there folks,” fire spokesperson Bill Morse said Sunday evening.
As of early Sunday, the biggest blaze northeast of Santa Fe had grown to an area more than twice the size of Philadelphia. Thousands of residents have been forced to flee their homes.
For now, the city of Las Vegas appears to be safe, said Berlin. Some residents of the area were able to return to their homes on Saturday, and some shops and restaurants had reopened.
“We even started to repopulate a section of town already,” he said. “Our concern right now is on the southwest portion of the fire which the wind is helping us out, sort of, because it’s blowing the flames back into the fire.”
But Wendy Mason with the New Mexico Forestry Division warned that “by no means” is anyone “out of potential danger.”
Also Read: Wildfires tear across several states, driven by high winds
“Just because the winds are coming from one direction doesn’t mean they can’t change direction so it’s better to be prepared and have residents ready to go,” she said.
Nationwide, close to 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) have burned so far this year, with 2018 being the last time this much fire had been reported at this point, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. And predictions for the rest of the spring do not bode well for the West, where long-term drought and warmer temperatures brought on by climate change have combined to worsen the threat of wildfire.
Western officials visit Ukraine after deadly school bombing
Dozens of Ukrainians were feared dead Sunday after a Russian bomb flattened a school sheltering about 90 people in its basement, while Ukrainian troops refused to surrender at a besieged steel plant that Moscow’s invading forces sped to seize before Russia’s Victory Day holiday.
The governor of Luhansk province, one of two areas that make up the eastern industrial heartland known as the Donbas, said the school in the village of Bilohorivka caught fire after Saturday’s bombing. Emergency crews found two bodies and rescued 30 people, he said.
“Most likely, all 60 people who remain under the rubble are now dead,” Gov. Serhiy Haidai wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Russian shelling also killed two boys, ages 11 and 14, in the nearby town of Pryvillia, he said.
The largest European conflict since World War II has developed into a punishing war of attrition due to the Ukrainian military’s unexpectedly effective defense. Since failing to capture Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, Moscow’s forces have attacked cities, towns and villages in eastern and southern Ukraine but not gained much ground, according to Western military analysts.
To demonstrate success in time for Victory Day on Monday, the Russian military worked to complete its takeover of Mariupol, which has been under relentless assault since the start of the war. The sprawling seaside steel mill where an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters made a last stand is the only part of the city not under Russian control.
All the remaining women, children and older civilians who were sheltering with the fighters in the Azovstal plant were evacuated Saturday. The Ukrainian troops rejected deadlines given by the Russians who said the defenders could leave with their lives if they laid down their arms.
Capt. Sviatoslav Palamar, the deputy commander of the Azov Regiment, a Ukrainian National Guard battalion holding the steel mill, told an online news conference Sunday that the site was targeted overnight by three fighter jet sorties, artillery and tanks.
“We are under constant shelling,” he said, adding that Russian infantry tried to storm the plant -- a claim Russian officials denied in recent days - and to lay landmines.
Palamar said there was a “multitude of casualties” at the plant.
Lt. Illya Samoilenko, another member of the Azov Regiment, said there were a “couple of hundred” wounded soldiers at the plant, but he declined at the same news conference to reveal how many abled-body fighters also remained in the plant.
He described the situation as dire because they didn’t have life-saving equipment in their tunnels. He also said fighters had to dig out people by hand when some bunkers collapsed under the Russian shelling.
“The truth is, we are unique because no one expected we would last so long,” Samoilenko said. “Surrender for us is unacceptable because we cannot grant such a gift to the enemy.”
After rescuers evacuated the last civilians, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was trying to secure humanitarian corridors for residents of Mariupol and surrounding towns to leave.
The Ukrainian government has reached out to international organizations to try to secure safe passage for the fighters remaining in the plant’s underground tunnels and bunkers.
The Ukrainian leader was expected to hold online talks Sunday with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, U.S. President Joe Biden and leaders from other Group of Seven countries. The meeting is partly meant to display unity among Western allies on Victory in Europe Day, which marks Nazi Germany’s 1945 surrender.
Also Read: Dozens feared dead as Russian shell hits Ukrainian school
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a surprise visit to Irpin Sunday, which had been damaged by Russia’s attempt to take Kyiv at the start of the war, according to Ukrainian media outlet Suspilne and Irpin Mayor Olexander Markushyn.
Markushyn posted images of Trudeau on social media, saying that the Canadian leader was shocked by the damage he saw at civilian homes.
Canadian officials said the prime minister would meet with Zelenskyy and “reaffirm Canada’s unwavering support for the Ukrainian people.”
Zelenskyy also met Sunday with the German parliament speaker, Bärbel Bas, in Kyiv to discuss further defense assistance as well as sanctions against Russia, according to Zelenskyy’s press office.
Trudeau is the latest Western leader to visit Ukraine to offer their support to the war-ravaged country. The prime ministers of the U.K., Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia traveled there earlier, as did the U.N.’s secretary-general.
U.S. first lady Jill Biden also made an unannounced visit to western Ukraine Sunday for a surprise Mother’s Day meeting with Zelenskyy’s wife, first lady Olena Zelenska. They visited a village school as Russia pressed its punishing war in the eastern regions.
Elsewhere, on Ukraine’s coast, explosions echoed again Sunday across the major Black Sea port of Odesa, which Russia struck with six cruise missiles on Saturday, while rocket fire damaged some 250 apartments, according to the city council.
Ukrainian leaders warned that attacks would only worsen in the lead-up to Victory Day, the May 9 holiday when Russia celebrates Nazi Germany’s defeat in 1945 with military parades. Russian President Vladimir Putin is believed to want to proclaim some kind of triumph in Ukraine when he addresses the troops on Red Square on Monday.
Zelenskyy released a video address Sunday marking the day of the Allied victory in Europe 77 years ago, drawing parallels between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the evils of Nazism.
The black-and-white video, published on social media, showed Zelenskyy standing in front of a ruined apartment block in Borodyanka, one of the Kyiv suburbs pummeled before Russian troops withdrew from the capital region weeks ago.
“Every year, on May 8, along with the whole civilized world, we pay our respects to everyone who defended the planet against Nazism during World War II,” Zelenskyy said, adding that prior generations of Ukrainians understood the significance of the words “Never again,” a phrase often used as a vow to never allow a repeat of the horrors of the Holoucaust.
“We knew the price our ancestors have paid for this wisdom. We knew how important it was to protect it and pass it on to our descendants. … But we hadn’t any notion that our generation will witness the abuse of these words,” he said.
In neighboring Moldova, Russian and separatists troops were on “full alert,” the Ukrainian military warned. The region has increasingly become a focus of worries that the conflict could expand beyond Ukraine’s borders.
Pro-Russian forces broke off the Transnistria section of Moldova in 1992, and around 1,500 Russian troops have been stationed there since, ostensibly as peacekeepers. Those forces are on “full combat readiness,” Ukraine said, without giving details on how it came to the assessment.
Also Read: Ukraine evacuates civilians from steel plant under siege
Vadim Krasnoselsky, the president of the unrecognized territory, denied those claims, saying it “does not pose a threat to neighboring states, observes neutrality and remains committed to the principle of resolving all issues at the negotiating table.”
Moscow has sought to sweep across southern Ukraine both to cut off the country from the Black Sea and to create a corridor to Transnistria. But it has struggled to achieve those objectives.
In a sign of the dogged resistance that has sustained the fighting into its 11th week, Ukraine’s military struck Russian positions on a Black Sea island that was captured in the war’s first days and has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.
Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press showed Ukraine targeting Russian-held Snake Island in a bid to impede Russia’s efforts to control the sea.
A satellite image taken Sunday morning by Planet Labs PBC showed smoke rising from two sites on the island. On the island’s southern edge, a fire smoked next to debris. That corresponded to a video released by the Ukrainian military showing a strike on a Russian helicopter that had flown to the island.
The most intense combat in recent days has taken place in eastern Ukraine. A Ukrainian counteroffensive near Kharkiv, a city in the northeast that is the country’s second-largest, “is making significant progress and will likely advance to the Russian border in the coming days or weeks,” according to the Institute for the Study of War.
The Washington-based think tank added that “the Ukrainian counteroffensive demonstrates promising Ukrainian capabilities.”
However, the Ukrainian army withdrew from Luhansk province’s embattled city of Popasna, Haidai, the regional governor, said Sunday. In a video interview posted on his Telegram channel, Haidai said that Kyiv’s troops had “moved to stronger positions, which they had prepared ahead of time.”
Rodion Miroshnik, a representative of the pro-Kremlin, separatist Luhansk People’s Republic, said its forces and Russian troops had captured most of Popasna after two months of fierce fighting.
The Russia-backed rebels have established a breakaway region in Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk, which together make up Ukraine’s industrial heartland known as the Donbas. Russia has targeted areas still under Ukrainian control.
One million residents in Luhansk, including those in separatist-held territory, were left without running water Sunday after Russian shelling damaged a local water utility, the region’s Ukrainian governor wrote on social media.
To the west in Dnipropetrovsk province, the governor said a 12-year-old boy was killed by a cluster munition that he found after a Russian attack. An international treaty bans the use of those kind of explosives, but neither Russia nor Ukraine have signed the agreement.
The regional governor, Valentyn Reznichenko, said the boy was the sixth local child killed by cluster munitions.
“This war is treacherous,” he wrote on social media. “It is near, even when it is invisible.”
A breakup leads to Indore fire claiming 7 lives
A relationship and subsequent breakup between a duo apparently played a role in the fire that broke out in a building in Indore’s Swarn Baag Colony in the wee hours of Saturday claiming seven lives, The Hindustan Times reported on Sunday from Bhopal quoting the Madhya Pradesh police
Police said Shubham Dixit alias Sanjay, who allegedly set on fire the building in Indore, wanted to get back at a woman living in the building who was reportedly in a relationship with him but broke up with him and decided to marry someone else.
The 28-year-old man was arrested late at night on Saturday from Lohamandi. He tried to flee and injured his leg and a hand, according to The Hindustan Times.
Also read: 7 die in India building fire
Police admitted him to the hospital and later arrested him, said Tehzeeb Qazi, police station in-charge, Vijay Nagar. He was scheduled to be produced before the court on Sunday.
According to the police officer, Dixit, a resident of Jhansi, was sore about a woman, who used to reside with her mother in the Swarnbagh Colony building, deciding to marry someone else.
He told the police that they were in a relationship and even lent her 10,000. But she recently got engaged to someone else.
“Late on Friday night, he called the woman for the money. The conversation (near the building) soon turned into a bitter argument. He threatened her. Later, he came to the parking area of the building, took out petrol from a bike, poured it on the woman’s scooty and set it afire,” said Qazi.
Police checked footage of at least 100 CCTV cameras during the investigation. In at least one of the video clips, police saw the man entering the building and later coming out of the building after setting the two-wheeler on fire.
The man also tried to tamper with the CCTV camera and also the electricity meter. The man was seen at the crime scene a few minutes later to check the result. But by then, the fire had spread to the building, the police officer said.
Also read: 7 of family killed in India road accident
The woman and her mother safely came out of the building by using a rope on Saturday. Police said they will register statement of the woman who did not disclose her argument with the man earlier.
“The fire broke out in the wee hours of Saturday in a building in Swarn Baag Colony. Some were burnt alive and some suffocated as it was a congested building,” Indore police commissioner HN Mishra said.
The deceased include Ishwar Singh Sisodia (45), Neetu Sisodia (45), Ashish (30), Gaurav (38) and Akanksha (25). Among the dead, two people aged between 40 and 45 have not been identified yet.
Syrians in desperate need of aid hit hard by Ukraine fallout
Umm Khaled hardly leaves the tent where she lives in northwest Syria, and she says she doesn’t pay attention to the news. But she knows one reason why it is getting harder and harder to feed herself and her children: Ukraine.
“Prices have been going up, and this has been happening to us since the war in Ukraine started,” said the 40-year-old, who has lived in a tent camp for displaced people in the last rebel-held enclave in Syria for the past six years since fleeing a government offensive.
Food prices around the world were already rising, but the war in Ukraine has accelerated the increase since Russia’s invasion began on Feb. 24. The impact is worsening the already dangerous situation of millions of Syrians driven from their homes by their country’s now 11-year-old civil war.
The rebel enclave in Syria’s northwest province of Idlib is packed with some 4 million people, most of whom fled there from elsewhere in the country. Most rely on international aid to survive, for everything from food and shelter to medical care and education.
Also read: Humanitarian corridors, from Syria to Ukraine
Because of rising prices, some aid agencies are scaling back their food assistance. The biggest provider, the U.N. World Food Program, began this week to cut the size of the monthly rations it gives to 1.35 million people in the territory.
The Ukraine crisis has also created a whole new group of refugees. European nations and the U.S. have rushed to help more than 5.5 million Ukrainians who have fled to neighboring countries, as well as more than 7 million displaced within Ukraine’s borders.
Aid agencies are hoping to draw some of the world’s attention back to Syria in a two-day donor conference for humanitarian aid to Syrians that begins Monday in Brussels, hosted by the U.N. and the European Union. The funding also goes toward aid to the 5.7 million Syrian refugees living in neighboring countries, particularly Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
Last year, the EU, the United States and other nations pledged $6.4 billion to help Syrians and neighboring countries hosting refugees. But that fell well short of the $10 billion that the U.N. had sought — and the impact was felt on the ground. In Idlib, 10 of its 50 medical centers lost funding in 2022, forcing them to dramatically cut back services, Amnesty International said in a report released Thursday.
Across Syria, people have been forced to eat less, the Norwegian Refugee Council said. The group surveyed several hundred families around the country and found 87% were skipping meals to meet other living costs.
“While the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine continues to demand world attention, donors and governments meeting in Brussels must not forget about their commitment to Syria,” NRC’s Mideast Regional Director Carsten Hansen said in a report Thursday.
The U.N.’s children’s agency UNICEF said more than 6.5 million children in Syria are in need of assistance calling it the highest recorded since the conflict began. It said that since 2011, over 13,000 children have been confirmed killed or injured.
Meanwhile, UNICEF said funding for humanitarian operations in Syria is dwindling fast, saying it has received less than half of its funding requirements for this year. “We urgently need nearly $20 million for the cross-border operations” in Syria, the agency said in a statement.
Umm Khaled is among those who rely on food aid. With her aid rations reduced, she has gone deeper in debt to feed her family.
Her husband and eldest son were killed in a Syrian government airstrike in their home city of Aleppo in 2016. Soon after, she escaped with her three surviving children to the rebel enclave in Idlib province. Ever since, they have lived in a tent camp with other displaced people on the outskirts of the town of Atmeh near the Turkish border.
Also read: US: Civilian toll in Syria raid may be higher than thought
Her family lives on two meals a day -- a small breakfast and a main meal late in the afternoon that serves as lunch and dinner. Her only income is from picking olives for a few weeks a year, making 20 Turkish liras ($1.35) a day.
“We used to get enough rice, bulgur, lentils and others. Now they keep reducing them,” she said by telephone from the camp. She spoke on condition her full name is not made public, fearing repercussions. She lives with her two daughters, ages six and 16, and 12-year-old son, who suffered head and arm injuries in the strike that killed his brother and father.
The price of essential food items in northwest Syria has already increased by between 22% and 67% since the start of the Ukraine conflict, according to the aid group Mercy Corps. There have also been shortages in sunflower oil, sugar and flour.
Mercy Corps provides cash assistance to displaced Syrians to buy food and other needs and it says it has no plans to reduce the amount.
“Even before the war in Ukraine, bread was already becoming increasingly unaffordable,” said Mercy Corps Syria Country Director, Kieren Barnes. The vast majority of wheat brought into northwest Syria is of Ukrainian origin, and the territory doesn’t produce enough wheat for its own needs.
“The world is witnessing a year of catastrophic hunger with a huge gap between the resources and the needs of the millions of people around the world,” said WFP spokeswoman Abeer Etefa.
In many of its operations around the world, WFP is reducing the size of the rations it provides, she said. Starting this month in northwest Syria, the provisions will go down to 1,177 calories a day, from 1,340. The food basket will continue to provide a mix of commodities, including wheat flour, rice, chickpeas, lentils, bulgur wheat, sugar and oil.
Rising prices have increased the cost of WFP’s food assistance by 51% since 2019 and that cost will likely go even higher as the impact of the Ukraine crisis is felt, Etefa said.
Earlier in the year, before the Ukraine conflict began, a 29% jump in costs prompted the Czech aid agency People in Need to switch from providing food packages to giving food vouchers. The vouchers, worth $60, buy less food than the group's target level, but it had to take the step to “maximize its coverage of food assistance to the most vulnerable,” a spokesperson told The Associated Press.
As the world turns to other conflicts, “Syria is on the verge of becoming yet another forgotten crisis,” Assistant U.N. Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Joyce Msuya warned in late April.
In northwest Syria, “a staggering 4.1 million people” need humanitarian aid, Msuya said — not just food, but also medicines, blankets, school supplies and shelter. She said almost a million people in the territory, mainly women and children, live in tents, “half of which are beyond their normal lifespan.”
Many fear that the situation could only get worse in July, because Russia may force international aid for the northwest to be delivered through parts of Syria under the control of its ally, President Bashar Assad.
Currently, aid enters the Idlib enclave directly from Turkey via a single border crossing, Bab al-Hawa. The U.N. mandate allowing deliveries through Bab al-Hawa ends on July 9, and Russia has hinted it will veto a Security Council resolution renewing the mandate.
A Russian veto would effectively hand Assad control over the flow of aid to the opposition enclave and the U.S. and EU had warned earlier they will stop funding in that case.
The result will be a severe humanitarian crisis, likely triggering a new flood of Syrian migrants into Turkey and Europe, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs warned in a report.
Umm Khaled said she has no choice but to endure her deteriorating living conditions.
“They keep reducing our food basket,” she said. “May God protect us if they cut it completely.”
Dozens feared dead as Russian shell hits Ukrainian school
Dozens of Ukrainians were feared dead Sunday after a Russian bomb destroyed a school sheltering about 90 people in the basement as Moscow's invading forces kept up their barrage of cities, towns and villages in eastern and southern Ukraine.
The governor of Luhansk province, one of two areas that make up the eastern industrial heartland known as the Donbas, said the school in the village of Bilohorivka caught fire after Saturday's bombing. Emergency crews found two bodies and rescued 30 people, he said.
“Most likely, all 60 people who remain under the rubble are now dead,” Gov. Serhiy Haidai wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Russian shelling also killed two boys, ages 11 and 14, in the nearby town of Pryvillia, he said.
Since failing to capture Ukraine's capital, Russia has focused its offensive in the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting since 2014 and occupy some territory. The largest European conflict since World War II has developed into a punishing war of attrition due to the Ukrainian military's unexpectedly effective defense.
To demonstrate success, Moscow was aiming to complete its conquest of the besieged port city of Mariupol in time for Victory Day celebrations on Monday. All the remaining women, children and older civilians who had been sheltering with Ukrainian fighters in a sprawling steel mill that is the city's last defense holdout were evacuated Saturday.
Also read: Ukraine evacuates civilians from steel plant under siege
The troops still inside have refused to surrender and requested international help to get them out, too. Capturing Mariupol would give Moscow a land bridge to the Crimean Peninsula, annexed from Ukraine during a 2014 invasion.
Satellite photos shot Friday by Planet Labs PBC showed vast devastation at the Azovstal steel mill. Buildings had gaping holes in the roofs, including one under which hundreds of fighters were likely hiding.
After rescuers evacuated the last civilians Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address that the focus would turn to extracting the wounded and medics: “Of course, if everyone fulfills the agreements. Of course, if there are no lies.”
Elsewhere on the coast, air raid sirens sounded several times early Sunday in the major Black sea port of Odesa, which Russia struck with six cruise missiles on Saturday.
The Odesa city council said four of the missiles hit a furniture company, with the shock waves and debris badly damaging high-rise apartment buildings. The other two missiles hit the Odesa airport, where a previous Russian attack destroyed the runway.
In a sign of the dogged resistance that has sustained the fighting into its 11th week, Ukraine’s military struck Russian positions on a Black Sea island that was captured in the war’s first days and has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.
Western military analysts also said a Ukrainian counteroffensive was advancing around the country's second-largest city, Kharkiv. Ukraine's military said retreating Russian forces destroyed three bridges on a road northeast of the city to try to slow the Ukrainian advance.
Also read: Ukraine braces for escalated attacks ahead of Russia’s V-Day
Ukrainian leaders warned that attacks would only worsen in the lead-up to Victory Day, when Russia celebrates Nazi Germany’s defeat in 1945 with military parades. Russian President Vladimir Putin is believed to want to proclaim some kind of triumph in Ukraine when he addresses the troops on Red Square on Monday.
In neighboring Moldova, Russian and separatists troops were on “full alert," the Ukrainian military warned. The region has increasingly become a focus of worries that the conflict could expand beyond Ukraine's borders.
Pro-Russian forces broke off the Transnistria section of Moldova in 1992, and Russian troops have been stationed there since, ostensibly as peacekeepers.
Those forces are on “full combat readiness,” Ukraine said, without giving details on how it came to the assessment.
Moscow has sought to sweep across southern Ukraine both to cut off the country from the sea and create a corridor to Transnistria. But it has struggled to achieve those objectives.
Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press showed Ukraine targeting Russian-held Snake Island in a bid to impede Russia’s efforts to control the Black Sea.
A satellite image taken Sunday morning by Planet Labs PBC showed smoke rising from two sites on the island. On the island’s southern edge, a fire smoked next to debris. That corresponded to a video released by the Ukrainian military showing its strike on a Russian helicopter that had flown to the island.
A Planet Labs image from Saturday showed most of the island’s buildings, as well as what appeared to be a Serna-class landing craft against the island’s northern beach. had been destroyed by Ukrainian drone attacks.
The most intense combat in recent days has taken place in eastern Ukraine. Western military analysts said a counter-offensive by Ukrainian forces was progressing around Kharkiv, the country's second-largest city. The Ukrainian military said it retook control of five villages and part of a sixth near the northeastern city.
However, the Ukrainian army withdrew from Luhansk province's embattled city of Popasna, Haidai, the regional governor, said Sunday.
In a video interview posted on his Telegram channel, Haidai said that Kyiv’s troops had “moved to stronger positions, which they had prepared ahead of time.”
“All free settlements in the Luhansk region are hot spots,” Haidai added. “Right now, there are shooting battles in (the villages) of Bilohorivka, Voivodivka and towards Popasna.”
Zelenskyy said in his nightly address that work would also continue Sunday on securing humanitarian corridors for residents of Mariupol and surrounding towns to leave.
It remains unclear what will happen to the estimated 2,000 fighters at the Azovstal plant, both those still in combat and the hundreds believed to be wounded. The Ukrainian government has been reaching out to international organizations to try to secure safe passage for them. surrender.
Zelenskyy said officials were trying to find a way to evacuate them. He acknowledged the difficulty, but said: “We are not losing hope, we are not stopping. Every day we are looking for some diplomatic option that might work.”