Asia
Indian sailors freed from Yemeni rebels' captivity 'to return soon'
India Monday said that seven of its sailors freed from the captivity of Yemen’s Houthi rebels would return home soon.
The Indian sailors were among a total of 14 people taken hostage by the Houthi rebels on January 2 when they seized UAE-flagged merchant vessel Rwabee in the Red Sea.
The sailors reached the Omani capital of Muscat on Sunday, and are “expected to travel back to India shortly”, the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement.
Also read: Britain, India call for immediate cease-fire in Ukraine
On Sunday, Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi took to Twitter to announce the release of the 14 hostages from the clutches of the rebels in Yemen.
“All of them are now safely in the care of Oman. We are deeply grateful for the noble and humanitarian efforts made by many parties in good faith, not least the Yemeni leadership in Sanaa, to bring this to fruition,” he wrote.
In response, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had tweeted, "Thank you my friend @badralbusaidi for your help and assistance. Look forward to their safe homecoming."
Also read: India condemns US lawmaker's Kasmir visit
Sri Lanka halts stock trading as share prices plummet
Stock trading in Sri Lanka was halted again on Monday after the index of liquid stocks plummeted, with the All Share Price Index falling 9.6 percent and the S&P SL20 plunging 12.64 percent.
Trading was initially halted till 11:00 a.m. due to sharp falls when the stock exchange started, while prices continued to plummet, prompting the market to declare a halt for the rest of the day.
The stock market opened for the first time on Monday since a weeklong Sri Lankan New Year holiday and a subsequent five-day trading halt following the central bank's move to hike the interest rates by 7 percent.
Read: Asian shares fall amid interest rate, earnings worries
The Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) temporarily closed the stock market for a period of five business days commencing on April 18.
The CSE has been adversely affected by the economic woes of the country and the index has fallen 26 percent by the end of March compared to the end of 2021.
Modi congratulates Prez Macron on his re-election
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday congratulated "friend" Emmanuel Macron on his re-election as the French President for another five-year term.
Calling Macron his "friend", the Indian PM took to Twitter to say that he looks forward to working with the French leader to bolster the strategic ties between Delhi and Paris.
Also read:To Europe’s relief, France’s Macron wins but far-right gains
"Congratulations to my friend @EmmanuelMacron on being re-elected as the President of France! I look forward to continue working together to deepen the India-France Strategic Partnership," Modi wrote.
Modi is likely to embark on a five-day tour of Europe next week. During his proposed visit from May 2 to 6, he is likely to hold bilateral meetings with the French President and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Also read:In France, it's Macron vs. Le Pen, again, for presidency
Defeating his far-right rival Marine Le Pen by 58.55% to 41.45%, 44-year-old Macron on Sunday became the first sitting president in France to get re-elected in 20 years.
China promotes coal in setback for efforts to cut emissions
China is promoting coal-fired power as the ruling Communist Party tries to revive a sluggish economy, prompting warnings Beijing is setting back efforts to cut climate-changing carbon emissions from the biggest global source.
Official plans call for boosting coal production capacity by 300 million tons this year, according to news reports. That is equal to 7% of last year’s output of 4.1 billion tons, which was an increase of 5.7% over 2020.
China is one of the biggest investors in wind and solar, but jittery leaders called for more coal-fired power after economic growth plunged last year and shortages caused blackouts and factory shutdowns. Russia’s attack on Ukraine added to anxiety that foreign oil and coal supplies might be disrupted.
“This mentality of ensuring energy security has become dominant, trumping carbon neutrality,” said Li Shuo, a senior global policy adviser for Greenpeace. “We are moving into a relatively unfavorable time period for climate action in China.”
Also read: China looks to learn from Russian failures in Ukraine
Officials face political pressure to ensure stability as President Xi Jinping prepares to try to break with tradition and award himself a third five-year term as ruling party leader in the autumn.
Coal is important for “energy security,” Cabinet officials said at an April 20 meeting that approved plans to expand production capacity, according to Caixin, a business news magazine.
The ruling party also is building power plants to inject money into the economy and revive growth that sank to 4% over a year earlier in the final quarter of 2021, down from the full year’s 8.1% expansion.
Governments have pledged to try to limit warming of the atmosphere to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the level of pre-industrial times. Leaders say what they really want is a limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
Scientists say even if the world hits the 2-degree goal in the 2015 Paris climate pact and the 2021 Glasgow follow-up agreement, that still will lead to higher seas, stronger storms, extinctions of plants and animals and more people dying from heat, smog and infectious diseases.
China is the top producer and consumer of coal. Global trends hinge on what Beijing does.
The Communist Party has rejected binding emissions commitments, citing its economic development needs. Beijing has avoided joining governments that promised to phase out use of coal-fired power.
In a 2020 speech to the United Nations, Xi said carbon emissions will peak by 2030, but he announced no target for the amount. Xi said China aims for carbon neutrality, or removing as much from the atmosphere by planting trees and other tactics as is emitted by industry and households, by 2060.
China accounts for 26.1% of global emissions, more than double the U.S. share of 12.8%, according to the World Resources Institute. Rhodium Group, a research firm, says China emits more than all developed economies combined.
Per person, China’s 1.4 billion people on average emit the equivalent of 8.4 tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to WRI. That is less than half the U.S. average of 17.7 tons but more than the European Union’s 7.5 tons.
China has abundant supplies of coal and produced more than 90% of the 4.4 billion tons it burned last year. More than half of its oil and gas is imported and leaders see that as a strategic risk.
Also read: Anti-virus shutdowns in China spread as infections rise
China’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2060 appears to be on track, but using more coal “could jeopardize this, or at least slow it down and make it more costly,” Clare Perry of the Environmental Investigations Agency said in an email.
Promoting coal will make emissions “much higher than they need to be” by the 2030 peak year, said Perry.
“This move runs entirely counter to the science,” she said.
Beijing has spent tens of billions of dollars on building solar and wind farms to reduce reliance on imported oil and gas and clean up its smog-choked cities. China accounted for about half of global investment in wind and solar in 2020.
Still, coal is expected to supply 60% of its power in the near future.
Beijing is cutting millions of jobs to shrink its bloated, state-owned coal mining industry, but output and consumption still are rising.
Authorities say they are shrinking carbon emissions per unit of economic output. The government reported a reduction of 3.8% last year, better than 2020′s 1% but down from a 5.1% cut in 2017.
Last year’s total energy use increased 5.2% over 2020 after a revival of global demand for Chinese exports propelled a manufacturing boom, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Stimulus spending also might raise carbon output if it pays for building more bridges, train stations and other public works. That would encourage carbon-intensive steel and cement production.
China’s coal-fired power plants operate at about half their capacity on average, but building more creates jobs and economic activity, said Greenpeace’s Li. He said even if the power isn’t needed now, local leaders face pressure to make them pay for themselves.
“That locks China into a more high-carbon path,” Li said. “It’s very difficult to fix.”
10 of 26 people from sunken Japan tour boat confirmed dead
Rescuers said that 10 people who were retrieved Sunday from the frigid sea and the rocky coast of a northern Japanese national park had died, a day after a tour boat with 26 aboard apparently sank in rough waters, triggering questions why it was allowed to sail.
The search for the others is still ongoing after the boat sent a distress call on Saturday afternoon saying it was sinking. The location, near the Kashuni Waterfall, is known as a difficult place to maneuver boats because of its rocky coastline and strong tide.
There were two crew and 24 passengers, including two children, on the the 19-ton Kazu 1 when it ran into troubles while traveling off the western coast of the Shiretoko Peninsula. The coast guard said the 10 victims — seven men and three women — were adults.
The Transport Ministry launched an investigation into the boat’s operator, which had two accidents last year. The ministry said it was looking into safety standards and the decision to conduct the tour despite rough weather on Saturday.
Also read: 7 people from missing tour boat in Japan found
The operator, Shiretoko Pleasure Cruise, had been instructed to take steps to improve its safety following earlier accidents in which it ran aground in June without causing injuries, and another in May, when three passengers suffered minor injuries when the boat collided with an object.
“We will thoroughly investigate what caused this situation and what kind of safety oversight was involved to allow the tour in order to prevent another accident," Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito, who visited the area Sunday, told reporters.
Following an intensive search involving six patrol boats, several aircraft and divers that went through the night, rescuers on early Sunday found four people near the tip of Shiretoko Peninsula and later six more in the same area. Some of them were plucked from the sea, while others were washed onto the rocky coast.
An orange-colored, square-shaped lifesaving float with the boat’s name on it was also found near the rocks, the coast guard said.
Footage on public broadcaster NHK showed one of the victims arriving on a helicopter and being transferred to an ambulance on a stretcher. Rescuers held up blue plastic shields to protect the victim's privacy.
The sightseeing vessel made an emergency call early Saturday afternoon, saying its bow had flooded and that it was beginning to sink and tilt, the coast guard said. Contact with the boat had since been lost. The coast guard said the operator told them that everyone on the boat was wearing a life vest, but some of the victims found were without them.
Average April sea temperatures in Shiretoko National Park are just above freezing, which experts say would cause hypothermia.
“It’s a very severe condition especially when they are wet,” Jun Abe, vice chairman of the Society of Water Rescue and Survival Research, told TBS TV.
Yoshihiko Yamada, a Tokai University marine science professor, said the boat was likely to have run aground after it was tossed around in high waves and damaged. A boat of that size usually does not carry a life boat, he said.
Also read: Tour boat with 26 missing in north Japan after distress call
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida cut short his attendance at a two-day summit in Kumamoto in southern Japan and returned to Tokyo. He told reporters early Sunday that he instructed officials “to do everything they can for the rescue.”
The cause of the accident is under investigation, but officials and experts suspect a safety negligence.
High waves and strong winds were forecast when the boat left and Japanese media reports said fishing boats had returned to port before noon Saturday because of the bad weather.
A tour boat crew belonging to another operator told NHK that he warned the Kazu 1 crew of rough seas and told them not to go. He also said the same boat ran aground last year and suffered a crack on its bow.
According to the operator’s website, the tour takes around three hours and offers scenic views of the western coast of the peninsula and a chance to see whales, dolphins and brown bears. The national park is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site and is famous as the southernmost region to see drifting sea ice.
Russian mercenaries are Putin's 'coercive tool' in Africa
When abuses were reported in recent weeks in Mali — fake graves designed to discredit French forces; a massacre of some 300 people, mostly civilians — all evidence pointed to the shadowy mercenaries of Russia's Wagner Group.
Even before these feared professional soldiers joined the assault on Ukraine, Russia had deployed them to under-the-radar military operations across at least half a dozen African countries. Their aim: to further President Vladimir Putin's global ambitions, and to undermine democracy.
The Wagner Group passes itself off as a private military contractor and the Kremlin denies any connection to it or even, sometimes, that it exists.
But Wagner's commitment to Russian interests has become apparent in Ukraine, where its fighters, seen wearing the group's chilling white skull emblem, are among the Russian forces currently attacking eastern Ukraine.
In sub-Saharan Africa, Wagner has gained substantial footholds for Russia in Central African Republic, Sudan and Mali. Wagner's role in those countries goes way beyond the cover story of merely providing a security service, experts say.
"They essentially run the Central African Republic," and are a growing force in Mali, Gen. Stephen Townsend, the commander of U.S. armed forces in Africa, told a Senate hearing last month.
The United States identifies Wagner’s financer as Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch who is close to the Russian president and sometimes is called “Putin’s chef" for his flashy restaurants favored by the Russian leader. He was charged by the U.S. government with trying to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the Wagner Group is the subject of U.S. and European Union sanctions.
Russia's game plan for Africa, where it has applied its influence as far north as Libya and as far south as Mozambique, is straightforward in some ways, say analysts. It seeks alliances with regimes or juntas shunned by the West or facing insurgencies and internal challenges to their rule.
The African leaders get recognition from the Kremlin and military muscle from Wagner. They pay for it by giving Russia prime access to their oil, gas, gold, diamonds and valuable minerals.
Russia also gains positions on a strategically important continent.
But there's another objective of Russia's “hybrid war” in Africa, said Joseph Siegle, director of research at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.
Siegle said Russia is also waging an ideological battle, using Wagner as a “coercive tool" to undermine Western ideas of democracy and turn countries toward Moscow. Putin wants to challenge the international democratic order “because Russia can't compete very well in that order,” Siegle said.
“If democracy is held up as the ultimate aspirational governance model, then that is constraining for Russia," Siegle said.
Rather, Wagner promotes Russian interests with soldiers and guns, but also through propaganda and disinformation, as Prigozhin has done for Putin before.
READ: Ukrainian counterattacks slowing Russian offensive in east
In Central African Republic, Wagner fighters ride around the capital Bangui in unmarked military vehicles and guard the country's gold and diamond mines. They have helped to hold off armed rebel groups and to keep President Faustin-Archange Touadera in power, but their reach goes much further. Russian national Valery Zakharov is Touadera's national security advisor but also a “key figure” in Wagner's command structure, according to European Union documents accusing the mercenary group of serious human rights violations.
A statue erected last year in Bangui depicts Russian soldiers standing side by side to protect a woman and her children. Russia is cast as the country's savior and pro-Russia marches have been held in support of the war in Ukraine and to criticize former security partner France — though several protesters said they are paid.
“A Central African adage says that when someone helps you, you have to reciprocate. This is why we have mobilized as one to support Russia,” said Didacien Kossimatchi, an official in Touadera's political party. “Russia has absolved us of the unacceptable domination of the West."
Kossimatchi said Russia was “acting in self-defense” in Ukraine.
Such support from African countries is a strategic success for Russia. When the United Nations voted on a resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine, 17 of the 35 countries that abstained from the vote — nearly half — were African. Several other African nations did not register a vote.
“Africa is fast becoming crucial to Putin’s efforts to dilute the influence of the United States and its international alliances,” said a report in March by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a non-profit set up by the former British prime minister.
Russia's strategy in Africa comes at a minimal cost economically and politically. Analysts estimate Wagner operates with only a few hundred to 2,000 mercenaries in a country. Many are ex-Russian military intelligence, Siegle said, but because it's a private force the Kremlin can deny responsibility for Wagner's actions.
The real price is paid by ordinary people.
The people of Central African Republic aren't more secure, said Pauline Bax, Africa Program deputy director of the International Crisis Group think tank. “In fact, there’s more violence and intimidation,” she said.
France, the U.S. and human rights groups have accused Wagner mercenaries of extra-judicial killings of civilians in Central African Republic. A U.N. panel of experts said private military groups and "particularly the Wagner Group” have violently harassed people and committed rape and sexual violence. They are just the latest accusations of serious abuses by the group.
Central African Republic in 2021 acknowledged serious human rights violations by Russians, which forced Russian ambassador Vladimir Titorenko to leave his post.
The Wagner group has responded with a charm offensive — creating films designed to please the public, sponsoring beauty pageants and distributing educational materials that promote Russia’s involvement in Africa. Russian is now being taught in universities.
Russia has taken its Central African Republic blueprint to Mali and elsewhere in Africa. In Mali, there has been an “uprooting of democracy,” said Aanu Adeoye, an analyst on Russia-Africa affairs at the London-based Chatham House think tank.
Following coups in 2020 and last year, France is withdrawing troops from its former colony that had been helping fight Islamic extremists since 2013. Wagner moved in, striking a security deal with Mali's new military junta, which then expelled the French ambassador and banned French TV stations. Tensions with the West have escalated. So has the violence.
Last month, Mali's army and foreign soldiers who witnesses suspected were Russian killed an estimated 300 men in the rural town of Moura. Some of those killed were suspected extremists but most were civilians, Human Rights Watch said, calling it a “deliberate slaughter of people in custody."
This week, when French forces handed over control of the Gossi military base, suspected Wagner agents hurriedly buried several bodies nearby and a Russian social media campaign blamed France for the graves. The French military, however, had used aerial surveillance after their withdrawal to show the creation of the sandy graves.
Both atrocities bear the hallmarks of Wagner mercenaries and Russia's foreign policy brand under Putin, say several analysts.
"They have no concerns about minor things like democracy and human rights,” said Chatham House's Adeoye.
7 people from missing tour boat in Japan found
The Japanese Coast Guard said Sunday that rescue helicopters found seven of the 26 people from a tour boat missing in the frigid waters of northern Japan since the day before, but their conditions are unknown.
Rescuers found four people near the tip of Shiretoko Peninsula earlier Sunday and then three more people in the same area a few hours later, but the coast guard said it could not confirm whether they were rescued alive. NHK public television said they were unconscious.
The coast guard said all seven people were found in the same area near the tip of the peninsula north of where the boat sent a distress call on Saturday. The location is known as a difficult place to maneuver boats because of its rocky coastline. The same tour boat had an accident there last year.
Footage on NHK showed one of the rescued people arriving on a helicopter and being transferred to an ambulance on a stretcher, while rescuers held up blue plastic shields for privacy.
The boat carrying 24 passengers, including two children, and two crew members had gone missing after sending a distress call, saying it took on water and was beginning to sink.
Sunday’s rescue came after nearly 19 hours of intense search involving six patrol boats, several aircraft and divers. The coast guard said the search continued through the night.
The 19-ton Kazu 1 made an emergency call in the early afternoon on Saturday, saying the ship’s bow had flooded and it was beginning to sink and tilt while traveling off the western coast of Shiretoko Peninsula on the northern island of Hokkaido, the coast guard said.
The tour boat has since lost contact, according to the coast guard. Nineteen people are still missing.
Average April sea temperatures in Shiretoko National Park are just above freezing.
An official for the vessel’s operator, Shiretoko Pleasure Cruise, said he could not comment because he had to respond to calls from worried families of the passengers.
READ: Tour boat with 26 missing in north Japan after distress call
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who was attending a two-day summit in Kumamoto in southern Japan, canceled his program for the second day and returned to Tokyo. He told reporters in the early hours of Sunday that he instructed officials “to do everything they can for the rescue.”
The cause of the accident is still under investigation, but experts suspect the boat ran aground and was damaged in rough seas in an area known for strong currents and a rocky coastline.
High waves and strong winds were observed in the area around noon, according to a local fisheries cooperative. Japanese media reports said fishing boats had returned to port before noon because of the bad weather.
NHK said there was a warning for high waves of up to 3 meters (9 feet).
A tour boat crew belonging to another operator told NHK that he warned of rough seas when he spotted the Kazu 1 crew and told them not to go. He said the same boat went aground last year and suffered a crack on its bow.
The coast guard confirmed that the same boat went aground in the area last June, though nobody was injured in that accident.
Yoshihiko Yamada, a Tokai University marine science professor, said the boat was likely to have run aground after it was tossed around in high waves and damaged, flooded and probably sank. A tour boat of that size usually does not carry a life boat, and passengers possibly could not escape a rapidly sinking vessel with its windows likely closed to shield them from strong winds.
In an interview with TBS television, Yamada said there was also a slight possibility the boat could have been hit by a whale.
The cold temperature and strong wind could cause hypothermia and put the passengers in severe conditions for survival, according to Jun Abe, vice chairman of the Society of Water Rescue and Survival Research. “It’s a very severe condition especially when they are wet,” Abe told TBS.
According to the operator’s website, the tour takes around three hours and offers scenic views of the western coast of the peninsula and includes potential sightings of animals such as whales, dolphins and brown bears. The national park is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site and is famous as the southernmost region to see drifting sea ice.
Tour boat with 26 missing in north Japan after distress call
A tour boat with 26 people aboard was missing in rough and cold waters off northern Japan on Saturday after issuing a distress call and reporting to be sinking, the coast guard said.
No survivors have been found after more than seven hours of an intense search involving six patrol boats and four aircraft.
The 19-ton Kazu 1 made an emergency call in early afternoon, saying the ship’s bow had flooded and was beginning to sink and tilt while it was traveling off the western coast of Shiretoko Peninsula in the northern island of Hokkaido, the coast guard said.
Also read: UN says boat capsizes off Libya, 35 dead or presumed dead
The tour boat has since lost contact, according to the coast guard. It said the boat was carrying 24 passengers, including two children, and two crew.
Average April sea temperatures in Shiretoko National Park are just above freezing.
An official of the vessel's operator, Shiretoko Pleasure Cruise, said he could not comment as he had to respond to calls from worried families of the passengers.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who was attending a two-day water summit in Kumamoto in southern Japan, was canceling his program for Sunday and was set to return to Tokyo to deal with the missing boat, the NHK public broadcaster reported.
High waves and strong winds were observed in the area around noon, according to a local fisheries cooperative. Japanese media reports said fishing boats had returned to port before noon because of the bad weather.
Also read: At least 7 killed after boat capsizes in Ghana
NHK said there was a warning for high waves of up to 3 meters (9 feet) high.
According to the operator's website, the tour takes about three hours and offers a scenic view of the western coast of the peninsula, including the nature and animals such as whales, dolphins and the brown bear. The national park is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site and is famous as the southernmost region to see drifting sea ice.
Militants in Afghanistan strike Pakistan army post, kill 3
Militants in Afghanistan fired heavy weapons across the border into a Pakistani military outpost overnight, killing three personnel, the army said Saturday, in the latest violence to rattle the volatile region.
A firefight ensued with the militants firing toward the army post in Pakistan's rugged North Waziristan region, and several were killed, the statement said. There was no immediate way to independently confirm details of the attack.
It comes as Afghanistan is reeling from a series of explosions in recent days, including the bombing of a mosque in northern Kunduz province on Friday that killed 33 people, including several students of an adjacent religious school or madrassa.
Also read: Pakistan warns neighbor Afghanistan not to shelter militants
That includes an attack Thursday on the Abdul Rahim Shaheed school in Kabul that killed seven children. It re-opened on Saturday, with children remembering their fallen classmates with roses.
The striking increase in attacks in Afghanistan — as well as in neighboring Pakistan — highlights the growing security challenge facing Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, who swept to power last August in the closing days of the chaotic withdrawal of American and NATO troops ending their 20-year war.
Even as their harsh religiously motivated edicts, which seemed reminiscent of their late 1990s rule, drew harsh criticism, their seemingly heavy-handed approach to security brought early expectations of improved safety.
However a vicious Islamic State affiliate known as the Islamic State in Khorasn Province, or IS-K — which claimed the recent spate of attacks in Afghanistan as well as a growing number in neighboring Pakistan — is proving an intractable challenge.
IS-K took responsibility for a series of attacks across Afghanistan on Thursday, most of which targeted the country's minority Shiites who the radical Sunni Muslim group revile as heretics.
Also read: Pakistan to work with Afghanistan, other neighbors to combat terrorism: army chief
Still, the IS-K, which is an enemy of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, is not the only militant organization in Afghanistan contributing to the security dilemma facing Kabul's religiously driven government.
The violent Pakistani Taliban, known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or (TTP) — which the United Nations says numbers around 10,000 in Afghanistan — has stepped up its assault on Pakistan's military outposts from its Afghan hideouts. Even the upstart IS-K has taken responsibility for some of the attacks targeting Pakistani military personnel, damaging relations between the two countries.
Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have promised no militant group would use its soil as a base to attack another country, but Kabul has yet to arrest or hand over any TTP leaders in Afghanistan to Pakistan. Other militant groups also operating in Afghanistan include China's militant Uighurs of East Turkistan Movement, which seeks independence for northwest China, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).
Some of the groups are loosely allied to the IS-K , while others act more independently, but on Saturday Pakistan's military statement warned Afghanistan's Taliban rulers to do more.
“Pakistan strongly condemns the use of Afghan soil by terrorists for activities against Pakistan and expects that the Afghan Government will not allow conduct of such activities, in future,” said the Pakistan military statement.
After seven of its troops were killed in an ambush earlier this month, Pakistan on April 16 retaliated with bombing raids inside Afghanistan that locals in Afghanistan's eastern Khost province said killed dozens of refugees. The United Nations Education Fund (UNICEF) confirmed 20 children were killed in the strikes in Afghanistan's border provinces of Khost and Kunar.
At the Abdul Rahim Shaheed School, which was among the IS-K targets in the Thursday attacks, school principal Ghulam Haider Husseini handed roses to each student as they arrived.
He also gave students a pen saying “it is our pen who will bring about a change in this situation.”
Beijing on alert after COVID-19 cases discovered in school
Beijing is on alert after 10 middle school students tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday, in what city officials said was an initial round of testing.
City officials suspended classes in the school for a week following the positive test results. The Chinese capital also reported four other confirmed cases on Friday that were counted separately.
Mainland China reported 24,326 new community-transmitted infections on Saturday, with the vast majority of them asymptomatic cases in Shanghai, where enforcement of a strict “zero-COVID” strategy has drawn global attention.
China has doubled down on the approach even in face of the highly transmissible omicron variant. The zero-COVID policy warded off many deaths and widespread outbreaks when faced with less transmissible variants through mass testing and strict lockdowns where people could not leave their homes.
READ: It’s not over: COVID-19 cases are on the rise again in US
But recent developments in Shanghai have led some to question whether the strategy is worth the tradeoffs. Many residents in the city have struggled to get adequate food supplies during a lockdown this month, while some were also unable to get drugs or medical attention. Some elderly people died after an outbreak at an hospital led medical staff to be quarantined.
The country is now facing its worst outbreak since the beginning of the pandemic in the central city of Wuhan.
Local media reported that in Beijing’s Chaoyang district, the government ordered the suspension of in-person after-school activities and classes. The city government is now conducting a round of mass testing to look for more cases.
In Shanghai, city officials reported 12 new deaths Saturday, all elderly patients with underlying illnesses.