A 65-year-old rickshaw puller was killed as a speeding pickup van hit his vehicle in the capital's Kakrail Monday night, police said. Tajul Islam was from Baliakandi upazila of Rajbari and used to live in the Rampura TV Station area in Dhaka. Md Romen Miah, a sub-inspector (SI) of Ramna Police Station, said the accident occurred around 8.45pm when the pickup van crashed into the rickshaw in front of Judges Complex in Kakrail, leaving Tajul critically injured. The 65-year-old was declared dead after being rushed to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) at 9:15pm. The body has been kept at the DMCH morgue for autopsy, the SI said. Read more: 2 killed, 4 hurt in Natore road crashes              

Three motorcycle riders of the same family were killed after being run over by a truck in Sreepur upazila Wednesday, police said. The dead were identified as Babul Miah, 32, his seven-year-old daughter Nusrat and 52-year-old mother-in-law Bachhiron from the upazila. The accident occurred in the evening in the Chukkabari area as a speeding truck ran over the bikers after they fell off their vehicle, Khorshed Alam, sub-inspector (SI) at Mawna Police Outpost, said. "Bachhiron died from the impact of the crash. Nusrat succumbed to her injuries on her way to Sreepur Upazila Health Complex. And Babul was declared dead after being taken to the hospital," he added. The bodies were sent to Gazipur General Hospital morgue for autopsies, the SI said. "The truck was seized but its driver managed to flee." Read more: 2 killed in Sirajganj road crash                    

  Two people were killed and three others injured in a road crash on Sirajganj-Kazipur road at Chilgachha intersection in Sadar upazila of Sirajganj district on Tuesday. The deceased were identified as Anwar Hossain, 42, son of Aynul Haque and Fazlul Haque, 30, son of Lal Chan of the upazila. The accident occurred in the afternoon when a battery-run auto-rickshaw hit a motorbike and a human hauler coming from opposite direction, leaving one dead on the spot and four others injured, said Humayun Kabir, officer-in-charge of Sadar Police Station. Also read: Patient among 6 dead as ambulance crashes into truck in Shariatpur The injured were taken to Sirajganj 250-bed Bangamata Sheikh Fazilatunnesa Mujib General Hospital where the doctors declared one dead. A case was filed in this connection.    

Six people — including a 17-year-old mother and her 6-month-old baby — were killed in a shooting early Monday at a home in central California, and authorities are searching for at least two suspects, sheriff’s officials said. Deputies responded around 3:30 a.m. to reports of multiple shots fired at the residence in unincorporated Goshen, just east of Visalia, the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office said. “Actually the report was that an active shooter was in the area because of the number of shots that were being fired,” Sheriff Mike Boudreaux told reporters. Deputies found two victims dead in the street and a third person fatally shot in the doorway of the residence, Boudreaux said. Three more victims were found inside the home, including a man who was still alive but later died at a hospital, he said. The sheriff said investigators are searching for at least two suspects. They believe there is a gang connection to the killings. The sheriff’s office conducted a narcotics-related search warrant at the residence last week, Boudreaux said. “We also believe this was not a random act of violence. We believe this was a targeted family,” he said. Goshen is a semi-rural community of about 3,000 residents 35 miles (56 kilometres) southeast of Fresno in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley. Read more: 9 killed in Walmart shooting in Virginia

A 15-year-old fisherman was killed and two others went missing as a Barishal-bound launch sailed over a fishing boat in the Meghna River in Chandpur on Sunday night. The deceased was identified as Abdul Jalil, 15, said Md Mizanur Rahman, in-charge of Chandpur Harina River Police Outpost. The missing fishermen are Md Riyad, 17, son of Matin Bhuyia  and Md Moktar, 18, son of Nuruzzaman Sheikh. One of the fishermen, Md Faruk, 20, son of Gafur Bepari was rescued alive. They all are residents of Eidgah Bazar of Ibrahimpur union under Chandpur Sadar upazila, he said. Later, Faruk was admitted to the district Sadar hospital in critical condition. The four fishermen were fishing in the river in the Harina area on Sunday night. At one point, a Barishal-bound launch, suspected to be the MV Karnaphuli-3,  hit the boat due to dense fog. Three fishermen went missing while one (Faruk) was rescued alive, he said. Of the three, Abdul Jalil's body washed ashore. The other two fishermen are still missing till this evening, the policeman added. The police officer, however, said that it was not possible to identify the launch, whether it was MV Karnaphuli-3, due to heavy fog. However, an investigation is going on in this regard. The river police are still continuing the search operation for the missing fishermen in the river, he added. A joint rescue operation will be conducted in the Meghna River and its surrounding areas tomorrow morning (Tuesday). An unnatural death case has been filed over the accident. The body was handed over to the family after the due procedure, he added. Read more: Narail boat capsize: Death toll rises to 4

A massive explosion at a chemical plant in northeastern China has killed at least two people and left 12 missing.   Another 34 people were injured in the explosion Sunday on the outskirts of the city of Panjin in Liaoning province east of the capital Beijing.   News releases from the local government showed photos of flames and thick black smoke rising from the complex of chemical processing machinery, pipes and storage containers. Read more: China to work with IORA for global development: Envoy Fire crews have brought the blaze under control and the local environmental department was monitoring the impact on air quality in the area, the government of Panshan County in the city's suburbs said in a news release.   The cause of the accident remained under investigation, authorities said. People posting on social media said they felt the shock of the explosion, but the damage did not appear to extend beyond the plant. Read more: China's Communist Party capable of new, greater miracles China, with the world's second-largest economy, suffers deadly industrial accidents on a regular basis. The central government has pledged stronger safety measures ever since an explosion in 2015 at a chemical warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin killed 173 people, most of them firefighters and police officers. In that case, a number of local officials were accused of taking bribes to ignore safety violations.

Two people, including a woman, were killed and four others injured in two road crashes in Natore's Sadar upazila Friday, police said. The deceased were identified as Parul Begum, 30, and Hanif, 40. One accident occurred as a tanker hit a rickshaw van in the Chawk Tabaria area around 11am, ALM Masud, officer-in-charge (OC) of Jhalmalia Highway Police Station, said. Also read: Lalmonirhat mother, daughter crushed to death by train "Parul and other passengers of the van were rushed to Sadar hospital where she was declared dead upon arrival. The other injured are now undergoing treatment." A speeding microbus ran Hanif over while he was crossing the road in front of Harishpur Police Lines, killing him on the spot, the OC said. The bodies were sent to Sadar hospital morgue for autopsies, he added.      

A mentally handicapped youth was killed during a robbery at his family's premises in the Charpara area of Ramu upazila in Cox’s Bazar - but police and local administration are treating the incident with indifference. According to the deceased Meer Kashem's relatives, they tortured and murdered him after he caught them in the act. Faruk, son-in-law of Kashem's uncle Mohammad Ali, was injured in the incident as he tried to stop the robbers from taking away all the cows. “One of them shot at me but missed,” said Faruk. The hustlers tried to loot seven cows from the house but could get away with only two. Kashem's body was found in a nearby vegetable field the morning after the robbery. “He had gone missing following the incident. We discovered his body in the morning. Ropes were wrapped around his eyes-mouth, hands, and feet,” said Mohammad Ali. Officer-in-charge (investigation) of Ramu police station, Arup Kumar Chowdhury, went to the spot and sent the body for autopsy. But the family claims the police weren’t helpful in the incident. “One police officer used derogatory terms toward my ninth-grader daughter,” said Mohammad Ali. “They slammed us for calling the 999 helpline,” he added. In fact the police are reluctant to accept that Kashem's death was even related to the robbery. Anwarul Islam, officer-in-charge of Ramu police station, said, “The robbery occurred at night, but the body was found the next morning. We cannot yet say whether these incidents are related or not. We are investigating.” Zafar Alam, the local UP member, almost justified the killing with his comment: "As Kashem was mentally handicapped, he used to shout at unknown people. Maybe he saw them in the night and started shouting. That’s why they tortured and killed him”. Livestock theft has increased at Ramu upazila in recent times. Five days ago five cows were looted from another house in the same upazila. Read more: Teen worker dies jumping out of spa during DNCC drive  

Two people were killed and four others injured in  separate road accidents in Sirajganj's Sadar and Raiganj upazilas on Friday night and Saturday morning. In Sadar upazila, an engineer of the Bangabandhu Railway Bridge project was killed after being hit by a truck in Mulibari Railgate area on Friday night. The deceased was identified as Hamidur Rahman, 28, son of Chand Mandol of Kumiradanga village of Gobindaganj upazila of Gaibandha district. The accident occurred when the truck hit Hamidur, leaving him dead on the spot, said Md. Humayun Kabir, officer-in-charge (OC) of Sadar Police Station. A case was filed in this regard, added the OC. Also Read: 3 family members among 5 dead in accident involving truck, pick-up and microbus on Dhaka-Sylhet highway In another accident in Raiganj, a man was killed and four others suffered injuries after a bus rammed a rickshaw van on Saturday, police said. The deceased Kanai Haldar,30, son of Shri Rampada Haldar of Kalinja Haladarpara village of Raiganj upazila of Sirajganj. Police said the accident occurred in the morning as they were going to Sadar upazila from Kalinja of Raiganj upazila in the van along with others. When they reached the town's court mosque area, the speeding bus hit their vehicle, killing Kanai Haladar on the spot, he added. Among the injured, Rampada Haladar, father of the deceased Kanai Haladar was sent to Bogura in critical condition. Three others were admitted to the Bongamata Sheikh Fazilatunnesa Mujib General Hospital in Sirajganj, said the OC.  

Ukrainian forces fired rockets at a facility in the eastern Donetsk region where Russian soldiers were stationed, killing 63 of them, Russia’s defense ministry said Monday, in one of the deadliest attacks on the Kremlin’s forces since the war began more than 10 months ago. Ukrainian forces fired six rockets from a HIMARS launch system and two of them were shot down, a defense ministry statement said. It did not say when the strike happened. The strike, using a U.S.-supplied precision weapon that has proven critical in enabling Ukrainian forces to hit key targets, delivered a new setback for Russia which in recent months has reeled from a Ukrainian counteroffensive. According to the governor of Russia’s Samara region, Dmitry Azarov, an unspecified number of residents of the region were among those killed and wounded by the strike on the town of Makiivka. Russian military bloggers, whose information has largely been reliable during the war, said ammunition stored close to the facility had exploded in the attack and contributed to the high number of casualties. Expressing anger at the losses, Daniil Bezsonov, an official with the Russian-appointed administration in Russian-occupied Donetsk, called for the punishment of military officers who ordered a large number of troops to be stationed at the facility. The Ukrainian military appeared to acknowledge the attack Monday, with the General Staff confirming that Makiivka was hit on Dec. 31, and saying 10 Russian military vehicles were destroyed or damaged. It added that Russian personnel losses were still being clarified. In a claim that could not be independently verified, the Strategic Communications Directorate of Ukraine’s Armed Forces had maintained Sunday that some 400 mobilized Russian soldiers were killed in a vocational school building in Makiivka and about 300 more were wounded. The Russian statement said the strike occurred “in the area of Makiivka” and didn’t mention the vocational school. Meanwhile, Russia deployed multiple exploding drones in another nighttime attack on Ukraine, officials said Monday, as the Kremlin signaled no letup in its strategy of using bombardments to target the country’s energy infrastructure and wear down Ukrainian resistance to its invasion. The barrage was the latest in a series of relentless year-end attacks, including one that killed three civilians on New Year’s Eve. On Monday, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that 40 drones “headed for Kyiv” overnight. All of them were destroyed, according to air defense forces. Klitschko said 22 drones were destroyed over Kyiv, three in the outlying Kyiv region and 15 over neighboring provinces. Energy infrastructure facilities were damaged as the result of the attack and an explosion occurred in one city district, the mayor said. It wasn’t immediately clear whether that was caused by drones or other munitions. A wounded 19-year-old man was hospitalized, Klitschko added, and emergency power outages were underway in the capital. In the outlying Kyiv region a “critical infrastructure object” and residential buildings were hit, Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba said. Russia has carried out airstrikes on Ukrainian power and water supplies almost weekly since October. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of “energy terrorism” as the aerial bombardments have left many people without heat amid freezing temperatures. Ukrainian officials say Moscow is “weaponizing winter” in its effort to demoralize the Ukrainian resistance. Read more: Putin, Xi vow closer ties as Russia bombards Ukraine again Ukraine is using sophisticated Western-supplied weapons to help shoot down Russia’s missiles and drones, as well as send artillery fire into Russian-held areas of the country. Moscow’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24 has gone awry, putting pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin as his ground forces struggle to hold ground and advance. He said in his New Year’s address to the nation that 2022 was “a year of difficult, necessary decisions.” Putin insists he had no choice but to send troops into Ukraine because it threatened Russia’s security — an assertion condemned by the West, which says Moscow bears full responsibility for the war. Russia is currently observing public holidays through Jan. 8. Drones, missiles and artillery shells launched by Russian forces also struck areas across Ukraine. Five people were wounded in the Monday morning shelling of a Ukraine-controlled area of the southern Kherson region, its Ukrainian Gov. Yaroslav Yanushevich said on Telegram. The Russian forces attacked the city of Beryslav, the official said, firing at a local market, likely from a tank. Three of the wounded are in serious condition and are being evacuated to Kherson, Yanushevich said. Seven drones were shot down over the southern Mykolaiv region, according to Gov. Vitali Kim, and three more were shot down in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said. In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a missile was also destroyed, according to Reznichenko. He said that energy infrastructure in the region was being targeted. Ukraine’s Air Force Command reported Monday that 39 Iranian-made exploding Shahed drones were shot down overnight, as well as two Russian-made Orlan drones and a X-59 missile. “We are staying strong,” the Ukrainian defense ministry tweeted. A blistering New Year’s Eve assault killed at least four civilians across the country, Ukrainian authorities reported, and wounded dozens. The fourth victim, a 46-year-old resident of Kyiv, died in a hospital on Monday morning, Klitschko said. Multiple blasts rocked the capital and other areas of Ukraine on Saturday and through the night. The strikes came 36 hours after widespread missile attacks Russia launched Thursday to damage energy infrastructure facilities, and the unusually quick follow-up alarmed Ukrainian officials. In Russia, a Ukrainian drone hit an energy facility in the Bryansk region that borders with Ukraine, Bryansk regional governor Alexander Bogomaz reported on Monday morning. A village was left without power as a result, he said. Read more: Ukraine conflict casts shadow on Russia as it enters 2023