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Tag: Blockades

  • Cambodia claims Thai bombing is deep into territory near shelters for displaced

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    MONGKOL BOREY, Cambodia — Heavy combat between Thailand and Cambodia entered a second week on Monday, with Phnom Penh claiming that Thai bombing is hitting deeper into its territory, coming close to shelters for people who had already fled dangerous areas along the border.

    According to Cambodia’s defense and information ministries, shortly after 10 a.m. local time on Monday, Thai F-16 fighter jets dropped two bombs near camps for displaced people in the Chong Kal district in the Oddar Meanchey province and the Srei Snam district in the Siem Reap province.

    The bombing in Srei Snam, located more than 70 kilometers (43 miles) inside Cambodian territory, targeted a bridge, said the Cambodian authorities.

    Siem Reap is home to Cambodia’s world-famous Angkor Wat temple complex, a UNESCO World Heritage site and the country’s biggest tourist attraction.

    There was no immediate comment from Thai officials.

    Access to the combat zone and nearby areas is limited, so few claims by either side can be independently verified.

    The two sides are battling over longstanding competing claims to patches of frontier land, some of which contain centuries-old temple ruins.

    More than two dozen people on both sides of the border have officially been reported killed in the past week’s fighting, while more than half a million have been displaced, according to officials.

    At a news conference on Monday morning, Thai officials issued an estimate of what damage has been inflicted on Cambodia’s military since a skirmish on Dec. 7 that wounded two Thai soldiers ignited large-scale fighting the day after.

    They said Cambodian losses included 12 tanks, 10 armored vehicles, four anti-aircraft artillery systems, 7 artillery pieces or mortars, five anti-drone systems, 175 drones, five communication hubs, and one BM-21 mobile rocket launcher.

    Thailand says Cambodia has fired thousands of rockets from the truck-mounted BM-21 launchers, which have a range of 30-40 kilometers (19-25 miles) and can fire up to 40 projectiles at a time.

    Thailand’s government announced on Sunday that a rocket attack from Cambodia had killed a 63-year-old villager, its first civilian death reported as a direct result of combat.

    Col. Ritcha Suksuwanon, a Thai army deputy spokesperson, said on Sunday an intact Chinese GAM-102LR guided anti-tank missile system was seized. Thailand estimates among Cambodia’s losses some 82 military positions and 505 Cambodian military personnel reportedly killed.

    Cambodia has dismissed as disinformation previous Thai estimates of its military death toll but has not released its own figures. Thailand acknowledges the deaths of 16 of its troops.

    Phnom Penh said Monday that 15 civilians have been killed and 73 wounded.

    Thai officials also said they were trying to cut off the supply of fuel and weapons to Cambodia, but denied reports that a full-scale naval blockade would be mounted. Capt. Nara Khunkothom, assistant spokesperson for the Thai Navy, said only Thai-registered vessels would be subject to their controls in what they have officially designated a “high-risk area” in the Gulf of Thailand.

    Officials also said fuel and weapons would no longer be allowed to go through a major land checkpoint to neighboring Laos that is close to Cambodian territory, declaring that military supplies and logistical support must be cut off.

    In a surprise admission, Thai officials implicitly acknowledged that attacks had damaged centuries-old Ta Kwai temple — known to Cambodians as Ta Krabey — in a disputed area, but blamed Cambodia for allegedly using it as a military stronghold.

    Phnombootra Chandrajoti, director-general of Thailand’s Fine Arts Department, said that historical sites should not be used as bases for military operations and that the most important priority is that Thailand must secure and preserve the area.

    The new fighting derailed a ceasefire promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump that ended five days of earlier combat in July. It had been brokered by Malaysia and pushed through by pressure from Trump, who threatened to withhold trade privileges unless Thailand and Cambodia agreed. It was formalized in more detail in October at a regional meeting in Malaysia that Trump attended.

    Trump announced this past Friday that the two countries had agreed at his urging to renew the ceasefire, but Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul denied making any commitment and Cambodia announced it was continuing to fight in what it said is self-defense.

    —

    Associated Press writers Grant Peck and Wasamon Audjarint in Bangkok contributed to this report.

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  • CEO of the Alamo’s historic site has resigned after a Texas Republican criticized her

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    The CEO of the nonprofit managing the Alamo resigned after a powerful Republican state official criticized her publicly, suggesting that her views aren’t compatible with the history of the Texas shrine.

    Kate Rogers said in a statement Friday that she had resigned the day before, after Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wrote a letter to the Alamo Trust’s Board of Directors suggesting that she either resign or be removed. Patrick criticized her over an academic paper questioning the GOP-controlled Legislature’s education policies and suggesting she wanted the historic site in Texas to have a broader focus.

    “It was with mixed emotions that I resigned my post as President and CEO at the Alamo Trust yesterday,” Rogers said in a statement texted to The Associated Press. “It became evident through recent events that it was time for me to move on.”

    Several trust officials did not immediately respond to email or cellphone messages Friday seeking comment.

    Patrick had posted a letter to the board Thursday on X, calling her paper “shocking.” She wrote it in 2023 for a doctorate in global education from the University of Southern California. Patrick posted a portion online.

    “I believe her judgment is now placed in serious question,” Patrick wrote. “She has a totally different view of how the history of the Alamo should be told.”

    It is the latest episode in an ongoing conflict over how the U.S. tells its history. Patrick’s call for Rogers’ ouster follows President Donald Trump’s pressure to get Smithsonian museums in Washington to put less emphasis on slavery and other darker parts of America’s past.

    The Alamo, known as “the Shrine of Texas Liberty,” draws more than 1.6 million visitors a year. The trust operates it under a contract with the Texas General Land Office, and the state plans to spend $400 million on a renovation with a new museum and visitor center set to open in 2027. Patrick presides over the Texas Senate.

    In San Antonio, Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai, the county’s elected top administrator, decried Patrick’s “gross political interference.”

    “We need to get politics out of our teaching of history. Period,” he said in a statement Friday.

    In the excerpt from her paper, Rogers noted the Texas Legislature’s “conservative agenda” in 2023, including bills to limit what could be taught about race and slavery in history courses.

    “Philosophically, I do not believe it is the role of politicians to determine what professional educators can or should teach in the classroom,” she wrote.

    Her paper also mentioned a 2021 book, “Forget the Alamo,” which challenges traditional historical narratives surrounding the 13-day siege of the Alamo during Texas’ fight for independence from Mexico in 1836.

    Rogers noted that the book argues that a central cause of the war was Anglo settlers’ determination to keep slaves in bondage after Mexico largely abolished it. Texas won the war and was an independent republic until the U.S. annexed it in 1845.

    Rogers also wrote that a city advisory council wanted to tell the site’s “full story,” including its history as a home to Indigenous people — something the state’s Republican leaders oppose. She said she would love the Alamo to be “a place that brings people together versus tearing them apart.”

    “But,” she added, “politically that may not be possible at this time.”

    Traditional narratives obscure the role slavery might have played in Texas’ drive for independence and portray the Alamo’s defenders as freedom fighters. Patrick’s letter called the siege “13 Days of Glory.”

    The Mexican Army attacked and overran the Texas defenses. But “Remember the Alamo” became a rallying cry for Texas forces.

    “We must ensure that future generations never forget the sacrifice for freedom that was made,” Patrick wrote in his letter to the trust’s board. “I will continue to defend the Alamo today against a rewrite of history.”

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  • Mali closes schools due to fuel scarcity as militants enforce blockade

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    BAMAKO, Mali — Mali closed schools and universities nationwide starting Sunday due to a fuel scarcity caused by a blockade on fuel imports jihadi militants imposed on the capital.

    Education Minister Amadou Sy Savane announced on state television classes would be suspended for two weeks “due to disruptions in fuel supplies that are affecting the movement of school staff.”

    Militants from the al-Qaida-backed Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin group announced a ban on fuel imports from neighboring countries into Mali in early September, squeezing the landlocked country’s fragile economy and leaving hundreds of fuel trucks stranded at the border.

    Mali, along with neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger, has battled an insurgency by armed groups, including some allied with al-Qaida and the Islamic State group as well as local rebels. Following military coups in all three nations in recent years, they have expelled French forces and turned to Russia’s mercenary units for security assistance, which analysts say has made little difference.

    In Mali’s capital, Bamako, endless queues have stretched in front of gas stations and the fuel scarcity has affected the price of commodities and transportation.

    For a country that relies on fuel imports for domestic needs, the blockade is seen as a significant setback for Mali’s military junta. The junta defended its forceful takeover of power in 2020 as a necessary step to end decades of security crises.

    The Malian military attempted to escort some fuel trucks from border areas to Bamako. Some trucks arrived but others were attacked by militants.

    The education minister said Sunday that authorities were “doing everything possible” to restore normal fuel supplies before schools resume classes Nov. 10.

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  • Desperate search for fuel in Mali’s capital as al-Qaida-linked group enforces blockade

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    BAMAKO, Mali — BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — Endless lines stretched in front of gas stations in Mali’s capital Bamako late into Monday night, as commuters desperately tried to find fuel. Residents are starting to feel the impact of a blockade on fuel imports to the city declared in early September by a militant group affiliated with al-Qaida.

    Amadou Berthé, a bank employee in Bamako, said he traveled 20 kilometers (12 miles) by motorcycle taxi to find gas for his car, which broke down due to a lack of fuel as he was returning from work

    “I’ve been to more than 20 gas stations and still can’t find any fuel,” Berthé said, sitting on the back of the motorcycle with an empty jerry can on his knees.

    Militants from Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) have relentlessly attacked fuel tankers coming from neighboring Senegal and Ivory Coast, plunging the capital of the landlocked West African country into crisis. Despite being one of Africa’s top gold producers, Mali is ranked the sixth least developed nation in the world, with nearly half its population living below the national poverty line.

    Some oil importers in Mali have started to use alternative ways of bringing fuel into the country in order to protect their staff and their businesses.

    “I transport fuel in my tankers from Dakar (the capital of Senegal) to the border with Mali, where I sell it to traders who then take the risk of bringing it into Mali,” a Malian fuel importer, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals, told the AP.

    “Of course, I don’t earn much, but it’s the only way I’ve found to keep my employees and tanker trucks safe,” the importer said.

    Analysts say the blockade poses huge risks for the fragile local economy and is a significant setback for Mali’s military junta, which took power in 2021 promising to improve security.

    Instead, attacks from militants linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have intensified in recent months.

    Beverly Ochieng, an analyst at the Control Risks Group consulting firm, said JNIM is using the blockade to pressure commercial operators and residents to distance themselves from the military authorities, therefore undermining the government’s legitimacy and authority.

    JNIM is one of several armed groups operating in the Sahel, a vast strip of semi-arid desert stretching from North Africa to West Africa, where an insurgency is spreading rapidly with large-scale attacks.

    In a report released last month, the Malian Petroleum Importers Association said over 100 tanker trucks had been burned and destroyed by JNIM fighters.

    Videos on social media in recent weeks show what appears to be truck drivers being held hostage by JNIM and calling for their release. The Associated Press was unable to independently verify the footage.

    According to their relatives, some tanker drivers were also killed by the militants.

    Lamine Kounta, a 38-year-old Bamako resident, said two of his cousins from Ivory Coast, a driver and his apprentice, were killed by JNIM fighters at the end of September in the Sikasso region, near the border with Ivory Coast.

    “They had nothing to do with this crisis or Mali. My cousins worked for an Ivorian road construction company and were in Mali to get equipment when they encountered JNIM fighters, who killed them,” he said.

    In a press release, the Ivorian company CIVOTECH confirmed the deaths of two fuel tanker drivers and an apprentice driver on Sept. 21 in the Sikasso region.

    In response to the embargo, the Malian army has started escorting some truck convoys on the roads between Bamako and the borders with Senegal and Ivory Coast.

    In a statement on Monday, the army said it destroyed the hideouts of the JNIM fighters responsible for a recent attack on a tanker convoy in the Kolondiéba area, near the border with Ivory Coast.

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  • Day of strikes in France challenges new prime minister’s budget plans

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    PARIS — Protesters hit France with transport strikes, notably hobbling the Paris Metro, demonstrations and traffic slowdowns and blockades Thursday, pitting the power of the streets against President Emmanuel Macron ‘s government and its proposals to cut funding for public services that underpin the French way of life.

    The first whiffs of police teargas came before daybreak, with scuffles between riot officers and protesters in Paris. Nationwide demonstrations, from France’s biggest cities to small towns, were expected to mobilize hundreds of thousands of marchers, voicing anger about mounting poverty, sharpening inequality and struggles for low-paid workers and others to make ends meet.

    “We say ‘no’ to the government. We’ve had enough. There’s no more money, a high cost of living,” striking transport worker Nadia Belhoum said at a before-dawn protest targeting a Paris bus depot. She described “people agonizing, being squeezed like a lemon even if there’s no more juice.”

    Labor unions that called strikes are pushing for the abandonment of proposed budget cuts, social welfare freezes and other belt-tightening that opponents contend will further hit the pockets of low-paid and middle-class workers and which triggered the collapse of successive governments that sought to push through savings.

    Opponents of Macron’s business-friendly leadership complain that taxpayer-funded public services — free schools and public hospitals, subsidized health care, unemployment benefits and other safety nets that are cherished in France — are being eroded. Left-wing parties and their supporters want the wealthy and businesses to pay more, rather than see spending cuts to plug holes in France’s finances and to rein in its debts.

    “Public service is falling apart,” said teacher Claudia Nunez. “It’s always the same people who pay.”

    The day of upheaval — with strikes also impacting schools, industry and other sectors of the European Union’s second-largest economy — aimed to turn up the heat on new Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu. Macron appointed him last week, tasking Lecornu with building parliamentary support for belt-tightening that brought down his predecessors.

    “Bringing in Lecornu doesn’t change anything — he’s just another man in a suit who will follow Macron’s line,” said 22-year-old student Juliette Martin.

    “We want our voices heard. People my age feel like no one in politics is speaking for us,” she said. “It’s always our generation that ends up with the insecurity and the debt.”

    Unions have decried budget proposals by Macron’s minority governments, weakened by their lack of a dependable majority in parliament, as brutal and punitive for workers, retirees and others who are vulnerable.

    “The bourgeoisie of this country have been gorging themselves, they don’t even know what to do with their money anymore. So if there is indeed a crisis, the question is who should pay for it,” said Fabien Villedieu, a leader of the SUD-Rail train workers union. “We are asking that the government’s austerity plan that consists of making the poorest in this country always pay — whether they are employees, retirees, students — ends and that we make the richest in this country pay.”

    Striking rail workers waving flares made a brief foray into the Paris headquarters of the Economics Ministry, leaving trails of smoke in the air before leaving.

    Macron’s opponents also continue to denounce unpopular pension reforms that he railroaded through parliament and which raised the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64, triggering a firestorm of anger and rounds of protest earlier in what is his second and last term as president, which ends in 2027.

    The government said it was deploying police in exceptionally large numbers — about 80,000 in all — to keep order. Police were ordered to break up traffic blockades and other efforts to prevent people who weren’t protesting from going about their business. Paris police used tear gas to disperse a before-dawn blockade of a bus depot. French broadcasters also reported sporadic clashes in the cites of Nantes, in the west, and Lyon in the southeast, with volleys of police tear gas and projectiles targeting officers.

    The Interior Ministry reported 94 arrests nationwide by midday.

    “Every time there’s a protest, it feels like daily life is held hostage,” said office worker Nathalie Laurent, grappling with disruptions on the Paris Metro during her morning commute.

    “You can feel the frustration in the air. People are tired,” she said. “It’s not very democratic when ordinary people can’t even do their jobs. And Lecornu — he’s only just started, but if this is his idea of stability, then he has a long way to go. We don’t need big speeches, we need to feel that someone in government understands what this chaos means for us.”

    The Paris Metro operator said rush-hour services suffered fewer disruptions than anticipated but that traffic largely stopped outside those hours except on three driverless automated lines.

    French national rail company SNCF said “a few disruptions” were expected on high-speed trains to France and Europe, but most will run.

    Regional rail lines, as well as the Paris Metro and commuter trains, will be more severely impacted.

    In airports, only few disruptions are anticipated as the main air traffic controllers union decided to postponed its call for a strike pending the appointment of a new Cabinet.

    Last week, a day of anti-government action across France saw streets choked with smoke, barricades in flames and volleys of tear gas as protesters denounced budget cuts and political turmoil.

    Although falling short of its self-declared intention of total disruption, the “Block Everything” campaign still managed to paralyze parts of daily life and ignite hundreds of hot spots across the country.

    ___

    Associated Press journalists Sylvie Corbet, Michael Euler, Oleg Cetinic and Yesica Brumec in Paris contributed.

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  • Nancy Pelosi book, ‘The Art of Power,’ will reflect on her career in public life

    Nancy Pelosi book, ‘The Art of Power,’ will reflect on her career in public life

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    NEW YORK — Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has completed a book about her years in public life, from legislation she helped enact to such traumatizing moments as the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol and the assault at her San Francisco home that left her husband with a fractured skull.

    Simon & Schuster announced Thursday that Pelosi’s “The Art of Power” will be released Aug. 6.

    “People always ask me how I did what I did in the House,” Pelosi, the first woman to become speaker, said in a statement. “In ‘The Art of Power,’ I reveal how — and more importantly, why.”

    Pelosi, 84, was first elected to the House in 1986, rose to minority leader in 2003 and to speaker four years later, when the Democrats became the majority party. She served as speaker from 2007-2011, and again from 2019-2023, and was widely credited with helping to mobilize support for and pass such landmark bills as the Affordable Care Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.

    She stepped away from any leadership positions after Republicans retook the majority in the 2022 elections, but she continues to represent California’s 11th district.

    According to Simon & Schuster, Pelosi also will offer a “personal account” of Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters rampaged through the Capitol as Congress voted to certify Joe Biden’s victory over Trump. She also recounts the night in 2022 when an intruder broke into the Pelosi home and assaulted her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer. (Nancy Pelosi was in Washington at the time).

    “Pelosi shares that horrifying day and the traumatic aftermath for her and her family,” the publisher’s announcement reads in part.

    Pelosi’s previous book, “Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters,” came out in 2008. In 2022, she was the subject of the HBO documentary “Pelosi in the House,” made by daughter Alexandra Pelosi.

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  • France’s 2 key farmers unions suspend protests after the government offers new measures

    France’s 2 key farmers unions suspend protests after the government offers new measures

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    PARIS — France’s two major farmers unions announced they would lift country-wide blockades Thursday, shortly after the prime minister introduced new measures aimed at protecting their livelihoods that they described as “tangible progress.”

    However, farmer activists who have snarled traffic along major highways around Paris said they would stay put at least another day to see the government commitments in writing, and both unions said they would closely monitor any government implementation.

    “We don’t want to hear words of love. What we want is proof of love,” said Thierry Desforges, a farm union member at road blockade of the A6 highway in Chilly-Mazarin, south of Paris.

    Thousands of French farmers have been demonstrating for a couple of weeks across the country in protests over low earnings, heavy regulation and what they call unfair competition from abroad. Similar protests also have extended across Europe, including at the European Union headquarters in Brussels.

    Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, whose earlier promises to address farmers’ issues had failed to quell the French protests, announced a new set of measures Thursday.

    They included tens of millions of euros in aid, tax breaks and a promise not to ban pesticides in France that are allowed elsewhere in Europe — which French farmers say leads to unfair competition. Attal also said France would immediately ban imports from outside the EU that use a pesticide banned in the bloc.

    Arnaud Rousseau, president of France’s biggest farmers union FNSEA, and Young Farmers union President Arnaud Gaillot said at a news conference later Thursday that they were calling on their members to suspend the protests.

    “We have been heard on a number of points, with tangible progress,” Rousseau said, though both unions said they would give keep a close eye on whether the government implements its promises by June.

    “We call on our members to suspend the blockades,” Gaillot said.

    Attal’s speech earlier Thursday came as hundreds of angry farmers driving heavy-duty tractors created chaos outside the European Union’s headquarters, demanding leaders at an EU summit provide relief from rising prices and bureaucracy.

    “The question is currently being asked throughout Europe: Is there a future for our agriculture? Of course, the answer is yes,” Attal said.

    At road blockades across France, protesters watched the speech on smartphones and televisions they had set up.

    Attal promised there would be no new pesticide ban “without a solution” and said no pesticides would be banned in France that are authorized elsewhere in the EU. Also, Attal announced that France was banning, starting immediately, imports of fruits and vegetables coming from outside the EU that have been treated with Thiaclopride — an insecticide currently banned in the bloc.

    France will propose the creation of a “European control force” to combat fraud, he said, particularly regarding health regulations, and fight against the import of food products that go against European and French health standards.

    Attal also reaffirmed France would remain opposed to the EU signing a free-trade deal with the Mercosur trade group. “There is no question of France accepting this treaty,” he said.

    The government’s goals with the newly announced measures are “to give food its value back” and “to boost farmers’ income, to protect them against unfair competition and to simplify their daily life,” he said.

    Attal also announced 150 million euros ($162 million) in aid to livestock farmers and a decrease in taxes on farms being transferred from older generations to younger ones.

    Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau, speaking after Attal, announced a 2 billion euro ($2.16 billion) package to make loans for those who are setting up as farmers.

    The French government has also doubled the numbers of controls to sanction food industrial groups and supermarkets that don’t comply with a 2018 law meant to pay a fair price to farmers. The fine can reach up to 2% of sales revenues to companies that don’t comply.

    At the Chilly-Mazarin blockade, Damien Greffin, a FNSEA representative, said farmers still need time to “better analyze the measures” as some appeared to him “a bit deceptive.”

    Desforges, a fellow FNSEA member, remained cautious about proposals that concern the EU because “we know how Europe works, the countries still need to agree.”

    Regarding domestic proposals, “we really need to wait and see if they are turned into law,” Desforges added.

    —-

    Oleg Cetinic and Helena Alves in Chilly-Mazarin and Michel Euler in Argenteuil contributed to the story.

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  • French farmers aim to put Paris ‘under siege’ in tractor protest. Activists hurl soup at ‘Mona Lisa’

    French farmers aim to put Paris ‘under siege’ in tractor protest. Activists hurl soup at ‘Mona Lisa’

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    PARIS — France’s interior ministry on Sunday ordered a large deployment of security forces around Paris as angry farmers threatened to head toward the capital, hours after climate activists hurled soup at the glass protecting the “Mona Lisa” painting at the Louvre Museum.

    French farmers are putting pressure on the government to respond to their demands for better remuneration for their produce, less red tape and protection against cheap imports.

    Speaking after an emergency meeting on Sunday evening, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said 15,000 police officers are being deployed, mostly in the Paris region.

    Darmanin said he ordered security forces to “prevent any blockade” of Rungis International Market — which supplies the capital and surrounding region with much of its fresh food — and the Paris airports as well as to ban any convoy of farmers from entering the capital and any other big city. He said that helicopters will monitor convoys of tractors.

    Darmanin said possibly all eight highways heading to Paris will be blocked Monday from midday and urged car and truck drivers to “anticipate” blockades. “Difficulties will obviously be very important,” he said.

    Farmers of the Rural Coordination union in the Lot-et-Garonne region, where the protests originated, said they plan to use their tractors Monday to head toward the Rungis International Market.

    France’s two biggest farmers unions said in a statement that their members based in areas surrounding the Paris region would seek to block all major roads to the capital, with the aim of putting the city “under siege,” starting Monday afternoon.

    Earlier on Sunday, two climate activists hurled soup at the glass protecting the “Mona Lisa” in the Louvre museum and shouted slogans advocating for a sustainable food system.

    In a video posted on social media, two women with the words “FOOD RIPOSTE” written on their T-shirts could be seen passing under a security barrier to get closer to the painting and throwing soup at the glass protecting Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece.

    “What’s the most important thing?” they shouted. “Art, or right to a healthy and sustainable food?”

    “Our farming system is sick. Our farmers are dying at work,” they added.

    Louvre employees could then be seen putting black panels in front of the Mona Lisa and asking visitors to evacuate the room.

    Paris police said that two people were arrested following the incident.

    On its website, the “Food Riposte” group said the French government is breaking its climate commitments and called for the equivalent of the country’s state-sponsored health care system to be put in place to give people better access to healthy food while providing farmers a decent income.

    Angry French farmers have been using their tractors for days to set up road blockades and slow traffic across France. They also dumped stinky agricultural waste at the gates of government offices.

    On Friday, the government announced a series of measures that farmers said don’t fully address their demands. Those include “drastically simplifying” certain technical procedures and the progressive end to diesel fuel taxes for farm vehicles.

    France’s new prime minister, Gabriel Attal, visited a farm on Sunday in the central region of Indre-et-Loire. He acknowledged that farmers are in a difficult position because “on the one side we say ‘we need quality’ and on the other side ’we want ever-lower prices.’”

    “What’s at stake is finding solutions in the short, middle and long term,” he said, “because we need our farmers.”

    Attal also said his government is considering “additional” measures against what he called “unfair competition” from other countries that have different production rules and are importing food to France.

    He promised “other decisions” to be made in the coming weeks to address farmers’ concerns.

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  • Tuberville is ending blockade of most military nominees, clearing way for hundreds to be approved

    Tuberville is ending blockade of most military nominees, clearing way for hundreds to be approved

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    Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama says he is ending his blockade of hundreds of military promotions, clearing the way for hundreds to be approved

    ByKEVIN FREKING Associated Press

    December 5, 2023, 1:35 PM

    FILE – Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, talks to reporters as he and other senators arrive at the chamber for votes, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

    The Associated Press

    WASHINGTON — Sen. Tommy Tuberville announced on Tuesday that he’s ending his blockade of hundreds of military promotions, following heavy criticism from many of his colleagues in the Senate and clearing the way for hundreds to be approved.

    Tuberville’s blockade of military promotions was over a dispute about a Pentagon abortion policy. The Alabama Republican said Tuesday he’s “not going to hold the promotions of these people any longer.”

    Almost 400 military nominations have been in limbo due to Tuberville’s blanket hold on confirmations and promotions for senior military officers. It’s a stance that has left key national security positions unfilled and military families with an uncertain path forward.

    Tuberville was blocking the nominations in opposition to new Pentagon rules that allow reimbursement for travel when a service member has to go out of state to get an abortion or other reproductive care. President Joe Biden’s administration instituted the new rules after the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to an abortion, and some states have limited or banned the procedure.

    Critics said that Tuberville’s ire was misplaced and that he was blocking the promotions of people who had nothing to do with the policy he opposed.

    “Why are we punishing American heroes who have nothing to with the dispute?” said Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska. “Remember we are against the Biden abortion travel policy, but why are we punishing people who have nothing to do with the dispute and if they get confirmed can’t fix it? No one has had an answer for that question because there is no answer.”

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  • Gaza has long been a powder keg. Here’s a look at the history of the embattled region

    Gaza has long been a powder keg. Here’s a look at the history of the embattled region

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    JERUSALEM — Gaza has long been a powder keg, and it exploded after Hamas fighters stormed southern Israel on Oct. 7 and began killing and abducting people.

    More than 1,400 people in Israel — mostly civilians — were killed in the Hamas attack, and the Israeli army says about 200 hostages were taken into Gaza. Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 4,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry. Nearly half Gaza’s population — the vast majority of whom are already refugees — have been displaced.

    Israel has imposed a complete siege on Gaza, preventing the entrance of food, water and fuel — a move that has created a catastrophic humanitarian situation. As the Israeli military gears up for a ground invasion and pledges to topple Hamas, the futures of Gaza and its 2.3 million Palestinians look uncertain.

    Here’s a look at the history of the Gaza Strip:

    Before the war surrounding Israel’s establishment in 1948, present-day Gaza was part of the large swath of the Middle East under British colonial rule. After Israel defeated the coalition of Arab states, the Egyptian army was left in control of a small strip of land wedged between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.

    During the war, some 700,000 Palestinians either fled or were forced from their homes in what is now Israel — a mass uprooting that they call the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” Tens of thousands of Palestinians flocked to the strip.

    Under Egyptian military control, Palestinian refugees in Gaza were stuck, homeless and stateless. Egypt didn’t consider them to be citizens and Israel wouldn’t let them return to their homes. Many were supported by UNWRA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, which has a heavy presence in Gaza to this day. Meanwhile, some young Palestinians became “fedayeen” — insurgency fighters who conducted raids into Israel.

    Israel seized control of Gaza from Egypt during the 1967 Mideast war, when it also captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem — areas that remain under Israeli control. The internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, which administers semi-autonomous areas of the occupied West Bank, seeks all three areas for a hoped-for future state.

    Israel built more than 20 Jewish settlements in Gaza during this period. It also signed a peace treaty with Egypt at Camp David — a pact negotiated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

    Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi referenced this 40-year old treaty Wednesday when he declined to permit Palestinian refugees from Gaza into Egypt, saying the potential entrance of militants into Egypt would threaten longstanding peace between Israel and Egypt.

    The first Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation erupted in Gaza in December 1987, kicking off more than five years of sustained protests and bloody violence. It was also during this time that the Islamic militant group Hamas was established in Gaza.

    For a time, promising peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders made the future of Gaza look somewhat hopeful.

    Following the Oslo accords — a set of agreements between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat that laid the groundwork for a two-state solution — control of Gaza was handed to the fledgling Palestinian Authority.

    But the optimism was short lived. A series of Palestinian suicide attacks by Hamas militants, the 1995 assassination of Rabin by a Jewish ultranationalist opposed to his peacemaking and the election of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister the following year all hindered U.S.-led peace efforts. Another peace push collapsed in late 2000 with the eruption of the second Palestinian uprising.

    As the uprising fizzled in 2005, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon led a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, uprooting all of Israel’s troops and roughly 9,000 settlers in a move that bitterly divided Israel.

    Just months after Israel’s withdrawal, Hamas won parliamentary elections over Fatah, the long-dominant Palestinian political party. The following year, after months of infighting, Hamas violently seized control of Gaza from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.

    Israel and Egypt imposed a crippling blockade on the territory, monitoring the flow of goods and people in and out. For nearly two decades, the closure has crippled the local economy, sent unemployment skyrocketing, and emboldened militancy in the region, which is one of the most densely populated places on the planet.

    Through four wars and countless smaller battles with Israel that devastated Gaza, Hamas has only grown more powerful. In each subsequent conflict, Hamas has had more rockets that have traveled farther. The group has displayed a growing array of weapons. Its top leaders have survived, and cease-fires have been secured. In the meantime, it has built a government, including a police force, ministries and border terminals equipped with metal detectors and passport control.

    Since the Oct. 7 attack, Israel has stated its goal is to crush Hamas. This will be no easy task given the group’s deep base of support. But even if Israel does realize its goal, it has said little about what it hopes will come next.

    On Friday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel hopes to relinquish control of Gaza and establish a “new security regime.” He did not elaborate.

    Experts have cautioned that defeating militancy is not possible — even if Israel manages to topple Hamas, militants could well fill the power vacuum.

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  • Gaza’s doctors struggle to save hospital blast survivors as Middle East rage grows

    Gaza’s doctors struggle to save hospital blast survivors as Middle East rage grows

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    KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Doctors in Gaza City faced with dwindling medical supplies performed surgery on hospital floors, often without anesthesia, in a desperate bid to save badly wounded victims of a massive blast that killed civilians sheltering in a nearby hospital amid Israeli bombings and a blockade of the territory.

    The Hamas militant group blamed the blast on an Israeli airstrike, while the Israeli military blamed a rocket misfired by other Palestinian militants. At least 500 people were killed, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said.

    Rage at the hospital carnage spread through the Middle East as U.S. President Joe Biden landed in Israel in hopes of stopping a spread of the war, which started after Hamas militants attacked towns and cities across southern Israel last week.

    After President Joe Biden came down the stairs of Air Force One, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately went in to embrace the American leader.

    Israeli strikes on Gaza continued on Wednesday.

    Jordan’s foreign minister said his country canceled a meeting there between Biden, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. Biden will now visit only Israel, a White House official said.

    The war between Israel and Hamas was “pushing the region to the brink,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told state-run television.

    The Israeli military held a briefing Wednesday morning laying out its case for why it was not responsible for the explosion at the al-Ahli Hospital. It was not firing in the area, Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.

    Instead, Hagari said, Israeli radar confirmed a rocket barrage fired by the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad from a nearby cemetery at that time of the blast, around 6:59 p.m. Independent video showed one of the rockets in the barrage falling out of the sky, he said.

    The misfired rocket hit the parking lot outside the hospital. Were it an airstrike, there would have been a crater there; instead, the fiery blast came from the misfired rocket’s warhead and its unspent propellant, he said.

    The Israeli military also released a recording they said was between two Hamas militants discussing the blast, during which the speakers say it was believed to be an Islamic Jihad misfire and that the shrapnel appeared to be from IJ weapons, not Israel’s.

    Hagari said Israeli’s intelligence would be shared with U.S. and British officials. He also questioned the death toll provided by Gaza’s Hamas-led health ministry.

    Since the war began, roughly 450 rockets fired at Israel by militant groups had landed in Gaza, the military said.

    Hamas called Tuesday’s hospital blast “a horrific massacre,” saying it was caused by an Israeli strike.

    Islamic Jihad dismissed Israel’s claims, accusing Israel of “trying hard to evade responsibility for the brutal massacre it committed.”

    The group pointed to Israel’s order that Al-Ahli be evacuated and reports of a previous blast at the hospital as proof that the hospital was an Israeli target. It also said the scale of the explosion, the angle of the bomb’s fall and the extent of the destruction all pointed to Israel.

    The blast left gruesome scenes. Hundreds of Palestinians had taken refuge in al-Ahli and other hospitals in Gaza City, hoping they would be spared bombardment after Israel ordered all residents of the city and surrounding areas to evacuate to the southern Gaza Strip.

    Ghassan Abu Sitta, a plastic surgeon working at al-Alhi, said the hospital was filled with internally displaced people seeking shelter from Israeli airstrikes when he heard a loud explosion and the ceiling of his operating room collapsed.

    “The wounded started stumbling toward us,” he wrote in an account posted to Facebook. He saw hundreds of dead and severely wounded people.

    “I put a tourniquet on the thigh of a man who had his leg blown off and then went to tend to a man with a penetrating neck injury,” he said.

    Video that The Associated Press confirmed was from the hospital showed the hospital grounds strewn with torn bodies, many of them young children, as fire engulfed the building. The grass was strewn with blankets, school backpacks and other belongings. On Wednesday morning the blast scene was littered with charred cars and the ground was blackened by debris.

    Ambulances and private cars rushed some 350 casualties to Gaza City’s main hospital, al-Shifa, which was already overwhelmed with wounded from other strikes, said its director, Mohammed Abu Selmia.

    Victims arrived with gruesome injuries, Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said. Some were decapitated, disemboweled, or missing limbs.

    Doctors in the overwhelmed hospital resorted to performing surgery on floors and in the halls, mostly without anesthesia.

    “We need equipment, we need medicine, we need beds, we need anesthesia, we need everything,” Abu Selmia said. He warned that fuel for the hospital’s generators would run out within hours, forcing a complete shutdown, unless supplies enter the Gaza Strip.

    The bloodshed unfolded as the U.S. tried to convince Israel to allow the delivery of supplies to desperate civilians, aid groups and hospitals in the tiny Gaza Strip, which has been under a complete siege since Hamas’ deadly rampage last week. Hundreds of thousands of increasingly desperate people were searching for bread and water.

    Before the al-Alhi Hospital deaths, Israeli strikes on Gaza killed at least 2,778 people and wounded 9,700, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and nearly two-thirds of those killed were children. Another 1,200 people across Gaza are believed to be buried under the rubble, alive or dead, health authorities said.

    More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, mostly civilians who were slain in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. The assault also resulted in some 200 being taken captive into Gaza. Militants in Gaza have launched rockets every day since, aiming at cities across Israel.

    Protests erupted across the Middle East. In Amman, a palace statement said Jordan’s king condemned “the ugly massacre perpetrated by Israel against innocent civilians.”

    The king “warned that this war, which has entered a dangerous phase, will plunge the region into an unspeakable disaster,” the statement said.

    With troops massed along the border, Israel has been expected to launch a ground invasion into Gaza.

    Throughout the day Tuesday, airstrikes killed dozens of civilians and at least one senior Hamas figure in the southern half of the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli military told fleeing Palestinians to go. An Associated Press reporter saw around 50 bodies brought to Nasser Hospital after strikes in the southern city of Khan Younis.

    The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas hideouts, infrastructure and command centers.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to put the blame on Hamas for Israel’s retaliatory attacks and the rising civilian casualties in Gaza. “Not only is it targeting and murdering civilians with unprecedented savagery, it’s hiding behind civilians,” he said.

    With Israel barring entry of most water, fuel and food into Gaza since Hamas’ brutal attack, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken secured an agreement with Netanyahu to discuss creation of a mechanism for delivering aid to the territory’s 2.3 million people. But aid was not getting in as of Wednesday morning.

    More than 1 million Palestinians have fled their homes — roughly half of Gaza’s population — and 60% are now in the approximately 14-kilometer (8-mile) long area south of the evacuation zone, the U.N. said.

    The Israeli military again called on Palestinians to move out of Gaza City and head south, saying that if aid were to be delivered it would be near the city of Khan Younis in south Gaza.

    At the Rafah crossing, Gaza’s only connection to Egypt, truckloads of aid have been waiting to enter for more than a day.

    ___

    Kullab reported from Baghdad. Nessman reported from Jerusalem. Lee reported from Amman. Associated Press journalists Amy Teibel in Jerusalem; Abby Sewell in Beirut; Samy Magdy and Jack Jeffrey in Cairo; and Ashraf Sweilam in el-Arish, Egypt contributed to this report.

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  • Israel vows complete siege of Gaza as it strikes the Palestinian territory after incursion by Hamas

    Israel vows complete siege of Gaza as it strikes the Palestinian territory after incursion by Hamas

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    JERUSALEM — Israel vowed to lay total siege to the Gaza Strip on Monday, as its military scoured the country’s south for militants, guarded breaches in its border fence and pounded the impoverished, Hamas-ruled territory in the wake of an unprecedented weekend incursion.

    More than two days after Hamas launched its surprise attack, the military said the fighting had largely died down for now. Israel’s vaunted military and intelligence apparatus was caught completely off guard, bringing heavy battles to its streets for the first time in decades.

    Israel formally declared war on Sunday and the army called up around 300,000 reservists, portending greater fighting ahead and a possible ground assault into Gaza — a move that in the past has brought intensified casualties. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy “the military and governing capabilities” of the militant group, which is deeply rooted in Gaza and has ruled unchallenged since 2007.

    As Israel hit more than 1,000 targets in Gaza and its tanks and drones guarded openings in the border fence to prevent more infiltrations, Palestinian militants continued firing barrages of rockets, setting off air raid sirens in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Video posted online appeared to show a plume of smoke near a terminal at Ben Gurion International Airport. There was no immediate word on casualties or damage.

    But civilians have already paid a high price. Around 700 people have been killed in Israel — a staggering toll by the scale of its recent conflicts. Nearly 500 have been killed in Gaza, an enclave of 2.3 million Palestinians bordering Israel and Egypt.

    Palestinian militant groups claimed to be holding over 130 people captured in Israel and dragged to Gaza. The armed wing of Hamas said on its Telegram channel that four of them were killed in Israeli airstrikes.

    That claim could not be independently confirmed — but underscored the dilemma facing Israel’s government as it bombards a territory where its own citizens are held captive.

    In an effort to further ratchet up the pressure on Hamas, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza, saying authorities would cut electricity and prevent food and fuel from entering the territory. He said Israel was at war with “human animals,” using the kind of dehumanizing language often heard on both sides at times of soaring tensions.

    Israel and Egypt have imposed various levels of blockade on Gaza since Hamas seized power, but in recent years Israel had provided limited electricity and allowed the import of food, fuel and consumer goods, while heavily restricting travel in and out.

    After about 48 hours of pitched battles inside Israel, the chief military spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, told reporters Israel has “control” of its border communities. He said there had been some isolated incidents early Monday, but that “at this stage, there is no fighting in the communities.”

    But he added that militants may remain inside Israel, and said that 15 of 24 border communities have been evacuated, with the rest expected to be emptied in the coming day.

    Earlier, Hamas spokesman Abdel-Latif al-Qanoua told The Associated Press over the phone that the group’s fighters continued to battle outside Gaza and had captured more Israelis as recently as Monday morning.

    He said the group aims to free all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, which in the past has agreed to painful, lopsided exchanges in which it released large numbers of prisoners for individual captives or even the remains of soldiers.

    Egypt is trying to mediate an initial deal in which Hamas would release captive women in exchange for Israel freeing female Palestinian prisoners, Egypt’s state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper reported. It said that if both sides agree, there would be a temporary cease-fire to facilitate the exchange.

    Among the captives that Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group claim to have taken are soldiers and civilians, including women, children and older adults, mostly Israelis but also some people of other nationalities. The Israeli military has said only that the number of captives is “significant.”

    Mayyan Zin, a divorced mother of two, said she learned that her two daughters had been abducted when a relative sent her photos from a Telegram group showing them sitting on mattresses in captivity. She then found online videos taken inside her ex-husband’s home, showing gunmen, her two girls — ages 8 and 15 — and their father.

    In its airstrikes, Israel’s military said it leveled much of Beit Hanoun — a town in northeast Gaza that military spokesperson Hagari said Hamas was using the as a staging ground for attacks. There was no immediate word on casualties, and most of the community’s population of tens of thousands likely fled beforehand.

    Hagari reiterated that the goal is to decimate Hamas’ military and governing capabilities — a massive task given that the group has ruled Gaza through the 16-year blockade and four previous wars with Israel.

    After breaking through Israeli barriers with explosives at daybreak Saturday, Hamas gunmen rampaged for hours, gunning down civilians and snatching people in towns, along highways and at a techno music festival attended by thousands in the desert. Palestinian militants have also launched around 4,400 rockets at Israel, according to the military.

    The Israeli military estimated 1,000 Hamas fighters took part in Saturday’s initial incursion. The high figure underscored the extent of planning by the militant group, which has said it launched the attack in response to mounting Palestinian suffering under Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, its blockade of Gaza, its discriminatory policies in annexed east Jerusalem and tensions around a disputed Jerusalem holy site sacred to Muslims and Jews.

    The Palestinians want a state of their own in all three territories, captured by Israel in the 1967 war, but the last serious peace talks broke down well over a decade ago, and Israel’s far-right government is opposed to Palestinian statehood.

    In Gaza, where the U.N. said more than 123,000 people had been displaced by the fighting, residents feared further escalation.

    As of late Sunday, Israeli airstrikes had destroyed 159 housing units across the territory and severely damaged 1,210 others, the U.N. said. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said a school sheltering more than 225 people took a direct hit. It did not say where the fire came from.

    In the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, an Israeli airstrike early Monday killed 19 people, including women and children, said Talat Barhoum, a doctor at the local Al-Najjar Hospital. Barhoum said aircraft hit the home of the Abu Hilal family, and that one of those killed was Rafaat Abu Hilal, a leader of a local armed group.

    Over the weekend, another airstrike on a home in Rafah killed 19 members of the Abu Quta family, including women and children, survivors said.

    Several Israeli media outlets, citing rescue service officials, said those killed on the Israeli side include at least 73 soldiers. The Gaza Health Ministry said 493 people, including 78 children and 41 women, were killed in the territory. Thousands have been wounded on both sides. An Israeli official said security forces have killed 400 militants and captured dozens more.

    On Sunday, the U.S. dispatched an aircraft carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean to be ready to assist Israel.

    In northern Israel, a brief exchange of strikes with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group fanned fears that the fighting could expand into a wider regional war. The Israeli military said the situation was calm after the exchange.

    Elsewhere, six Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers Sunday around the West Bank.

    ___

    This story has been updated to correct the name of Palestinian family to Abu Quta, not Abu Outa.

    ___

    Adwan reported from Rafah, Gaza Strip. Associated Press writers Isabel DeBre and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem; Wafaa Shurafa in Gaza City; Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel; Bassem Mroue in Beirut; Samy Magdy in Cairo; and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

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  • Italy mulls new migrant crackdown as talk turns to naval blockade to prevent launching of boats

    Italy mulls new migrant crackdown as talk turns to naval blockade to prevent launching of boats

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    ROME — The Italian Cabinet met Monday to adopt new measures to crack down on migration after the southern island of Lampedusa was again overwhelmed by a wave of arrivals from Tunisia and the migration issue returned to center stage in Europe with talk of a naval blockade.

    Premier Giorgia Meloni has said the Cabinet measures will focus on migrants who don’t qualify for asylum and are slated to be repatriated to their home countries. The plan is to extend the amount of time such people can be detained to the EU maximum of 18 months and increase the number of detention centers to hold them until they are sent back, since the capacity in Italy has always been insufficient.

    Meloni announced the “extraordinary measures” after Lampedusa, which is closer to Tunisia than the Italian mainland, was overwhelmed last week by nearly 7,000 migrants in a day, more than the island’s resident population. Italy has been offloading them slowly by ferry to Sicily and other ports, but the arrivals once again stoked tensions on the island and in political corridors, especially ahead of European Parliament elections next year.

    Amidst the domestic and EU political jockeying, Meloni resurrected campaign calls for a naval blockade of North Africa to prevent human traffickers from launching their smuggling boats into the Mediterranean. Meloni was on hand in Tunis when the European Commission signed an accord with the Tunisian government pledging economic aid in exchange for help preventing departures; a similar accord was signed years ago with Libya.

    Human rights groups have blasted the Libya accord as a violation of international maritime law, insisting that Libya isn’t a safe port and that migrants intercepted by the Libyan coast guard are returned to detention centers where abuses are rife.

    Meloni visited Lampedusa on Sunday with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who took a hard line, vowing: “We will decide who comes to the European Union, and under what circumstances. Not the smugglers.” Von der Leyen laid out a 10-point plan that included a pledge of support to prevent departures of smuggling boats by establishing “operational partnerships on anti-smuggling” with countries of origins and transit.

    The plan envisages a possible “working arrangement between Tunisia and Frontex,” the EU border force with air and sea assets that currently assists search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, and a coordinating task force within Europol.

    The Commission hasn’t ruled out the possibility that a naval blockade is under consideration. “We have expressed the support to explore these possibilities” raised by Italy, Commission spokeswoman Anitta Hipper said Monday.

    Under the deal von der Leyen signed with Tunisia, the EU pledged to provide funds for “the provision of equipment, training and technical support necessary to further improve the management of Tunisia’s borders.” For example, it is helping to pay for the refurbishment of 17 vessels belonging to Tunisian authorities.

    “We will speed up the supply of equipment to the Tunisian coast guard,” von der Leyen said in Lampedusa.

    The latest influx is challenging unity within the EU, its member states and also in Meloni’s far-right-led government, especially with European elections looming. Some member countries have objected to the way von der Leyen pushed the Tunisia plan through and complain that they were not properly consulted.

    Vice Premier Matteo Salvini, head of the populist, right-wing League, has challenged the efficacy of Meloni’s EU-Tunisia deal and hosted French right-wing leader Marine Le Pen at an annual League rally in northern Italy on Sunday. Just a few days earlier, Le Pen’s niece and far-right politician Marion Marechal was on Lampedusa blasting the French government’s response to the migration issue.

    The French government of Emmanuel Macron has shifted right on migration and security issues, and on Monday, his interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, was heading to Rome for meetings. Darmanin said before he left that France would help Italy maintain its border to prevent people from arriving but is not prepared to take in migrants who have arrived in Lampedusa in recent days.

    ’’Things are getting very difficult in Lampedusa. That’s why we should help our Italian friends. But there should not be a message given to people coming on our soil that they are welcomed in our countries no matter what,” he said on France’s Europe-1 radio.

    ‘’Our will is to fully welcome those who should be welcomed, but we should absolutely send back those who have no reason to be in Europe,” he said, citing people arriving from Ivory Coast or Guinea or Gambia, saying there is no obvious political reason to give them asylum.

    ___

    Cook reported from Brussels and Charlton reported from Paris.

    ___ Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

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  • Benedict Arnold burned a Connecticut city. Centuries later, residents get payback in fiery festival

    Benedict Arnold burned a Connecticut city. Centuries later, residents get payback in fiery festival

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    NEW LONDON, Conn. — A month before the British surrender at Yorktown ended major fighting during the American Revolution, the traitor Benedict Arnold led a force of Redcoats on a last raid in his home state of Connecticut, burning most of the small coastal city of New London to the ground.

    It has been 242 years, but New London still hasn’t forgotten.

    A crowd of several hundred revelers, some in period costume, marched through the city’s streets Saturday evening chanting, “Burn the traitor!” before watching as officials set Arnold’s effigy ablaze for the Burning of Benedict Arnold Festival, recreating a tradition that was once practiced in many American cities.

    “I like to jokingly refer to it as the original Burning Man festival,” said organizer Derron Wood, referencing the annual gathering in the Nevada desert.

    For decades after the Revolutionary War, cities including New York, Boston and Philadelphia held yearly traitor-burning events. They were an alternative to Britain’s raucous and fiery Guy Fawkes Night celebrations commemorating the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, when Fawkes was executed for conspiring with others to blow up King James I of England and both Houses of Parliament.

    Residents “still wanted to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day, but they weren’t English, so they created a very unique American version,” Wood said.

    The celebrations died out during the Civil War, but Wood, the artistic director of New London’s Flock Theatre, revived it a decade ago as a piece of street theater and a way to celebrate the city’s history using reenactors in period costumes.

    Anyone can join the march down city streets behind the paper mache Arnold to New London’s Waterfront Park, where the mayor on Saturday cried, “Remember New London,” and put a torch to the effigy. The crowd chanted “U-S-A” as the life-sized Arnold burned.

    Ellen Warfield, of Mystic, brought her 9-year-old son, Lucian Bace, because she said their ancestors fought in the Revolution and she hoped to get her son excited about the history that surrounds him.

    “It’s wild to show the kids something like this,” she said. “You get to see it in real life, rather than see it play out on TV. They spend too much time on their screens today.”

    Lucian had a singular focus.

    “I just can’t wait to see them burn that man,” he said. “Burn that turncoat!”

    Arnold, a native of nearby Norwich, was initially a major general on the American side of the war, playing important roles in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga and the Battle of Saratoga in New York.

    In 1779, though, he secretly began feeding information to the British. A year later, he offered to surrender the American garrison at West Point in exchange for a bribe, but the plot was uncovered when an accomplice was captured. Arnold fled and became a brigadier general for the British.

    On Sept. 6, 1781, he led a force that attacked and burned New London and captured a lightly defended fort across the Thames River in Groton.

    After the American victory at Yorktown a month later, Arnold left for London. He died in 1801 at age 60, forever remembered in the United States as the young nation’s biggest traitor.

    New London’s Burning Benedict Arnold Festival, which has become part of the state’s Connecticut Maritime Heritage Festival, was growing in popularity before it was halted in 2020 because of the pandemic. The theater group brought the festival back last year.

    “This project and specifically the reaction, the sort of hunger for its return, has been huge and the interest in it has been huge,” said Victor Chiburis, the Flock Theatre’s associate artistic director and the festival’s co-organizer.

    The only time things got a little political, Chiburis said, is the year a group of Arnold supporters showed up in powdered wigs to defend his honor. But that was all tongue-in-cheek and anything that gets people interested in the Revolutionary War history of the city, the state and Arnold is positive, he said.

    In one of the early years after the festival first returned, Mayor Michael Passero forgot to notify the police, who were less than pleased with the yelling, burning and muskets firing, he said.

    But those issues, he said, were soon resolved and now he can only be happy that the celebration of one of the worst days in the history of New London brings a mob of people to the city every year.

    A mob that included a very satisfied 9-year-old.

    The coolest part was “probably the head falling off,” Bace said. “I really liked it.”

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  • Benedict Arnold burned a Connecticut city. Centuries later, residents get payback in fiery festival

    Benedict Arnold burned a Connecticut city. Centuries later, residents get payback in fiery festival

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    NEW LONDON, Conn. — A month before the British surrender at Yorktown ended major fighting during the American Revolution, the traitor Benedict Arnold led a force of Redcoats on a last raid in his home state of Connecticut, burning most of the small coastal city of New London to the ground.

    It has been 242 years, but New London still hasn’t forgotten.

    Hundreds of people, some in period costume, are expected to march through the city’s streets Saturday to set Arnold’s effigy ablaze for the Burning of Benedict Arnold Festival, recreating a tradition that was once practiced in many American cities.

    “I like to jokingly refer to it as the original Burning Man festival,” said organizer Derron Wood, referencing the annual gathering in the Nevada desert.

    For decades after the Revolutionary War, cities including New York, Boston and Philadelphia held yearly traitor-burning events. They were an alternative to Britain’s raucous and fiery Guy Fawkes Night celebrations commemorating the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, when Fawkes was executed for conspiring with others to blow up King James I of England and both Houses of Parliament.

    Residents “still wanted to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day, but they weren’t English, so they created a very unique American version,” Wood said.

    The celebrations died out during the Civil War, but Wood, the artistic director of New London’s Flock Theatre, revived it a decade ago as a piece of street theater and a way to celebrate the city’s history using reenactors in period costumes.

    Anyone can join the march down city streets behind the paper mache Arnold to New London’s Waterfront Park, where the mayor cries, “Remember New London,” and puts a torch to the effigy.

    Arnold, a native of nearby Norwich, was initially a major general on the American side of the war, playing important roles in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga and the Battle of Saratoga in New York.

    In 1779, though, he secretly began feeding information to the British. A year later, he offered to surrender the American garrison at West Point in exchange for a bribe, but the plot was uncovered when an accomplice was captured. Arnold fled and became a brigadier general for the British.

    On Sept. 6, 1781, he led a force that attacked and burned New London and captured a lightly defended fort across the Thames River in Groton.

    After the American victory at Yorktown a month later, Arnold left for London. He died in 1801 at age 60, forever remembered in the United States as the young nation’s biggest traitor.

    New London’s Burning Benedict Arnold Festival, which has become part of the state’s Connecticut Maritime Heritage Festival, was growing in popularity before it was halted in 2020 because of the pandemic. The theater group brought the festival back last year.

    “This project and specifically the reaction, the sort of hunger for its return, has been huge and the interest in it has been huge,” said Victor Chiburis, the Flock Theatre’s associate artistic director and the festival’s co-organizer.

    The only time things got a little political, Chiburis said, is the year a group of Arnold supporters showed up in powdered wigs to defend his honor. But that was all tongue-in-cheek and anything that gets people interested in the Revolutionary War history of the city, the state and Arnold is positive, he said.

    In one of the early years after the festival first returned, Mayor Michael Passero forgot to notify the police, who were less than pleased with the yelling, burning and muskets firing, he said.

    But those issues, he said, were soon resolved and now he can only be happy that the celebration of one of the worst days in the history of New London brings a mob of people to the city every year.

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  • Palestinian fishermen decry Israel’s ban on Gaza exports as collective punishment

    Palestinian fishermen decry Israel’s ban on Gaza exports as collective punishment

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    KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Israel closed the main commercial crossing in the Gaza Strip, effectively banning exports from the coastal territory after saying it had uncovered explosives in a shipment of clothes to the occupied West Bank. Gaza’s fishermen, with their perishable exports, were among the first to feel the pain.

    The new restrictions choke off the territory’s already ailing economy. They come on top of the punishing 16-year blockade that Israel and Egypt have maintained since the Islamic militant group Hamas seized control of the enclave in 2007.

    The blockade, which Israel says is needed to prevent Hamas from arming, severely limits the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza.

    Israel closed the Kerem Shalom cargo crossing late on Monday after saying it had discovered explosives hidden in a shipment of Zara jeans and other clothing bound for the West Bank — one of the main markets for Gaza’s tiny export sector. Israeli officials fear the explosives were bound for Palestinian militants in the West Bank. Israel has not said when the crossing will reopen.

    Palestinian fishermen, businessmen and rights advocates condemned Israel’s latest measure as a form of collective punishment against Gaza’s 2 million people, including tens of thousands of laborers who heavily depend on exports to Israel and the West Bank to stay afloat. Nearly all the goods that enter and exit Gaza pass through Kerem Shalom.

    Gaza’s 4,000 fishermen, worried about keeping their surplus seafood from spoiling, condemned the ban.

    “Now I can’t make a living,” said Khalid al-Laham, 35, from his bare home in the southern town of Khan Younis as his five children scurried around him. “I have to borrow food from the shops.”

    The struggle also reached Gaza’s wealthiest traders.

    “Fish are completely different from any product, it’s sensitive,” said Mohammed Abu Hasira, a 38-year-old owner of a popular Gazan fish restaurant near the Mediterranean. “They should punish those who are at fault. Why are we being punished with them?”

    Abu Hasira’s plans to export truckloads of fish Thursday were thwarted by the Israeli decision, he said. Within moments, his profits evaporated and costs skyrocketed.

    Overall, the measure has caused 26 tons of fish to rot and resulted in $300,000 in weekly losses, Gaza’s main fishermen’s union said.

    The restrictions represented a reversal of recent Israeli military moves to ease the blockade to relieve economic pressure on Gaza to prevent tensions from boiling over into another bloody conflict.

    Israel now allows some 21,000 Palestinian laborers from Gaza to enter Israel for work, and in July, Israel issued hundreds more permits. Some 70% more people left the strip in July than during the same month last year, according to the United Nations humanitarian office.

    But now Gaza’s fishermen and others affected by the Israeli measure said they’ve again been subsumed into a larger political struggle that has nothing to do with them.

    Israel says the closure was intended to deter militants from sneaking explosives through the crossing and to press the strip’s Hamas rules to crack down on the smuggling.

    “The defense establishment will not allow terror organizations to take advantage of civilian and humanitarian facilities,” Israel’s defense ministry said.

    The move, rights groups said, also laid bare Israel’s inability to provide an effective answer to the security incidents and to address Gaza’s underlying problems.

    “Instead of finding proportionate and reasonable measures, it just imposes sweeping measures and punitive closings,” said Miriam Marmur, a spokeswoman for Gisha, an Israeli human rights group.

    Under the blockade, Gaza’s businessmen have grappled with what they describe as exasperating bureaucratic controls and routine indignities.

    Fishermen say their struggle reflects how the blockade has damaged a vital part of Gaza’s economy. In July, fish accounted for 6% of all exports, according to the U.N.

    The restrictions have prevented them from importing engines, fiberglass, and other materials needed to repair their dilapidated boats.

    The naval blockade limits how far out into the Mediterranean Sea the fishermen can go – and how much and what type of fish they can catch. If they drift too close to Israel’s maritime border, they risk being shot at or having their boats seized by the Israeli navy.

    Since the start of the year, the U.N. humanitarian office, or OCHA, has recorded over 400 incidents in which Israeli forces opened fire at Palestinian fishermen approaching the sea boundary, causing injuries and damage. “Recurring shootings off the coast of Gaza are deeply troubling,” said Noel Tsekouras, head of OCHA’s Gaza office. “These actions severely jeopardize livelihoods.”

    This week’s closure has left all merchants reeling in the crowded enclave. In an upscale tower just blocks from the seaport, Muhammad al-Ghussein, an engineer and spokesperson for the Palestinian Businessmen Association, said he shared the fishermen’s concerns.

    “Halting exports is like dealing a fatal blow to a sector that’s already dying,” he said.

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  • Tribal ranger draws weapon on climate activists blocking road to Burning Man; conduct under review

    Tribal ranger draws weapon on climate activists blocking road to Burning Man; conduct under review

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    NIXON, Nev. — A tribal ranger’s conduct is under review after he pointed a weapon Sunday at environmental activists and plowed his patrol vehicle through their blockade on the road leading to the annual Burning Man counter-culture festival in the Nevada desert.

    The incident unfolded on a rural stretch of highway on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe reservation in northwestern Nevada. The protest calling attention to climate change stopped traffic as attendees were headed to the Black Rock Desert north of the reservation for opening day of Burning Man.

    A news release from the tribe’s chairman, James J. Phoenix, described the incident as a ranger using his patrol vehicle to clear “debris” out of the roadway after climate activists refused to leave.

    Videos on social media, however, showed the ranger had slammed his vehicle into the blockade — a metal travel trailer frame that some of the protesters had chained themselves to — then drove back toward the activists while announcing on a bullhorn, “I’m going to take you all out!”

    Phoenix declined to answer questions Tuesday from The Associated Press, including which agency is conducting the review into the ranger’s conduct and whether the weapon pointed at the activists was a handgun or a Taser.

    “Bottom line up front, we are on it,” Phoenix said.

    The ranger, whose name has not been released, then exited his vehicle, drew the weapon and yelled for the protesters to get down on the ground, according to videos taken from multiple angles. The ranger approached a woman as she lowered herself to the ground and grabbed her arm, pulling her down and kneeling on her back.

    Other protesters can be heard in the videos repeatedly announcing they were unarmed and “nonviolent.”

    “We have no weapons,” yells Emily Collins, one of the activists who had chained herself to the blockade.

    Seven Circles, the coalition that organized the demonstration, called the ranger’s actions excessive in a statement released Tuesday.

    “The excessive response is a snapshot of the institutional violence and police brutality that is being shown to anyone who is actively working to bring about systemic change within the United States, including the climate movement,” the statement said.

    According to the tribe’s chairman, rangers cited five of the demonstrators, who had traveled to Nevada from New York, Washington, California and the European country of Malta. The chairman did not say what they were cited for.

    Collins and her partner, Tom Diacono, traveled from Italy to participate in the protest, opting to skip Burning Man this year after attending the festival for many years.

    “The planet is burning,” Diacono said. “It’s a bit absurd to continue with the festival while the planet is begging for a change.”

    Diacono said they parked the travel trailer across the two-lane highway, placing signs around their blockade that included a call for a ban on private jets. Diacono had expected to make some festival attendees angry by causing traffic jams, but the demonstration’s outcome took him by complete surprise, he said.

    “If you asked me to imagine 100 scenarios,” Diacono said, “police ramming us with their truck was not one of them.”

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  • Armenia and Azerbaijan clash over plight of 120,000 people in Nagorno-Karabakh facing food crisis

    Armenia and Azerbaijan clash over plight of 120,000 people in Nagorno-Karabakh facing food crisis

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    UNITED NATIONS — Armenia and Azerbaijan clashed at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council Wednesday over the plight of the 120,000 people in the Nagorno-Karabakh region that Armenia says are blockaded by Azerbaijan and facing a humanitarian crisis.

    Armenia asked for the meeting saying Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting mainly Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia since July 15, had left its people with dwindling food, medicine and electricity.

    Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan, but the region and substantial territory around it came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces who were backed by the Armenian military in separatist fighting that ended in 1994. Azerbaijan regained control of the surrounding territory in a six-week war with Armenia in 2020, and the Russian-brokered armistice left the Lachin Corridor as Nagorno-Karabakh’s only connection to Armenia.

    At the council meeting, many countries urged Azerbaijan to immediately reopen the road, pointing to orders from the International Court of Justice, the U.N.’s highest tribunal, and all 15 nations urged Armenia and Azerbaijan to find a diplomatic solution to their nearly 30-year conflict.

    The Security Council did not issue any statement but U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who chaired the meeting, told the Associated Press afterward that “there were strong statements in the council from everyone that the Lachin Corridor needed to be reopened.” That was “the main accomplishment,” she said.

    U.N. humanitarian coordinator Edem Wasornu told the council the International Committee of the Red Cross, the only international humanitarian body with access to the area, reported on July 25 that it had been unable to transport food through the Lachin Corridor since June 14 and medicine since July 7.

    Wasornu said international humanitarian law requires all parties to facilitate rapid delivery of aid to all people in need, and “it is therefore critical that the ICRC’s delivery of humanitarian relief be allowed to resume through any available routes.”

    Armenia’s Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan told the council that as a result of the blockade, there is no economic activity in Nagorno-Karabakh, thousands of people are unemployed, stores are empty and women, children and the elderly stand in long lines to be able to buy bread, fruit and vegetables. In addition, he said, Azerbaijan has disrupted the supply of electricity through the only high voltage line between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh since Jan. 9.

    Mirzoyan quoted a report from Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, saying “there is a reasonable basis to believe that a genocide is being committed” as a result of the blockade.

    “Starvation is the invisible genocide weapon,” he said, warning that “without immediate dramatic change this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks.”

    Mirzoyan said preventing such a catastrophe is a duty of the Security Council, which is charged with ensuring international peace and security. “I do believe that this distinguished body, despite geopolitical differences, has capacity to act as genocide prevention body, and not as genocide commemoration when it might be too late,” he said.

    Azerbaijan’s U.N. Ambassador Yashar Aliyev responded by “categorically rejecting all the unfounded and groundless allegations on (a) blockade or humanitarian crisis propagated by Armenia against my country.”

    He accused Armenia of engaging in a “provocative and irresponsible political campaign” to undermine Azerbaijan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, which includes Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lachin Corridor.

    Aliyev said Azerbaijan installed a border checkpoint on the road to safeguard its sovereignty and security and prevent Armenia from using the route “for illegal military and other activities” including rotating its 10,000 military personnel “illegally stationed” in Azerbaijani territory, and transferring weapons and munitions as well as unlawfully extracted natural resources.

    He called the genocide allegations false, saying prominent British human rights lawyer, Rodney Dixon, in a preliminary report said there is no foundation for Ocampo’s claim, citing Azerbaijan’s offer to supply good via the town of Aghdam.

    Aliyev also held up what he said were photos from social media of people in Nagorno-Karabakh celebrating weddings and birthdays, saying they refute allegations about starvation and a humanitarian crisis.

    Aliyev and Mirzoyan blamed each other for so-far failed diplomatic efforts.

    The European Union’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Silvio Gonzato, told the council “humanitarian access must not be politicized by any actors,” and the Lachin Corridor must be reopened immediately.

    “Azerbaijani authorities bear the responsibility to guarantee safety and freedom of movement along the Lachin Corridor, and to ensure the crisis does not escalate further,” he said.

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  • Cease-fire between Israel and militants in Gaza appears to hold after days of fighting

    Cease-fire between Israel and militants in Gaza appears to hold after days of fighting

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    GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — A fragile cease-fire between Israeli forces and militants in the Gaza Strip appeared to be holding on Sunday, after a five-day clash that killed 33 Palestinians and two people in Israel.

    The latest round of Gaza fighting was sparked Tuesday when Israeli jets killed three top commanders from the Islamic Jihad militant group in response to earlier rocket launches from Gaza. Those killings set off a barrage of militant fire and the conflagration threatened to drag the region into another all-out war until an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire took hold late Saturday.

    While the calm appeared to bring a sense of relief to Gaza’s 2 million people and hundreds of thousands of Israelis who had been largely confined to bomb shelters in recent days, the agreement did nothing to address the underlying issues that have fueled numerous rounds of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip over the years.

    In Gaza, residents surveyed the latest damage caused to their surroundings, with gaping holes left in the apartments serving as what Israel said were hideouts for the six senior Islamic Jihad members killed during this round. Gaza’s main cargo crossing with Israel was set to reopen Sunday after warnings that keeping it closed would force Gaza’s sole power plant to shut down, deepening a power crisis.

    Israel lifted most restrictions on residents in southern Israel, which had borne the brunt of the rocket fire.

    Israeli officials have expressed satisfaction with the latest battle, having eliminated many of Islamic Jihad’s top brass in what it says were pinpointed strikes based on solid intelligence. But at least 13 of those killed in Gaza were civilians, among them children as young as 4 years old, as well as women.

    Israel has faced criticism in the past from rights groups over the civilian casualties in its bombardments in Gaza. Israel says it does its utmost to avoid harming civilians in its strikes and says militants operate from within the territory’s densely populated areas to fire rockets indiscriminately at Israeli communities.

    Throughout the fighting, Israel’s repeated airstrikes targeting Islamic Jihad and its command centers and rocket-launching sites showed no signs of stopping the rocket fire, prompting Islamic Jihad to declare victory and sending cheering Palestinians out into the streets late Saturday.

    Israel reported over 1,200 launches throughout the fighting, with some rockets reaching as far as the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem areas. Israel said about a quarter of the rockets were misfired and landed in Gaza, while most of the rest were either intercepted or landed in open areas. But an 80-year-old woman and a Palestinian laborer who was working inside Israel were killed by rocket fire. A Palestinian human rights group said three people, including two children, were killed in Gaza by errant rockets.

    It was the latest in a long series of battles between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza since the Islamic militant group Hamas seized control of the seaside territory in 2007. Israel and Hamas have fought four wars, and there have been numerous smaller flareups as well.

    The more powerful Hamas has praised Islamic Jihad’s strikes but remained on the sidelines during the latest round of fighting, limiting the scope of the conflict. As the de facto government held responsible for the abysmal conditions in the blockaded Gaza Strip, Hamas has recently tried to keep a lid on its conflict with Israel. Islamic Jihad, on the other hand, a more ideological and unruly militant group wedded to violence, has taken the lead in the past few rounds of fighting with Israel.

    Saturday’s deal did not address many of the causes of the repeated fighting, including Israel’s ongoing blockade of Gaza, the large arsenals of weapons possessed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem.

    Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians claim all three areas for a future state. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but Hamas subsequently overran the territory and expelled forces loyal to the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority.

    Israel and Egypt have maintained a blockade over Gaza in what Israel says is a policy aimed at preventing Hamas from arming. The Palestinians and international rights groups say the policy, which restricts the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, amounts to collective punishment.

    ___

    Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel.

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  • Prize-winning AP team served as world’s eyes in Mariupol

    Prize-winning AP team served as world’s eyes in Mariupol

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    NEW YORK — Instincts about the strategic significance of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol led a team of Associated Press journalists there just as Russians were about to lay siege. It proved to be a fateful decision.

    For nearly three weeks last year, Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka and Vasilia Stepanenko were the only journalists in Mariupol, serving as the world’s eyes and ears amid the horrors of the Russian onslaught.

    Together they helped expose the extent of the suffering Ukrainians endured, served as a counterweight to Russian disinformation and contributed to the opening of a humanitarian corridor out of Mariupol. They also had to elude capture by Kremlin forces that were hunting for the team.

    On Monday, Pulitzer Prize judges cited the work of the three Ukrainian journalists, along with Paris-based Lori Hinnant, in giving The Associated Press the prestigious award for public service.

    Seven AP photographers, including Maloetka, also won a breaking news Pulitzer for their coverage of the war, including in Mariupol. The AP was also a finalist for a third award for work in Ukraine, this time for photography focused on the war’s impact on the elderly.

    “This is how the AP should work,” Chernov said Monday from Ukraine during a staff celebration of the prizes. “This is how we function. All of these people supporting one another and in the end producing work that is supposed to change the world for the better or at least not make it worse.”

    While the awards are meaningful, it’s important to recognize all the suffering and loss at the heart of what the journalists chronicled, said Julie Pace, AP’s senior vice president and executive editor.

    The reporting, particularly heartbreaking images of civilian bomb victims, had a clear impact. Mariupol officials later credited their work with pressuring Russians to allow an evacuation route, saving thousands of civilian lives.

    Their resourceful work, called “courageous” by the Pulitzer committee, included sneaking out a tiny file of images taken by a Ukrainian medic hidden in a tampon.

    At one point during the siege, as the noose tightened on them, Chernov and his colleagues were reporting from a hospital treating war wounded. They were given scrubs to wear as camouflage. A group of soldiers burst in and profanely demanded to know where the reporters were.

    They wore blue armbands that indicated they were Ukrainian. But were they actually Russians in disguise?

    Chernov took a chance, stepped forward and identified himself.

    The soldiers were indeed Ukrainian. They loaded the journalists in a car, and they escaped the city, passing through 15 Russian checkpoints.

    It’s not an overstatement to say the work was a true public service — telling the world of the war’s human toll, dispelling Russian disinformation as well as opening the humanitarian corridor, Pace said.

    “It was ambitious from the very beginning because it had to be, because the stakes were so high for us, for AP, for the team in Mariupol and for the people of the city,” Hinnant said Monday on a staff Zoom call. “We thought then that lives would depend on it, and that turned out to be true.”

    The AP team that won the prize for breaking news photography in Ukraine included Maloletka, his second Pulitzer of the day. Other winners were Bernat Armangue, Emilio Morenatti, Felipe Dana, Nariman El-Mofty, Rodrigo Abd and Vadim Ghirda.

    Eight photographers — Maloletka, Armangue, Morenatti, El-Mofty, Girda, David Goldman, Natacha Pisarenko and Petros Giannakouris — were Pulitzer finalists in feature photography for their package on the elderly in Ukraine. Two journalists, Eranga Jayawardena and Rafiq Maqbool, were finalists in breaking news photography for their work covering protests over the economic collapse in Sri Lanka.

    “To be there is probably more important and more critical than ever. You can’t make the moment that captures the world if you’re not there, and being there is often dirty and difficult and dangerous,” said J. David Ake, AP’s director of photography.

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