ReportWire

Tag: Military and defense

  • Israel intensifies Gaza strikes and battles to repel Hamas, with over 1,100 dead in fighting so far

    Israel intensifies Gaza strikes and battles to repel Hamas, with over 1,100 dead in fighting so far

    JERUSALEM — Israel’s military battled to drive Hamas fighters out of southern towns and seal its borders Monday, as it pounded the Gaza Strip from the air and mustered for a campaign its prime minister said would destroy “the military and governing capabilities” of the militant group.

    Civilians paid a high price on both sides. At least 700 people have reportedly been killed in Israel — a staggering toll on a scale the country has not experienced in decades — and more than 400 have been killed in Gaza. Palestinian militant groups claimed to be holding over 130 captives from the Israeli side.

    More than two days after Hamas launched its unprecedented incursion out of Gaza, Israeli forces were still battling militants holed up in several locations.

    As Monday began, the military said it was fighting Hamas in “seven to eight” places in southern Israel.

    Military spokesperson Richard Hecht said it was taking longer than expected to repel the incursion because there were still multiple breaches in the border, which Hamas could be using to bring in more fighters and weapons. “We thought this morning we’d be in a better place,” Hecht said.

    The Israeli Defense Forces said that 70 additional militants infiltrated Be’eri kibbutz, which the military has been unable to wrest from Hamas, overnight.

    Meanwhile, Israel hit more than 1,000 targets in Gaza, its military said, including airstrikes that leveled much of the town of Beit Hanoun in the enclave’s northeast corner.

    Israeli Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told reporters Hamas was using the town 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.

    “We will continue to attack in this way, with this force, continuously, on all gathering (places) and routes” used by Hamas, Hagari said.

    The declaration of war portended greater fighting ahead, and a major question was whether Israel would launch a ground assault into Gaza, a move that in the past has brought intensified casualties. An Israeli military spokesperson said that the army had called up around 100,000 reservists, and said in a statement that Israel would aim to end Hamas’ rule of Gaza.

    “Our task is to make sure that Hamas will no longer have any military capabilities to threaten Israel with this,” said spokesperson Jonathan Conricus in a video tweeted by Israel’s military. “And in addition to that, we will make sure that Hamas is no longer able to govern the Gaza Strip.”

    After breaking through Israeli barriers with explosives at daybreak Saturday, the 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. The rescue service Zaka said it removed about 260 bodies from the festival, and that number was expected to rise. It was not clear how many of those bodies were already included in Israel’s overall toll.

    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 ruling Gaza, which has said it launched the attack in response to mounting Palestinian suffering under Israel’s occupation and blockade of Gaza.

    Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group claimed to have taken captive more than 130 people from inside Israel and brought them into Gaza, saying they would be traded for the release of thousands of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. The announcement, though unconfirmed, was the first sign of the scope of abductions.

    The captives are known to include soldiers and civilians, including women, children and older adults, mostly Israelis but also some people of other nationalities. The Israeli military 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 of a chilling scene in her ex-husband’s home in the town of Nahal Oz: Gunmen who had broken in speak to him, his leg bleeding, in the living room near the two terrified, weeping daughters, Dafna, 15, and Ella, 8. Another video showed the father being taken across the border into Gaza.

    “Just bring my daughters home and to their family. All the people,” Zin said.

    The Israeli military was evacuating at least five towns close to Gaza, while the U.N. said more than 123,000 Gazans had been displaced by the fighting.

    In Gaza, a tiny enclave of 2.3 million people sealed off by an Israeli-Egyptian blockade for 16 years since the Hamas takeover, residents feared further escalation.

    As of late Sunday, Israeli airstrikes had destroyed 159 housing units across Gaza 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 Palestinian 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. The strike caused damage to surrounding homes.

    Over the weekend, another airstrike on a home in Rafah killed 19 members of the Abu Outa family, including women and children, when they were huddling on the ground floor in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, survivors said.

    Several Israeli media outlets, citing rescue service officials, said at least 700 people have been killed in Israel, including 73 soldiers. The Gaza Health Ministry said 413 people, including 78 children and 41 women, were killed in the territory. Some 2,000 people have been wounded on each side. An Israeli official said security forces have killed 400 militants and captured dozens more.

    The declaration of war was largely symbolic, said Yohanan Plesner, the head of the Israel Democracy Institute, a think tank, but it “demonstrates that the government thinks we are entering a more lengthy, intense and significant period of war.”

    Israel has carried out major military campaigns over the past four decades in Lebanon and Gaza that it portrayed as wars, but without a formal declaration.

    The presence of hostages in Gaza complicates Israel’s response. Israel has a history of making heavily lopsided exchanges to bring captive Israelis home.

    An Egyptian official said Israel sought help from Cairo to ensure the safety of the hostages. Egypt also spoke with both sides about a potential cease-fire, but Israel was not open to a truce “at this stage,” according to the official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to brief media.

    On Sunday, the U.S. dispatched an aircraft carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean to be ready to assist Israel, and said it would send additional military aid.

    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. Hezbollah fired rockets and shells Sunday at Israeli positions in a disputed area along the border, and Israel fired back using armed drones. 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.

    Over the past year, Israel’s far-right government has ramped up settlement construction in the occupied West Bank. Israeli settler violence has displaced hundreds of Palestinians there, and tensions have flared around the Al-Aqsa mosque, a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site.

    ___

    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.

    Source link

  • The Marines are moving gradually and sometimes reluctantly to integrate women and men in boot camp

    The Marines are moving gradually and sometimes reluctantly to integrate women and men in boot camp

    PARRIS ISLAND, S.C. — Under a scorching sky at Marine Base Parris Island, two young recruits grapple awkwardly in hand-to-hand combat inside an Octagon training structure. Circling them, the drill instructor barks orders, “Hit her! Punch her! DO something!”

    Outside the ring, a mix of male and female Marine hopefuls are helping each other put on protective headgear, preparing for their turn at combat. They are assigned to one of the mixed-gender recruit companies as the Marine Corps moves gradually — and at times reluctantly — to more integrated training at boot camp.

    It’s been a bit hit-and-miss.

    While companies of men and women train together at the ring, on the obstacle course or at the range, the line of recruits outside the swimming pool presents a sharp contrast. There the companies are broken up into their smaller platoons that remain separated by gender. So as they line up, there is a small group of women standing rod-straight at the front with groups of men in formation behind them.

    It’s a stark visual reminder that Corps leaders still fervently believe there must be a degree of segregation as they mold young people into tomorrow’s force of what they promote as the Few, the Proud, the Marines.

    This summer — nearly eight years after the defense secretary at the time, Ash Carter, ordered all combat jobs open to women — the Marine Corps formally deactivated the 4th Marine Recruit Training Battalion at Parris Island. Since 1949, all female recruits have gone through boot camp at the South Carolina base; the 4th Battalion was created in 1986 as the women’s unit.

    The Marines have inched grudgingly toward integration. Marine leaders flatly opposed allowing women in combat jobs, but Carter dismissed their arguments. Many Corps officers stridently defended the training separation, insisting that women could grow more confident quickly if they were not directly competing with their often larger or stronger male counterparts.

    Under pressure from Congress, the Marines over the past four years gradually made the 4th Battalion coed, then disbanded it in June. The remaining recruit battalions include a mix of gender-integrated and all-male companies.

    Now, Marine leaders say, boot camp is integrated.

    But from watching the training for several days, it’s not that clear-cut.

    Inside the pool, men and women struggle side by side, jumping off a platform and swimming to the other end. Some wear their fatigues inside out, identifying them as Marines who are just learning to swim and flailing the length of the pool in a mix of dog paddle and haphazard overhand stroke. Instructors are also a mix of men and women, and they line the sides ready to toss a float or jump in if needed.

    But outside, a group of recruits moving through the woods and then dropping to crawl across a stretch of blistering hot sand are all men trying to get through the final tests to become a Marine. A second group on a different part of the course also includes no women.

    Brig. Gen. Walker Field, who heads the recruit depot, is insistent that keeping the platoons segregated by gender is key to the way the Corps makes Marines — by taking individuals, breaking them down and building them back up as team members.

    “We have established a tried-and-true manner by which we train Marines that proves effective in transforming young Americans,” he said in a recent interview at Parris Island. “We break down their individuality and grow them as a team. We’re adamant about that outcome. Having the platoon model is absolutely part of that.”

    He added that by 2024, training at Marine Recruit Depot San Diego on the West Coast will also be fully integrated. Female recruits will then be split evenly between the two locations.

    Field said keeping the platoons all one gender allows unit leaders to provide guidance and instruction tailored for each group when they are together in their barracks in the evenings. “Being the same gender at the platoon level allows us to optimize the training schedule every single day and every hour of the day,” he said.

    Some measure of all-male companies would be necessary no matter what because there just are not enough female recruits to go around. Of all the military services, the Corps has the smallest percentage of woman, hovering between 8% and 9%.

    Lt. Col. Aixa Dones and other female officers are also strong advocates of the continued segregation.

    “As someone who came through this battalion as a recruit and has worked here as a young company grade officer, I would advocate that there’s goodness to there being all-female platoons,” said Dones, who served as the last commander of the 4th Battalion before its shutdown this year.

    Speaking in the former battalion’s offices, now largely empty, she said she remembers being a young recruit, and “I can’t imagine it having gone any other way.” Noting that 17- and 18-year-olds are not too mature, she said they can easily get distracted by “liking and feelings and emotions.”

    She and others say keeping the men and women in separate platoons helps them stay focused and that changing to full integration could present problems.

    Out near the firing range, Sgt. Maria Torres, a drill instructor, is working on firearm basics with her all-female platoon. The company-level integration, she said, is necessary and a good start. But expanding it to the platoon level might have consequences, so “we’d have to start small.”

    But many disagree. They say the separate platoons only reinforce the stigma that the women are not considered equal and should be treated differently.

    Erin Kirk, a former Marine sergeant who went through the more segregated training in 2010, remembers the ridicule and the cat calls from male recruits who looked down on the women in the 4th Battalion. The split, she said, divided them into “male Marines” and “female Marines,” and that shaped the men’s view of the women and made it more difficult for them to work together as they moved along.

    “It made you feel like you weren’t part of the team. It made it difficult to be seen as a real Marine,” said Kirk, who served for five years. “Now we have the opportunity to have equity and inclusion and not be seen as an ‘other.’”

    Another female Marine officer — who is still on active duty and has served for more than 15 years — said her first surprise as a new recruit was when she was issued her uniform and realized it was not the same as the one her male recruiter had worn.

    Her uniform did not have the same collar and the hat was different. And when she got to Parris Island, “the first class I got was how to do my hair. We’re training to be the most lethal force and the first thing you learn is how to do my hair.”

    The officer spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid any repercussions because she is still in the Corps.

    Asked about those complaints, Dones disagreed that the segregation presented problems for the women.

    “Our female platoons have been outperforming our male teams, and we have had more female company honor graduates than we have had male,” she said.

    Young female recruits, who usually come from high schools where there is little separation, acknowledge the differences but voice no complaints.

    Nicole Momura, 22, said she chose the Marines because she thought it was the hardest military branch, and “this recruit was looking for something bigger than herself.” She shrugged off the platoon segregation, noting that “we’re all going to be working together in the fleet.”

    Nubia Delatorre, 19, said she is proud to be a member of the second female platoon in Bravo Company, but admits the men and women do not interact very much. “We’re not allowed to talk to the males,” she said.

    Taking a quick pause from her workout inside the gym, where she was recovering from a stress fracture of her hip, Delatorre said she believes they all get the same training. She said she joined the Marine Corps because “I wanted to prove to myself that I could do something hard.”

    Source link

  • Hamas surprise attack out of Gaza stuns Israel and leaves hundreds dead in fighting, retaliation

    Hamas surprise attack out of Gaza stuns Israel and leaves hundreds dead in fighting, retaliation

    JERUSALEM — Backed by a barrage of rockets, dozens of Hamas militants broke out of the blockaded Gaza Strip and into nearby Israeli towns, killing dozens and abducting others in an unprecedented surprise early morning attack during a major Jewish holiday Saturday. A stunned Israel launched airstrikes in Gaza, with its prime minister saying the country is now at war with Hamas and vowing to inflict an “unprecedented price.”

    In an assault of startling breadth, Hamas gunmen rolled into as many as 22 locations outside the Gaza Strip, including towns and other communities as far as 15 miles (24 kilometers) from the Gaza border. In some places, they roamed for hours, gunning down civilians and soldiers as Israel’s military scrambled to muster a response. Gunbattles continued well after nightfall, and militants held hostages in standoffs in two towns and occupied a police station in a third.

    Israeli media, citing rescue service officials, said at least 250 people were killed and 1,500 wounded, making it the deadliest attack in Israel in decades. At least 232 people in the Gaza Strip have been killed and at least 1,700 wounded in Israeli strikes, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. Hamas fighters took an unknown number of civilians and soldiers captive into Gaza, a deeply sensitive issue for Israel, in harrowing scenes posted on social media videos.

    The conflict threatened to escalate to an even deadlier stage with Israel’s vows of greater retaliation. Previous conflicts between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers brought widespread death and destruction in Gaza and days of rocket fire on Israeli towns. The situation is potentially more volatile now, with Israel’s far-right government stung by the security breach and with Palestinians in despair over a never-ending occupation in the West Bank and suffocating blockade of Gaza.

    In a televised address Saturday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who earlier declared Israel to be at war, said the military will use all of its strength to destroy Hamas’ capabilities and “take revenge for this black day. But he warned, “This war will take time. It will be difficult.”

    “All the places that Hamas hides in, operates from, we will turn them into ruins,” he added. “Get out of there now,” he told Gaza residents, who have no way to leave the tiny, overcrowded Mediterranean territory of 2.3 million people.

    After nightfall, Israeli airstrikes in Gaza intensified, flattening several residential buildings in giant explosions, including a 14-story tower that held dozens of apartments as well as Hamas offices in central Gaza City. Israeli forces fired a warning just before, and there were no reports of casualties.

    Soon after, a Hamas rocket barrage into central Israel hit four cities, including Tel Aviv and a nearby suburb, where two people were seriously injured. Throughout the day, Hamas fired more than 3,500 rockets, the Israeli military said.

    In the southern Gaza city of Rafah, an Israeli airstrike late Saturday flattened a home, killing 12 members of the Abu Qouto family, neighbors said. Ten members of a family in the northern town of Jebalya were killed in another airstrike, relatives said. It was not known why the homes were targeted.

    The strength, sophistication and timing of the Saturday morning attack shocked Israelis. Hamas fighters used explosives to break through the border fence enclosing Gaza, then crossed with motorcycles, pickup trucks, paragliders and speed boats on the coast without resistance from the military.

    In some towns, a trail of civilians’ bodies lay where they had encountered the advancing gunmen. On the road outside the town of Sderot, a bloodied woman slumped dead in the seat of her car. At least nine people gunned down at a bus shelter in the town were laid out on stretchers on the street, their bags still on the curb nearby. One woman, screaming, embraced the body of a family member sprawled under a sheet next to a toppled motorcycle; as she was led away, she picked up the dead person’s helmet from the ground nearby.

    In amateur video, hundreds of terrified young people who had been dancing at a rave fled for their lives after Hamas militants entered the area and began firing at them. Israeli media said dozens of people were killed.

    Associated Press photos showed an abducted elderly Israeli woman being brought back into Gaza on a golf cart by Hamas gunmen and another woman squeezed between two fighters on a motorcycle. Images also showed fighters parading captured Israeli military vehicles through Gaza streets.

    Among the dead in Israel was Col. Jonathan Steinberg, a senior officer who commanded the military’s Nahal Brigade, a prominent infantry unit.

    The shadowy leader of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, said the assault was in response to the 16-year blockade of Gaza, Israeli raids inside West Bank cities over the past year, violence at Al Aqsa — the disputed Jerusalem holy site sacred to Jews as the Temple Mount — increasing attacks by settlers on Palestinians and growth of settlements.

    “Enough is enough,” Deif, who does not appear in public, said in the recorded message. He said the attack was only the start of what he called “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” and called on Palestinians from east Jerusalem to northern Israel to join the fight. “Today the people are regaining their revolution.”

    The Hamas incursion on Simchat Torah, a normally joyous day when Jews complete the annual cycle of reading the Torah scroll, revived painful memories of the 1973 Mideast war practically 50 years to the day, in which Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, aiming to take back Israeli-occupied territories.

    Comparisons to one of the most traumatic moments in Israeli history sharpened criticism of Netanyahu and his far-right allies, who had campaigned on more aggressive action against threats from Gaza. Political commentators lambasted the government and military over its failure to anticipate what appeared to be a Hamas attack unseen in its level of planning and coordination.

    Asked by reporters how Hamas had managed to catch the army off guard, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli army spokesman, replied, “That’s a good question.”

    The abduction of Israeli civilians and soldiers also raised a particularly thorny issue for Israel, which has a history of making heavily lopsided exchanges to bring captive Israelis home.

    Hamas’ military wing claimed it was holding dozens of Israeli soldiers captive in “safe places” and tunnels in the Gaza Strip. Hecht confirmed that a number of Israelis were abducted but would not give a figure, saying only that the number was “substantial.”

    If true, the claim could set the stage for complicated negotiations on a swap with Israel, which is holding thousands of Palestinians in its prisons.

    An unknown number of civilians were also taken. AP journalists saw four taken from the kibbutz of Kfar Azza, including two women. In Gaza, a black jeep pulled to a stop and, when the rear door opened, a young Israeli woman stumbled out, bleeding from the head and with her hands tied behind her back. A man waving a gun in the air grabbed her by the hair and pushed her into the vehicle’s back seat. Israeli TV reported that workers from Thailand and the Philippines were also among the captives.

    In the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, just 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) from the Gaza Strip, terrified residents who were huddled indoors said they could hear constant gunfire echoing off the buildings as firefights continued.

    “With rockets we somehow feel safer, knowing that we have the Iron Dome (missile defense system) and our safe rooms. But knowing that terrorists are walking around communities is a different kind of fear,” said Mirjam Reijnen, a 42-year-old volunteer firefighter and mother of three.

    Earlier in the day, Netanyahu vowed that Hamas “will pay an unprecedented price.” A major question now was whether Israel will launch a ground assault into Gaza, a move that in the past has brought intensified casualties.

    Israel’s military was bringing four divisions of troops as well as tanks to the Gaza border, joining 31 battalions already in the area, the spokesman Hagari said. And the Israeli military later released an Arabic-language video warning Gazans to leave their homes in targeted areas of the dense coastal enclave.

    In Gaza, much of the population was thrown into darkness after nightfall as electrical supplies from Israel — which supplies almost all the territories’ power — were cut off. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that Israel would stop supplying electricity, fuel and goods to Gaza.

    Hamas said it had planned for a potentially long fight. “We are prepared for all options, including all-out war,” the deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, Saleh al-Arouri, told Al-Jazeera TV. “We are ready to do whatever is necessary for the dignity and freedom of our people.”

    U.S. President Joe Biden said from the White House that he had spoken with Netanyahu to say the United States “stands with the people of Israel in the face of these terrorist assaults. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop.”

    Saudi Arabia, which has been in talks with the U.S. about normalizing relations with Israel, called on both sides to exercise restraint. The kingdom said it had repeatedly warned about the danger of “the situation exploding as a result of the continued occupation (and) the Palestinian people being deprived of their legitimate rights.”

    Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group congratulated Hamas, praising the attack as a response to “Israeli crimes.” The group said its command in Lebanon was in contact with Hamas about the operation.

    The attack comes at a time of historic division within Israel over Netanyahu’s proposal to overhaul the judiciary. Mass protests over the plan have sent hundreds of thousands of Israeli demonstrators into the streets and prompted hundreds of military reservists to avoid volunteer duty — turmoil that has raised fears over the military’s battlefield readiness.

    It also comes at a time of mounting tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, with the peace process effectively dead for years. Over the past year, Israel’s far-right government has ramped up settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, Israeli settler violence has displaced hundreds of Palestinians there and tensions have flared around a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site.

    Palestinians demonstrated in towns and cities around the West Bank on Saturday night amid the offensive from Gaza and Israeli retaliation. Palestinian health officials said Israeli fire killed five there, but gave few details.

    ___

    Adwan reported from Rafah, Gaza Strip. Associated Press writers Isabel DeBre and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

    Source link

  • A Russian missile attack in eastern Ukraine kills a 10-year-old boy and his grandmother

    A Russian missile attack in eastern Ukraine kills a 10-year-old boy and his grandmother

    KHARKIV, Ukraine — A Russian missile attack killed a 10-year-old boy and his grandmother Friday in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, officials said, a day after a strike in the same region killed at least 51 civilians in one of the deadliest attacks in the war in months.

    Associated Press reporters saw emergency crews pulling the boy’s body from the rubble of a building after the early morning attack. He was wearing pajamas with a Spider-Man design.

    The strike also killed the boy’s grandmother and injured an 11-month-old child, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Telegram.

    Regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said 30 people were wounded and rescue operations were continuing.

    Officials said preliminary information indicated the Kremlin’s forces used two Iskander missiles in the attack, the same as in the previous day’s attack on the eastern village of Hroza that killed 51.

    One of the missiles landed in the street, leaving a crater, and the other hit a three-story building, setting it ablaze, according to Syniehubov.

    Debris and rubble littered the street. Surrounding buildings were blackened by the blast, which blew out windows and damaged parked cars.

    Yevhen Shevchenko, a resident of a nearby nine-story building, said he was in bed when the attack occurred. “There was a blast wave, a powerful explosion. It blew out the windows and doors in the apartment,” he said.

    A day earlier, a Russian Iskander ballistic missile turned a village cafe and store to rubble in Hroza, a village in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 51 civilians, according to Ukrainian officials.

    Around 60 people, including children, were attending a wake at the cafe when the missile hit, the officials said.

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied Friday that Russia was responsible for the Hroza attack. He insisted, as Moscow has in the past, that the Russian military doesn’t target civilian facilities.

    The Hroza victims made up most of the 54 civilians killed in the country over the previous 24 hours, Ukraine’s presidential office said Friday.

    The office of the U.N. human rights chief, Volker Türk, said he was “shocked and saddened” by the Hroza attack.

    It said on X, formerly Twitter, that its human rights monitors intended to visit the site and collect information. “Accountability is key,” it said.

    Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, attending a summit of about 50 European leaders in Spain to rally support from Ukraine’s allies, called the strike a “demonstrably brutal Russian crime” and “a completely deliberate act of terrorism.”

    His visit to the summit aimed to secure more military aid, among other goals, and Zelenskyy said late Thursday that his efforts had produced results.

    “We will have more air defense systems,” he wrote on his Telegram channel. “There will be more long-range weapons.”

    The air defense systems are crucial as Ukrainian officials try to prevent attacks like the ones in Kharkiv and amid fears Moscow will resume concerted attacks on power facilities during the winter, in a repeat of its tactics last year when it tried to break Ukrainians’ spirit by denying them electricity.

    Zelenskyy is also fighting against signs that Western support for his country’s war effort could be fraying.

    Concerns over the resupply of Ukraine’s armed forces have deepened amid political turmoil in the United States and warnings that Europe’s ammunition and military hardware stocks are running low.

    The Swedish government said Friday it plans to send to Ukraine a military aid package worth 2.2 billion kronor ($199 million), mainly consisting of 155-millimeter artillery ammunition.

    “We are preparing for it to be a long war, therefore we need to design our support long-term and sustainably,” Defense Minister Pål Jonson told a press conference. “It is now important that more countries step up to support Ukraine.”

    ___

    Associated Press writers Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

    Source link

  • Russian strike on cafe kills 51, Ukrainian officials say, as Zelenskyy seeks more Western support

    Russian strike on cafe kills 51, Ukrainian officials say, as Zelenskyy seeks more Western support

    HROZA, Ukraine — A Russian rocket blast turned a village cafe and store in eastern Ukraine into rubble Thursday, killing at least 51 civilians in one of the deadliest attacks in the war in months, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other top officials in Kyiv.

    Rescuers searched for survivors in the remains of the only cafe in the village of Hroza. Body parts were strewn across a nearby children’s playground that was severely damaged by the strike. Cellphones were collected and put in a courtyard nearby, waiting to be claimed. Occasionally, one of them rang, lighting up a shattered screen.

    Around 60 people, including children, were attending a wake at the cafe when the missile hit, Ukrainian officials said.

    Zelenskyy, attending a summit of about 50 European leaders in Spain to drum up support from Ukraine’s allies, denounced the strike as a “demonstrably brutal Russian crime” and “a completely deliberate act of terrorism.”

    According to preliminary information from Kyiv, the village was hit by an Iskander missile.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the strike “horrifying” and said it demonstrated why the United States is doing everything it can “to help the brave people of Ukraine to fight for their freedom, to fight for their democracy.”

    Hroza, which had a population of about 500 before the war, is in the northeastern Kharkiv region and was seized by Russia early in the war before being recaptured by Ukraine in September 2022. It’s only 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of Kupiansk, a key focus of the Russian military effort. Zelenskyy visited the area Tuesday to meet with troops and inspect equipment supplied by the West.

    Dmytro Nechvolot told The Associated Press he was looking for his 60-year-old father, who attended the wake for a soldier from Hroza who died last year but who was reburied after being identified by DNA. Nechvolot kept walking up to his father’s red car, which was still parked nearby, while waiting for confirmation that he had been killed.

    “I have lost a man I looked up to, a beloved father, and an unforgettable grandfather,” he said.

    On Thursday, Zelenskyy was at a summit of the European Political Community in Granada, Spain, where he asked for more Western support, saying that “Russian terror must be stopped.”

    “Russia needs this and similar terrorist attacks for only one thing: to make its genocidal aggression the new norm for the whole world,” he said in a statement posted on his Telegram channel. “Now we are talking with European leaders, in particular, about strengthening our air defense, strengthening our soldiers, giving our country protection from terror. And we will respond to the terrorists.”

    “The key for us, especially before winter, is to strengthen air defense, and there is already a basis for new agreements with partners,” he told the group, which was formed in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

    Heeding Zelenskyy’s cry, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany will supply Ukraine with another Patriot missile air defense system. He expects Russia will again target crucial infrastructure and cities across Ukraine in the winter months.

    “This is what is now needed the most,“ Scholz said after meeting Zelenskyy, according to the German news agency dpa.

    Last winter, Russia targeted Ukraine’s energy system and other vital infrastructure in a steady barrage of missile and drone attacks, triggering continuous power outages across the country. Ukraine’s power system has shown a high degree of resilience and flexibility, but there have been concerns that Russia will again ramp up its strikes on power facilities as winter draws near.

    Zelenskyy noted that the Granada summit will also focus on “joint work for global food security and protection of freedom of navigation” in the Black Sea, where the Russian military has targeted Ukrainian ports after Moscow’s withdrawal from a U.N.-sponsored grain deal designed to ensure safe grain exports from the invaded country’s ports.

    The U.K. Foreign Office cited intelligence suggesting that Russia may lay sea mines in the approaches to Ukrainian ports to target civilian shipping and blame it on Ukraine.

    “Russia almost certainly wants to avoid openly sinking civilian ships, instead falsely laying blame on Ukraine for any attacks against civilian vessels in the Black Sea,” it said, adding that the U.K. was working with Ukraine to help improve the safety of shipping.

    Speaking in Granada, Zelenskyy emphasized the need to preserve European unity in the face of Russian disinformation and to remain strong amid what he described as a “political storm” in the United States.

    Asked if he was worried that support for Ukraine could falter in the U.S. Congress, the Ukrainian president stressed that his visit to Washington last month made him confident of strong backing by both the Biden administration and Congress.

    Zelenskyy called for more air defense systems, more artillery weapons and shells, and more long-range missiles and drones for Ukrainian soldiers, as well as other forms of support and security guarantees to help protect Europe from potential aggression by Moscow.

    Earlier Thursday, Russia targeted Ukraine’s southern regions with drones. Ukraine’s air force said the country’s air defenses intercepted 24 out of 29 Iranian-made drones that Russia launched at the Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kirovohrad regions.

    Andriy Raykovych, head of the Kirovohrad regional administration, said an infrastructure facility in the region was struck and emergency services were deployed to extinguish a fire, but there were no casualties.

    In other Russian attacks in the past day, two civilians were killed by shelling in the southern city of Kherson and one died after a strike on the city of Krasnohorivka in the eastern Donetsk region. At least eight people were wounded, according to Ukraine’s presidential office.

    A Russian strike on a hospital in the city of Beryslav in the Kherson region ravaged the building and wounded two medical workers, according to the regional administration chief, Oleksandr Prokudin.

    Ukraine, in turn, has struck back at Russia with regular drone attacks across the border.

    In Russia’s Kursk region that borders Ukraine, Gov. Roman Starovoit said Ukrainian drone attacks resulted in power cuts in several areas. He also said Ukrainian forces fired artillery at the border town of Rylsk, wounding a resident and damaging several houses.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Dasha Litvinova and Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, Emma Burrows in London and Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed.

    Source link

  • Colombia’s government issues long awaited apology for extrajudicial killings during armed conflict

    Colombia’s government issues long awaited apology for extrajudicial killings during armed conflict

    BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombia’s government issued a long awaited public apology on Tuesday for the extrajudicial killings of 19 civilians who were slain by the military and registered as rebel fighters during one of the most violent periods of the nation’s civil war.

    The apology comes as Colombia’s government attempts to make amends with communities affected by decades of armed conflict and broker peace deals with rebel groups that are still fighting the military in rural areas despite a 2016 peace deal between the government and the nation’s largest rebel group.

    “These (killings) should have never happened,” Defense Minister Iván Velásquez said at an event in front of the nation’s congress attended by the victims’ relatives.

    “We ask you to forgive us for these crimes that embarrass us in front of the world,” Velásquez said in a speech. The killings took place between 2004 and 2008 as Colombia’s military intensified its campaign against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — the rebel group that made peace with the government in 2016.

    The killings involved young men from poor neighborhoods who were lured away from their homes with false promises of jobs in other parts of the country. Once they arrived at their destinations, the victims were shot by soldiers who dressed their corpses in camouflage, or placed weapons next to their bodies, and presented them to their superiors as rebels killed in combat in order to secure promotions and vacation time.

    Courts in Colombia have been ordering the government to apologize for these cases – known here as “false positives” — since 2015, as part of a set of reparation measures which also included prison sentences for some of the soldiers and officers involved.

    But the administrations of Presidents Juan Manuel Santos and Iván Duque had skirted around the orders to apologize in public because they were reluctant to recognize that during the nation’s armed conflict the military committed war crimes that were just as serious as those carried out by rebel groups, said Gimena Sanchez, a Colombia expert at the Washington Office on Latin America – a human rights group.

    Sanchez said the recently elected government of Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, has been more willing to collaborate with investigations into war crimes, including those undertaken by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, a transitional justice system created by the 2016 peace deal.

    “This is incredibly important to the victims families,” Sanchez said. “Those family members had to deal with the stigma of supposedly being family members of guerrillas.”

    According to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, Colombia’s military committed at least 6,402 extrajudicial killings between 2002 and 2008, as commanders pressured their troops to provide more results on the battlefield, and placed an emphasis on increasing the number of enemy casualties.

    The peace tribunal recently charged a former commander of Colombia’s army for the murders of 130 civilians between 2002 and 2003 in Antioquia province.

    At Tuesday’s event, the mothers, sisters, sons and daughters of the 19 victims were invited to speak.

    Many carried photos of the victims, and wore t-shirts with their names.

    While the relatives thanked Velásquez, the defense minister, for attending the event and issuing an apology, most said they were not ready to forgive.

    And they said the ones who should be apologizing to them are the politicians that were leading Colombia when the murders of their relatives occurred, including Santos, who was Colombia’s defense minister between 2006 and 2009.

    “Santos should be the one who shows his face here and asks for forgiveness,” said Florinda Hernández, whose son Elkin Gustavo Hernández, was murdered by the military in January of 2008. “We don’t want this to happen again, and we are still seeking justice for the murders of so many people.”

    The public apology comes as Colombia’s government attempts to broker peace deals with the nation’s remaining rebel groups.

    Elizabeth Dickinson, a Colombia analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the government’s decision to apologize for extrajudicial killings helps the military build trust with communities that have been afflicted by human rights violations.

    “If we manage to get an agreement with any group what’s going to be key to (sustain) that is the trust that the security forces have with the civilian population,” Dickinson said.

    Source link

  • Israeli soldiers kill a Palestinian man in West Bank, saying he threw explosives

    Israeli soldiers kill a Palestinian man in West Bank, saying he threw explosives

    Palestinian health officials say Israeli soldiers have shot and killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank

    ByThe Associated Press

    September 30, 2023, 4:33 AM

    JERUSALEM — Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank, Palestinian health officials said, the latest death in a monthslong surge of violence in the occupied territory.

    The Israeli military said that soldiers late Friday shot two Palestinians who hurled Molotov cocktails at an army post near the West Bank city of Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian authority.

    The Palestinian Health Ministry said the soldiers killed Muhammad Rumaneh from the hardscrabble Amari refugee camp in Ramallah. The militant group Hamas claimed him as a member.

    Health officials did not identify Rumaneh’s age, saying that Israeli authorities were withholding his body.

    Israeli officials have suggested in the past that holding onto the bodies of Palestinians slain in security incidents can deter attacks and prevent the exaltation of assailants at funerals that often draw giant crowds of protesters.

    In lieu of a funeral, residents of Ramallah called for a general strike Saturday to pay tribute to Rumaneh. Student groups at the prominent Birzeit University near Ramallah called off Sunday classes.

    The incident was the latest in a spiral of violence that has gripped the occupied territory for more than 1 1/2 year. The Israeli military has mounted near-nightly raids into Palestinian towns, often prompting deadly clashes with residents. Militancy has surged among young Palestinians who have lost hope in their leadership and in the prospect of a political resolution to the conflict.

    Nearly 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire so far this year in the West Bank, according to a tally by The Associated Press — the highest death toll in years. Israel says most of those killed have been militants, but stone-throwing youths protesting incursions as well as innocent bystanders have also been killed.

    Palestinian attacks against Israelis have killed more than 30 people since the start of 2023.

    Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war.

    Source link

  • Putin marks anniversary of annexation of Ukrainian regions as drones attack overnight

    Putin marks anniversary of annexation of Ukrainian regions as drones attack overnight

    KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday insisted that the residents of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed a year ago “made their choice — to be with their Fatherland.”

    In an address released in the early hours to mark the first anniversary of the annexation, Putin insisted that it was carried out “in full accordance with international norms.” He also claimed that residents of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions had again expressed their desire to be part of Russia in local elections earlier this month, in which Russia’s Central Election Commission said that the country’s ruling party won the most votes.

    The West has denounced both the referendum votes carried out last year and the recent ballots as a sham. The votes were held as Russian authorities attempted to tighten their grip on territories Moscow illegally annexed a year ago and still does not fully control.

    A concert was held in Red Square on Friday to mark the anniversary, but Putin did not participate.

    Meanwhile, in Ukraine, air defenses shot down 30 out of 40 Iranian-made kamikaze drones aimed at the Odesa, Mykolaiv and Vinnytsia provinces overnight, the Ukrainian air force said Saturday.

    Vinnytsia regional Gov. Serhii Borzov said that air defenses shot down 20 drones over his central Ukrainian region, but that a “powerful fire” broke out in the town of Kalynivka when a drone struck an unspecified infrastructure facility.

    Romania’s Ministry of National Defense said on Saturday that a possible unauthorized entry into its national airspace occurred overnight amid the bombardment.

    It said the radar surveillance system of the Romanian Army detected “a possible unauthorized entry” into the national airspace of NATO member Romania, with a signal detected toward the city of Galati, which is close to the border with Ukraine.

    “At this moment, no objects have been identified that fell from the airspace onto the national territory,” the statement read, adding that NATO allies were informed in real time and that searches will continue through Saturday.

    Emergency authorities issued text message alerts overnight to residents living in the counties of Galati and Tulcea, after detecting what the defense ministry said was “groups of drones heading toward Ukrainian territory” near the border.

    In recent weeks, Romania has found drone fragments on its soil from the war next door at least three times as Russian forces carry out sustained attacks on Ukraine’s Danube ports.

    Russia’s Defense Ministry said Saturday that it had shot down nine Ukrainian rockets fired at its southern Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine. Local officials in Russia’s Bryansk region, also bordering Ukraine, reported disruptions to power supply following an unspecified attack on the town of Pogar. Drone strikes and shelling in the Russian border regions are a regular occurrence.

    ___

    AP writers Stephen McGrath in Sighisoara, Romania, and Elise Morton in London contributed to this report.

    ___

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

    Source link

  • Putin orders former Wagner commander to take charge of ‘volunteer units’ in Ukraine

    Putin orders former Wagner commander to take charge of ‘volunteer units’ in Ukraine

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered one of the top commanders of the Wagner military contractor to take charge of “volunteer units” fighting in Ukraine

    ByThe Associated Press

    September 29, 2023, 7:00 AM

    Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, meets with Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, second right, and Chairman of the St. Petersburg regional public organization “League for the Protection of the Interests of Veterans of Local Wars and Military Conflicts” retired Col. Andrey Troshev in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

    The Associated Press

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered one of the top commanders of the Wagner military contractor to take charge of “volunteer units” fighting in Ukraine, signaling the Kremlin’s effort to keep using the mercenaries after the death of their chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

    In remarks released by the Kremlin on Friday, Putin told Andrei Troshev that his task is to “deal with forming volunteer units that could perform various combat tasks, primarily in the zone of the special military operation” — a term the Kremlin uses for its war in Ukraine.

    Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was also present at the meeting late Thursday, a sign that Wagner mercenaries will likely serve under the Defense Ministry’s command. Speaking in a conference call with reporters on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Troshev now works for the Defense Ministry and referred questions about Wagner’s possible return to Ukraine to the military.

    Wagner fighters have had no significant role on the battlefield since they withdrew after capturing the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in the war’s longest and bloodiest battle.

    The meeting appeared to reflect the Kremlin’s plan to redeploy some Wagner mercenaries to the front line in Ukraine following their brief mutiny in June and Prigozhin’s suspicious death in a plane crash Aug. 23. The private army that once counted tens of thousands of troops is a precious asset the Kremlin wants to exploit.

    The June 23-24 rebellion aimed to oust the Russian Defense Ministry’s leadership that Prigozhin blamed for mishandling the war in Ukraine and trying to place Wagner under its control. His mercenaries took over Russia’s southern military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don and then rolled toward Moscow before abruptly halting the mutiny.

    Putin denounced them as “traitors,” but the Kremlin quickly negotiated a deal ending the uprising in exchange for amnesty from prosecution. The mercenaries were offered a choice to retire from the service, move to Belarus or sign new contracts with the Defense Ministry.

    Putin said in July that five days after the mutiny he had a meeting with 35 Wagner commanders, including Prigozhin, and suggested they keep serving under Troshev, who goes by the call sign “Gray Hair,” but Prigozhin refused the offer then.

    Troshev, is a retired military officer who has played a leading role in Wagner since its creation in 2014 and faced European Union sanctions over his role in Syria as the group’s executive director.

    Wagner mercenaries have played a key role in Moscow’s war in Ukraine, spearheading the capture of Bakhmut in May after months of fierce fighting. Kyiv’s troops are now seeking to reclaim it as part of their summer counteroffensive that has slowly recaptured some of its lands but now faces the prospect of wet and cold weather that could further delay progress.

    ___

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

    Source link

  • North Korean leader urges greater nuclear weapons production in response to a ‘new Cold War’

    North Korean leader urges greater nuclear weapons production in response to a ‘new Cold War’

    SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for an exponential increase in production of nuclear weapons and for his country to play a larger role in a coalition of nations confronting the United States in a “new Cold War,” state media said Thursday.

    The Korean Central News Agency said Kim made the comments during a two-day session of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament which amended the constitution to include his policy of expanding the country’s nuclear weapons program.

    The Supreme People’s Assembly’s session on Tuesday and Wednesday came after Kim traveled to Russia’s Far East this month to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and visit military and technology sites.

    The trip sparked Western concerns about a possible arms alliance in which North Korea would supply Putin with badly needed munitions to fuel his war on Ukraine in exchange for economic aid and advanced Russian technologies to enhance North Korea’s nuclear and missile systems.

    As North Korea slowly ends its pandemic lockdown, Kim has been actively boosting his partnerships with Moscow and Beijing as he attempts to break out of diplomatic isolation and join a united front against Washington. He has described the world as entering a “new Cold War” and that North Korea should advance its nuclear capabilities in response.

    KCNA’s reports on Kim’s comments came a day after North Korea c onfirmed the release of U.S. Army Pvt. Travis King, who is now being flown back to America, two months after he sprinted across the heavily fortified border into the North.

    King’s relatively swift expulsion defied speculation that North Korea might drag out his detention to squeeze concessions from the United States, and possibly reflected the North’s disinterest in diplomacy with Washington.

    KCNA said members of the assembly gave unanimous approval to a new clause in the constitution to “ensure the country’s right to existence and development, deter war and protect regional and global peace by rapidly developing nuclear weapons to a higher level.”

    North Korea’s “nuclear force-building policy has been made permanent as the basic law of the state, which no one is allowed to flout with anything,” Kim said in a speech at the assembly. He stressed the need to “push ahead with the work for exponentially boosting the production of nuclear weapons and diversifying the nuclear strike means,” KCNA said.

    Kim pointed to what he described as a growing threat posed by a hostile United States and its expanding military cooperation with South Korea and Japan, accusing them of creating the “Asian version of NATO, the root cause of war and aggression.”

    “This is just the worst actual threat, not threatening rhetoric or an imaginary entity,” he said.

    Kim urged his diplomats to “further promote solidarity with the nations standing against the U.S. and the West’s strategy for hegemony.”

    Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest level in years as North Korea has test-fired more than 100 missiles since the start of 2022 and the U.S. has expanded its military exercises with its Asian allies, in tit-for-tat responses.

    Last year, the assembly passed a new nuclear doctrine into law which authorizes pre-emptive nuclear strikes if North Korea’s leadership is perceived as under threat.

    Source link

  • US secures the release of the soldier who crossed into North Korea 2 months ago

    US secures the release of the soldier who crossed into North Korea 2 months ago

    WASHINGTON — The U.S. has secured the release of a U.S. soldier who sprinted across a heavily fortified border into North Korea more than two months ago, and he is on his way back to America, officials announced Wednesday. U.S. ally Sweden and rival China helped with the transfer.

    Left unanswered were questions of why Pyongyang—which has tense relations with Washington over the North’s nuclear program, support for Russia’s war in Ukraine and other issues—had agreed to turn him over and why the soldier had fled in the first place.

    North Korea had abruptly announced earlier Wednesday that it would expel Pvt. Travis King — though some had expected the North to drag out his detention in hopes of squeezing concessions from Washington at a time of high tensions between the two countries.

    “U.S. officials have secured the return of Private Travis King from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement. “We appreciate the dedication of the interagency team that has worked tirelessly out of concern for Private King’s wellbeing.”

    Officials said they did not know exactly why North Korea decided to expel King, but suspected Pyongyang determined that as a low-ranking serviceman he had no real value in terms of either leverage or information. One official, who was not authorized to comment and requested anonymity, said the North Koreans may have decided that King, 23, was more trouble to keep than to simply release him.

    Swedish officials took King to the Chinese border, where he was met by the U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, the Swedish ambassador to China, and at least one U.S. Defense Department official. Biden administration officials insisted they provided no concessions to North Korea to secure the soldier’s release.

    “We thank the government of Sweden for its diplomatic role serving as the protecting power for the United States in the DPRK and the government of the People’s Republic of China for its assistance in facilitating the transit of Private King,” Sullivan added.

    King was flown to a U.S. military base in South Korea before being returned to the U.S.

    His expulsion almost certainly does not end his troubles or ensure the sort of celebratory homecoming that has accompanied the releases of other detained Americans. He has been declared AWOL from the Army, which can mean punishment military jail, forfeiture of pay or a dishonorable discharge.

    In the near term, officials said that their focus would be on helping King reintegrate into U.S. society, including helping him address mental and emotional concerns, according to a senior Biden administration officials who briefed reporters on the transfer.

    The soldier was in “good spirits and good health” upon his release, according to one senior administration official. He was to be taken to Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, and was expected to arrive overnight, officials said.

    King, who had served in South Korea, ran into North Korea while on a civilian tour of a border village on July 18, becoming the first American confirmed to be detained in the North in nearly five years.

    At the time he crossed the border, King was supposed to be heading to Fort Bliss, Texas, following his release from prison in South Korea on an assault conviction.

    After arriving on the Texas military installation, King is expected to undergo psychological assessments and debriefings. He will also get a chance to meet with family. King’s legal situation remains complicated because he willingly bolted into enemy hands, so legally he would be in military custody throughout the process.

    Sweden was the chief interlocutor with North Korea on the transfer, while China helped facilitate his transfer, administration officials said.

    Biden administration officials expressed gratitude for China’s assistance with the transfer but underscored that Beijing did not play a mediating role in securing King’s release. The U.S. first learned through Swedish officials earlier this month that North Korea was looking to expel King. That information accelerated the effort to release King with Sweden acting on the United States’ behalf in its talks with the North, an official said.

    On Wednesday, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported that authorities had finished their questioning of King. It said that he confessed to illegally entering the North because he harbored “ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination” within the U.S. Army and was “disillusioned about the unequal U.S. society.”

    It had attributed similar comments to King before, and verifying their authenticity is impossible. Some previous foreign detainees have said after their releases that declarations of guilt while in North Korean custody were made under coercion.

    The White House did not address the North Korean state media reports that King fled because of his dismay about racial discrimination and inequality in the military and U.S. society. One senior administration official said that King was “very happy” to be on his way back to the United States.

    In an interview last month with The Associated Press, King’s mother, Claudine Gates, said her son had reason to want to come home. She thanked the U.S. government on Wednesday for securing her son’s release.

    “Ms. Gates will be forever grateful to the United States Army and all its interagency partners for a job well done,” Jonathan Franks, spokesperson for Gates, said in a statement.

    King was among about 28,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea as deterrence against potential aggression from North Korea. U.S. officials had expressed concern about King’s well-being, citing the North’s harsh treatment of some American detainees in the past.

    Both Koreas ban anyone from crossing their heavily fortified shared border without special permissions. The Americans who crossed into North Korea in the past include soldiers, missionaries, human rights advocates or those simply curious about one of the world’s most cloistered societies.

    While King was officially declared AWOL, the Army considered, but did not declare him a deserter, which is a much more serious offense. In many cases, someone who is AWOL for more than a month can automatically be considered a deserter, which means they intended to leave permanently.

    Punishment for going AWOL or desertion can vary, and it depends in part on whether the service member voluntarily returned or was apprehended. King’s turnover by the North Koreans makes that a more complicated determination.

    North Korea’s decision to release King after 71 days appears relatively quick by the country’s standards, especially considering the tensions between Washington and Pyongyang over the North’s growing nuclear weapons and missile program and the United States’ expanding military exercises with South Korea. Some had speculated that North Korea might treat King as a propaganda asset or bargaining chip.

    The U.S. has also publicly accused North Korea of providing munitions to Russia for its war with Ukraine and says that Moscow is pushing Pyongyang to provide even more military aid. Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met for talks in Russia’s Far East earlier this month.

    Biden administration officials on Wednesday downplayed any idea that the release could augur a broader shift by Kim, but reiterated that the U.S. remains ready to engage the North with diplomatic talks.

    Captive Americans have been flown to China previously. In other cases, an envoy has been sent to retrieve them.

    That happened in 2017 when North Korea deported Otto Warmbier, an American college student who was in a coma at the time of his release and later died.

    ___

    Kim Tong-Hyung reported from Seoul, South Korea. Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Eric Tucker contributed from Washington.

    Source link

  • China on charm offensive at Asian Games, but doesn’t back down from confrontations

    China on charm offensive at Asian Games, but doesn’t back down from confrontations

    HANGZHOU, China — A month before the Asian Games, China released a new national map, doubling down on its claims to almost the entire South China Sea and disputed border territories with India.

    A few days before the event, it flew more than 100 warplanes toward Taiwan, stepping up its regular military harassment of the self-governing democratic island that Beijing claims for its own.

    At the games themselves, however, outward aggression has taken a backseat to unctuous charm as China sought to win the hearts of more than 40 Asian nations and regions by dazzling them with technology and slathering them with praise.

    In a personal appearance in the eastern city of Hangzhou, into which the government poured billions of dollars for the two-week games, Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed leaders and officials at an opening banquet on Saturday.

    “The Asian Games embodies the Asian people’s shared desire for peace, unity and inclusiveness,” Xi told them, according to his prepared remarks.

    No mention was made of the status of Taiwan, the tense standoffs in the South China Sea over competing claims with Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines – all competitors at the Hangzhou games – or the border disputes with India that resulted in a clash three years ago in which 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed.

    Nor was anything said about a diplomatic spat China ignited with India the day before Saturday’s opening ceremony as it refused to back down on its stance on visas for Indian athletes coming from a region that leaders maintain belongs to China, resulting in three women wushu athletes being unable to compete.

    Taiwan’s athletes even received one of the loudest rounds of applause at the opening ceremony, though have to compete under the name “Chinese Taipei” and without their flag due to China’s claim on the island off of its east coast, which it has not ruled out taking by force.

    Signs around Hangzhou billed the city as a “paradise on earth” while China adopted the motto “heart to heart” for the Asian Games, which feature some 12,000 competitors – more than the summer Olympics – from across Asia and the Middle East.

    “This will undoubtedly open new prospects for cultural exchanges, cultural integration and people-to-people bonds in Asia,” the Chinese Communist Party’s official People’s Daily wrote Monday in an effusive editorial about the Hangzhou games. “It will inject profound and lasting cultural strength into the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.”

    The headlines the state-run China Daily’s supplement edition for the games carried after the opening ceremony included “Xi extends hand of friendship,” and “Wave of Glory” alongside a photo of the Chinese leader waving to the crowds.

    Xi told the officials at Saturday’s banquet that the region’s recent economic growth had been an “Asian miracle” and that “we should make Asia an anchor of world peace.”

    But while offering a verbal carrot in Hangzhou, Beijing continued brandishing a physical stick elsewhere. Taiwan’s military said Sunday it had detected the Chinese military initiating an exercise featuring warplanes, ships and ground troops in coastal Fujian Province, which faces Taiwan.

    The Philippine coast guard reported over the weekend that it had detected a floating barrier placed by China’s coast guard to prevent Filipino fishing boats from entering a lagoon in a disputed shoal in the South China Sea.

    The Philippines removed the barrier on Monday. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters Tuesday that China’s “resolve to safeguard its sovereignty and maritime rights” was unwavering, and he warned “the Philippines not to make provocations or seek trouble.”

    Xi’s banquet speech did not refer to any territorial claims or confrontations, nor to the mounting tensions with the U.S. and its allies as Beijing and Washington jockey for influence in the Asia-Pacific region

    Still, geopolitics were clearly not far from his Xi’s mind as he outlined China’s goals, thinly veiling his remarks with the language of sport.

    “As a community with a shared future connected by mountains and rivers as well as cultural affinity, we should use sports to promote peace, pursue good neighborliness and mutual benefit, and reject Cold War mentality and bloc confrontation,” he said, using language China commonly does when referring to the U.S.’s Asia-Pacific strategy.

    “As humanity faces unprecedented global challenges, we should use sports to promote unity, seize the historic opportunity, and jointly stand up to the challenges,” Xi said.

    Source link

  • The federal government is headed into a shutdown. What does it mean, who’s hit and what’s next?

    The federal government is headed into a shutdown. What does it mean, who’s hit and what’s next?

    WASHINGTON — The federal government is heading toward a shutdown that will disrupt many services, squeeze workers and roil politics as Republicans in the House, fueled by hard-right demands for deep cuts, force a confrontation over federal spending.

    While some government entities will be exempt — Social Security checks, for example, will still go out — other functions will be severely curtailed. Federal agencies will stop all actions deemed non-essential, and millions of federal employees, including members of the military, won’t receive paychecks.

    Here’s a look at what’s ahead if the government shuts down on Oct. 1.

    WHAT IS A GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN?

    A shutdown happens when Congress fails to pass some type of funding legislation that is signed into law by the president. Lawmakers are supposed to pass 12 different spending bills to fund agencies across the government, but the process is time-consuming. They often resort to passing a temporary extension, called a continuing resolution or CR, to allow the government to keep operating.

    When no funding legislation is enacted, federal agencies have to stop all non-essential work and will not send paychecks as long as the shutdown lasts.

    Although employees deemed essential such as air traffic controllers and law enforcement officers still have to report to work, other federal employees are furloughed. Under a 2019 law, those same workers are slated to receive backpay once the funding impasse is resolved.

    WHEN WOULD A SHUTDOWN BEGIN AND HOW LONG WILL IT LAST?

    Government funding expires Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year. A shutdown will effectively begin at 12:01 a.m. if Congress is not able to pass a funding plan that the president signs into law.

    It is impossible to predict how long a shutdown would last. With Congress divided between a Democratic-controlled Senate and Republican-led House, and Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s hard-right conservatives looking to use the shutdown as leverage for spending cuts, many are bracing for a stoppage that could last weeks.

    WHO DOES A SHUTDOWN AFFECT?

    Millions of federal workers face delayed paychecks when the government shuts down, including many of the roughly 2 million military personnel and more than 2 million civilian workers across the nation.

    Nearly 60% of federal workers are stationed in the Defense, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security departments.

    Federal workers are stationed in all 50 states and have direct interaction with taxpayers — from Transportation Security Administration agents who operate security at airports to Postal Service workers who deliver mail.

    Some federal offices will also have to close or face shortened hours during a shutdown.

    Beyond federal workers, a shutdown could have far-reaching effects on government services. People applying for government services like clinical trials, firearm permits and passports could see delays.

    Businesses closely connected to the federal government, such as federal contractors or tourist services around national parks, could see disruptions and downturns. The travel sector could lose $140 million daily in a shutdown, according to the U.S. Travel Industry Association.

    Lawmakers also warn that a shutdown could rattle financial markets. Goldman Sachs has estimated that a shutdown would reduce economic growth by 0.2% every week it lasted, but growth would then bounce back after the government reopens.

    Others say the disruption in government services has far-reaching impacts because it shakes confidence in the government to fulfill its basic duties. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned, “A well-functioning economy requires a functioning government.”

    WHAT ABOUT COURT CASES, THE WORK OF CONGRESS AND PRESIDENTIAL PAY?

    The president and members of Congress will continue to work and get paid. However, any members of their staff who are not deemed essential will be furloughed.

    The judiciary will be able to continue to operate for a limited time using funds derived from court filings and other fees, as well as other approved funding.

    Notably, funding for the three special counsels appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland would not be affected by a government shutdown because they are paid for through a permanent, indefinite appropriation, an area that’s been exempted from shutdowns in the past.

    That means the two federal cases against Donald Trump, the former president, as well as the case against Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, would not be interrupted. Trump has demanded that Republicans defund the prosecutions against him as a condition of funding the government, declaring it their “last chance” to act.

    HAS THIS HAPPENED BEFORE?

    Prior to the 1980s, lapses in government funding did not result in government operations significantly shuttering. But then-U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, in a series of legal opinions in 1980 and 1981, argued that government agencies cannot legally operate during a funding gap.

    Federal officials have since operated under an understanding they can make exemptions for functions that are “essential” for public safety and constitutional duties.

    Since 1976, there have been 22 funding gaps, with 10 of them leading to workers being furloughed. But most of the significant shutdowns have taken place since Bill Clinton’s presidency, when then-Speaker Newt Gingrich and his conservative House majority demanded budget cuts.

    The longest government shutdown happened between 2018 and 2019 when then-President Trump and congressional Democrats entered a standoff over his demand for funding for a border wall. The disruption lasted 35 days, through the holiday season, but was also only a partial government shutdown because Congress had passed some appropriations bills to fund parts of the government.

    WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO END A SHUTDOWN?

    It’s the responsibility of Congress to fund the government. The House and Senate have to agree to fund the government in some way, and the president has to sign the legislation into law.

    Congress often relies on a so-called continuing resolution, or CR, to provide stopgap money to open government offices at current levels as budget talks are underway. Money for pressing national priorities, such as emergency assistance for victims of natural disasters, is often attached to a short-term bill.

    But hardline Republicans say any temporary bill is a non-starter for them. They are pushing to keep the government shut down until Congress negotiates all 12 bills that fund the government, which is historically a laborious undertaking that isn’t resolved until December, at the earliest.

    Trump, who is Biden’s top rival heading into the 2024 election, is urging on the Republican hardliners.

    If they are successful, the shutdown could last weeks, perhaps even longer.

    __

    Associated Press reporters Fatima Hussein, Lindsay Whitehurst, Josh Boak and Lisa Mascaro

    Source link

  • White House preparing for government shutdown as House Republicans lack a viable endgame for funding

    White House preparing for government shutdown as House Republicans lack a viable endgame for funding

    WASHINGTON — The White House is preparing Friday to direct federal agencies to get ready for a shutdown after House Republicans left town for the weekend with no viable plan to keep the government funded and avert politically and economically costly disruption of federal services.

    A federal shutdown after Sept. 30 seems all but certain unless Speaker Kevin McCarthy can persuade his rebellious hard-right flank of Republicans to allow Congress to approve a temporary funding measure to prevent closures as talks continue. Instead, he’s launched a much more ambitious plan to try to start passing multiple funding bills once the House returns Tuesday, with just five days to resolve the standoff.

    “We got members working, and hopefully we’ll be able to move forward on Tuesday to pass these bills,” McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters at the Capitol.

    McCarthy signaled his preference for avoiding a closure, but a hard-right flank of his House majority has effectively seized control. “I still believe if you shut down you’re in a weaker position,” he said.

    The standoff with House Republicans over government funding puts at risk a range of activities — including pay for the military and law enforcement personnel, food safety and food aid programs, air travel and passport processing — and could wreck havoc with the U.S. economy.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday that if federal workers go unpaid it would be Republicans’ fault. “Our message is: This doesn’t have to happen,” she said. “They can do their job and keep these vital programs continuing, keeping the government open.”

    With the Oct. 1 start of a new fiscal year and no funding in place, the Biden administration’s Office of Management and Budget is preparing to advise federal agencies to review and update their shutdown plans, according to an OMB official. The start of this process suggests that federal employees could be informed next week if they’re to be furloughed.

    President Joe Biden has been quick to blame the likely shutdown on House Republicans, who are intent on spending cuts beyond those laid out in a June deal that also suspended the legal cap on the government borrowing’s authority until early 2025.

    “They’re back at it again, breaking their commitment, threatening more cuts and threatening to shut down government again,” Biden during a recent speech in suburban Maryland.

    McCarthy faces immense pressure for severe spending cuts from a handful of hard-right conservatives in his caucus, essentially halting his ability to lead the chamber. Many on the right flank are aligned with Donald Trump — the Republican front-runner to challenge Biden in the 2024 election. They opposed the budget deal the speaker reached with Biden earlier this year and are trying to dismantle it.

    Trump has urged the House Republicans on, pushing them to hold the line against federal spending.

    Led by Trump ally Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., the right flank has all but commandeered control of the House debate in a public rebuke to the speaker.

    Late Thursday, the hard-right faction pushed McCarthy to consider their idea to shelve plans for a stopgap funding measure, called a continuing resolution, or CR, and instead start bringing up the 12 individual bills needed to fund the government.

    The House GOP leadership then announced just that — it would begin processing a package of four bills to fund Defense, Homeland Security, State and Foreign Operations and Agricultural departments, setting up voting for Tuesday when lawmakers return. Work on some bills had been held up by the same conservatives demanding passage now.

    “Any progress we are making is in spite of, not due to McCarthy,” Gaetz posted on social media, deriding the speaker for having sent lawmakers home for the weekend. “Pathetic.”

    Gaetz and his allies say they want to see the House engage in the hard work of legislating — even if it pushes the country into a shutdown — as they pursue sizable reductions and cuts.

    The House Rules Committee was holding a Friday afternoon session to begin preparing those bills, which historically require weeks of floor debate, with hundreds of amendments, but now are slated to be rushed to the floor for next week’s votes. The panel was expected to wrap up its work Saturday.

    It’s a capstone to a difficult week for McCarthy who tried, unsuccessfully, to advance a typically popular defense spending bill that was twice defeated in embarrassing floor votes. The speaker seemed to blame the defeat of the bill on fellow lawmakers “who just want to burn the whole place down.”

    McCarthy’s top allies, including Rep. Garrett Graves, R-La., insisted Friday they were still working toward both ends — passing annual spending bills and pushing for the most conservative stopgap CR with border security provisions — in time to prevent a shutdown.

    Shutdowns happen when Congress and the president fail to complete a set of 12 spending bills, or fail to approve a temporary measure to keep the government operating. As a result, federal agencies are required to stop all actions deemed non-essential. Since 1976, there have been 22 funding gaps, with 10 of them leading to workers being furloughed.

    The last and longest shutdown on record was for 35 days during Trump’s administration, between 2018 and 2019, as he insisted on funding to build a wall along the U.S. southern border that Democrats and some Republicans refused.

    Because some agencies already had approved funding, it was a partial closure. The Congressional Budget Office estimated it came at a cost of $3 billion to the U.S. economy. While $3 billion is a lot of money, it was equal to just 0.02% of U.S. economic activity in 2019.

    There could be costs to parts of the economy and difficulties for individuals.

    Military and law enforcement officials would go unpaid during the shutdown. The disaster relief fund of the Federal Emergency Management Agency could be depleted, hurting the victims of wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes and flooding.

    Clinical trials on new prescription drugs could be delayed. Ten thousand children could lose access to care through Head Start, while environmental and food safety inspections would get backlogged.

    Food aid for Americans through the Women, Infants and Children program could be cut off for nearly 7 million pregnant women, mothers, infants and children.

    Brian Gardner, chief Washington strategist at the investment bank Stifel, said that air traffic controllers largely continued to work without pay during the previous shutdown. He noted that visa and passport applications would not be processed if the government is closed.

    The U.S. Travel Industry Association estimates that the travel sector could lose $140 million daily in a shutdown.

    But in a sign of how little damage that 35-day shutdown did to the overall economy, the S&P 500 stock index climbed 11.6% during the last government closure.

    Source link

  • Ukraine missile strike hits Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters, kills 1 serviceman

    Ukraine missile strike hits Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters, kills 1 serviceman

    KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine struck the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in a missile attack Friday that left a serviceman missing and the main building smoldering, according to officials on both sides of the conflict and images from the scene in annexed Crimea.

    The Russian Defense Ministry initially said one servicemember was killed but then issued a subsequent statement saying he was missing following the attack in the port city of in Sevastopol.

    The Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 in an act that most of the world considered illegal, has been a frequent target since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost 19 months ago.

    Previous attacks resulted in several civilian deaths, but Russian officials haven’t yet reported any military personnel killed. Six people were reported wounded following a July 2022 attack on the Black Sea Fleet headquarters, but it wasn’t clear whether they were civilians or servicemembers.

    The Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said no one was injured Friday outside of the burning headquarters building, but he didn’t provide information on other casualties. Firefighters battled the blaze, and more emergency forces were being brought in, an indication the fire could be massive.

    Ukrainian officials have claimed responsibility for a series of other recent attacks on Crimea but didn’t immediately confirm or deny that Kyiv had launched missiles at Sevastopol on Friday.

    In an apparent acknowledgement of Ukraine’s responsibility for the barrage, the country’s air force commander posted a video of air sirens blazing and smoke rising from the building along with a message thanking the pilots.

    “We promised that ‘there will be more,’” Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleschuk said.

    Sevastopol residents said they heard explosions and saw smoke, Russian news outlets reported, and images showed gray plumes over the seafront. The Associated Press could not immediately verify the videos.

    A stream of ambulances arrived at the fleet’s headquarters, and shrapnel was scattered hundreds of meters (yards) around, Russian state news agency Tass reported.

    The Defense Ministry said five missiles were shot down by Russian air defense systems responding to the attack on Sevastopol. It was not immediately clear if the headquarters was hit in a direct strike or by debris from an intercepted missile.

    Oleg Kryuchkov, an official with the Crimean administration, said one cruise missile downed near Bakhchysarai, about 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) inland, sparked a grass fire.

    Razvozhayev said civilian infrastructure wasn’t damaged but did not mention the impact on the fleet headquarters.

    He initially warned Sevastopol residents that another attack was possible and urged them not to leave buildings or go to the city center. He later said there was no longer any threat of an air strike but reiterated calls not to go to the central part of the city, saying roads were closed and and unspecified “special efforts” were underway.

    Police asked residents to leave the central part of the city, Tass said.

    The reported attack came a day after Russian missiles and artillery pounded cities across Ukraine, killing at least five people as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with U.S. President Joe Biden and congressional leaders in Washington with an additional $24 billion aid package being considered.

    Sevastopol serves as the main base for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. The Russian-installed authorities in the city accused Ukraine on Sept. 13 of carrying out the biggest attack in Crimea in weeks, one on a strategic shipyard that damaged two ships undergoing repairs and caused a fire at the facility.

    In other developments, ongoing shelling in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region killed one man and injured another, according to regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin.

    “Kherson has been restless since the morning,” he said on Telegram.

    Russian shelling sparked fires in a residential building and a garage.

    In Kharkiv, regional Gov. Oleh Synyehubov said over 14 settlements came under attack. A house was damaged and a fire broke out in Vovchansk, in Chuguyiv district. There were no casualties, the governor said.

    ___

    This story has been corrected after Russia’s Defense Ministry said a serviceman was missing after the attack, not killed.

    ___

    Litvinova reported from Tallinn, Estonia. Associated Press journalist Brian Melley in London contributed to this report.

    ___

    For more coverage of the war in Ukraine, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

    Source link

  • Azerbaijan and Armenia fight for 2nd day over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh

    Azerbaijan and Armenia fight for 2nd day over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh

    YEREVAN, Armenia — Explosions rocked parts of Nagorno-Karabakh early Wednesday, a day after Azerbaijani forces used heavy artillery fire on Armenian positions in the separatist region that local officials said killed or wounded scores of people.

    Azerbaijan has called the artillery fire an “anti-terrorist operation” and said it will continue until the separatist government of Nagorno-Karabakh dismantles itself and “illegal Armenian military formations” surrender.

    It said it is only targeting military sites, but significant damage was visible on the streets of the regional capital, Stepanakert, with shop windows blown out and vehicles punctured apparently by shrapnel.

    The blasts reverberated around Stepanakert every few minutes on Wednesday morning, with some explosions in the distance and others closer to the city.

    The artillery fire raised concerns that a full-scale war in the region could resume between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which for more than three decades have been locked in a struggle over the mountainous territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The most recent heavy fighting there occurred over six weeks in 2020.

    Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry announced the start of the military operation hours after it reported that four soldiers and two civilians died in land mine explosions in Nagorno-Karabakh.

    The ministry did not immediately give details but said that front-line positions and the military assets of Armenia’s armed forces were being “incapacitated using high-precision weapons,” and that only legitimate military targets were being attacked.

    Armenia’s Foreign Ministry, however, denied that its weapons or troops were in Nagorno-Karabakh and called reported sabotage and land mines in the region “a lie.” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashiyan alleged that Azerbaijan’s main goal is to draw Armenia into hostilities.

    Ethnic Armenian officials in Nagorno-Karabakh said in a statement that Stepanakert and other villages were “under intense shelling.” The region’s military said Azerbaijan was using aircraft, artillery and missile systems, and drones in the fighting.

    Residents of Stepanakert moved to basements and bomb shelters, and the fighting cut off electricity. Food shortages persisted in the area, with limited humanitarian aid delivered Monday not distributed due to the shelling, which resumed in the evening after halting briefly in the afternoon.

    Nagorno-Karabakh human rights ombudsman Geghan Stepanyan said Tuesday that 27 people, including two civilians, were killed and more than 200 others were wounded. Stepanyan earlier said one child was among those killed, and 11 children were among the injured.

    The Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s Office said Armenian forces fired at Shusha, a city in Nagorno-Karabakh under Azerbaijan’s control, from large-caliber weapons, killing one civilian.

    Neither claim could be independently verified.

    Nagorno-Karabakh and sizable surrounding territories were under ethnic Armenian control since the 1994 end of a separatist war, but Azerbaijan regained the territories and parts of Nagorno-Karabakh during the 2020 fighting. That ended with an armistice placing Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh.

    However, Azerbaijan alleges that Armenia has smuggled in weapons since then. The claims led to a blockade of the road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, causing food and medicine shortages.

    Thousands of protesters gathered Tuesday in central Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, blocking streets and demanding that authorities defend Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. Some clashed with police, who reportedly used stun grenades. A total of 34 people — 16 policemen and 18 civilians — were injured in the clashes, Armenia’s Health Ministry said. About half of them continue to receive medical assistance, the ministry said.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Jim Heintz va in Tallinn, Estonia; Aida Sultanova in London; and Siranush Sargsyan in Stepanakert contributed.

    Source link

  • Israeli military raid kills 3 in West Bank. Officials say 4th man killed by Israeli fire in Gaza

    Israeli military raid kills 3 in West Bank. Officials say 4th man killed by Israeli fire in Gaza

    JERUSALEM — Israeli troops raided the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank late Tuesday, killing three people and wounding some 30 others, according to Palestinian health officials. A fourth Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire in separate unrest in the Gaza Strip, officials said.

    The bloodshed in Jenin was the latest in a deadly wave of fighting in the West Bank, where the Israeli military has stepped up its activities over the past year and a half in what it says is an effort to crack down on Palestinian militants. Tensions now appear to be spreading to Gaza.

    The Israeli army gave few details about the operation in the camp — a stronghold of Palestinian militants where the army often carries out deadly raids. In July, Israel launched its most intense operation in the West Bank in nearly two decades, leaving widespread destruction in the camp.

    The army said it carried out a rare strike with a suicide drone during the operation, but gave no further information. Palestinian health officials said three people were killed and some 30 people wounded by Israeli gunfire, some in critical condition.

    Videos posted on social media showed medics unloading the wounded at a hospital, while in other videos, explosions and gunfire could be heard echoing in the camp. As Israeli soldiers withdrew, a crowd of young men chanted: “Oh, you who ask, who are we? We are the Jenin Brigade.”

    Motasem Abu Hasan, a resident who works at the Freedom Theater in Jenin, a cultural center in the camp, said that he saw drones fire toward a mosque and heard strikes from drones in other locations.

    When Israeli forces entered the camp in the evening, the Freedom Theater was hosting its annual Feminist Theater Festival, which attracts a host of foreigners and regional artists.

    The fighting erupted outside the door of the theater, spoiling the night’s performances and forcing all the attendees to hunker down inside. “It was incredibly difficult on us, you had all elderly people and small children cramming together, all terrified,” said Abu Hasan.

    All the attendees’ cars that were parked outside the theater were destroyed. “It’s so much pressure and we just wanted to try to complete the show, to help people here feel like they’re human,” he said.

    After the Israeli military withdrew, dozens of gunmen and residents poured into the streets to protest against the Palestinian Authority and its failure to protect them, according to footage shared by residents.

    “You infidel! You heretic!” they screamed as they chanted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ name.

    In Gaza, meanwhile, health officials said the Israeli military killed a 25-year-old Palestinian along the volatile border with Israel as youths mounted violent protests at the separation fence.

    Unrest over the past week has escalated tensions and prompted Israel to bar entry to thousands of Palestinian laborers from the impoverished enclave.

    The army said it had opened fire after hundreds of people gathered along the separation fence and detonated a number of explosive devices. It confirmed shooting several people, but had no details on their conditions.

    Palestinian officials in Gaza confirmed one death and said nine people were wounded, one critically.

    Over the last week, dozens of Palestinians — burning tires and hurling explosive devices at Israeli soldiers — have streamed toward the fence separating Israel from Gaza, which has been under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since 2007. Israel says the blockade is needed to prevent the ruling Hamas militant group from arming itself.

    Hamas says youths have organized the protests in response to Israeli provocations.

    The week’s events recall a bloody protest campaign organized by Hamas in 2018 and 2019 during which over 350 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire.

    Earlier Tuesday, the Israeli military sentenced an army commander in the occupied West Bank to 10 days in military prison after an investigation found he had shot an innocent Palestinian motorist.

    The Israeli military said security forces stationed at the Israeli settlement of Rimonim, east of Jerusalem, had received reports of gunshots and spotted a Palestinian vehicle they believed to be behind the shooting.

    The forces opened fire at the Palestinian man’s car, the military said, hitting and wounding the 23-year-old driver, Mazen Samarat. The army arrested him and took him to a hospital for treatment before releasing him the next day.

    An Israeli military investigation determined the army’s shooting was the result of mistaken identity. “This is a serious incident in which the force acted contrary to procedures,” the army said, announcing that the force’s commander had been sentenced to 10 days in military prison.

    The driver, Samarat, a water mechanic from the Palestinian city of Jericho, remains in the hospital, unable to get up from his bed because of the gunshot wound to his leg.

    He told The Associated Press that he and his cousin had been driving home after hanging out with friends in the city of Ramallah. He said he had no idea what prompted the gunfire.

    “I thought I was dead,” he said. “In that moment they changed my entire life.”

    Rights groups have accused Israeli soldiers and police officers of being too quick to pull the trigger, particularly in response to a recent surge in attacks by Palestinians that have killed 31 people so far this year.

    Critics also have noted that Israeli military investigations into accusations of crimes committed against Palestinians rarely lead to prosecutions in the West Bank, which Israel captured along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war.

    Source link

  • Military officers begin to speak out on the harm done by Sen. Tuberville’s holds on promotions

    Military officers begin to speak out on the harm done by Sen. Tuberville’s holds on promotions

    WASHINGTON — In the months since a single senator froze military promotions over the Pentagon’s abortion policy, the uniformed officers affected have been largely silent, wary of stepping into a political fray. But as the ramifications of Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s freeze have grown, more of them are speaking out.

    This week, some of the military’s most senior leaders took the issue head on and voiced their concerns. They said the damage the holds will do to the military will be felt for years, as young talented officers decide they’ve had enough and choose to get out.

    “We’re on the fringe of losing a generation of champions,” Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly, the head Air Combat Command, told reporters this week at a defense conference in Maryland. Kelly said he’s talking to his junior officers, many with families, and they are “people who will take a bullet for the nation, the Constitution.” But when it comes to dragging their family through this, “there’s a red line.”

    One of the unusual things about Tuberville’s holds is he’s punishing uniformed personnel who had nothing to do with creating the administration policy he’s against.

    Uniformed military leaders typically avoid commenting on political decisions, not only because they don’t want to antagonize lawmakers who can block their future military promotions, but also because they don’t want to be seen as challenging civilian control of the military, a core tenet of U.S. government.

    But now even the Pentagon’s soon-to-be highest military leader is speaking out. Navy Adm. Christopher Grady, who currently serves as the military’s No. 2 officer as Joint Chiefs vice chairman, will simultaneously have to fill in as chairman starting Oct. 1 with the retirement of Gen. Mark Milley if his replacement, Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown, can’t get confirmed in the next two weeks. Brown is also subject to Tuberville’s hold.

    “We need C.Q. Brown to be confirmed as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Grady said Wednesday at the Air and Space Forces Association conference.

    For younger officers who are stuck in limbo by the holds, “the fact that folks can’t plan for their moves or get their kids in school” is what is hurting them, Grady said. “There is a cumulative cost to this and we need to be very attuned to that.”

    In the last few years, there’s been a slew of political orders that have had a direct impact on the military. There was former President Donald Trump’s order that transgender personnel could not serve, and then the restoration of that service under the Biden administration, the mandate for COVID-19 vaccines and now the response to new state laws restricting access to abortion.

    “Some of the orders that are given by civilians to the military, that the military then has to carry out, can make the military seem political,” said Mark Harkins, a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University. “If whatever the civilian control has asked them to do, if that order, that rule that they’re following is against what you believe, then you’re going to say they’re political.”

    Tuberville announced the holds late last year after the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs that abortion limits should be left to the states, and the Biden administration’s civilian Pentagon head, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, responded by instituting a policy that Tuberville says violates federal law.

    Under the policy, service members, who often do not get a say in where they are assigned, are reimbursed for travel costs incurred for seeking an abortion or other reproductive care if they are serving in a state that has outlawed those services.

    Tuberville says the policy violates a federal law that says Defense Department funds may not be used for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest or where the life of the mother is threatened.

    So in March, Tuberville exercised a privilege that allows any single senator to place a hold on a nomination, except he put a blanket hold on all military general officer nominations and said he would not lift it until the policy is rescinded.

    Putting the hold on service members rather than on civilian nominees has a larger impact because civilian posts often go unfilled for months and a career civilian fills in, said Larry Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

    It’s not the first time general officer promotions have been frozen by a single senator. In July 2020, Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois put a blanket hold on military promotions in response to reports that Trump was interfering with the promotion of Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who was a witness in the former president’s impeachment inquiry. Duckworth dropped the hold two weeks later after learning Vindman had been selected for promotion. Vindman, however, retired, citing a “campaign of bullying, intimidation and retaliation” after multiple delays to his promotion convinced him there was not a viable future for him in the military.

    Six months into Tuberville’s hold, 315 military officers are now affected, and the impact cuts deeper in some services. In the small and still growing U.S. Space Force, at least eight general officers’ nominations are on hold — but that’s one third of all of its 25 senior officers. In the Marine Corps, at least 18 general officers among the Corps cadre of 88 can’t move to their new commands, or are being stretched too thin by having to cover the duties of their current job while also being responsible for the vacancy they cannot officially fill.

    “It’s disruptive,” said Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of Space Force operations. “The people that we want in the jobs, that we know they’re going to be value-added in, we’re not in a position to put them there.”

    However the head of Army forces in the Pacific, Gen. Charles Flynn, told reporters this week the holds were not affecting his operations. “I don’t see any practical challenges that it’s creating in the region,” Flynn said, according to a transcript provided by the Army.

    Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said while military officers are concerned about the holds and their use as a “political cudgel,” it is inappropriate for them to speak out.

    “It’s not just the president who provides civilian control of the military; constitutionally, Congress also serves that function. We wouldn’t want our military criticizing the president’s partisan political acts, so we shouldn’t want them doing it about Congress, either,” Schake said.

    On Thursday, Tuberville watched as another officer, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, who would become the first female chief of naval operations, testified about the impact of the holds during her confirmation hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee.

    Franchetti said if the holds are lifted, it will take three to four months to get the three-star general officers in place, but it will take years to recover from the impact the promotion delays are having on lower-level officers.

    That’s because as each officer is promoted, it creates an opportunity for a more junior officer to rise. The military is capped at the numbers of personnel it can have at each rank, so keeping a colonel from being promoted to a general means there are younger lieutenant colonels who can’t get promoted to colonel. That affects pay, retirement, lifestyle and future assignments — and in some fields where the private sector will pay more, it becomes harder to convince those highly trained young leaders to stay.

    And at one point when asked why she hadn’t been briefed on a specific submarine funding study, Franchetti noted the job strains the holds are creating, since she is doing the job both of vice chief of naval operations and acting chief of the service.

    “I think it’s just my own bandwidth capacity right now,” she said.

    Tuberville made no mention of the vote delays, instead saying he looked forward to Franchetti’s service as chief. And he told her to keep the military out of politics and “leave it to us politicians.”

    Kelly, a career fighter pilot whose retirement has deferred because of the holds, had sharp words about their impact.

    “The situation is not instilling confidence in our allies, and it is instilling confidence in our adversaries,” Kelly said. In the nation’s capital, “that popping sound you hear is not stray gunfire. It’s champagne corks in the Chinese Embassy bouncing off the walls.”

    ___

    Lita C. Baldor contributed from Washington.

    Source link

  • The Senate’s bipartisan approach to government funding is putting pressure on a divided House

    The Senate’s bipartisan approach to government funding is putting pressure on a divided House

    WASHINGTON — On one side of the Capitol, two senators have steered the debate over government funding mostly clear of partisan fights, creating a path for bills to pass with bipartisan momentum.

    Steps away, on the House side of the building, things couldn’t be more different.

    House Republicans, trying to win support from the far-right wing of the party, have loaded up their government funding packages with spending cuts and conservative policy priorities. Democrats have responded with ire, branding their GOP counterparts as extreme and bigoted, and are withdrawing support for the legislation.

    The contrary approaches are not unusual for such fights in Congress. But the differences are especially stark this time, creating a gulf between the chambers that could prove difficult to bridge. The dynamic threatens to plunge the United States into yet another damaging government shutdown, potentially as soon as the end of September when last year’s funding expires.

    Leaders in both chambers are trying to project strength as they enter negotiations that will determine the fate of billions of dollars in government programs, military aid for Ukraine and emergency disaster recovery funds.

    The Senate strategy is being led by the first female duo to hold the top leadership spots on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Susan Collins, R-Maine.

    The two have worked for months to pull off a feat not seen in Congress in five years, crafting 12 separate funding bills through the so-called regular order process, which involves crafting legislation in open committee hearings. The goal is to avoid an outcome that rank-and-file lawmakers in both parties loathe: being forced to fund the government at year’s end with a sprawling omnibus package, nearly sight unseen, after it emerges from closed-door negotiations.

    “I heard from many members at the end of last year, Republicans and Democrats, that they don’t want this dysfunction,” Murray told The Associated Press. “They want the appropriations bill not to be some big conglomerate at the end of the year that nobody knows what’s in it.”

    As Murray took the helm of the committee earlier this year, she and Collins began to build on their decades-old working relationship. Murray also met with the top Democrats and Republicans on each subcommittee and urged them to shield funding legislation from “poison pill” policy riders that would drive away the members of one party or the other.

    Their effort was at first met with skepticism, Murray said. But as the Senate grinds toward votes on their funding bills, they have won plaudits from leadership in both parties.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the appropriations work “a shining example of how things should work in Washington.” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has been supportive as well, saying Murray and Collins “have taken us in the right direction.”

    Collins said she has urged her Republican colleagues, who are in the minority, to “understand that if they really believe in regular order, we need to proceed with these bills and start the amendment process and conclude the bills and send them on their way to the House.”

    So far, Senate appropriations bills have made it out of the committee on large bipartisan votes, and the Senate this past week took a step toward a final vote on the first package of three spending bills with a 91-7 vote.

    Thanks to the filibuster that forces a 60-vote threshold for passage of most legislation, the Senate has no choice but to work on a bipartisan basis when it comes to most major legislation. But the chamber is hardly immune to political brinkmanship. A few GOP senators allied with conservatives in the House are working to slow the Senate’s work on appropriations bills. The delay could give the House more time to advance its own, hard-line approach.

    Still, the Senate’s coordination on the bills only intensifies the pressure on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who abandoned a plan to pass a defense funding bill — one of the 12 appropriations bills, and usually one of the least controversial — after members of the House Freedom Caucus refused to support it advancing to a vote on the House floor.

    “You’re stronger when you have one House and you can advocate for the policies you want and you’ve passed that,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said Wednesday, shortly after he was forced to call off the vote.

    The top lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee, Reps. Kay Granger of Texas, R-Texas, and Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., have had a good working relationship, but their bills are shaped by larger forces in the House. That means all eyes are on McCarthy as he tries to win support from the conservative wing of his own conference.

    To win the speaker’s gavel, McCarthy committed to returning the appropriations process to regular order. He reiterated that approach this week saying, “The American public wins in this — that they actually see the bills.”

    But with a thin majority and a shaky hold on his leadership position, McCarthy has allowed House Republicans to craft packages that cut below the agreement he struck in May with President Joe Biden to suspend the nation’s borrowing limit. They have also loaded the House’s appropriations bills with conservative policy wins, ensuring Democratic opposition.

    McCarthy has also ratcheted up the political divide in the House by directing an impeachment inquiry into Biden — a move that the right-wing of his conference has been demanding for months.

    “House Republicans have made clear that they are determined to shut down the government and try to jam their extreme right-wing ideology down the throats of the American people,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

    Republican appropriators have used their funding bills to engage in charged partisan fights, teeing up cuts to programs that benefit LGBTQ people, funding for the Department of Defense’s policy of facilitating travel for service members to receive abortions and defunding offices and positions that Republicans see as liberal.

    Committee hearings often grew tense over the summer as Democrats accused Republicans of betraying future generations by cutting money for environmental protections and climate programs. Republicans criticized current spending levels as a betrayal of their children and grandchildren because it imperils the future of Social Security and Medicare.

    Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a senior Republican, dismissed the House ruckus as “the chaos of democracy.”

    “We’re actually having a real legislative debate over here, a pretty robust discussion and some pretty hardball politics,” he said.

    But a government shutdown is approaching rapidly, leaving House Republicans little time to form an appropriations plan or pass a short-term measure that would give them more time to negotiate a funding deal.

    McCarthy told a closed-door House GOP meeting on Thursday that he would keep the House in session longer than scheduled if necessary, according to lawmakers in attendance.

    Exiting the meeting, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said McCarthy’s message was stark: “We will be losers if we get a shutdown.”

    Source link

  • Scientists call fraud on supposed extraterrestrials presented to Mexican Congress

    Scientists call fraud on supposed extraterrestrials presented to Mexican Congress

    MEXICO CITY — Supposed aliens landed in Mexico’s Congress but there were no saucer-shaped UFOs hovering over the historic building or bright green invaders like those seen in Hollywood films.

    The specter of little green men visited Mexico City as lawmakers heard testimony Tuesday from individuals suggesting the possibility that extraterrestrials might exist. The researchers hailed from Mexico, the United States, Japan and Brazil.

    The session, unprecedented in the Mexican Congress, took place two months after a similar one before the U.S. Congress in which a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer claimed his country has probably been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s.

    Mexican journalist José Jaime Maussan presented two boxes with supposed mummies found in Peru, which he and others consider “non-human beings that are not part of our terrestrial evolution.”

    The shriveled bodies with shrunken, warped heads left those in the chamber aghast and quickly kicked up a social media fervor.

    “It’s the queen of all evidence,” Maussan claimed. “That is, if the DNA is showing us that they are non-human beings and that there is nothing that looks like this in the world, we should take it as such.”

    But he warned that he didn’t want to refer to them as “extraterrestrials” just yet.

    The apparently desiccated bodies date back to 2017 and were found deep underground in the sandy Peruvian coastal desert of Nazca. The area is known for gigantic enigmatic figures scraped into the earth and seen only from a birds-eye-view. Most attribute the Nazca Lines to ancient indigenous communities, but the formations have captured the imaginations of many.

    In 2017, Maussan made similar claims in Peru, and a report by the country’s prosecutor’s office found that the bodies were actually “recently manufactured dolls, which have been covered with a mixture of paper and synthetic glue to simulate the presence of skin.”

    The report added that the figures were almost certainly human-made and that “they are not the remains of ancestral aliens that they have tried to present”. The bodies were not publicly unveiled at the time, so it is unclear if they are the same as those presented to Mexico’s congress.

    On Wednesday, Julieta Fierro, researcher at the Institute of Astronomy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, was among those to express skepticism, saying that many details about the figures “made no sense.”

    Fierro added that the researchers’ claims that her university endorsed their supposed discovery were false, and noted that scientists would need more advanced technology than the X-rays they claimed to use to determine if the allegedly calcified bodies were “non-human”.

    “Maussan has done many things. He says he has talked to the Virgin of Guadalupe,” she said. “He told me extraterrestrials do not talk to me like they talk to him because I don’t believe in them.”

    The scientist added that it seemed strange that they extracted what would surely be a “treasure of the nation” from Peru without inviting the Peruvian ambassador.

    Congressman Sergio Gutiérrez Luna of the ruling Morena party, made it clear that Congress has not taken a position on the theses put forward during the more than three-hour session.

    Believing or not was up to each member of the legislative body, but those who testified had to swear an oath to tell the truth.

    Gutiérrez Luna stressed the importance of listening to “all voices, all opinions” and said it was positive that there was a transparent dialogue on the issue of extraterrestrials.

    In the U.S. in July, retired Maj. David Grusch alleged that the U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects. The Pentagon has denied his claims.

    Grusch’s highly anticipated testimony before a House Oversight subcommittee was the U.S. Congress’ latest foray into the world of UAPs — or “unidentified aerial phenomena,” which is the official term the U.S. government uses instead of UFOs.

    Democrats and Republicans in recent years have pushed for more research as a national security matter due to concerns that sightings observed by pilots may be tied to U.S. adversaries.

    Source link