MOSCOW: Five women were shot dead in an apparent radical militant attack on an Orthodox church in the North Caucasus region of Dagestan on Sunday, as Daesh claimed responsibility for the assault.
An unidentified gunman fired at worshippers at the church in the town of Kizlyar in the mainly Muslim region, local press reports said.
The regional internal affairs ministry said in a statement that the assailant used a hunting rifle, and that four women were killed on the spot, while the attacker was “eliminated.”
A fifth woman died of her injuries in hospital, health ministry spokeswoman Zalina Mourtazalieva told TASS news agency.
Two Russian police officers were injured in the attack.
According to a local official the assailant was a local man in his early twenties, the Interfax news agency reported.
The Russian RBK daily quoted an Orthodox priest saying the attacker had opened fire on churchgoers following an afternoon service.
“We had finished the mass and were beginning to leave the church. A bearded man ran toward the church shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (’God is greatest’) and killed four people,” Father Pavel told RBK.
“He was carrying a rifle and a knife,” he added.
Daesh claimed responsibility for the attack.
“A soldier of Islam, Khalil Daghestani, attacked” a church in the town of Kizlyar in Dagestan,” Daesh said via the Telegram messaging app.
“He targeted them with his gun, killing five of them and wounding four others,” it added.
A spokesman for Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill strongly condemned the attack, branding it a “monstrous crime” aimed at “provoking a confrontation between Orthodox Christians and Muslims” in the North Caucasus.
Images published by the local press showed the body of a bearded man dressed in military fatigues who was identified as the assailant.
Next to his corpse lay two of his victims, covered in a white shroud.
Dagestan, bordering Chechnya, is one of the poorest and most unstable regions of Russia. Rebels from the region, which lies immediately east of Chechnya, are known to have traveled to Syria to join Daesh.
In 2015, Daesh declared it had established a “franchise” in the North Caucasus.
It has claimed a number of attacks on police in Dagestan in the last couple of years that have involved guns and explosives, as local security forces battle a simmering extremist insurgency.
Sunday’s shooting comes exactly one month before the March 18 presidential election that Vladimir Putin is almost guaranteed to win.
Five women killed in Dagestan church shooting claimed by Daesh
Five women killed in Dagestan church shooting claimed by Daesh
A bridge collapse causes a train to derail in Russia, killing at least 7 people, officials say
- Moscow Railways blamed the bridge collapse on “illegal interference”
- The bridge is in Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine
MOSCOW: A passenger train derailed in western Russia late Saturday after a bridge collapsed because of what local officials described as “illegal interference,” killing at least seven people and injuring 30.
The bridge in Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, was damaged “as a result of illegal interference in transport operations,” Moscow Railways said in a statement, without elaborating.
Russia’s federal road transportation agency, Rosavtodor, said the destroyed bridge passed above the railway tracks where the train was traveling.
Photos posted by government agencies from the scene appeared to show passenger cars from the train ripped apart and lying amid fallen concrete from the collapsed bridge. Other footage on social media appeared to be taken from inside other vehicles that narrowly avoided driving onto the bridge before it collapsed.
Bryansk regional Gov. Alexander Bogomaz said emergency services and government officials were working at the scene. He said seven people died and two children were among the 30 injured.
“Everything is being done to provide all necessary assistance to the victims,” he said. Russian officials have not said who is responsible for Saturday’s incident, but in the past some officials have accused pro-Ukrainian saboteurs of attacking Russia’s railway infrastructure. The details surrounding such incidents, however, are limited and cannot be independently verified.
Ukrainian media outlets reported in December 2023 that Kyiv’s top spy agency had successfully carried out two explosions on a railroad line in Siberia that serves as a key conduit for trade between Russia and China. Ukraine’s security services did not comment on the reports.
Russian Railways confirmed one of the explosions described by Ukrainian media, but did not say what had caused it. There was no comment from Russian authorities on a second explosion.
UK faces choice next week between health and other spending, IFS think tank warns
- The non-partisan IFS said this spending review could prove to be “one of the most significant domestic policy events” for the current Labour government
LONDON: British finance minister Rachel Reeves’ key decision in next week’s multi-year spending review will be how much to spend on health care versus other public services, the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank said on Sunday.
Reeves is due to set out day-to-day spending limits for other government departments on June 11 which will run through to the end of March 2029 — almost until the end of the Labour government’s expected term in office.
Britain has held periodic government spending reviews since 1998, but this is the first since 2015 to cover multiple years, other than one in 2021 focused on the COVID pandemic.
The non-partisan IFS said this spending review could prove to be “one of the most significant domestic policy events” for the current Labour government.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s announcement in February that defense spending would reach 2.5 percent of national income by 2027 had already used the room for further growth in public investment created in Reeves’ October budget, it said.
“Simultaneously prioritising additional investments in public services, net zero and growth-friendly areas ... will be impossible,” said Bee Boileau, a research economist at the IFS.
Non-investment public spending is intended to rise by 1.2 percent a year on top of inflation between 2026-27 and 2028-29, according to budget plans which Reeves set out in October — half the pace of spending growth in the current and previous financial year.
The IFS sees no scope for this to be topped up, as Reeves’ budget rules leave almost no room for extra borrowing and tax rises are now limited to her annual budget statement.
This forces Reeves and Starmer to choose between the demands of the public health care system — plagued by long waiting times and a slump in productivity since the COVID-19 pandemic — and other stretched areas.
In past spending reviews, annual health care spending has typically risen 2 percentage points faster than total spending.
If that happened this time — equivalent to an annual increase of 3.4 percent — spending in other departments would have to fall by 1 percent a year in real terms, the IFS forecast.
Raising health care spending at roughly the same pace as other areas — a 1.2 percent rise — would only just keep pace with an aging population and not allow any reversal of recent years’ deterioration in service quality, the IFS said.
Spending cuts could be achieved by scaling back services provided by the state, reducing public-sector employment or real-terms cuts in public-sector pay, it added.
But it warned the government needed to be specific about how it planned to make cuts, or risk financial markets losing confidence in its ability to keep borrowing under control.
The review does not cover spending on pensions or other benefits, which the government is tackling separately.
Britain plans at least six new weapons factories in defense review
- The 1.5 billion-pound ($2.0 billion) investment will be included in the Strategic Defense Review, a 10-year plan for military equipment and services
MANCHESTER, England: Britain will build at least six new factories producing weapons and explosives as part of a major review of its defense capabilities, the government said on Saturday.
The 1.5 billion-pound ($2.0 billion) investment will be included in the Strategic Defense Review, a 10-year plan for military equipment and services. The SDR is expected to be published on Monday.
The Ministry of Defense added that it planned to procure up to 7,000 long-range weapons built in Britain. Together, the measures announced on Saturday will create around 1,800 jobs, the MoD said.
“The hard-fought lessons from (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine show a military is only as strong as the industry that stands behind them,” Defense Secretary John Healey said in a statement.
“We are strengthening the UK’s industrial base to better deter our adversaries and make the UK secure at home and strong abroad.”
The extra investment will mean Britain will spend around 6 billion pounds on munitions in the current parliament, the MoD said.
Earlier on Saturday, the MoD said it would spend an extra 1.5 billion pounds to tackle the poor state of housing for the country’s armed forces.
Paris Holocaust memorial, synagogues hit with paint
- “I am deeply disgusted by these heinous acts targeting the Jewish community,” Retailleau said
- No arrests have been made
PARIS: France’s Holocaust memorial, two synagogues and a restaurant in central Paris were vandalized with green paint overnight, according to police sources on Saturday, prompting condemnation from government and city officials.
“I am deeply disgusted by these heinous acts targeting the Jewish community,” French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said on X.
No arrests have been made.
Retailleau last week called for “visible and dissuasive” security measures at Jewish-linked sites amid concerns over possible anti-Semitic acts.
In a separate message seen by AFP, the interior minister on Friday had again ordered heightened surveillance ahead of the upcoming Jewish Shavuot holiday.
The French Jewish community, one of the largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials since the Gaza war erupted on October 7, 2023.
“Anti-Semitic acts account for more than 60 percent of anti-religious acts, and the Jewish community is particularly vulnerable,” Retailleau said in the message seen by AFP.
Paris authorities would be lodging a complaint over the paint incident, said the city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo.
“I condemn these acts of intimidation in the strongest possible terms. Anti-Semitism has no place in our city or in our Republic,” she said.
In May 2024, red hand graffiti was painted beneath the wall at the memorial in central Paris honoring individuals who saved Jews from persecution during the 1940-44 Nazi occupation of France.
US judge prevents Trump from invalidating 5,000 Venezuelans’ legal documents
- The US Supreme Court on May 19 lifted an earlier order Chen issued
- TPS is available to people whose home country has experienced a natural disaster
NEW YORK: A federal judge prevented the Trump administration from invalidating work permits and other documents granting lawful status to about 5,000 Venezuelans, a subset of the nearly 350,000 whose temporary legal protections the US Supreme Court last week allowed to be terminated.
US District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco in a Friday night ruling concluded that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem likely exceeded her authority when she in February invalidated those documents while more broadly ending the temporary protected status granted to the Venezuelans.
The US Supreme Court on May 19 lifted an earlier order Chen issued that prevented the administration as part of President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda from terminating deportation protection conferred to Venezuelans under the Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, program.
But the high court stated specifically it was not preventing any Venezuelans from still challenging Noem’s related decision to invalidate documents they were issued pursuant to that program that allowed them to work and live in the United States.
Such documents were issued after the US Department of Homeland Security in the final days of Democratic President Joe Biden’s tenure extended the TPS program for the Venezuelans by 18 months to October 2026, an action Noem then moved to reverse.
TPS is available to people whose home country has experienced a natural disaster, armed conflict or other extraordinary event.
Lawyers for several Venezuelans and the advocacy group National TPS Alliance asked Chen to recognize the continuing validity of those documents, saying without them thousands of migrants could lose their jobs or be deported.
Chen in siding with them said nothing in the statute that authorized the Temporary Protected Status program allowed Noem to invalidate the documents.
Chen, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, noted the administration estimated only about 5,000 of the 350,000 Venezuelans held such documents. “This smaller number cuts against any contention that the continued presence of these TPS holders who were granted TPS-related documents by the Secretary would be a toll on the national or local economies or a threat to national security,” Chen wrote.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
Chen ruled hours after the US Supreme Court in a different case allowed Trump’s administration to end the temporary immigration “parole” granted to 532,000 Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants under a different Biden-era program.
