LESBOS ISLAND, Greece: Greece sent a navy ship to the island of Lesbos Wednesday to house hundreds of migrants who landed on the island in recent days, part of the ongoing surge from Turkey, officials said.
A Greek defense ministry source said the migrants would stay on the transport ship until a new facility to accommodate them had been created on the mainland.
Some 500 people, many of them families with small children, have been stranded at the harbor since arriving from Turkey over the weekend.
Although the Greek vessel arrived at the port of Mytilene Wednesday morning, it was not until 4:00 p.m. (1600 GMT) that the first 15 migrants boarded, said an AFP photographer at the scene.
But the atmosphere at the harbor was tense as the port police and security forces tried to stop two Greek photographers and a German journalist from taking pictures, pushing them back and trying to grab their cameras.
A Greek military source said the migrants would stay on the ship, which normally had a capacity of 400, “as long as necessary.”
Astrid Castelein of the UN refugee agency on Lesbos said they and other aid groups would provide matresses and bedding, as this type of vessel was not normally meant to house people.
On Tuesday evening hundreds of migrants, earlier arrivals on Lesbos who have already filed asylum requests, headed down to the harbor in a bid to get a berth on the ship as news of its impending spread.
After a few brief scuffles, police pushed them back.
In an effort to curb the influx, which began after Ankara said last week it would no longer stop refugees from entering Europe, Athens has suspended asylum procedures and reinforced its borders.
The weekend arrivals, who have not filed asylum requests, will get a place on the boat under this new regime, Fotis Garoufalias, president of the coast guard at Mytilene, told AFP.
“The instructions are to register them, without the possibility of making an asylum request, and to take them on to the boat for them to be transferred,” he said. That process should be finished by the end of the day, he added.
The new arrivals have exacerbated an already combustible situation on the Greek islands in the Adriatic, off the Turkish coast.
Lesbos hosts more than 19,000 refugees and migrants, crammed into squalid conditions around a camp built to house fewer than 3,000, a legacy of the 2015 migration crisis.
Fed up with shouldering the burden of Europe’s over-stretched asylum system, locals have protested against the presence of the migrants on their shores, saying they threaten safety, public health and a tourism-dependent economy.
That anger has spilled over into violence in recent days, with an extremist minority accused of leading attacks on newly arrived migrants, intimidating journalists and targeting aid workers, according to several groups based on Lesbos.
Locals are also angry about the government plans to build a new migrant center on Lesbos and clashed with riot police last week.
Greek navy ship on Lesbos houses latest island migrants
https://arab.news/gxf6z
Greek navy ship on Lesbos houses latest island migrants
- A Greek defense ministry source said the migrants would stay on the transport ship until a new facility to accommodate them had been created on the mainland
- Some 500 people, many of them families with small children, have been stranded at the harbor since arriving from Turkey over the weekend
Trump says he hopes Russia, Ukraine to strike ‘deal this week’
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said Sunday that he hoped for a Russia-Ukraine peace deal “this week,” promising “big business with the United States” for both combatants if a truce is signed.
“Hopefully Russia and Ukraine will make a deal this week,” Trump posted to his Truth Social network, without giving details of any progress in peace talks Washington has sought to push forward since he took over from Joe Biden in January.
Congo suspends Kabila’s political party
- Joseph Kabila, who was president for 18 years up to 2019, remains head of his People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy, the Interior Ministry said
KINSHASA: The Democratic Republic of Congo government said it suspended the political party of former President Joseph Kabila days after security services raided his properties.
“This decision follows the overt activism” of Kabila, who was president for 18 years up to 2019 and remains head of his People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy, PPRD, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
PPRD activities “are suspended across all the national territory,” the statement said.
There was no immediate reaction from the party.
Current leader President Felix Tshisekedi has accused Kabila of preparing “an insurrection” and backing an alliance that includes the M23 armed group that is fighting government forces in eastern DR Congo.
According to a spokesman for his family, Kabila, 53, left the country before the last presidential election in 2023.
But in early April, in a message relayed by his staff, he said he would return on an unspecified date because the country was “in peril.”
There are unconfirmed suggestions that he will arrive, or is already in, the eastern city of Goma.
The family spokesman said on Thursday that security services mounted raids on Kabila’s main property, a farm east of Kinshasa, and on a compound belonging to the family in the capital.
The Interior Ministry statement accused Kabila’s party of keeping “a guilty, or even complicit, silence” over “the Rwandan war of aggression.”
Kinshasa, UN experts, and several international powers have said M23 is backed by Rwanda, which denies the charge.
The armed group is at the center of a new surge in conflict in eastern DR Congo, having taken the key cities of Goma and Bukavu.
The DR Congo ministry statement said Kabila has maintained an “ambiguous attitude” on the M23 rebellion, which he “has never condemned.”
It criticized Kabila’s “deliberate choice” to enter the country through the city of Goma, under the “control of the enemy.”
A separate statement from the country’s Justice Ministry said the chief prosecutor had been asked to start legal action against Kabila for “his direction participation” in M23.
Exec linked to Bangkok building collapse arrested
BANGKOK: Thai authorities said they have arrested a Chinese executive at a company that was building a Bangkok skyscraper which collapsed in a major earthquake, leaving dozens dead.
The 30-story tower was reduced to an immense pile of rubble when a 7.7-magnitude quake struck neighboring Myanmar last month, killing 47 people at the construction site and leaving another 47 missing.
Justice Minister Tawee Sodsong told a news conference Saturday that a Thai court had issued arrest warrants for four individuals, including three Thai nationals, at China Railway No.10 for breaching the Foreign Business Act.
The Department of Special Investigation, which is under the justice ministry, said in a statement Saturday that one of the four had been arrested — a Chinese “company representative” who they named as Zhang.
China Railway No.10 was part of a joint venture with an Italian-Thai firm to build the State Audit Office tower before its collapse.
Zhang is listed as a 49-percent shareholder in the firm, while the three Thai citizens have a 51-percent stake in the company.
But Tawee told journalists that “we have evidence ... that the three Thais were holding shares for other foreign independents.”
The Foreign Business Act says that foreigners may hold no more than 49 percent of shares in a company.
Separately, Tawee said several investigations related to the collapse were ongoing, including over the possibility of bid rigging and the use of fake signatures of engineers in construction supervisor contracts.
Earlier this month Thai safety officials said testing of steel rebars — struts used to reinforce concrete — from the site has found that some of the metal used was substandard.
The skyscraper was the only major building in the capital to fall in the catastrophic March 28 earthquake that has killed more than 3,700 people in Thailand and neighboring Myanmar.
Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of breaching Easter truce
- The 30-hour truce had been meant to start Saturday to mark the religious holiday
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of keeping up its attacks on the front line
KRAMATORSK: Russia and Ukraine on Sunday accused each other of violating an Easter truce announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The 30-hour truce had been meant to start Saturday to mark the religious holiday, but Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of keeping up its attacks on the front line.
While Ukrainian troops told AFP that fighting had eased, Zelensky said Russian forces staged hundreds of shelling and drone assaults along the front line despite the surprise truce.
“The Ukrainian army is acting and will continue to act in an absolutely mirror image” of Russia,” he warned.
Zelensky also renewed a proposal for a 30-day truce.
Moscow said it had “repelled” assaults by Ukraine and accused Kyiv of launching hundreds of drones and shells, causing civilian casualties.
“Despite the announcement of the Easter truce, Ukrainian units at night made attempts to attack” Russia’s positions in the Donetsk region, its defense ministry added.
Russian troops had “strictly observed the ceasefire,” the defense ministry insisted.
Rescue services in the eastern town of Kostyantynivka said they had recovered the bodies of a man and a woman from the ruins of building hit the previous day by Russian shelling.
The Russian-appointed mayor of Gorlovka in occupied Donetsk, Ivan Prikhodko, said two civilians had been wounded there, without giving details.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and now occupies around 20 percent of the country.
Putin’s order to halt all combat over the Easter weekend came after months of efforts by US President Donald Trump to get the war rivals to agree to a ceasefire.
But on Friday, Trump threatened to withdraw from talks if no progress was made.
Ukrainian soldiers told AFP that they had noticed a lull in fighting.
A drone unit commander said that Russia’s activity had “significantly decreased both in Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv regions,” combat zones in the south and northeast where the unit is active.
“Several assaults were recorded, but those were solitary incidents involving small groups,” the commander told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Fewer guys (soldiers) will die today.”
Russian “artillery is not working. it is quiet compared to a regular day,” Sergiy, a junior lieutenant fighting in the Sumy border region, wrote to AFP in a message.
Ukrainian troops “are on the defensive,” he added. “If the enemy doesn’t move forward, they don’t shoot.”
AFP journalists monitoring in eastern Ukraine heard fewer explosions than usual and saw no smoke on the horizon.
Putin announced a truce from 6:00 p.m. (1500 GMT) Saturday to midnight Sunday Moscow time (2100 GMT), saying it was motivated by “humanitarian reasons.”
Zelensky responded that Ukraine was ready to follow suit and proposed extending the truce for 30 days to “give peace a chance.”
But he said Sunday that Russia “has not yet responded to this.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin had given no order to extend the truce.
In Kyiv, as Easter Sunday bells rang out, people doubted Russia’s good faith.
“They’ve already broken their promise,” said 38-year-old Olga Grachova, who works in marketing. “Unfortunately, we cannot trust Russia today.”
Natalia, a 41-year-old medic, said of Zelensky’s 30-day proposal: “Everything we offer, unfortunately, remains only our offers. Nobody responds to them.”
People in Moscow welcomed an Easter truce and hoped for more progress toward an end to the war.
“We dreamt of course that peace would come by Easter. Let it come soon,” said Svetlana, a 34-year-old housewife.
“I think that this awful thing will end at some point, but not soon,” said Irina Volkova, a 73-year-old pensioner.
“All is not going well for us in Ukraine,” she added. “People are dying, our guys are dying.”
Moscow said this weekend that it had now recovered 99.5 percent of its Kursk region, which Ukrainian troops occupied in a surprise offensive in August.
Syrian refugee says UK government has ‘broken her heart’ by blocking terminally ill mother’s visit
- Ola Al-Hamwi fled Syria with her husband, Mostafa Amonajid, in 2015 after the couple lost their baby in a bombing
LONDON: A Syrian refugee has said the British Home Office has “broken her heart” after it moved to block her terminally ill mother from traveling to the UK to spend her final days with the grandchildren she has never met, it was reported on Sunday.
Ola Al-Hamwi fled Syria with her husband, Mostafa Amonajid, in 2015 after the couple lost their baby in a bombing.
They were unable to take Al-Hamwi’s mother, Soaad Al-Shawa, with them when they escaped the conflict.
Now living in Glasgow with their three children, aged seven, five and one, Al-Hamwi and Amonajid were granted refugee status and applied to bring Al-Shawa, 57, to the UK under the refugee family reunion scheme — but their request was rejected, The Guardian newspaper reported.
Al-Shawa, who has only communicated with her grandchildren via video calls, was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer last year.
In November, doctors in Syria gave her about six months to live. A second application for family reunion was submitted following her diagnosis, but was again rejected by the Home Office.
The family appealed the decision, and in April a judge at the first-tier tribunal of the immigration court ruled in their favor, citing Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to family life.
The family were overjoyed by the decision.
“My mum really perked up when she heard the news and started to eat more,” said Al-Hamwi. “All she wants to do before she dies is to see us and the kids.”
Plans were swiftly made for Al-Shawa’s neighbors to help her travel to neighboring Jordan or Lebanon, where Amonajid would meet her and accompany her to the UK.
Because Al-Hamwi and Amonajid are refugees, they are unable to return to Syria themselves to be with her.
However, on April 10, the Home Office submitted a request for permission to appeal the judge’s ruling to a higher court — a process that can take an average of eight months.
The news has left the family devastated.
“There isn’t much time, if we can get her here we will provide everything for her. When the Home Office asked for permission to appeal against the decision of the judge who said my mum could come here they didn’t think about how they are breaking my heart,” Al-Hamwi said.
“My message to the Home Office is, ‘Please help my mum to see us before she dies.’ We haven’t told my mum that the Home Office has asked to appeal against the decision for her to come to the UK,” she added.
The family’s solicitor, Usman Aslam, said: “We could feel the family’s relief when they won the appeal, then their horror that the Home Office have sought permission to appeal. We immediately sought an expedition of their permission application.
He continued: “I have written to the Home Office directly expressing my outrage. Whilst I fully respect their right to seek permission to appeal, it is regrettable they have chosen this case of a dying woman. We are hoping that the Home Office will show compassion and allow her to spend what little time she has left with her family.”
A Home Office spokesperson told the Guardian: “It would be inappropriate to comment while legal proceedings are ongoing.”
