SOKOLKA, Poland: Polish forces fired tear gas and deployed water cannons against stone-throwing migrants trying to cross the Belarusian border on Tuesday, sparking accusations from Belarus that Poland was trying to escalate the crisis.
Polish border guards estimate up to 4,000 migrants are currently camped out along the border between Poland and Belarus in increasingly dire conditions and freezing temperatures.
Western powers accuse Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko of orchestrating the crisis, possibly with the backing of Russia, by luring migrants to the border to sow division in the EU — claims denied by Minsk and Moscow.
A standoff near the Bruzgi-Kuznica border crossing on the EU’s eastern frontier began last week when hundreds of migrants gathered there.
“Migrants attacked our soldiers and officers with rocks and are trying to destroy the fence and cross into Poland,” Poland’s defense ministry said on Tuesday, tweeting a video showing apparent clashes at the border.
“Our forces used tear gas to quell the migrants’ aggression.”
A police officer, a border guard and a soldier were injured in the clashes, Polish officials said, with police saying stun grenades and tear gas canisters had also been thrown at officers.
Belarusian foreign ministry spokesman Anataoly Glaz accused Poland of exacerbating the problem.
“The goal of the Polish side is completely understandable — it needs to escalate the situation even more, to stifle any progress in resolving the situation,” he said.
“We see today from the Polish side direct provocations and inhumane treatment of the disadvantaged,” he said.
Russia also condemned Poland’s use of tear gas and water cannons against the migrants, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov calling it “absolutely unacceptable.”
Lukashenko, who has crushed opposition to his rule over nearly three decades in power, said on Tuesday that he wanted to avoid a “heated confrontation” at the border.
“The main thing now is to protect our country and our people, and not to allow clashes,” he told a government meeting, according to state news agency Belta.
The Belarusian leader discussed the crisis with Germany’s Angela Merkel on Monday, his first phone call with a Western leader since he suppressed mass protests against his rule last year.
Merkel’s office said the pair discussed bringing humanitarian aid to the migrants, whose number includes many young children.
Lukashenko said he and Merkel agreed the standoff should be defused.
“We were of the united opinion that nobody needs escalation — not the EU, or Belarus,” he said.
But he said he had “differing” views with Merkel on how the migrants got to Belarus, with the West saying Minsk had brought them there as revenge for sanctions.
EU foreign ministers on Monday agreed that existing sanctions targeting Lukashenko’s regime will be expanded to include individuals or companies found to have encouraged border crossings.
The US has also vowed to expand its sanctions on Belarus.
Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who lives in exile in Lithuania, welcomed the sanctions saying Lukashenko had “crossed all the red lines already.”
Iraq has said it will start voluntary repatriations of its citizens from Belarus this week.
The Iraqi embassy in Moscow said it would fly out around 200 people in a flight on Thursday.
But many migrants — including those AFP has spoken to — have vowed not to go back.
The EU meanwhile has been asking for the flights to Belarus to stop.
Turkish Airlines has now banned Iraqis, Syrians and Yemenis from flying to Belarus via Turkey and private Syrian carrier Cham Wings Airlines has said it will halt flights to Minsk.
Belarus’s state-run airline Belavia has also said that Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis and Afghans are banned from incoming flights from the United Arab Emirates at Dubai’s request.
At least 11 migrants have died on both sides since the influx started in the summer, according to aid groups.
One of them, a 19-year-old Syrian man from the war-torn city of Homs, was laid to rest on Monday in a cemetery near the border belonging to Poland’s tiny ethnic Muslim community.
Polish forces fire tear gas at migrants on Belarus border
https://arab.news/4dpdx
Polish forces fire tear gas at migrants on Belarus border
- Polish border guards estimate up to 4,000 migrants are currently camped out along the border
- Western powers accuse Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko of orchestrating the crisis
Seven dead in small plane crash in western Mexico
- The aircraft, a Cessna 207, was flying from La Parota in the neighboring state of Michoacan
The aircraft, a Cessna 207, was flying from La Parota in the neighboring state of Michoacan.
Jalisco Civil Protection said via its social media that the crash site was in an area that was difficult to access.
Initial authorities on the scene “reported a preliminary count of seven people dead,” who haven’t been identified yet, according to the agency.
“A fire was extinguished and risk mitigation was carried out to prevent possible additional damage,” it added.
Authorities said they were awaiting the arrival of forensic investigators to remove the bodies and rule out the presence of additional victims.
Canada’s Trudeau losing support within his party: MPs
- Ottawa area MP Chandra Arya: Dozens of Liberal MPs want the prime minister to go
- Trudeau has huddled with advisers to contemplate his future ahead of elections set for October 2025
OTTAWA: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s support within his own party appeared to falter further on Sunday, as former loyalists said growing numbers of Liberal caucus members wanted the premier to resign.
Trudeau has suffered a series of blows in recent days, spurred by the surprise resignation of Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who clashed with her boss over incoming US president Donald Trump’s threats to impose 25 percent tariffs on Canadian imports.
Freeland’s exit, after nearly a decade at Trudeau’s side, marked the first open dissent against the prime minister from within his cabinet and has emboldened critics.
Ottawa area MP Chandra Arya told the public broadcaster CBC on Sunday that dozens of Liberal MPs wanted Trudeau to go.
Arya was interviewed a day after Liberal MPs from the province of Ontario held a meeting that addressed Trudeau’s future.
Multiple outlets, including the CBC and Toronto Star, reported that more than 50 of the 75 Ontario Liberals in parliament declared in Saturday’s meeting that they no longer supported Trudeau.
Asked about those reports, Arya said a “majority of the caucus thinks it is time for the prime minister to step aside.”
Anthony Housefather, a Liberal member of parliament from the province of Quebec, told the CBC on Sunday that “the prime minister needs to go.”
“We’re in an impossible situation if he stays,” Housefather said, arguing the party would be hammered in an election that amounted to a referendum on Trudeau’s leadership.
Trudeau has huddled with advisers to contemplate his future ahead of elections set for October 2025 but expected much sooner. He changed a third of his cabinet on Friday.
Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the small leftist New Democratic Party in parliament, declared Friday that he would join with other opposition parties to topple Trudeau’s minority government early next year.
The NDP had previously opposed a series of non-confidence votes brought by the opposition Conservatives.
A change in the party’s position would almost certainly bring down Trudeau’s government if another non-confidence vote is held.
Trudeau swept to power in 2015 and led the Liberals to two more ballot box victories in 2019 and 2021.
But he now trails his main rival, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, by 20 points in public opinion polls.
Trump names former staffer Katie Miller to Musk-led DOGE panel
- Katie Miller will soon be joining DOGE! She has been a loyal supporter of mine for many years, and will bring her professional experience to Government Efficiency, Trump posts
WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday named Katie Miller, who served in Trump’s first administration and is the wife of his incoming deputy chief of staff, as one of the first members of an advisory board to be led by billionaire allies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy that aims to drastically slash government spending, federal regulations and the federal workforce.
Miller, wife of Trump’s designated homeland security adviser Stephen Miller, will join Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an informal advisory body that Trump has said will enable his administration to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.”
“Katie Miller will soon be joining DOGE! She has been a loyal supporter of mine for many years, and will bring her professional experience to Government Efficiency,” Trump posted in a message on his social media platform Truth Social.
Musk and Ramaswamy recently revealed plans to wipe out scores of federal regulations crafted by what they say is an anti-democratic, unaccountable bureaucracy, but have yet to announce members of the DOGE team. Musk has said he wants to slash the number of federal agencies from over 400 to 99.
Katie Miller had served in the first Trump adminstration as deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security and as press secretary for former Vice President Mike Pence.
She is currently a spokesperson for the transition team for Trump’s designated Health and Human Services secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr.
Panama rejects Trump’s threat to take control of Canal
- Trump also complained of China’s growing influence around the canal, a worrying trend for American interests as US businesses depend on the channel to move goods between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans
PANAMA CITY: Panama’s president Jose Raul Mulino on Sunday dismissed recent threats made by US President-elect Donald Trump to retake control of the Panama Canal over complaints of “unfair” treatment of American ships.
“Every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent areas belongs to Panama and will continue belonging to Panama,” Mulino said in a video posted to X.
Mulino’s public comments, though never mentioning Trump by name, come a day after the president-elect complained about the canal on his Truth Social platform.
“Our Navy and Commerce have been treated in a very unfair and injudicious way. The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous,” he said.
Trump also complained of China’s growing influence around the canal, a worrying trend for American interests as US businesses depend on the channel to move goods between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
“It was solely for Panama to manage, not China, or anyone else,” Trump said. “We would and will NEVER let it fall into the wrong hands!“
The Panama Canal, which was completed by the United States in 1914, was returned to the Central American country under a 1977 deal signed by Democratic president Jimmy Carter.
Panama took full control in 1999.
Trump said that if Panama could not ensure “the secure, efficient and reliable operation” of the channel, “then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question.”
Mulino rejected Trump’s claims in his video message, though he also said he hopes to have “a good and respectful relationship” with the incoming administration.
“The canal has no direct or indirect control from China, nor the European Union, nor the United States or any other power,” Mulino said. “As a Panamanian, I reject any manifestation that misrepresents this reality.”
Later on Sunday, Trump responded to Mulino’s dismissal, writing on Truth Social: “We’ll see about that!“
Musk, president? Trump says ‘not happening’
- Trump: “He wasn’t born in this country”
“He’s not gonna be president, that I can tell you,” Trump told a Republican conference in Phoenix, Arizona.
“You know why he can’t be? He wasn’t born in this country,” Trump said of the Tesla and SpaceX boss, who was born in South Africa.
The US Constitution requires that a president be a natural-born US citizen.
Trump was responding to criticism, particularly from the Democratic camp, portraying the tech billionaire and world’s richest person as “President Musk” for the outsized role he is playing in the incoming administration.
As per ceding the presidency to Musk, Trump also assured the crowd: “No, no that’s not happening.”
The influence of Musk, who will serve as Trump’s “efficiency czar,” has become a focus point for Democratic attacks, with questions raised over how an unelected citizen can wield so much power.
And there is even growing anger among Republicans after Musk trashed a government funding proposal this week in a blizzard of posts — many of them wildly inaccurate — to his more than 200 million followers on his social media platform X.
Alongside Trump, Musk ultimately helped pressure Republicans to renege on a funding bill they had painstakingly agreed upon with Democrats, pushing the United States to the brink of budgetary paralysis that would have resulted in a government shutdown just days before Christmas.
Congress ultimately reached an agreement overnight Friday to Saturday, avoiding massive halts to government services.
