WASHINGTON: The United States, Britain and France on Sunday jointly dismissed Russian claims that Ukraine is preparing to use a dirty bomb and warned Moscow against using any pretext for escalating the conflict.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made the allegation about a possible dirty bomb attack in a round of telephone conversations with Western defense chiefs earlier Sunday.
“Our countries made clear that we all reject Russia’s transparently false allegations that Ukraine is preparing to use a dirty bomb on its own territory,” the US State Department said in a joint statement with the British and French governments.
“The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation,” the statement went on. “We further reject any pretext for escalation by Russia.”
A so-called dirty bomb is designed to contaminate a wide area with radioactive material, making it dangerous for civilians. It does not involve a nuclear explosion.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sharply denounced Moscow’s claims, calling the allegation a Russian ploy for just such an attack in Moscow’s eight-month-old war against its pro-Western neighbor. “The world should react as harshly as possible,” he said.
“If Russia calls and says that Ukraine is allegedly preparing something, it means one thing: Russia has already prepared all this,” Zelensky said in a video address on social media.
“Even the very Russian threat of nuclear weapons — and even more so against our country, which has given up its nuclear arsenal... is a reason for both sanctions and for even greater strengthening of support for Ukraine,” said Zelensky.
Shoigu conducted a round of telephone consultations with counterparts from Britain, France and Turkey, all NATO members, after first speaking Friday with Austin.
In those calls, Shoigu conveyed “concerns about possible provocations by Ukraine with the use of a ‘dirty bomb,’” the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Shoigu and Austin spoke Sunday, in what the Pentagon said was a follow-up call requested by Russia to their call Friday.
“Secretary Austin rejected any pretext for Russian escalation and reaffirmed the value of continued communication amid Russia’s unlawful and unjustified war against Ukraine,” said a statement afterward from Pentagon press secretary Pat Ryder.
When Shoigu and Austin spoke on Friday, it was only their second call since Moscow sent troops to Ukraine on February 24.
Western powers see Russia’s ‘dirty bomb’ claim against Ukraine as pretext for escalation
https://arab.news/gstyk
Western powers see Russia’s ‘dirty bomb’ claim against Ukraine as pretext for escalation
- A so-called dirty bomb, which does not involve a nuclear explosion, is designed to contaminate a wide area with radioactive material
- Ukraine sharply denounced Moscow’s claims, calling the allegation a Russian ploy for just such an attack in Moscow’s eight-month-old war
Pro-Palestinian protesters, police clash in Basel during Eurovision
BASEL: Pro-Palestinian demonstrators clashed with riot police in Basel as the Swiss city hosted the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday, according to AFP journalists at the scene.
Protesters demonstrating against Israel’s participation in the contest while it ramps up its war in Gaza clashed briefly with police in the center of the city shortly before Israel’s Eurovision entrant Yuval Raphael took to the stage at the St. Jakobshalle venue across town.
Civilians expelled to Rwanda by fighters
- UNHCR: ‘Returns of refugees to countries of origin must be voluntary’
GOMA: Armed fighters from the M23 group, which has taken control of eastern DR Congo’s key major town of Goma, on Saturday set about expelling thousands of people they say are illegals from Rwanda, witnesses said.
On Monday, the group’s military spokesman, Willy Ngoma, had presented to the media 181 men whom they referred to as “Rwandan subjects” illegally in the country at Goma’s main sports stadium.
All the men shown had ID papers from the DRC, which the M23 asserted were bogus.
An AFP reporter said the armed group had summarily burned the documents on the stadium pitch.
Several hundred women and children, relatives of those detained, joined them at the stadium aboard trucks chartered by the M23.
One of the men arrested, who gave his name only as Eric, had said on Monday that he was from Karenga, located in North Kivu, which is considered a stronghold of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR.
The FDLR is an armed group founded by former Rwandan Hutu leaders of the 1994 Tutsi genocide.
Early on Saturday, 360 people were loaded onto buses from Goma, Eujin Byun, said a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
The UNHCR stressed that “returns of refugees to their countries of origin must be safe, voluntary, and carried out with dignity, under international law.”
An AFP correspondent reported that the convoy crossed the border to Rubavu, in western Rwanda.
“We will do everything to reintegrate them into society, so that they have the same responsibilities and rights as other Rwandans,” said Prosper Mulindwa, mayor of Rubavu district.
The M23 and Kigali accuse Kinshasa of supporting the FDLR and have justified their offensive in eastern DRC by a need to neutralize that group.
Most of the families expelled by the M23 are from Karenga and had been prevented from returning there after the M23 took over Goma, according to security and humanitarian sources.
The sources said the families lived in a reception center for displaced persons in Sake, some 20 km from Goma.
In March, 20 suspected FDLR fighters, dressed in Congolese Armed Forces uniforms, were handed over to Rwandan authorities by the M23.
Kinshasa denounced the incident as a “crude fabrication” intended to discredit its army.
Gabon’s ousted President Bongo flies to Angola with wife and son
- The family’s release followed talks between Angolan President Joao Lourenco and Gabon’s new leader, Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema
LUANDA: Gabon’s former leader, Ali Bongo Ondimba, who was detained after being ousted in a 2023 coup, has been released and has gone to Angola with his family, the Angolan presidency said.
Bongo, whose family ruled Gabon for 55 years, had been under house arrest in the capital, Libreville, since being overthrown in August 2023.
His wife and son had also been in detention, accused of embezzling public funds.
A statement on the Angolan presidency’s Facebook page announcing the arrival of the Bongo family in the capital, Luanda, was accompanied by photographs showing the former leader being welcomed at an airport.
The “Bongo family has been released and has just arrived in Luanda,” it said.
The release of the family followed talks between Angolan President Joao Lourenço and Gabon’s new leader, Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, the statement said.
Lawyers for the Bongos in France said their release had been the “result of long efforts on both the judicial and diplomatic levels.
“After 20 months of arbitrary and cruel detention accompanied by torture, the family is finally reunited around the former president Ali Bongo,” they said in a statement.
But a prosecutor in Libreville said Bongo’s French-born wife Sylvia, 62, and son Noureddin, 33, had only been provisionally freed, awaiting a trial for alleged embezzlement.
Prosecutor Eddy Minang said the pair’s release “does not in any way interrupt the normal course of the proceedings, which will continue until a fair, transparent, equitable and timely trial is held.”
Oligui, a former junta leader, seized power in the August 2023 coup that ended the 55-year rule of the Bongo dynasty.
The general was sworn in earlier this month after winning 94.85 percent in an April 12 vote in which international observers signaled no major irregularities.
Oligui’s main rival, Alain-Claude Bilie By Nze, the last prime minister under Bongo, said the family’s release demonstrated that their detention “did not respect the framework of law and justice.
“President Oligui Nguema did not show clemency: He had to bow to international demands after what everyone understood to be an abuse of power,” he said.
Lawyers for Sylvia and Noureddin alleged they had suffered torture while in detention.
Several Gabonese news media reported recently that they had been moved from cells in an annex of the presidency to a family residence in Libreville.
A member of Gabon’s transitional parliament, Geoffroy Foumboula Libeka, said the move of the family “in the middle of the night and total silence” was “a real disgrace for the first days” of the new government. “Where is Gabon’s sovereignty?” he asked on social media.
The Bongo family’s release, he said, was “the price to pay” for the country’s reintegration into the African Union, which Angolan leader Lourenco currently heads.
The African Union announced on April 30 that it had lifted sanctions against Gabon, which was suspended from the organisation following the coup.
The country of 2.3 million people has endured high unemployment, regular power and water shortages, and heavy government debt despite its oil wealth.
The Gabon presidency announced on social media on May 12 that Lourenco had met Oligui in Libreville for talks focused “on strengthening bilateral cooperation, the smooth running of democratic elections marking the end of the transition in Gabon.”
They also discussed lifting sanctions following Gabon’s reintegration into the AU.
Bongo, 66, who is suspected to be in poor health, came to power in 2009, taking over from his father, Omar Bongo Ondimba, who ruled for 41 years.
In 2016, he was narrowly reelected for a second term by a few thousand votes, beating opposition challenger Jean Ping after a campaign marred by bloody clashes and allegations of fraud.
He suffered a stroke in October 2018 while on a visit to Saudi Arabia, and there was speculation about his health and fitness to govern when he returned home.
His public appearances were rare, and the times when he spoke live outside the confines of the presidential palace were rarer still.
Bongo ruled for 14 years until he was overthrown moments after being proclaimed the winner in a presidential election the army and opposition declared fraudulent.
Chad’s former prime minister and opposition leader arrested in clash probe
- Clashes between herders and farmers, who accuse herders of grazing livestock on their land, are common in the Central African country
N’DJAMENA, Chad: Chad’s former Prime Minister and opposition leader Succes Masra was arrested for his alleged involvement in a clash between herders and farmers in the country’s southwest a day earlier, the country’s prosecutor said.
Public prosecutor Oumar Mahamat Kedelaye said fighting on Thursday in Chad’s southwestern Logone Occidental province left 42 people dead and several homes burned. Clashes between herders and farmers, who accuse herders of grazing livestock on their land, are common in the Central African country.
The prosecutor said Masra is being investigated on charges of inciting hatred and revolt through social media posts that called on the population to arm themselves against a community in the area.
Other charges against the former prime minister include complicity in murder.
Masra’s Transformers party said earlier in a statement that their leader was “kidnapped” from his residence and expressed “deep concern over this brutal action carried out outside any known judicial procedures and in blatant violation of the civil rights guaranteed by the constitution.”
Ndolembai Sade Njesada, the party’s vice president, released a video appearing to show armed men in uniforms escorting Masra out of a residential building.
Masra is one of the leading figures opposed to President Mahamat Idriss Deby, who seized power after his father, who spent three decades in power, was killed fighting rebels in 2021.
In 2022, Masra fled Chad after the military government suspended his party and six others in a clampdown on protests against Deby’s decision to extend his time in power by two more years.
More than 60 people were killed in the protests, which the government condemned as “an attempted coup.”
Following his return from exile, Masra was appointed prime minister in January 2024 in a bid to appease tensions with the opposition, four months before the presidential election.
Deby won the election, but the results were contested by the opposition, which had claimed victory and alleged electoral fraud.
Masra resigned from his role as prime minister shortly after the election.
Pro-Palestine demonstrators mark Nakba anniversary with rally in London
- Protesters demand UK government action to halt Gaza conflict
- Mass rally passes central London landmarks, including Downing Street
LONDON: Tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched through central London on Saturday to mark the 77th anniversary of the Nakba.
The word, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, refers to the mass displacement of Palestinians during the creation of Israel in 1948. The UN estimates more than half the Palestinian population was permanently displaced.
The march, which was organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, began at Embankment and passed key landmarks, including Big Ben and Downing Street, with protesters calling on the UK government to take action over the war in Gaza.
The PSC said the protest aimed to “mark the 77th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba and demand our government take action to end the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land,” The Independent reported.
This year’s commemoration came amid reports that the Trump administration has been in talks with Libya about resettling up to a million Palestinians from Gaza in exchange for billions of dollars.
The proposal has drawn comparisons to the Nakba and widespread international criticism.
A PSC spokesperson said they expected around 100,000 attendees from across the UK, describing the turnout as larger than recent demonstrations. “We expected around 100,000 people to attend the London march,” the spokesperson said.
However, London’s Metropolitan Police estimated the crowd at around 20,000 and enforced Public Order Act conditions that restricted protesters to designated areas.
A small counter-protest organized by Stop The Hate gathered on the Strand, waving Israeli flags and remaining in an area outlined by police at the north end of Waterloo Bridge.
Pro-Palestinian protests in the UK reached their height following the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed around 1,200 people in Israel, and the subsequent Israeli military response in Gaza, in which 53,000 people have been killed.
Nearly all the enclave’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced.
That November, a march held on Armistice Day drew an estimated 300,000 people, the largest to date since the war began.
Negotiations to end the war have so far stalled, with both Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resisting proposed ceasefires. Netanyahu’s government recently approved new plans for further attacks in Gaza.
Humanitarian agencies and global leaders have continued to call on Israel to allow the delivery of vital aid into the besieged territory.
Also on Saturday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called for increased pressure “to halt the massacre in Gaza” at an Arab League summit in Iraq, while UN chief Antonio Guterres told the Baghdad meeting “we need a permanent ceasefire, now.”
