POKHARA, Nepal: A plane making a 27-minute flight to a Nepal tourist town crashed into a gorge Sunday while attempting to land at a newly opened airport, killing at least 68 of the 72 people. At least one witness reported hearing cries for help from the fiery wreck. It’s the country’s deadliest airplane accident in three decades.
Hours after dark, scores of onlookers crowded around the crash site near the airport in the resort town of Pokhara as rescue workers combed the wreckage on the edge of the cliff and in the ravine below. Officials suspended the search for the four missing people overnight and planned to resume looking Monday.
Local resident Bishnu Tiwari, who rushed to the crash site near the Seti River to help search for bodies, said the rescue efforts were hampered by thick smoke and a raging fire.
“The flames were so hot that we couldn’t go near the wreckage. I heard a man crying for help, but because of the flames and smoke we couldn’t help him,” Tiwari said.
It was not immediately clear what caused the accident, Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority said.
A witness said he saw the aircraft spinning violently in the air after it began landing, watching from the terrace of his house. Finally, Gaurav Gurung said, the plane fell nose-first toward its left and crashed into the gorge.
The aviation authority said the aircraft last made contact with the airport from near Seti Gorge at 10:50 a.m. before crashing.
The twin-engine ATR 72 aircraft, operated by Nepal’s Yeti Airlines, was flying from the capital, Katmandu, to Pokhara, located 200 kilometers (125 miles) west. It was carrying 68 passengers including 15 foreign nationals, as well as four crew members, Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement. The foreigners included five Indians, four Russians, two South Koreans, and one each from Ireland, Australia, Argentina and France.
Images and videos shared on Twitter showed plumes of smoke billowing from the crash site, about 1.6 kilometers (nearly a mile) away from Pokhara International Airport. The aircraft’s fuselage was split into multiple parts that were scattered down the gorge.
Firefighters carried bodies, some burned beyond recognition, to hospitals where grief-stricken relatives had assembled. At Katmandu airport, family members appeared distraught as they were escorted in and at times exchanged heated words with officials as they waited for information.
Tek Bahadur K. C., a senior administrative officer in the Kaski district, said he expected rescue workers to find more bodies at the bottom of the gorge.
Images and videos shared on Twitter showed plumes of smoke billowing from the crash site as rescue workers, Nepali soldiers, and crowds of people gathered around the wreckage of the aircraft to find survivors. The aircraft’s fuselage was split into multiple parts that were scattered down the gorge.
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who rushed to Tribhuvan International Airport in Katmandu after the crash, set up a panel to investigate the accident.
”The incident was tragic. The full force of the Nepali army, police has been deployed for rescue,” he said.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it’s still trying to confirm the fate of two South Korean passengers and has sent staff to the scene. The Russian Ambassador to Nepal, Alexei Novikov, confirmed the death of four Russian citizens who were on board the plane.
Pokhara is the gateway to the Annapurna Circuit, a popular hiking trail in the Himalayas. The city’s new international airport began operations only two weeks ago.
The type of plane involved, the ATR 72, has been used by airlines around the world for short regional flights. Introduced in the late 1980s by a French and Italian partnership, the aircraft model has been involved in several deadly accidents over the years.
In Taiwan two earlier accidents involving ATR 72-500 and ATR 72-600 aircrafts happened just months apart.
In July 2014, a TransAsia ATR 72-500 flight crashed while trying to land on the scenic Penghu archipelago between Taiwan and China, killing 48 people onboard. An ATR 72-600 operated by the same Taiwanese airline crashed shortly after takeoff in Taipei in February 2015 after one of its engines failed and the second was shut down, apparently by mistake.
The 2015 crash, captured in dramatic footage that showed the plane striking a taxi as it hurtled out of control, killed 43, and prompted authorities to ground all Taiwanese-registered ATR 72s for some time. TransAsia ceased all flights in 2016 and later went out of business.
ATR identified the plane involved in Sunday’s crash as an ATR 72-500 in a tweet. According to plane tracking data from flightradar24.com, the aircraft was 15 years old and “equipped with an old transponder with unreliable data.” It was previously flown by India’s Kingfisher Airlines and Thailand’s Nok Air before Yeti took it over in 2019, according to records on Airfleets.net.
Yeti Airlines has a fleet of six ATR72-500 planes, company spokesperson Sudarshan Bartaula said.
Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Mount Everest, has a history of air crashes. According to the Flight Safety Foundation’s Aviation Safety database, there have been 42 fatal plane crashes in Nepal since 1946.
Sunday’s crash is Nepal’s deadliest since 1992, when all 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines plane were killed when it plowed into a hill as it tried to land in Katmandu.
The European Union has banned airlines from Nepal from flying into the 27-nation bloc since 2013, citing weak safety standards. In 2017, the International Civil Aviation Organization cited improvements in Nepal’s aviation sector, but the EU continues to demand administrative reforms.
68 dead, 4 missing after Nepal’s worst air crash in 30 years
https://arab.news/j3bu8
68 dead, 4 missing after Nepal’s worst air crash in 30 years
- A witness said he saw the aircraft spinning violently in the air after it began landing, watching from the terrace of his house
- The twin-engine ATR 72 aircraft, operated by Nepal’s Yeti Airlines, was flying from the capital, Katmandu, to Pokhara
Urban mosquito sparks malaria surge in East Africa
NAIROBI: The spread of a mosquito in East Africa that thrives in urban areas and is immune to insecticide is fueling a surge in malaria that could reverse decades of progress against the disease, experts say.
Africa accounted for about 95 percent of the 249 million malaria cases and 608,000 deaths worldwide in 2022, according to the most recent data from the World Health Organization, which said children under five accounted for 80 percent of deaths in the region.
But the emergence of an invasive species of mosquito on the continent could massively increase those numbers. Anopheles stephensi is native to parts of South Asia and the Middle East but was spotted for the first time in the tiny Horn of Africa state of Djibouti in 2012.
Djibouti had all but eradicated malaria only to see it make a slow but steady return over the following years, hitting more than 70,000 cases in 2020.
Then stephensi arrived in neighboring Ethiopia and WHO says it is key to an “unprecedented surge,” from 4.1 million malaria cases and 527 deaths last year to 7.3 million cases and 1,157 deaths between January 1 and October 20, 2024. Unlike other species which are seasonal and prefer rural areas, stephensi thrives year-round in urban settings, breeding in man-made water storage tanks.
US will send Ukraine at least $275m in new weapons in push to bolster Kyiv before Trump
- One American official said the US is seeing no indications that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine
- The US officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid package has not yet been made public
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon will send Ukraine at least $275 million in new weapons, US officials said Tuesday, as the Biden administration rushes to do as much as it can to help Kyiv fight back against Russia in the remaining two months before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
The latest tranche of weapons comes as worries grow about an escalation in the conflict, with both sides pushing to gain any advantage that they can exploit if Trump demands a quick end to the war — as he has vowed to do.
In rapid succession this week, President Joe Biden gave Ukraine the authority to fire longer-range missiles deeper into Russia and then Russian President Vladimir Putin formally lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons.
US officials contend that Russia’s change in nuclear doctrine was expected, but Moscow is warning that Ukraine’s new use of the Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, inside Russia on Tuesday could trigger a strong response.
One American official said the US is seeing no indications that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. The US officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid package has not yet been made public.
Asked Tuesday if a Ukrainian attack with longer-range US missiles could potentially trigger use of nuclear weapons, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov answered affirmatively. He pointed to the doctrine’s provision that holds the door open for it after a conventional strike that raises critical threats for the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Russia and its ally Belarus.
A US official said Ukraine fired about eight ATACM missiles into Russia on Tuesday, and just two were intercepted. The official said the US is still assessing the damage but that the missiles struck an ammunition supply location in Karachev, in the Bryansk region.
The weapons in the new package of aid for Ukraine include an infusion of air defense, including High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), as well as 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds, Javelin anti-armor munitions and other equipment and spare parts, US officials say.
The weapons will be provided through presidential drawdown authority, which allows the Pentagon quickly to pull supplies from its shelves to speed them to Ukraine’s front line.
Trump’s upcoming move to the White House has triggered a scramble by the Biden administration to ensure all the congressionally approved funding for Ukraine gets delivered and that Kyiv is in a strong position going into the winter.
The Biden administration would have to rush $7.1 billion in weapons from the Pentagon’s stockpiles to spend all of those funds before Trump is sworn in. That includes $4.3 billion from a foreign aid bill passed by Congress earlier this year and $2.8 billion still on the books in savings due to the Pentagon recalculating the value of systems sent.
As part of the wider effort, the administration also is on track to disperse its portion of a $50 billion loan to Ukraine, backed by frozen Russian assets, before Biden leaves the White House, according to two senior administration officials.
The officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly, said the US and Ukraine are now in “advanced stages” in discussing terms of the loan and are looking to complete the process for the $20 billion portion of the mammoth loan that the US is backing.
The goal is to get it done before the end of the year, one official said.
Trump has criticized US support for Ukraine and derided Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “salesman” while also having praised Putin and touting his good relationship with him. The president-elect has claimed — without explaining how — that he will end the war in in Ukraine before his inauguration on Jan. 20, saying he will “get it resolved very quickly.”
Last week, when he addressed supporters from a golden ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump returned to that pledge but again offered little information before changing the subject.
“We’re going to work very hard on Russia and Ukraine. It’s got to stop. Russia and Ukraine’s gotta stop,” he said.
He has suggested that Ukraine give up at least some of its Russian-occupied territory to settle the war, saying at a rally in late September that “if they made a bad deal, it would’ve been much better. They would’ve given up a little bit and everybody would be living and every building would be built and every tower would be aging for another 2,000 years.”
Earlier this year, the leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies agreed to engineer the mammoth loan to help Ukraine. Interest earned on profits from Russia’s frozen central bank assets would be used as collateral.
Once terms are finalized, the US will send the $20 billion to the World Bank, which will in turn disperse the money to Ukraine. The remaining $30 billion will come from the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan, among others.
Pakistan PM approves military operation against separatists following surge in violence in southwest
Pakistan PM approves military operation against separatists following surge in violence in southwest
- Announcement by Shehbaz Sharif to launch the operation ‘against terrorist organizations’ operating in Balochistan came after a meeting of the government’s security committee
- BLA wants a halt to all Chinese-funded projects and for Chinese workers to leave Pakistan to avoid further attacks
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Prime Minister on Tuesday approved a long-awaited “comprehensive military operation” against separatist groups in the restive southwest, more than a week after an outlawed group killed 26 people in a suicide bombing at a train station, officials said.
The announcement by Shehbaz Sharif to launch the operation “against terrorist organizations” operating in Balochistan came after a meeting of the government’s security committee in Islamabad, the capital. On Nov. 9, a suicide bomber with the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army group blew himself up at a train station in Quetta, killing 26 people, most of them soldiers.
In a statement, Sharif’s office said the BLA and other groups will be targeted buit didn’t say when the operation would begin. The office blamed the groups for “targeting innocent civilians and foreign nationals to scuttle Pakistan’s economic progress by creating insecurity at the behest of hostile external powers.”
In recent months, Balochistan and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province have witnessed a surge in militant violence, most blamed on the outlawed BLA and TTP groups. The train station attack in Quetta was the deadliest since August, when separatists killed more than 50 people in multiple coordinated attacks on passengers buses, police and security forces across Balochistan.
Oil- and mineral-rich Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest but also least populated province. It is a hub for the country’s ethnic Baloch minority whose members say they face discrimination and exploitation by the central government.
The BLA mostly targets security forces and foreigners, especially Chinese nationals who are in Pakistan as part of Beijing’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative. The BLA wants a halt to all Chinese-funded projects and for Chinese workers to leave Pakistan to avoid further attacks.
Also Tuesday, a suicide car bomber targeted a security post in Bannu, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to Irfan Kahn, a local police official. Kahn said gunshots were heard and and ambulances had arrived at the scene of the attack. He provided no further details, and it was not immediately clear how many people were killed or wounded in the attack.
The attack came a day after Pakistani security forces raided a militant hideout in the northwestern district of Tirah, sparking a shootout in which at least 10 insurgents were killed and several others were wounded.
Woman faces hate crime charges after confronting Palestinian man wearing `Palestine’ shirt
- Waseem Zahran told the Chicago Sun-Times it was not the first time he has been harassed for wearing the sweatshirt, and he expects it won’t be the last time
DOWNERS GROVE, Illinois: A suburban Chicago woman faces hate crime charges for allegedly confronting a Palestinian man wearing a sweatshirt with “Palestine” written on it and trying to knock a cellphone out of his pregnant wife’s hands as she recorded the encounter, authorities and the man said.
Alexandra Szustakiewicz, 64, appeared in court Monday for her arraignment on two felony hate crime counts and a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge. A DuPage County judge ordered the Darien, Illinois, woman to have no contact with the victims and to stay away from the restaurant where police said the confrontation occurred Saturday. Szustakiewicz’s next court hearing is set for Dec. 16.
A message left Tuesday for her public defender, Kendall Pietrzak, seeking comment on the charges was not immediately returned.
Szustakiewicz was at a Panera Bread restaurant in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove on Saturday “when she confronted and yelled expletives at a man regarding a sweatshirt he was wearing with the word Palestine written on it,” according to a news release sent Monday by the DuPage County State’s Attorney’s Office and Downers Grove police.
She also allegedly “attempted to hit a cell phone out of the hands of a woman who was with the man when the woman began videotaping the incident,” it adds.
A complaint filed against Szustakiewicz, who was arrested Sunday, alleges that she “committed a hate crime by reason of perceived national origin” of the two victims.
DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said in a statement that “this type of behavior and the accompanying prejudice have no place in a civilized society.”
The Palestinian man Szustakiewicz is accused of confronting said he was wearing a hoodie with the word “Palestine” on it when she approached him and yelled expletives at him while trying to hit his pregnant wife, whom he shielded as she filmed Szustakiewicz with her cellphone.
Waseem Zahran told the Chicago Sun-Times it was not the first time he has been harassed for wearing the sweatshirt, and he expects it won’t be the last time. He said his family has long faced harassment and threats for being Palestinian.
“Since I was a child, I’ve seen my mom threatened, parents screamed at, cousins yelled at. But it was a first for me to be attacked,” Zahran told the newspaper.
He said he tried to deescalate the situation multiple times, even after Szustakiewicz allegedly hit him in the face and attempted to throw hot coffee on his wife before and after swinging at her multiple times.
Zahran said Szustakiewicz continued swinging at his wife even after he told her she was pregnant.
“I don’t care,” he said she replied.
He said in a statement sent Monday by the Chicago Office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations that he is “a born and raised American who took his wife out for lunch. I was not able to do that simply because I was Palestinian.”
CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab condemned the attack in the statement.
“We have long seen how European migrants like this woman feel a bizarre sense of entitlement to regularly harass and accost native Palestinians in their ancestral homeland, knowing they enjoy full impunity and knowing their victims have no recourse,” Rehab said.
“Now, shockingly but not surprisingly, that same anti-Palestinian hatred has followed them into their new homeland, here in America, where they were born and raised.”
Afghan woman teacher, jailed Tajik lawyer share top rights prize
- Zholia Parsi, a teacher from Kabul, shared the prize with lawyer Manuchehr Kholiqnazarov, who is serving a 16-year prison sentence in connection with his human rights work
- The chairman of the prize jury, Hans Thoolen, said the pair were “exceptional laureates“
GENEVA: An Afghan teacher and a jailed lawyer from Tajikistan on Tuesday won the Martin Ennals Award, one of the world’s most prestigious rights prizes, with the jury hailing their “exceptional courage.”
Zholia Parsi, a teacher from Kabul who began protesting for women’s rights after the Taliban returned to power three years ago, shared the prize with lawyer Manuchehr Kholiqnazarov, who is serving a 16-year prison sentence in connection with his human rights work.
The chairman of the prize jury, Hans Thoolen, said the pair were “exceptional laureates” who had “paid too big a price for justice and equality to be respected in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and the international community must support their efforts instead of battling geostrategic interests in the region.”
Parsi began her activism after losing her career and seeing her daughters deprived of their education in the wake of the Taliban takeover in August 2021.
She founded the Spontaneous Movement of Afghan Women (SMAW), which has mobilized communities in various provinces to resist the Taliban’s policies and practices, the jury said.
Parsi had “displayed remarkable leadership and resilience in organizing numerous public protests despite the risks involved,” it added.
She was arrested in the street by armed Taliban in September 2023 and detained along with her son, it said, adding that she was only released “after three months of torture and ill-treatment... which further strengthened her resolve to resist Taliban oppression and repression.”
Kholiqnazarov is a human rights lawyer belonging to the Pamiri ethnic group from the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO) region in eastern Tadjikistan.
He headed the Lawyers Association of Pamir, and lobbied among other things for minority rights and the incorporation of international human rights standards into domestic law and practice.
He played a key role in investigating the November 2021 death of youth leader Gulbiddin Ziyobekov.
That investigation turned up critical evidence indicating the young man may have been the victim of an extrajudicial execution, the jury’s statement said.
It also pointed to unlawful use of force in the violent repression of the mass protest in the regional capital Khorog that followed Ziyobekov’s death, resulting in two deaths, 17 people injured and hundreds detained, it added.
Kholiqnazarov himself was arrested on May 28, 2022 “amid a widespread crackdown on local informal leadership and residents of the GBAO,” the prize jury said.
The Martin Ennals Award, named after the first secretary general of Amnesty International, was first given in 1994.
The jury comprises representatives from 10 leading human rights organizations, including Amnesty and Human Rights Watch.
The award ceremony will take place in Geneva on Thursday.
