ATHENS: Fire department officials in Greece arrested two men Saturday for allegedly starting wildfires on purpose, while hundreds of firefighters battled blazes that have killed at least 21 people in the past week.
One man was arrested on the Greek island of Evia for allegedly setting fire to dried grass in the Karystos area. The fire department said the man confessed to having set four other fires in the area in July and August.
A second man arrested in the Larissa area of central Greece also was accused of intentionally setting fire to dried vegetation.
Officials have said blamed arson for several fires in Greece over the past week, although it was unclear what sparked the country’s largest blazes, including one in the northeastern region of Evros, where nearly all the fire-attributed deaths occurred, and another on the fringes of Athens.
“Some ... arsonists are setting fires, endangering forests, property and above all human lives,” Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias said Thursday. “What is happening is not just unacceptable, but despicable and criminal.”
The minister said nine fires were set in the space of four hours Thursday morning in the Avlona area in the northern foothills of Mount Parnitha, a mountain on the northwestern fringes of Athens that is one of the capital’s last green areas.
A major fire was already burning on the southern side of the mountain at the time, and it continued to burn Saturday.
“You are committing a crime against the country,” Kikilias said. “We will find you. You will be held accountable to justice.”
Later Thursday, police arrested a 45-year-old man on suspicion of arson for allegedly setting at least three fires in the Avlona area. A search of his home revealed kindling, a fire torch gun and pine needles, police said.
A daily outbreak of dozens of fires has plagued Greece over the past week as gale-force winds and hot, dry summer conditions combine to whip up flames and hamper firefighting efforts. Firefighters tackled 111 blazes Friday, including 59 that broke out in the 24 hours between Thursday and Friday evenings, the fire department said.
Although most new fires were controlled in their early stages, some grew to massive blazes that have consumed homes and vast tracts of forest.
Storms were forecast Saturday for some areas of Greece, and lightning strikes ignited several fires near the Greek capital. The fire department said 100 firefighters, including contingents from France and Cyprus, backed up by four helicopter, brought fires in four outlying areas near the Greek capital under partial control within hours.
The fire department called on the public “to be particularly careful” and to follow directions by authorities “given that intense thunderstorm activity is occurring in various parts of the country.”
The Evros fire, Greece’s largest current blaze, was burning for an eighth day Saturday near the city of Alexandroupolis after causing at least 20 deaths.
Firefighters found 18 bodies in a forest on Tuesday, one on Monday and another Thursday. With nobody reported missing in the area, authorities think the victims might have been migrants who recently crossed the border from Turkiye.
Greece’s Disaster Victim Identification Team was activated to identify the remains, and a telephone hotline set up for potential relatives of the victims to call. A man reportedly trying to save his livestock from advancing flames in central Greece also died on Monday.
More than 290 firefighters, backed by five planes and two helicopters, were battling the Evros blaze. Another 260 firefighters, four planes and three helicopters were tackling the Mount Parnitha fire.
With firefighting forces stretched to the limit, Greece called on other European countries for help. Germany, Sweden, Croatia and Cyprus sent aircraft, while dozens of Romanian, French, Czech, Bulgarian, Albanian and Slovak firefighters helped on the ground.
Greece imposes wildfire prevention regulations, typically from the start of May to the end of October, to limit activities such as the burning of dried vegetation and the use of outdoor barbecues.
Since the start of this year’s fire season, fire department officials have arrested 163 people on fire-related charges, government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said Friday, including 118 for negligence and 24 for deliberate arson. The police made a further 18 arrests, he said.
Greek fire officials arrest 2 for arson as multiple wildfires continue to burn across the country
https://arab.news/6kx22
Greek fire officials arrest 2 for arson as multiple wildfires continue to burn across the country
- One man was arrested on the Greek island of Evia for allegedly setting fire to dried grass in the Karystos area
- A second man arrested in the Larissa area of central Greece also was accused of intentionally setting fire to dried vegetation
Karachi mob kills member of Ahmadi minority
KARACHI: A mob attacked a place of worship of Pakistan’s Ahmadi minority community in Karachi on Friday, killing at least one man, police and a community spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for the Ahmadi community, Amir Mahmood, said the mob of 100-200 people beat a 47-year-old owner of a car workshop to death with bricks and sticks and was still surrounding the building, with around 30 people trapped inside.
The superintendent of police for Karachi’s Saddar neighborhood, Mohammad Safdar, confirmed the death and told Reuters that police were mobilizing efforts to subdue the crowd.
Ahmadis are a minority group considered heretical by some orthodox Muslims.
Pakistani law forbids them from calling themselves Muslims or using Islamic symbols, and they face violence, discrimination and impediments blocking them from voting in general elections.
Kyiv receives 909 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers
- The exchange of prisoners and war dead is one of the few areas of cooperation
- Russia has not commented on the latest patriation
KYIV: Kyiv said Friday it had received the bodies of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers killed during battles with Russia, the second such patriation in the space of three weeks.
The exchange of prisoners and war dead is one of the few areas of cooperation between the two sides since Russia invaded Ukraine more than three years ago.
“As a result of repatriation activities, the bodies of 909 fallen Ukrainian defenders were returned to Ukraine,” the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, a government agency, said in a statement on social media.
On 28 March, the two countries conducted a similar exchange, with Kyiv receiving the same number of bodies, 909, and Moscow 43, according to Russian state media.
Russia has not commented on the latest patriation.
In mid-February, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told US broadcaster NBC News that more than 46,000 of his soldiers had been killed and some 380,000 wounded.
Russia has not reported on its losses since autumn 2022, when it acknowledged fewer than 6,000 soldiers killed.
An ongoing investigation by Mediazona and BBC News Russian has identified the names of around 100,000 dead Russian soldiers since the beginning of the war, based on information from publicly available sources.
US Vice President says he is ‘optimistic’ Russia-Ukraine war can be ended
- Vance saw Meloni in Washington on Thursday
- “We do feel optimistic that we can hopefully bring this war, this very brutal war, to a close”
ROME: The United States is optimistic it can put an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, Vice President JD Vance said on Friday as he met Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for the second time in 24 hours.
Vance saw Meloni in Washington on Thursday and the two have since flown to the Italian capital ahead of the Easter holidays.
“I want to update the prime minister on some of the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine ... even in the past 24 hours, we think we have some interesting things to report on,” Vance told reporters sitting alongside Meloni.
“Since there are the negotiations I won’t prejudge them, but we do feel optimistic that we can hopefully bring this war, this very brutal war, to a close,” he added.
Hours earlier, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said US President Donald Trump would walk away from trying to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal within days unless there were clear signs that a deal could be done.
Russia rains missiles on Ukraine as US mulls ending truce efforts
- US President Donald Trump has been pressing Moscow and Kyiv to agree to a truce
- There has been no major concessions from the Kremlin, despite repeated negotiations between his administration and Russia
KHARKIV, Ukraine: Russia fired a fresh volley of missiles and drones at Ukraine overnight, wounding dozens of people, Kyiv said Friday, as the United States warned it could end efforts to broker a ceasefire if it did not see progress soon.
US President Donald Trump has been pressing Moscow and Kyiv to agree to a truce, but has failed to extract any major concessions from the Kremlin, despite repeated negotiations between his administration and Russia on the three-year war.
After meeting European officials in Paris to discuss Ukraine, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington needed to figure out soon whether a ceasefire was “doable in the short term.”
“Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on,” he told reporters at Le Bourget airport before leaving the French capital.
Russia fired at least six missiles and dozens of drones at Ukraine overnight, killing two people in the eastern regions of Kharkiv and Sumy and wounding 70 others, officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky slammed the attack, which came just days before Easter.
“This is how Russia started Good Friday – with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, Shahed drones. A mockery of our people and cities,” he said on Telegram.
An AFP photographer in the city of Kharkiv witnessed the aftermath of one strike, which left rubble and debris scattered across a street.
An elderly resident could be seen bandaged, her face smeared with blood, while residents assessed the damage.
Since taking office Trump has embarked on a quest to warm ties with the Kremlin that has alarmed Kyiv and driven a wedge between the US and its European allies.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last month rejected a joint US-Ukrainian proposal for a full and unconditional pause in the conflict, while the Kremlin has made a truce in the Black Sea conditional on the West lifting certain sanctions.
Trump has also repeatedly expressed anger and frustration at Zelensky in a marked break from policy under his predecessor, Joe Biden.
The US is pushing Ukraine into a deal that would give Washington sweeping access to its mineral resources.
Ukraine’s prime minister will visit Washington next week for talks with top US officials aimed at clinching the minerals and resources deal by April 26, according to a US-Ukraine signed “memorandum of intent” published Friday.
Trump wants the deal – designed to give the United States royalty payments on profits from Ukrainian mining of resources and rare minerals – as compensation for aid given to Ukraine under Biden.
France hosted meetings between US and European officials in Paris on Thursday, saying the talks had launched a “positive process.”
The meetings included French President Emmanuel Macron, Rubio and US envoy Steve Witkoff.
European officials had expressed dismay at being shut out from the peace process, while Ukraine has expressed concern that Witkoff – one of Trump’s closest allies – is biased toward Russia.
Zelensky accused Witkoff on Thursday of having adopted the “strategy of the Russian side,” after the US envoy suggested a peace deal with Moscow hinged on the status of Ukraine’s occupied territories.
“He is consciously or unconsciously, I don’t know, spreading Russian narratives,” Zelensky told journalists.
Witkoff told Fox News on Monday that a peace settlement depended on “so-called five territories” – the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea, that Russia claims to have annexed.
The Kremlin wants its claims over the regions to be recognized as part of any peace deal, a proposal that Ukraine has balked at. Moscow does not fully control any of them except for Crimea, which it seized in 2014.
Zelensky also said Thursday he had “information” China was supplying weapons to Russia, amid an escalating row between Kyiv and Beijing over China’s support for Moscow.
China, which has portrayed itself as a neutral party in the three-year war, has hit back at Kyiv’s criticism and called on all parties in the conflict to refrain from “irresponsible remarks.”
Indonesia weighs US arms purchases to curb tariff threat, Bloomberg News reports
- Equipment includes fighter jets and munitions
Dubai: Indonesia is considering purchasing billions of dollars worth of US-manufactured defense equipment, including fighter jets and munitions, Bloomberg news reported on Friday.
Indonesia’s Defense Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin held a closed-door meeting of senior officials on April 8 to deliver a directive from the President Prabowo Subianto instructing them to identify US weapons that could be imported or fast-tracked for purchase, the report said, citing people with knowledge of the gathering.
