KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday welcomed a decision from the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for Russia’s chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, and former defense minister Sergei Shoigu.
The warrants — issued over strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure that constitute alleged war crimes — are the latest in a series of actions by the court over the Ukraine war, including an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“These barbaric missile and drone strikes continue to kill people and inflict damage across Ukraine,” Zelensky said.
“This decision is a clear indication that justice for Russian crimes against Ukrainians is inevitable,” he added.
“Every criminal involved in the planning and execution of these strikes must know that justice will be served. And we do hope to see them behind bars,” the Ukrainian leader wrote on social media.
The two men are accused of the war crimes of directing attacks at civilian objects and causing excessive incidental harm to civilians, as well as the crime against humanity of “inhumane acts” in Ukraine, the ICC said in a statement.
The Ukrainian presidency’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak wrote that “Shoigu and Gerasimov bear individual responsibility” for the strikes.
“This is an important decision. Everyone will be held accountable for evil,” he said.
“Every war criminal should be held accountable,” said Ukraine’s human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets.
The country’s prosecutor general’s office also welcomed the news in a statement.
“This is a new significant step toward full accountability for the aggressor,” it said.
Zelensky says ICC warrants show justice for Russia ‘inevitable’
https://arab.news/ggx94
Zelensky says ICC warrants show justice for Russia ‘inevitable’
- “This decision is a clear indication that justice for Russian crimes against Ukrainians is inevitable,” Zelensky said
- “Every criminal involved in the planning and execution of these strikes must know that justice will be served“
Kremlin: Zelensky’s letter to Trump on readiness to negotiate is positive
- Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov: ‘The question is who to sit down with. For now, the Ukrainian president is still legally prohibited from negotiating with the Russian side’
MOSCOW: Russia welcomes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s statement that Kyiv is willing to negotiate over the war, but it is not yet clear to Moscow who it might be negotiating with, the Kremlin said on Wednesday.
Zelensky made the statement in a letter to US President Donald Trump, which Trump made public on Tuesday.
“Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians,” Trump said in an address to Congress while quoting from the letter.
Asked how the Kremlin viewed this, spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied: “Positively.”
But he added: “The question is who to sit down with. For now, the Ukrainian president is still legally prohibited from negotiating with the Russian side. So, overall, the approach is positive, but the nuances have not changed yet.”
Peskov was referring to a Zelensky decree in 2022 that ruled out negotiations with President Vladimir Putin.
Children, soldiers among 18 killed in Pakistan attack
PESHAWAR: Thirteen civilians and five soldiers were killed when suicide bombers drove two explosive-laden cars into an army compound in northwestern Pakistan, the military said on Wednesday.
Four children were among those killed in Tuesday’s attack, which involved four suicide bombers, with fighting raging into the early hours of Wednesday.
The attack took place in Bannu, a district in the turbulent Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province close to Afghanistan and adjacent to the formerly self-governed tribal areas, once a hotbed for militancy.
“The terrorists entered Bannu Cantt from two different directions and, after an intense operation lasting several hours until this morning, all attackers were eliminated,” provincial minister Pakhtoon Yar Khan told AFP, adding that four children and three women were killed.
Plumes of grey smoke rose into the air after the two explosions, with gunfire heard throughout the night.
“In this intense exchange of fire, five brave soldiers, after putting up a heroic resistance, embraced martyrdom in the line of duty,” the military said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that 13 civilians were also killed.
The statement said 16 “terrorists,” including four suicide bombers, were killed, while a nearby mosque and residential area were severely damaged.
Thousands of people, including security officials, attended funerals for 12 of the civilians held at a sports complex in Bannu on Wednesday afternoon.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif denounced the attackers as “cowardly terrorists who target innocent civilians during the holy month of Ramadan” and said they “deserve no mercy.”
The attack was claimed by a faction of the Hafiz Gul Bahadur armed group, which actively supported the Afghan Taliban in its war against the US-led NATO coalition between 2001 and 2021.
“The force of the explosion threw me several feet away... The explosion was so intense that it caused significant damage to the neighborhood,” Nadir Ali Shah, 40, told AFP from hospital as he received treatment for head and leg wounds.
“It was a scene of apocalyptic devastation.”
A police official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media, told AFP on Tuesday that “the blasts created two four-foot craters.”
The attack came days after a suicide bomber killed six people at an Islamic religious school in Pakistan attended by key Taliban leaders in the same province.
Violence has increased in Pakistan since the Taliban authorities returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
Islamabad accuses Kabul’s rulers of failing to root out militants sheltering on Afghan soil as they prepare to stage assaults on Pakistan, a charge the Taliban government denies.
The military said it has “unequivocally confirmed the physical involvement of Afghan nationals” in the attack, which they said was “orchestrated and directed” by militant leaders operating from Afghanistan.
“Pakistan expects the Interim Afghan Government to uphold its responsibilities and deny its soil for terrorist activities against Pakistan,” the statement said.
Hafiz Gul Bahadur carried out another attack on the same compound last July, detonating a car bomb against the boundary wall, killing eight Pakistani soldiers.
Last year was the deadliest in a decade for Pakistan, home to 250 million people, with a surge in attacks that killed more than 1,600 people, according to Islamabad-based analysis group the Center for Research and Security Studies.
The violence is largely limited to Pakistan’s border regions with Afghanistan.
Rain, snow offer hope in Japan’s worst wildfire in 50 years
- The blaze around the northern city of Ofunato has raged for more than a week
- Columns of white smoke billowed from a mountain through the rain and snow on Wednesday
OFUNATO, Japan: Japan battled its worst wildfire in half a century on Wednesday in a region hit by record-low rainfall, as wet weather gave hope for some relief.
The blaze around the northern city of Ofunato has raged for more than a week, killing one person and forcing nearly 4,000 residents to evacuate their homes.
It has engulfed about 2,900 hectares — around half the size of Manhattan — making it the largest wildfire since at least 1975, when 2,700 hectares burnt in Hokkaido.
Columns of white smoke billowed from a mountain through the rain and snow on Wednesday, AFP reporters saw. More wet weather was forecast through Thursday.
“The fire was like nothing I’ve seen before. It was towering and spreading fast,” said Mitsuo Otsubo, 85, who fled his home to stay with a relative.
“It didn’t rain or snow at all this year... Thank goodness it rained today though. I can only hope it will help contain the situation,” the seaweed and scallop farmer said.
Japan endured its hottest summer on record last year as climate change pushes up temperatures worldwide.
Ofunato received just 2.5 millimeters (0.1 inches) of rainfall in February — breaking the previous record low for the month of 4.4 millimeters in 1967 and well below the average of 41 millimeters.
Makeshift tents were being set up at a city hall where around 270 people were taking shelter, with bottles of water and food supplies spread out on tables.
“Fires are the scariest disaster, because they spring from one place to another, so you don’t know where to run,” 69-year-old evacuee Fumiko Tanaka said.
“I can only hope the fires won’t reach my house.”
Tanaka and her husband, a fisherman, “feel the effect of climate change every year” as rising ocean temperatures affect what they are able to catch, she said.
At least 84 buildings are believed to have been damaged, although details are still being assessed, according to the fire agency.
The owner of an “onsen” hot spring inn voluntarily opened his facility for free to evacuees.
“Not being able to bathe yourself on top of dealing with the chaos of life in a shelter definitely wears you down,” 60-year-old Toyoshige Shida, of Ofunato Onsen, said.
He said he built the inn after seeing how people suffered in the wake of a huge earthquake and tsunami in 2011 that killed at least 340 people in Ofunato alone.
The number of wildfires in Japan has declined since its 1970s peak.
However, there were about 1,300 in 2023, concentrated in the period from February to April when the air dries out and winds pick up.
Greg Mullins, formerly fire and rescue commissioner for the Australian state of New South Wales, said this fire and the recent Los Angeles wildfires were “highly unusual” because they were in winter.
“In both cases the fires were preceded by hot summers, which increased evaporation and drying of vegetation, followed by large rainfall deficits that parched the landscape,” he said.
“This is a common by-product of climate change,” said Mullins, a founder of the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action group.
“As the planet warms further we can expect to see fires in places where they have never before been a problem.”
Around 2,000 firefighters, most deployed from other parts of Japan, including Tokyo, have been working from the air and on the ground.
“The fact that teams of firefighters are being reinforced every day, and that the fire has been going on for a week, shows the extent of the dry weather and the difficulties we are facing,” Ofunato Mayor Kiyoshi Fuchigami told reporters.
The topography of the mountainous coastal area, with steep slopes and narrow and winding roads, was hampering the fire-fighting operation.
Russian attack cuts power, kill two in south Ukraine
KYIV: Russia staged night-time attacks on energy facilities in the southern Ukrainian region of Odesa, officials said Wednesday, cutting electricity to the Black Sea territory and leaving at least one dead.
Moscow has stepped up drone and missile attacks on Ukraine even as rhetoric builds in Washington and Moscow on potential talks to halt fighting.
Regional authorities announced that “critical infrastructure has been damaged and part of the city has been left without electricity, water and heat.”
Emergency services described the damage as “large-scale” and released images showing firefighters battling blazes.
The governor said a 77-year-old man was killed by shrapnel in village outside Odesa city.
Separately the governor of the neighboring region of Kherson said a 55-year-old was killed in Kherson city.
There was no immediate comment from Moscow on the attacks.
The Ukrainian airforce said Russia had launched four missiles and 181 drones, including the Iranian-designed Shahed attack unmanned aerial vehicles, adding Kyiv had shot down 115 of the Russian drones.
Philippine fighter jet wreckage, bodies of crew found
- The FA-50 fighter jet had gone missing a day earlier while on a mission to provide air support for troops fighting guerrillas
- The wreckage of the missing jet was found on Mount Kalatungan, the fifth-tallest mountain in the Philippines
MANILA: Philippine rescuers on Wednesday found the wreckage of a fighter jet and the bodies of two crewmen sent to combat communist rebels in a mountainous region of the country’s south.
The FA-50 fighter jet had gone missing a day earlier while on a mission to provide air support for troops fighting guerrillas in northern Mindanao.
Lt. Gen. Luis Rex Bergante, commander of Eastern Mindanao Command, said the two crewmen had been found inside the wreckage.
“The bodies were found inside the aircraft. There was an attempt to open a parachute and eject,” he said.
“The aircraft was a total wreck. The aircraft smashed through the trees in the mountain.”
Lt. Col. Francisco Garello of the 4th Infantry Division said the wreckage of the missing jet was found on Mount Kalatungan.
Located in Mindanao’s Bukidnon province, the 2,880-meter Kalatungan is the fifth-tallest mountain in the Philippines.
Bergante said bringing the servicemen’s remains down the mountainside was now the top priority.
In a statement, the air force said it had temporarily “grounded its FA-50 fleet” and would “ensure a thorough investigation into the accident,” the cause of which remains unknown.
The crashed jet was one of a dozen FA-50s the Philippines purchased from South Korea in the past decade.
Garello said early Wednesday that the search had been suspended overnight due to the danger of “communist groups” believed to be operating in the area.
On Tuesday, he said his division had called in air support during a firefight with the New People’s Army, a long-running Maoist insurgency now believed to have fewer than 2,000 fighters.
The jets flew out of Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base, which shares a runway with the airport in Cebu, the Philippines’ second-largest city.
Air force spokeswoman Col. Consuelo Castillo told reporters Tuesday it was the “first major incident” involving its squadron of FA-50s, which have been used in exercises over the disputed South China Sea.
The FA-50s have been flown in joint air patrols with treaty ally the United States over contested areas of the South China Sea, where China and the Philippines have been involved in increasingly tense confrontations.
On Wednesday, Castillo said the air force hoped the investigation would be “done thoroughly but swift enough for us not to sacrifice our operational readiness” given the fighters’ key role in maritime patrols.
She also said the air force has proposed purchasing 12 more FA-50s, a request under consideration at the Department of National Defense.
There have been a number of deadly crashes involving Philippine military aircraft in recent years.
Two navy pilots were killed last April when their Robinson R22 helicopter crashed near a market south of the capital Manila during a training flight.
Two PAF pilots were killed in January 2023 when their Marchetti SF260 turboprop plane crashed into a rice field.
