NEW DELHI: Four Indian soldiers were killed in a gunfight with suspected rebels fighting against Indian rule in the disputed region of Kashmir, the Indian military said Tuesday.
The soldiers were killed late Monday when they were fired at by militants hiding in the forests of southern Doda district in Jammu division, the Indian military said in a statement on the X social media platform. Government forces had been conducting a search based on intelligence input when the shooting occurred.
No insurgent group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
The attack was the latest in a flurry of violence in the region. Last week, five soldiers were killed in the nearby Kathua district when suspected rebels ambushed an army vehicle. In June, nine people were killed when suspected militants fired at a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims.
Rebel groups have been fighting since 1989 for Indian-controlled Kashmir’s independence or merger with neighboring Pakistan. Most Muslim Kashmiris support the rebel goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.
New Delhi insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and most Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle.
Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.
Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan each administer part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety.
4 Indian soldiers are killed in a gunfight with suspected rebels in disputed Kashmir
https://arab.news/na7eb
4 Indian soldiers are killed in a gunfight with suspected rebels in disputed Kashmir
Why Philippines tops ranking of disaster risk countries
- Archipelago nation of 120 million people has faced five typhoons since May
- Country heads 2024 World Risk Index, which breaks down disaster risk of 193 countries
MANILA: The Philippines is the country most at risk from natural disasters, the 2024 World Risk Report shows, with environmentalists highlighting sluggish climate action amid worsening and extreme weather conditions.
The archipelago nation of nearly 120 million people is no stranger to natural disasters, with millions of people often displaced during annual storms and typhoons, which have been made more unpredictable and extreme by the changing climate.
For the third year in a row, the Philippines tops the report’s World Risk Index, which breaks down the disaster risk of 193 countries.
Published by Germany-based research institute IFHV and the alliance of development organizations Bundnis Entwicklung Hilft, this year’s top five most at-risk countries include Indonesia, India, Colombia and Mexico.
“It is definitely a worsening and concerning trend. There are noticeable extreme weather conditions, heat during the summers have been record-breaking, seasons have been unpredictable, there have been high intensity and (high) frequency typhoons,” Ann Dumaliang, a Filipino conservationist and managing trustee of Masungi Georeserve, told Arab News.
“In the Philippines, it is no longer vulnerable communities that are affected. It’s now felt widely across the nation — schools need to be canceled, heatstroke patients overwhelm emergency rooms, in addition to devastating floods.”
This month, more than a dozen people were killed when Typhoon Yagi, known locally as Enteng, passed central and northern Philippines, before it wreaked havoc in southern China and parts of Vietnam and Thailand.
For Filipinos, it is the fifth tropical storm to hit their country since May.
It is more accurate to describe natural disasters as geographical realities, Dumailang said, which for the Philippines are multifold due to its archipelagic nature and location in the “Ring of Fire,” the arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin.
Those aspects intersect with “man-made causes that lead to continuous environment degradation and poor infrastructure,” and are further “exacerbated by lack of political willpower to make the necessary interventions at the right time,” she added.
John Leo Algo, national coordinator of Aksiyon Klima Pilipinas, a leading civil society network for climate action, said the country’s vulnerability to natural disasters has got worse over time.
“The Philippines’ vulnerability to the climate crisis is worsening because of a combination of more extreme impacts and the lack of capacity to address them. There really is no such thing as a ‘natural disaster’; disasters, by definition, occur when stakeholders do not properly prepare against an impending hazard,” Algo said.
The country’s vulnerability can be traced to insufficient local understanding of the climate crisis and its effects, delays and incoherence in climate policy development, as well as issues with funding and support to implement climate solutions, he added.
Resolving the issue would require “every sector, every stakeholder, and every community” to be prepared to address the effects of the climate crisis.
For now, the Philippines’ National Adaptation Plan and Nationally Determined Contribution Implementation Plan, new mechanisms adopted in an effort to address climate change, “are crucial to reduce the country’s risk to the climate crisis,” Algo said.
“But a lot of work still has to be done, especially in improving its inclusion of communities and civil society groups in both the decision-making and implementation process.”
New Delhi’s chief minister announces resignation two days after he was released on bail
- Arvind Kejriwal, a fierce Modi critic, was arrested nearly six months ago ahead of elections
- Kejriwal said his party will hold a meeting later to decide who will take over his position
NEW DELHI: One of India’s main opposition figures and New Delhi’s chief minister said he would resign from office Sunday, two days after he was granted bail in a bribery case.
Arvind Kejriwal, a fierce critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was arrested nearly six months ago ahead of national elections on charges of receiving bribes from a liquor distributor. India’s top court released him on bail Friday.
Kejriwal has consistently denied the accusations and called them a political conspiracy.
“Today I have come to ask the public whether you consider Kejriwal honest or a criminal,” he said in a public address Sunday at the headquarters of his Aam Aadmi Party, which governs New Delhi. “I will resign from the post of chief minister two days from today.”
Kejriwal said his party — a part of a broad alliance of opposition parties called INDIA and was the main challenger to Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in June’s elections — will hold a meeting later to decide who will take over his position.
He also demanded the New Delhi elections, scheduled for February next year, be held in November instead.
Opposition parties widely condemned Kejriwal’s arrest. They accused Modi’s government of misusing federal investigation agencies to harass and weaken its political opponents. They pointed to several raids, arrests, and corruption investigations of key opposition figures in the months before the elections.
Kejriwal’s supporters celebrated his release by lighting firecrackers and dancing in the rain outside his New Delhi residence, with many carrying placards with photos of the popular politician.
Some leaders from Modi’s party warned that he was released on bail and not acquitted.
Government agencies have accused Kejriwal’s party and ministers of accepting 1 billion rupees ($12 million) in bribes from a liquor distributor nearly two years ago in return for revising a liquor sales policy in New Delhi, allowing private companies greater profits.
Kejriwal, a former civil servant, launched the Aam Aadmi Party in 2012. He promised to rid the Indian political system and governance of corruption and inefficiency.
The party’s symbol — a broom — and its promise to sweep the administration of graft struck a chord with New Delhi’s residents, fed up with runaway inflation and slow economic growth.
Three Americans, two Spaniards held over alleged plot to ‘destabilize’ Venezuela
- The arrests come amid heightened tensions between Venezuela and both the United States and Spain over Venezuela’s disputed July 28 presidential election
CARACAS: Three Americans, two Spaniards and a Czech citizen have been detained in Venezuela on suspicion of plotting to destabilize the country, the government said, as the United States and Spain denied Caracas’s allegations they were involved.
The arrests come amid heightened tensions between Venezuela and both the United States and Spain over Venezuela’s disputed July 28 presidential election, which the country’s opposition accuses President Nicolas Maduro of stealing.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said Saturday the foreign nationals were being held on suspicion of planning an attack on Maduro and his government.
“We know that the United States government has links to this operation,” Cabello asserted.
Cabello said two Spaniards were recently detained in Puerto Ayacucho in the southwest.
He added that three Americans and a Czech national were also arrested and linked the alleged plot to intelligence agencies in the United States and Spain, as well as to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
Maduro has heaped blame for the tide of adversity his country faces on the “imperialist” United States, which he accuses of conspiring with his Venezuelan opponents to overthrow him.
A State Department spokesperson said Saturday that “any claims of US involvement in a plot to overthrow Maduro are categorically false.”
The State Department spokesperson additionally confirmed that a US military member was being held and noted “unconfirmed reports of two additional US citizens detained in Venezuela.”
Spain also rejected allegations it was involved.
“Spain denies and categorically rejects any insinuation that it is involved in a political destabilization operation in Venezuela,” a foreign ministry source told AFP Sunday.
Cabello said those detained had “contacted French mercenaries, they contacted mercenaries from Eastern Europe and they are in an operation to try to attack our country.”
He added that “more than 400 rifles were seized” and accused the detainees of plotting “terrorist acts.”
The Czech Republic has yet to react to the sensational claims, which come amid a deepening standoff between Maduro and Western powers.
Maduro, who succeeded iconic left-wing leader Hugo Chavez on his death in 2013, insists he won a third term but failed to release detailed voting tallies to back his claim.
Tensions between Caracas and former colonial power Spain rose sharply after Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, 75, went into exile in Spain a week ago, after being threatened with arrest.
Caracas on Thursday recalled its ambassador to Madrid for consultations and summoned Spain’s envoy to Venezuela for talks after a Spanish minister accused Maduro of running a “dictatorship.”
Venezuela was also angered by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s decision to meet with Gonzalez Urrutia and warned Spain against any “interference” in its affairs.
Caracas has additionally been engaged in a war of words with the United States, which recognized Gonzalez Urrutia as the winner of the election.
Washington announced new sanctions on Thursday against 16 Venezuelan officials, including some from the electoral authority, for impeding “a transparent electoral process” and not publishing accurate results.
Venezuela denounced the measures as a “crime of aggression” and Maduro decorated four military officers among those targeted by the sanctions.
Maduro’s claim to have won a third term in office sparked mass opposition protests, which claimed at least 27 lives and left 192 people wounded.
The opposition published polling station-level results that it said showed Gonzalez Urrutia winning by a landslide.
About 2,400 people, including numerous teens, were arrested in the unrest.
Opposition leader Machado called Saturday for more protests on September 28, two months since the election, to demand international recognition for Gonzalez Urrutia as president.
Maduro also claimed victory amid widespread accusations of fraud after Venezuela’s previous election in 2018.
With the support of the military and other institutions, he managed to cling to power despite international sanctions.
Maduro’s tenure since 2013 has seen GDP drop 80 percent in a decade, prompting more than seven million of the country’s 30 million citizens to emigrate.
UK foreign minister Lammy plays down Putin threats
LONDON: UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “bluster” Sunday over his warning that letting Ukraine use long-range weapons to strike inside Russia would put NATO “at war” with Moscow.
Tensions between Russia and the West over the conflict reached dire levels this week as US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met at the White House to discuss whether to ease rules on Kyiv’s use of western-supplied weaponry.
“I think that what Putin’s doing is throwing dust up into the air,” Lammy told the BBC.
“There’s a lot of bluster. That’s his modus operandi. He threatens about tanks, he threatens about missiles, he threatens about nuclear weapons.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been asking for permission to use British Storm Shadow missiles and US-made ATACMS missiles to hit targets deeper inside Russia for months.
Biden and Starmer delayed a decision on the move during their meeting on Friday.
It came after Putin warned that green-lighting use of the weapons “would mean that NATO countries, the US, European countries, are at war with Russia.”
“If that’s the case, then taking into account the change of nature of the conflict, we will take the appropriate decisions based on the threats that we will face,” he added.
The Russian leader has long warned western countries that they risk provoking a nuclear war over their support for Ukraine.
“We cannot be blown off course by an imperialist fascist, effectively, that wants to move into countries willy nilly,” said Lammy.
“If we let him with Ukraine, believe me, he will not stop there.”
Lammy said that talks between Starmer, Biden and Zelensky over the use of the missiles would continue at the United Nations General Assembly gathering in New York later this month.
Two people die in Ukraine’s Odesa after Moscow and Kyiv exchange drone and missile attacks
KYIV: Two people died in a missile attack on the Ukrainian Black Sea port city of Odesa, local officials said, as Moscow and Kyiv exchanged drone and missile attacks
The Ukrainian air force said Sunday it shot down 10 of the 14 drones and one of the three missiles Russia launched overnight, while the rest hit the suburbs of Odesa.
Oleh Kiper, Odesa’s regional governor, said the two who died Saturday night were a married couple, and that another person was wounded in the attack.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said it downed 29 Ukrainian drones overnight into Sunday over western and southwestern regions, with no damage caused by the falling debris. It also said another Ukrainian drone was shot down Sunday morning over the western Ryazan region.
While Ukraine and Russia regularly launch overnight drone raids on each other’s territory, Ukrainian officials generally do not confirm or deny attacks within Russia’s borders.
The latest attacks came after Ukraine made a new call Saturday on the West to allow it to use the long-range missiles they have provided to strike targets deep inside Russia, as Ukrainian forces struggle to hold back Russian advances in eastern Ukraine.
So far, the US has allowed Kyiv to use American-provided weapons only in a limited area inside Russia’s border with Ukraine.
Kyiv officials argue the weapons are vital to weaken Russia’s ability to strike Ukraine and force it to move its strike capabilities further from the border.
