SHANGHAI: China opposes any violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty, China’s foreign ministry said on its website on Sunday after an Israeli airstrike on Beirut killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Nasrallah’s death is widely considered a significant blow to the Iran-aligned group as it reels from an escalating campaign of Israeli attacks.
China urges all parties and especially Israel to immediately cool the situation and prevent the conflict from expanding or “even getting out of control,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on its website.
China “opposes and condemns all action that harms innocent civilians and opposes any move that exacerbates conflict,” the foreign ministry said.
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China says it opposes any violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty
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China says it opposes any violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty
- China urges all parties and especially Israel to immediately cool the situation and prevent the conflict from expanding
11 wounded in southern Ukraine in Russian strikes
KYIV: At least 11 people were wounded on Sunday in a series of Russian strikes on Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine, emergency services announced.
The regional capital was hit by several “massive aerial strikes” at dawn, Ukrainian emergency services said in a statement.
“A building and six houses in different city neighborhoods suffered a lot of destruction,” said the statement, adding that 42 members of the emergency services were helping those potentially trapped under the rubble.
“According to preliminary information, the number of wounded people has risen to 11,” said the emergency services, adding that rescue operations had ended.
A woman dragged from the rubble was taken to hospital.
Regional governor Ivan Fedorov had earlier said that six people were wounded.
He said that Zaporizhzhia was hit by 10 Russian strikes that destroyed “one multi-story building and some houses.”
Andriy Yermak, the head of the office of the president, hit out in a social media post at an attempt to “terrorize” the civilian population.
Yermak also reiterated his called on Western allies to supply more weapons to intercept Russian missiles and apply more economic sanctions against Moscow.
Russia annexed the Zaporizhzhia region in 2022, but the main city of the same name remains under Kyiv’s control.
The regional capital was hit by several “massive aerial strikes” at dawn, Ukrainian emergency services said in a statement.
“A building and six houses in different city neighborhoods suffered a lot of destruction,” said the statement, adding that 42 members of the emergency services were helping those potentially trapped under the rubble.
“According to preliminary information, the number of wounded people has risen to 11,” said the emergency services, adding that rescue operations had ended.
A woman dragged from the rubble was taken to hospital.
Regional governor Ivan Fedorov had earlier said that six people were wounded.
He said that Zaporizhzhia was hit by 10 Russian strikes that destroyed “one multi-story building and some houses.”
Andriy Yermak, the head of the office of the president, hit out in a social media post at an attempt to “terrorize” the civilian population.
Yermak also reiterated his called on Western allies to supply more weapons to intercept Russian missiles and apply more economic sanctions against Moscow.
Russia annexed the Zaporizhzhia region in 2022, but the main city of the same name remains under Kyiv’s control.
Search renews for missing migrants after nine die off Spain's Canary Islands
- Among the dead was a child aged between 12-15
EL HIERRO: Rescue crews on Sunday renewed the search for about 48 migrants missing since their boat capsized near the Spanish island of El Hierro in what threatens to be the deadliest such incident in 30 years of crossings from Africa to the Canary Islands.
Nine people, one of them a child, have been confirmed as dead after their boat sank in the early hours of Saturday morning, emergency and rescue services said.
Rescuers were able to pick up 27 of 84 migrants who were trying to reach the Spanish coast.
A Reuters journalist said one coastguard vessel had left the island of El Hierro on Sunday to renew the search. More rescue craft are expected to follow, along with air support.
Spanish authorities said the migrants were from Mali, Mauritania and Senegal.
The emergency services received a call on Saturday shortly after midnight from the boat, which was located around four miles east of El Hierro. It sank during the rescue, they said.
"They had been at sea for at least two days without food and it seems there was a panic before the boat capsized," Anselmo Pestana, the Spanish government representative in the Canary Islands, told reporters on Saturday.
Wind and poor visibility made the rescue extremely difficult, he added.
Among the dead was a child aged between 12-15, according to the NGO Walking Borders, which helps migrants.
Three other boats reached the Canary Islands during the night, carrying 208 migrants.
Calm seas and gentle winds associated with late summer in the Atlantic Ocean off West Africa have prompted a renewed surge of migrants, local authorities said this month.
The route from Africa to the islands has seen a 154% surge in migrants this year, with 21,620 migrants crossing in the first seven months, data from the European Union's border agency Frontex showed.
In some 30 years of migrant crossings to the islands the deadliest shipwreck recorded to date occurred in 2009 off the island of Lanzarote when 25 people died.
Indonesia mine landslide toll up to 13 as search ends
JAKARTA: The death toll after a landslide at an illegal mine in western Indonesia was raised to 13 on Sunday, an official said, as search efforts for any further victims ended.
Heavy rains caused a landslide at a remote illegal mining site on Thursday evening in West Sumatra province on Sumatra island, where rescue workers had to walk for hours from the nearest village to reach the area.
Provincial disaster mitigation agency spokesperson Ilham Wahab said 13 people were found dead, while 12 others were injured, raising the death toll by two.
“Since all 25 reported victims have been found and evacuated, we decided to close the search and rescue operation,” Ilham told AFP.
But he said a public reporting post would remain open for the next seven days to allow families to report any missing relatives to authorities.
Unlicensed mines are common across the mineral-rich Southeast Asian archipelago, where abandoned sites attract locals who hunt for leftover gold ore without proper safety equipment.
Indonesia is prone to landslides during the rainy season, typically between November and April, but some disasters caused by adverse weather have taken place outside that season in recent years.
Muslim women break taboos navigating east London’s waterways
- The initiative has grown in the last two years from a pilot project with 18 women to a group of around 70
London: Paddle dipped gently below mossy water, Dilruba Begum guided the kayak and a trainee sat in front of her down a canal in east London.
“Out here, you can be anyone,” she whispered as she lifted the paddle up to allow the kayak to drift with the current.
Two years ago, when Dilruba, 43, was swamped with mothering duties, a friend told her about a free, women-only program to learn paddle sports near her home.
Now she is a qualified paddle sport instructor, after taking part in the program run by local housing and community regeneration body Poplar HARCA.
Dilruba and her fellow paddlers are breaking new ground, encouraging women from London’s less advantaged eastern neighborhoods to embrace water sports that many felt were inaccessible to ethnic minorities like them with stretched resources and limited leisure time.
The initiative has grown in the last two years from a pilot project with 18 women to a group of around 70.
Among them are women who are “working, some are full-time mums, some haven’t been out of the house in years,” Dilruba told AFP.
Nine of them, including Dilruba and Atiyya Zaman, 38, have qualified as instructors and started London’s first boat club with an all-female, Muslim committee.
On a rain-soaked September afternoon, the pair led their first session, teaching a small group of women how to use kayaks and inflatable paddle boards.
Life vests secured, they demonstrated different maneuvers to participants on a small pontoon before lowering themselves into kayaks to begin the session on Limehouse Cut.
The canal runs through Poplar and Bow in Tower Hamlets, one of the city’s most deprived and densely populated boroughs.
One aim of the initiative is to improve local people’s access to “blue spaces” in Poplar, which lies at the heart of 6.5 kilometers (3.7 miles) of uninterrupted waterways.
“I live next to the canal, and I used to see people going (on it) all the time. I did always wonder how it would feel if I could do that?” said Atiyya, bobbing up and down on an orange kayak.
Jenefa Hamid, from Poplar HARCA, said many people from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds that make up most of the local community “thought water sport was not something that’s typically for them.”
This could be due to a fear of drowning, as well as cultural and religious reasons. “I think it is just feeling socially excluded,” she added.
According to Sport England data from 2017 to 2019, less than one percent of Asian (excluding Chinese) adults participated in water sports, and all BAME communities were under-represented in swimming activities.
Some of the women in the group “haven’t even been in the water before,” said Atiyya.
“When I started, especially women within this community, we would never do this sort of thing.”
Making the program women-only and allowing different attire made it welcoming to local Muslim women.
Naseema Begum, 47, who was part of the initial cohort and is now an instructor, said there was a “taboo” preventing Asian women and those wearing headscarves from taking part in water sports.
Wearing a niqab, Naseema wanted to show that “you can wear anything and go in the water. As long as you’ve got the right equipment... anyone can take part.”
Women were also attracted by the affordability. Private boating clubs are “quite unaffordable if you’ve got a family to maintain,” said Naseema, adding that she could not justify spending the amount on her own “leisure.”
Naseema now chairs the “Oar and Explore” boat club. With Atiyya and Dilruba, they hope to raise enough funds to acquire their own boats and a storage space by a new pontoon planned for the area.
“The way I felt, the enjoyment and the confidence that I’ve built from this, I want to pass it on to others and tell them there’s more to life,” said Dilruba.
Part of the enjoyment for her was a rare chance to “just sit down with your thoughts, not think about anything else.”
Atiyya agreed. “During Covid, it was quite hard with three young children at home, and then with work, it was very stressful. This was a way to escape,” she said.
Dilruba credits the instructors for helping her become one herself — and opening up a new world.
“They have lifted us up and made us into some new people, with new experiences... new skills we never thought we would have,” she said.
More than 60 dead from storm Helene as rescue, cleanup efforts grow
Cedar Key: Rescuers struggled on Saturday with washed-out bridges and debris-strewn roads in the search for survivors of devastating Storm Helene, which killed at least 63 people across five states and caused massive power outages.
Helene slammed into Florida Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane and surged north, gradually weakening but leaving in its wake toppled trees, downed power lines and mudslide-wrecked homes.
Federal emergencies were declared in six states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee — with more than 800 personnel from the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) deployed.
Now classified as a “post-tropical cyclone,” the remnants of the storm are expected to continue inundating the Ohio Valley and central Appalachians through Sunday, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).
In affected communities across the eastern coast and midwest, storm victims and volunteers toting trash bags, mops and hammers tried to repair what they could and clean up the rest.
“There’s only a couple businesses open. They have limited supply. So I’m just worried about families that have kids and stuff like that, getting somewhere to stay and have something to eat,” said Steven Mauro, a resident of Valdosta, Georgia.
At least 24 people died in South Carolina, 17 in Georgia, 11 in Florida, 10 in North Carolina and one in Virginia, according to local authorities and media tallied by AFP.
The National Weather Service said conditions would “continue to improve today following the catastrophic flooding over the past two days.”
But it warned of possible “long-duration power outages.”
“Main issue is the electrical power,” said another man from Valdosta who declined to give his name. “With the whole town down, the traffic lights are out. So driving around... people should just stay home.”
More than 2.6 million customers were still without electricity across 10 states from Florida in the southeast to Indiana in the midwest as of early Sunday morning, according to tracker poweroutage.us.
Helene blew into Florida’s northern Gulf shore with powerful winds of 140 miles (225 kilometers) per hour. Even as it weakened into a post-tropical cyclone, it has wreaked havoc.
Record levels of flooding threatened to break several dams, but Tennessee emergency officials said Saturday that the Nolichucky Dam — which had been close to breaching — was no longer in danger of giving way and people downriver could return home.
Massive flooding was reported in Asheville, in western North Carolina. Governor Ray Cooper called it “one of the worst storms in modern history” to hit his state.
There were reports of remote towns in the Carolina mountains without power or cell service, their roads washed away or buried by mudslides.
In Cedar Key, an island city of 700 people off Florida’s Gulf Coast, several pastel-colored wooden homes were destroyed by record storm surges and ferocious winds.
“I’ve lived here my whole life, and it breaks my heart to see it. We’ve not really been able to catch a break,” said Gabe Doty, a Cedar Key official, referring to two other hurricanes in the past year.
In South Carolina, the dead included two firefighters, officials said.
Georgia’s 17 deaths included an emergency responder, according to state officials.
In the Tennessee town of Erwin, more than 50 patients and staff trapped on a hospital roof by surging floodwaters had to be rescued by helicopters.
In a statement Saturday, President Joe Biden called Helene’s devastation “overwhelming.”
Biden was briefed by FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell and Homeland Security Adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall on “the tragic loss of life across the region,” the White House said.
Criswell, who went to Florida on Saturday to survey damage, will visit Georgia on Sunday and North Carolina on Monday.
September has been an unusually wet month around the world, with scientists linking some extreme weather events to human-caused global warming.
The North Atlantic hurricane season runs from the beginning of June to the end of November, with most of the severe storms historically forming around the end of August or beginning of September.
Forecasters are carefully watching two more named storm systems expected next week: Joyce and Hurricane Isaac.
Isaac is expected to weaken into a powerful post-tropical cyclone by Sunday night or early Monday, while Joyce is expected to be a tropical storm for a couple more days, according to the NHC.
Helene slammed into Florida Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane and surged north, gradually weakening but leaving in its wake toppled trees, downed power lines and mudslide-wrecked homes.
Federal emergencies were declared in six states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee — with more than 800 personnel from the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) deployed.
Now classified as a “post-tropical cyclone,” the remnants of the storm are expected to continue inundating the Ohio Valley and central Appalachians through Sunday, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).
In affected communities across the eastern coast and midwest, storm victims and volunteers toting trash bags, mops and hammers tried to repair what they could and clean up the rest.
“There’s only a couple businesses open. They have limited supply. So I’m just worried about families that have kids and stuff like that, getting somewhere to stay and have something to eat,” said Steven Mauro, a resident of Valdosta, Georgia.
At least 24 people died in South Carolina, 17 in Georgia, 11 in Florida, 10 in North Carolina and one in Virginia, according to local authorities and media tallied by AFP.
The National Weather Service said conditions would “continue to improve today following the catastrophic flooding over the past two days.”
But it warned of possible “long-duration power outages.”
“Main issue is the electrical power,” said another man from Valdosta who declined to give his name. “With the whole town down, the traffic lights are out. So driving around... people should just stay home.”
More than 2.6 million customers were still without electricity across 10 states from Florida in the southeast to Indiana in the midwest as of early Sunday morning, according to tracker poweroutage.us.
Helene blew into Florida’s northern Gulf shore with powerful winds of 140 miles (225 kilometers) per hour. Even as it weakened into a post-tropical cyclone, it has wreaked havoc.
Record levels of flooding threatened to break several dams, but Tennessee emergency officials said Saturday that the Nolichucky Dam — which had been close to breaching — was no longer in danger of giving way and people downriver could return home.
Massive flooding was reported in Asheville, in western North Carolina. Governor Ray Cooper called it “one of the worst storms in modern history” to hit his state.
There were reports of remote towns in the Carolina mountains without power or cell service, their roads washed away or buried by mudslides.
In Cedar Key, an island city of 700 people off Florida’s Gulf Coast, several pastel-colored wooden homes were destroyed by record storm surges and ferocious winds.
“I’ve lived here my whole life, and it breaks my heart to see it. We’ve not really been able to catch a break,” said Gabe Doty, a Cedar Key official, referring to two other hurricanes in the past year.
In South Carolina, the dead included two firefighters, officials said.
Georgia’s 17 deaths included an emergency responder, according to state officials.
In the Tennessee town of Erwin, more than 50 patients and staff trapped on a hospital roof by surging floodwaters had to be rescued by helicopters.
In a statement Saturday, President Joe Biden called Helene’s devastation “overwhelming.”
Biden was briefed by FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell and Homeland Security Adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall on “the tragic loss of life across the region,” the White House said.
Criswell, who went to Florida on Saturday to survey damage, will visit Georgia on Sunday and North Carolina on Monday.
September has been an unusually wet month around the world, with scientists linking some extreme weather events to human-caused global warming.
The North Atlantic hurricane season runs from the beginning of June to the end of November, with most of the severe storms historically forming around the end of August or beginning of September.
Forecasters are carefully watching two more named storm systems expected next week: Joyce and Hurricane Isaac.
Isaac is expected to weaken into a powerful post-tropical cyclone by Sunday night or early Monday, while Joyce is expected to be a tropical storm for a couple more days, according to the NHC.
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