UMAN, Ukraine: Prayer chants and the sounding of traditional ram’s horns fill the air in the town of Uman, in central Ukraine, as thousands of pilgrims join an annual gathering to mark the Jewish new year, despite the war against Russia.
Uman, 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, is transformed for the celebration of Rosh Hashana. The streets are plastered with signs in Hebrew for the pilgrims who come to pray at the tomb of Rabbi Nachman, the great-grandson of the founder of Hasidic movement.
Despite Ukrainian and Israeli diplomats warning of the security threat, officials told The Associated Press that 35,000 pilgrims made the journey to Uman this year, the same as in earlier years.
Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman, a leading figure in Ukraine’s Jewish community, was one of those who urged international pilgrims not to visit Ukraine due to security concerns but acknowledged that many would still make the trip regardless of the potential risks involved.
“Every year (since Russia’s full-scale invasion), I speak on Israeli television and radio, and I call on the (Jewish) pilgrims not to come to Ukraine. My primary concern is for the lives of people,” he said.
As the war in Ukraine rages for a third year, Russian army fires barrages of drones and missiles at Ukraine almost daily, leaving no region completely safe. Active combat is taking place along a 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front, as Russian forces press their advantage in the eastern Donetsk region. This year alone, the Russian army has managed to capture several thousand square kilometers (miles) of Ukrainian territory, with the capture of the city of Vuhledar being their most recent notable achievement.
Nachman Shitrit, 18, who traveled to Uman from Haifa, Israel with his father, said he had made the pilgrimage over a dozen times.
“The war here didn’t scare me from traveling to Ukraine; there’s also war where I came from,” he told the AP.
This year’s pilgrimage comes at an increasingly volatile time in the Middle East. Israel is now engaged in a multifront war that includes the battles with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, attacks from Iran and strikes inside Syria, plus ongoing confrontations with armed militants in the West Bank and occasional attacks launched by Iranian-backed militants in Iraq and by the Houthis in Yemen.
The hostilities posed additional challenges to some pilgrims traveling to Ukraine this year.
Ukraine closed its air space in February 2022, at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, forcing visitors to travel overland via other European countries in order to reach Uman.
The United Jewish Community of Ukraine said Wednesday that more than 14,000 pilgrims were unable to travel to Uman, partly as a result of Iran’s attack on Israel Tuesday. Iran fired a barrage of nearly 180 missiles, causing cancelation of multiple flights from Israel in an act Iranian officials called retaliation for Israel’s recent strikes on Hezbollah.
Meir Shpanier, 23, who traveled from Tel Aviv, said the difficulty of the journey had made the experience more meaningful to him this year.
“I managed to get here by a miracle. My travel agent booked airplane tickets from Tel Aviv to Budapest. From there, a Ukrainian driver picked me up, and we drove 22 hours to Uman. But some of my friends had to travel through five countries.”
“Because I had to work hard to get here, it means more to me now. I think we’re all blessed to be here,” Shpanier said.

TAPACHULA, Mexico: An 11-year-old Egyptian girl and her 18-year-old sister were among those killed after Mexican army troops opened fire on a truck carrying migrants earlier this week, an official said Friday.
The sisters, and four other migrants from countries including Peru and Honduras, were killed on Tuesday in the southern state of Chiapas.
An official in the state’s prosecutors office confirmed the identification of the two sisters and said their father was wounded in the shooting, but survived.
Federal officials, including newly inaugurated President Claudia Sheinbaum, again refused Friday to confirm the ages or genders of the six migrants killed in the shooting, which occurred on Sheinbaum’s first day in office.
Soldiers claimed they heard shots and returned fire and officials have studiously avoided saying the migrants were killed by army gunfire. However, that appears to be the case, and two soldiers have been relieved of duty and turned over to civilian prosecutors for questioning.
The killings placed in doubt Sheinbaum’s statements over her first days in office that human rights will be at the forefront of her administration’s policies.
Asked about her immigration policy Friday, Sheinbaum said only that the killings were under investigation and doubled down on earlier claims that the government doesn’t violate human rights.
“First of all, human rights are respected,” Sheinbaum said. “That is very important, that is why it is called a humanistic immigration policy, because human rights are at the forefront.”
Three of the dead were from Egypt, and one each from Peru and Honduras. The other has apparently not yet been identified.
Ten other migrants were wounded in the shooting. but there has not been any information on their conditions.
Peru’s foreign ministry confirmed one Peruvian was killed and demanded “an urgent investigation” into the killings. Peru and Mexico have had damaged relations since a 2022 diplomatic spat.
It was the worst killing of migrants by authorities in Mexico since police in the northern state of Tamaulipas killed 17 migrants in 2021.
Sheinbaum has said the shootings are being investigated to see if any commanders might face punishment, and noted “a situation like this cannot be repeated.”
But she left out any mention of that Thursday at a ceremony at a Mexico City army base, where army and navy commanders pledged their loyalty to her in front of massed combat vehicles and hundreds of troops.
“In our country, there is not a state of siege, there are no violations of human rights,” Sheinbaum said, as she promised wage increases for soldiers and sailors.
The shootings Tuesday occurred near the city of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala.
The Defense Department initially said that soldiers claimed to have heard shots as a convoy of three trucks passed the soldiers’ position.
The Attorney General’s Office later said all three trucks ignored orders to stop and tried to flee. The soldiers pursued them and reported coming under fire from the convoy, and returned fire.
One of the trucks eventually stopped, the driver reportedly fled, and a total of 33 migrants were found aboard, from the three countries already mentioned, as well as Nepal, Cuba, India and Pakistan.
The Defense Department said four of the migrants were found dead, and 12 wounded. Two of the wounded later died of their injuries. Sheinbaum refused to say whether any weapons were found in the migrants’ truck.
The area is a common route for smuggling migrants, who are often packed into crowded freight trucks. It has also been the scene of drug cartel turf battles, and the department said the trucks “were similar to those used by criminal groups in the region.”
Irineo Mujica, a migrant rights activist, said he doubted the migrants or their smugglers opened fire.
“It is really impossible that these people would have been shooting at the army,” Mujica said. “Most of the time, they get through by paying bribes.”
If the deaths were the result of army fire, as appears likely, it could prove a major embarrassment for Sheinbaum.
The new president has followed the lead of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador in giving the armed forces extraordinary powers in law enforcement, state-run companies, airports, trains and construction projects.
It is not the first time Mexican forces have opened fire on vehicles carrying migrants in the area, which is also the object of cartel turf battles.
In 2021, the quasi-military National Guard opened fire on a pickup truck carrying migrants, killing one and wounding four. The Guard officers initially claimed some of those in the migrants’ truck were armed and had fired shots, but the governmental National Human Rights Commission later found that was not true.
And in 2021, state police in Tamaulipas killed 17 migrants and two Mexican citizens. Those officers also initially claimed to have come under fire from the migrants’ vehicles.
They argued they were responding to shots fired and believed they were chasing the vehicles of one of the country’s drug cartels, which frequently participate in migrant smuggling. But that later turned out to be false, and the police in fact burned the victims’ bodies in an attempt to cover up the crime.
Eleven of the policemen were convicted of homicide and sentenced to over 50 years in prison.