World

KABUL — At least 16 people were killed in two Afghan cities on Thursday by bomb blasts that were claimed by the Daesh..

Since Taliban fighters seized control of Afghanistan last year after ousting the US-backed government, the number of bombings has fallen but the terrorists and Sunni Daesh has continued with attacks — often against Shiite targets.

Earlier this week, at least six people were killed in twin blasts that hit a boys' school in a Shiite neighbourhood of Kabul.

On Thursday, 12 worshippers were killed in a blast at a Shiite mosque in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, said Ahmad Zia Zindani, spokesman for the provincial public health department in Balkh.

He added that 58 people were wounded, including 32 in serious condition.

Grisly images posted to social media showed victims of the attack being carried to hospital from Seh Dokan Mosque.

“Blood and fear are everywhere,” Zindani told AFP, adding “people were screaming” while seeking news of their relatives at the hospital.

“Many residents were also coming to donate blood,” he said.

The blast occurred as worshippers were offering midday prayers during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

In a statement, Daesh said “the soldiers of the caliphate managed to get a booby-trapped bag” inside the mosque, detonating it from afar.

In a separate blast on Thursday in the city of Kunduz, at least four people were killed and 18 wounded. Police spokesman Obaidullah Abedi told AFP that a bicycle bomb exploded near a vehicle carrying mechanics working for the Taliban.

Late on Thursday, Daesh claimed that attack too but said its fighters set off an explosive device on a bus carrying Kunduz airport employees.

Taliban authorities vowed to punish those responsible for the bloodshed.

“The forces of the Islamic Emirate have good experience in eliminating the wicked elements, and soon the culprits of these crimes will be found and punished harshly,” government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Twitter.

Shiite Afghans, who are mostly from the Hazara community that makes up between 10 and 20 per cent of the country’s 38 million people, have long been the target of the Daesh, who consider them heretics.

“There is religious and ethnic hostility towards the Shiites and Hazaras in particular,” said prominent Shiite leader Mohammad Mohaqqiq.

“All extremist groups that are in Afghanistan, be it Daesh or even Taliban, have shown this hostility.”

No group has yet to claim the deadly attack on a boys’ school in Kabul on Tuesday, which also wounded more than 25.

“Systematic targeted attacks on crowded schools & mosques call for immediate investigation, accountability and end to such human rights violations,” tweeted Richard Bennett, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Afghanistan on human rights.

Taliban officials insist their forces have defeated Daesh, but analysts say the extremist group is a key security challenge.

Since seizing power, the Taliban have regularly raided suspected Daesh hideouts in eastern Nangarhar province.

In May last year at least 85 people — mainly girl students — were killed and about 300 wounded when three bombs exploded near their school in the Shiite dominated Dasht-e-Barchi neighbourhood of Kabul.

No group claimed responsibility for that, but in October 2020 Daesh admitted a suicide attack on an educational centre in the same area that killed 24 people, including students.

In May 2020, the group was blamed for a bloody attack on a maternity ward of a hospital in the same neighbourhood that killed 25 people, including new mothers.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — Mariupol could fall into Russian hands within "hours", an Ukrainian official said following a two month siege, as the enemies agreed Wednesday to a humanitarian corridor for civilians to flee the devastated port city.

As fighting raged in the country's east and south, the president of the European Council Charles Michel arrived in Kyiv, in the latest sign of strengthening ties between Ukraine and the EU.

"In Kyiv today. in the heart of a free and democratic Europe," he wrote on social media.

Michel's visit comes as the West continues to pour weapons into Ukraine amid a renewed Russian push into the eastern Donbas region where a new offensive launched this week has led to an uptick in fighting.

Hours ahead of Michel's arrival, the Pentagon said that Ukraine had recently received fighter planes and spare parts to bolster its air force, following repeated calls from Kyiv for heavier weapons.

Ukraine's air force later hit back at the claim, saying they had only received spare parts to repair existing planes and not been given additional aircraft.

The announcement came as the battle for Mariupol appeared to be nearing a crucial tipping point, after months of devastating fighting that has seen untold numbers of civilians trapped and killed.

Control of Mariupol and the separatist-controlled Donbas region in the east would allow Moscow to create a southern corridor to the Crimean Peninsula that it annexed in 2014, depriving Ukraine of much of its coastline.

In the latest ultimatum issued in its battle to capture Mariupol, Moscow made another call for the city’s defenders to surrender on Wednesday by 2:00pm Moscow time (1100 GMT) and announced the opening of a humanitarian corridor for any Ukrainian troops who agreed to lay down their arms.

As the deadline approached, a commander in the besieged Azovstal steel plant issued a desperate plea for help, saying his marines were “maybe facing our last days, if not hours”.

“The enemy is outnumbering us 10 to one,” Serhiy Volyna from the 36th Separate Marine Brigade said.

“We appeal and plead to all world leaders to help us. We ask them to use the procedure of extraction and take us to the territory of a third-party state.”

Thousands of troops and civilians remain holed up in the plant.

An adviser to the mayor of Mariupol described a “horrible situation” in the encircled complex and reported that up to 2,000 people — mostly women and children — are without “normal” supplies of drinking water, food and fresh air.

Svyatoslav Palamar, a commander in the nationalist Azov battalion defending Mariupol, said the Russian attack on the sprawling steel complex was relentless.

“Powerful bombs have been dropped several times on Azovstal, we have been bombed from boats... we are under siege. The front is 360 degrees,” said Palamar in a post on Telegram, adding that hundreds of civilians were also trapped at the plant.

“The situation is critical, we call on international leaders to help the children,” he added.

Offering some respite, Kyiv said early on Wednesday it had agreed with Russian forces to open a safe route for civilians to flee the devastated city.

“We have managed to get a preliminary agreement on a humanitarian corridor for women, children and elderly persons,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk wrote on Telegram.

Elsewhere on the frontlines, Ukraine’s defence ministry reported its troops had beaten back a Russian attack in the city of Izium, south of the partly blockaded second city of Kharkiv in the east.

Kyiv also claimed enemy losses in a Ukrainian counterattack near the town of Marinka in Donetsk.

Separately, Russia on Wednesday said its forces had launched 73 air strikes across Ukraine, hitting dozens of locations where troops were concentrated.

In eastern Ukraine’s Kramatorsk, a large city in the Donetsk region, residents were already braced for the worst.

“It’s going to be a mess,” said Alexander, 53. “There’s nothing good to expect.”

Further from the frontlines, residents were still reeling weeks after Russian forces withdrew from the area near the capital Kyiv.

At a morgue in Bucha, families carefully searched body bags and examined cadavers looking for missing loved ones.

In the car park of the small communal morgue, the body bags arrived in carts or were piled up in trailers, vans and non-refrigerated trucks.

Four hundred bodies have been discovered since the Russians withdrew on March 31, local police chief Vitaly Lobas told AFP. Around a quarter of them are still unidentified.

“The majority died violent deaths” and were shot, Lobas said, declining to provide a concrete figure at this stage.

President Vladimir Putin has said he launched the so-called military operation in Ukraine in February to save Russian speakers in the country from a “genocide” carried out by a “neo-Nazi” regime.

But his forces have faced allegations of war crimes — most recently from the EU’s Michel during his visit to Kyiv on Wednesday where he toured the devastated nearby town of Borodianka.

“In Borodianka. Like Bucha and too many other towns in Ukraine. History will not forget the war crimes that have been committed here,” Michel wrote on Twitter.

“There can be no peace without justice,” he added.

Ukrainian authorities have said that over 1,200 bodies have been found in the Kyiv region so far.

PANAMA CITY — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday sought greater cooperation in Latin America on migration, taking on a cause of growing political headaches that has only been exacerbated by the crisis in Ukraine.

The top US diplomat was paying a two-day trip to Panama, his first to Latin America this year, weeks before President Joe Biden's administration ends pandemic restrictions that allowed swift expulsions to Mexico.

Opening talks with a generous dinner at the foreign ministry, Blinken and US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas met with counterparts from more than 20 countries in the Western Hemisphere.

"This issue is a priority for the United States," Blinken said, calling for a "safe, orderly and humane" way of migration.

"We care about the well-being of millions of people across the hemisphere who have made the desperate decision to leave their homes and communities in search of a better life," he said.

"All of us bring our concerns to this discussion but also the shared sense of responsibility to meet the migration challenges throughout our region."

Nearly 100 million people have fled their homes worldwide — a figure that Blinken noted is the highest since World War II.

The global crisis has been worsened by the startlingly fast displacement of millions of Ukrainians since Russia invaded in February.

In the United States, authorities apprehended more than 221,000 people on the Mexican border in March, the highest for a single month in more than two decades — an issue sure to be high on the agenda of Biden's Republican rivals in upcoming congressional elections.

The spike comes as people from El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras flee dire poverty, rampant violence and natural disasters aggravated by climate change.

Refocusing on region 

But the United States is far from the only nation in the hemisphere experiencing migration strains. Venezuela's economic and political crisis has triggered an exodus of more than 6 million people, with neighbouring Colombia taking the most.

Blinken signed with Panama an agreement to work together on migration, the second such pact after one last month with Costa Rica.

Panamanian Foreign Minister Erika Mouynes said that the trading nation — home to the dangerous Durian Gap that connects North and South America — saw a record of more than 130,000 migrants last year.

She doubted that migration would ease, pointing to the effects of climate change and the invasion of Ukraine.

"The difficult and harsh reality — our reality — puts us all in a scenario that demands collaboration," she said.

"Coordinating our efforts is no longer optional. It's a necessity."

Brian Nichols, the top US diplomat for Latin America, said the Panama talks would seek to boost support to nations that welcome refugees, including through multinational institutions.

The Panama trip will also help lay the groundwork for a summit of Latin American leaders that Biden will lead in Los Angeles in June.

With Latin America rarely seen as a global security hotspot, the international community spends more than 10 times on each refugee from Syria compared with each Venezuelan migrant, according to a Brookings Institution study.

"There's going to be less and less appetite from the international community to support migrants in the Western Hemisphere while we have a major migration crisis being provoked by Russia," said Jason Marczak, an expert on Latin America at the Atlantic Council.

"We need to avoid that becoming an afterthought for the global community, so it's really important to have Secretary Blinken along with Secretary Mayorkas there in Panama."

Ukrainian refugees have received a warmer welcome in much of the West than did mostly Muslim migrants from Syria and Afghanistan.

Biden has promised to welcome 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, drawing few protests from former president Donald Trump's Republican Party, which has generally made opposition to immigration a core issue.

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Moscow launched dozens of air strikes across eastern Ukraine overnight, its defence ministry said on Tuesday, with Russia's top diplomat acknowledging "another phase" of the conflict was beginning as fighting raged in the Donbas region.

Russia's defence ministry said that "high-precision air-based missiles" had hit 13 Ukrainian positions in parts of the Donbas while other air strikes "hit 60 military assets", including in towns close to the eastern frontline. 

Ukraine's armed forces also confirmed that fighting had increased throughout the east, just hours after President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had kicked off the widely anticipated offensive in Ukraine's industrial heartland. 

"The Russian occupiers intensified offensive operations along the entire line of contact," the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces said in a report published early Tuesday. 

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov appeared to acknowledge the new offensive during an interview with a leading Indian media outlet. 

“Another phase of this operation is beginning and I am sure it will be a very important moment in this entire special operation,” Lavrov told India Today on Tuesday.

Ahead of the advance, Ukrainian authorities had urged people in Donbas to flee west to escape, even as officials called off evacuations for a third straight day from frontline cities due to ongoing fighting. 

“No matter how many Russian soldiers are brought here, we will fight. We will defend ourselves,” Zelensky said on Telegram late Monday.

 ‘Bombed everywhere’ 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he launched the so-called military operation on February 24 to save Russian speakers in Ukraine from a “genocide” carried out by a “neo-Nazi” regime.

But in the Donbas town of Novodruzhesk, Nadya, 65, said “we are bombed everywhere”.

“It’s a miracle that we’re still alive,” she said, her voice trembling.

“We were lying on the ground and waiting. Since February 24 we’ve been sleeping in the cellar.”

Control of Donbas and the besieged port of Mariupol would allow Moscow to create a southern corridor to the Crimean Peninsula that it annexed in 2014, and deprive Ukraine of much of its coastline and a major revenue resource.

In the south, Russia continued its push to capture the besieged port city of Mariupol, as Moscow issued a fresh call for the city’s defenders to surrender and announced the opening of a humanitarian corridor for Ukrainian troops who agreed to lay down their arms.

During an interview broadcast on CNN Tuesday, Pavlo Kyrylenko — who oversees the Donetsk region’s military administration — said Mariupol remained contested. 

“The Ukrainian flag is flying over the city,” said Kyrylenko. “I can’t say the Russians are controlling them. It is just these streets are sustaining heavy fighting.”

$800 million boost 

The first shipments of a new $800 million (740 million euros) US military aid package had begun to arrive at Ukraine’s borders this week, for use against Russian forces.

Washington was due to hold a video meeting with allies Tuesday to discuss the conflict in Ukraine, even as it increasingly provoked the ire of Moscow.

“The United States and Western states under its control are doing everything to drag out the military operation for as long as possible,” said Russia’s defence chief Sergei Shoigu in a televised meeting with his military commanders.

“The growing volume of foreign weapons supplies graphically demonstrate their intention to provoke the Kyiv regime to fight to the last Ukrainian.”

 ‘Seismic waves’ 

While much of the focus has remained in Ukraine’s east, Moscow has also targeted the country’s west with air strikes, killing at least seven people in the city of Lviv near the Polish border on Monday.

Lviv has largely been spared bombardment since Russia invaded on February 24, and the city and its surroundings had become a haven for those seeking safety from the war zone.

But even as strikes continued to hit targets across the country, the east appeared to be Russia’s primary focus. 

The regional governor of the eastern Lugansk region Sergiy Gaiday said Ukrainian forces continued to hold their ground amid heavy fighting.

“We have positional battles in the cities of Rubizhne and Popasna. The enemy cannot do anything though. They are losing people and equipment there,” Gaiday said. 

“Our guys are shooting down drones there. Shooting down planes on the border of the Lugansk and Kharkiv regions, so they are holding on,” he added. 

Later Tuesday, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres denounced Russia’s ongoing offensive as he issued calls for a four-day truce to mark Orthodox Holy Week.

“The intense concentration of forces and firepower makes this battle inevitably more violent, bloody and destructive,” said Guterres as he called for a “humanitarian pause” from Holy Thursday until Easter Sunday on April 24. 

As fighting raged, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a grim forecast for the warring nations on Tuesday, while also predicting the conflict would drag down the global economy, hitting poorest nations the hardest. 

“The economic effects of the war are spreading far and wide — like seismic waves that emanate from the epicenter of an earthquake,” said IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas. 

The report predicted Ukraine suffering a 35 per cent collapse of its economy this year, while Russia’s GDP will drop 8.5 per cent, more than 11 points below the pre-war expectations.

LVIV, Ukraine — Air strikes killed at least seven people in Ukraine's western city of Lviv on Monday, as Russia pounded targets across the country and massed forces for an expected all-out assault in the east.

The air strikes in Lviv came just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of wanting to "destroy" the entire eastern region of Donbas bordering Russia.

Russia's defence ministry said it had hit 16 military targets at various locations across Ukraine.

Following the attack on Lviv, black smoke billowed from the gutted roof of a car repair shop in the northwest of the city as air raid sirens wailed.

"Fires were set off as a result of the strikes. They are still being put out. The facilities were severely damaged," Lviv regional governor Maksym Kozytsky said on social media.

In the south, Russia continued its push to capture the besieged port city of Mariupol where the last remaining Ukranian forces prepared for a final stand.

Ukraine has pledged to fight on and defend the strategic city, defying a Russian ultimatum for remaining fighters inside the encircled Azovstal steel plant to lay down their arms and surrender.

Prsoner swap 

Russian state TV on Monday broadcast a video of what it described as “Britons” captured fighting for Ukraine and demanding that Prime Minister Boris Johnson negotiate their release.

The two haggard-looking men asked to be exchanged for Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian tycoon close to President Vladimir Putin, who was recently arrested in the pro-Western country.

Ukraine then aired its own video featuring Medvedchuk calling for his exchange in return for an evacuation of civilians and troops from Mariupol.

“I want to ask Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to exchange me for Ukrainian defenders and residents of Mariupol,” he said in the video published by Kyiv’s security services, wearing black clothes and looking directly into the camera.

Mariupol has become a symbol of Ukraine’s unexpectedly fierce resistance since Russian troops invaded the former Soviet state on February 24.

While several large cities were under siege, according to Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, not one — with the exception of Kherson in the south — had fallen, and more than 900 towns and cities had been recaptured.

Capturing Mariupol would allow Russia to have a land bridge between the Crimea Peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, and the two Moscow-backed separatist statelets in Ukraine’s east.

‘Last chance to save you’ 

In the east, Ukrainian authorities urged people in Donbas to move west to escape a large-scale Russian offensive to capture its composite regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.

“Russian troops are preparing for an offensive operation in the east of our country in the near future. They want to literally finish off and destroy Donbas,” Zelensky said.

Lugansk governor Sergiy Gaiday said the coming week would be “difficult”.

“It may be the last time we have a chance to save you,” he wrote on Facebook.

Heavy bouts of shelling also resumed in the country’s second city of Kharkiv on Monday morning, according to an AFP reporter on the ground.

The shelling comes a day after at least five people were killed and 20 wounded during a string of strikes in the city just 21 kilometres from the Russian border on Sunday.

More than 4.9 million Ukrainians have fled their country, the United Nations said Monday warning of the risks of women and child refugees being exploited.

“Refugees from Ukraine, the vast majority women and children, face increased risks of sexual exploitation, abuse and human trafficking,” the UN refugee agency said.

‘Genocide’ 

Ukraine officials also said on Monday they were halting the evacuation of civilians from frontline towns and cities in the east for a second day, accusing Russian forces of blocking and shelling escape routes.

“In violation of international humanitarian law, the Russian occupiers have not stopped blocking and shelling humanitarian routes,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on social media.

But Lugansk governor Gaiday announced earlier that he had proceeded with evacuations.

“At our own peril and risk, we took out several dozen people anyway, but it’s already dangerous,” he told Ukrainian media.

During an interview with CNN broadcast on Sunday, Zelensky said he had invited his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron to visit Ukraine to see for himself evidence that Russian forces have committed “genocide,  a term Macron has avoided.

“I just told him I want him to understand that this is not war, but nothing other than genocide.”

Zelensky, describing the situation in Mariupol as “inhuman”, has called on the West to immediately provide heavy weapons — a request he frequently airs.

But Russia has warned the United States this week of “unpredictable consequences” if it sent its “most sensitive” weapons systems to Ukraine.

PARIS — The EU's anti-fraud body has accused French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and associates of embezzling around 600,000 euros during their time as MEPs, French website Mediapart said on Saturday, quoting a new report.

The allegations come just over a week before Le Pen goes head-to-head with incumbent Emmanuel Macron in the second round of presidential elections.

Her lawyer dismissed the accusations, raising suspicions over the "timing" of the report.

Mediapart published extracts from the new report by OLAF into expenses that political groups can make as part of their mandate as MEPs.

The agency accuses Le Pen and others of having used the funds for national political purposes, personal expenses or for services that would benefit commercial companies close to her National Rally Party and the far-right parliamentary group, Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF).

The report points the finger at Le Pen and three other former members of the European parliament including her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, her ex-partner Louis Aliot and former far-right MEP Bruno Gollnisch.

The body accuses the four of having embezzled around 600,000 euros ($650,000), which it recommends they repay.

According to the report, Le Pen personally embezzled around 137,000 euros ($150,000) worth of public money from the Strasbourg parliament when she was an MEP between 2004 and 2017.

“I’m surprised by the timing of such a strong disclosure” and the “instrumentalisation”, Le Pen’s lawyer, Rodolphe Bosselut, told AFP.

Bosselut said he was “dismayed by the way that OLAF [European Anti-Fraud Office] is acting”, insisting that some of the report related to “old facts more than ten years old”.

He added that Le Pen “has not been summoned by any French judicial authority” and slammed the failure to send him or Le Pen the final report.

The investigation by OLAF was opened in 2016, Bosselut said, and Le Pen was questioned in writing by post in March 2021.

The Paris public prosecutor’s office confirmed to AFP that it had received the report on March 11, which it was currently assessing.

Since June 2017, Le Pen is also under investigation on suspicion of having given party members fake jobs as assistants at the European Parliament.

She is accused of “embezzling public funds” and “complicity” in this crime as part of the judicial investigation.