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KRAMATORSK/ODESSA, Ukraine — Both sides have been burying their dead as Ukraine slides further towards war, with supporters of Russia and of a united Ukraine accusing each other of tearing the country apart.

Tuesday morning was quieter than past days in eastern and southern Ukraine, but the deadliest week since the separatist uprising began has transformed the conflict, hardening positions and leaving little room for peace.

In Kramatorsk, a separatist-held town in the east that saw an advance by Ukrainian troops at the weekend, the coffin of 21-year-old nurse Yulia Izotova was carried through streets stilled by barricades of tyres and tree trunks on Monday. Scattered red carnations traced the route.

At the Holy Trinity Church, seven priests led mourners in prayer for a woman killed by large calibre bullets, which the townsfolk believe were fired by Ukrainian troops.

“They shoot at us. Why? Because we don’t want to live with fascists?” asked 58-year-old passport photographer Sergei Fominsky, standing with his wife among the mourners. “We’re not slaves. We kneel to no one.”

In Odessa, a previously peaceful, multi-ethnic Black Sea port where more than 40 people were killed on Friday in the worst day of violence since a February revolt toppled Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, pall-bearers carried Andrey Biryukov’s open casket from a van to the street corner where he was shot.

A pro-Ukrainian activist, Biryukov, 35, was killed during a day that began with hundreds of pro-Russian sympathisers armed with axes, chains and guns attacking a Ukrainian march, and ended later that night with the pro-Russians barricaded inside a building that was set on fire, killing dozens.

A small crowd of about 50 people stood around the body, covering it with carnations and roses. A Ukrainian flag fluttered in the wind and a patriotic song about dead heroes was played from a sound system.

Relatives wept and a young woman fell on her knees crying loudly. The corner where the man died was decorated with flowers and small Ukrainian flags.

“The government has failed to protect its own people. The police have failed miserably,” said Nikita, a grizzled 56-year-old with a Ukrainian yellow and blue arm-band.

Sergei, in his 40s, who also came to mourn, said violence “was imported to Odessa”.

“We were proud of Odessa as a unique place where people used to live in peace, regardless of their beliefs and religion and race,” he said. “Now this is all gone.”

The surge in violence has changed the tone of international diplomacy, with even cautious European states speaking increasingly of the likelihood of war in a country of around 45 million people the size of France.

“The bloody pictures from Odessa have shown us that we are just a few steps away from a military confrontation,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in interviews published in four European newspapers.

Government offensive

The next few days could prove decisive: separatists in the eastern Donbass region say they will hold a referendum on secession on Sunday May 11, similar to the one that preceded Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Two days earlier, Friday May 9, is the annual Victory Day holiday celebrating the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. Moscow has been openly comparing the government in Kiev to the Nazis and Ukrainian officials say they are worried that the day could provoke violence. In Moscow, there will be a massive parade of military hardware through Red Square, a Soviet-era tradition revived by President Vladimir Putin.

The past few days have seen government forces press on with an offensive but make little progress in the east, where separatist rebels have so far held firm at their main outpost in the town of Slaviansk and shot down three Ukrainian helicopters.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on Tuesday more than 30 separatists had been killed in fighting around Slaviansk, but there was no confirmation of such a figure. The rebels, who triggered fighting in the area on Monday by ambushing government troops, said four of their number had been killed.

At roadblocks in the town, some armed fighters have been replaced by civilians, like Alexandra, in her late 20s, who said she leaves her 10-year-old daughter at home each morning, puts a starting pistol in her belt and walks to the barricades. The tactic of putting civilians at the front could make a government offensive more difficult.

“We have two options — to use heavy artillery... wipe everything out, put the flag up and report that everything has been done. The second option is a gradual blockade, destroying provocateurs and sabotage to prevent injuries among the population. We are carrying out the second scenario,” said acting defence minister Mykhailo Koval, explaining why the operation has taken so long and achieved so little.

Since a pro-European government took power after the uprising that toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich, Putin overturned diplomatic convention by declaring Moscow’s right to send troops across borders to protect Russian speakers.

In March, Russia seized and annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region, and in the weeks that followed, armed separatists have taken control of most of the eastern Donbass coal and steel region, which accounts for around 15 per cent of Ukraine’s population and a third of industrial output.

Moscow has tens of thousands of troops massed on Ukraine’s eastern frontier. The outbreak of violence in Odessa, hundreds of kilometres away near a Russian-occupied breakaway region of neighbouring Moldova, means the unrest has spread across the breadth of southern and eastern Ukraine.

Western countries say Russian agents are directing the uprising and Moscow is stoking the violence with a campaign of propaganda, broadcast into Ukraine on Russian state channels, that depicts the government in Kiev as “fascists”.

“Russia sometimes sounds as if it’s refighting WW2. Fascism all over the place. Enemies everywhere. Ghosts of history mobilised,” tweeted Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.

LImited sanctions

However, so far Western concern has not been matched by any serious action that might dissuade Putin. The United States and the European Union have imposed limited sanctions on lists of individual Russians and small firms, but have held back from measures designed to hurt Russia’s economy broadly.

NATO has made clear it will not fight to protect Ukraine, instead beefing up defences of its nearby member states. NATO’s top military commander, US Air Force General Philip Breedlove, said on Monday Russia had used special forces in eastern Ukraine and he now believed Moscow might be able to achieve its goals without resorting to a conventional invasion.

Western leaders have threatened to impose tougher sanctions on Russia if it interferes with presidential elections in Ukraine set for May 25 and most of their diplomacy has been centred around that date.

“If [the election] doesn’t take place, there will be chaos and the risk of civil war,” French President Francois Hollande said. “The Russians, Vladimir Putin, at the moment want this election not to happen so as to maintain the pressure. It’s up to us to convince them.”

Petro Poroshenko, a Ukrainian confectionery baron who is front-runner in the presidential election, said the vote would go ahead despite the unrest: “We hope that we will be able to complete the anti-terrorist operation before the election. And where we cannot do so — we will surround [those places] and not allow them to interfere with the election.”

But Moscow has increasingly dismissed the prospect, suggesting it will not accept the winner of the vote any more than it accepts the interim government in power since February.

“Holding elections at a time when the army is deployed against part of the population is quite unusual,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference.

ODESSA/SLAVIANSK, Ukraine — Pro-Russian rebels shot down a Ukrainian helicopter in fierce fighting near the eastern town of Slaviansk on Monday, and Kiev drafted police special forces to the southwestern port city of Odessa to halt a feared westward spread of rebellion.

Ukraine said the Odessa force, based on “civil activists”, would replace local police who had failed to tackle rebel actions at the weekend. Its dispatch was a clear signal from Kiev that, while tackling rebellion in the east, it would vigorously resist any sign of a slide to a broader civil war.

Odessa, with its ethnic mix from Russians to Ukrainians, Georgians to Tatars a cultural contrast to the pro-Russian east, was quiet on Monday. Ukrainian flags flew at half mast for funerals of some of the dozens killed in clashes on Friday.

But in the east, fighting intensified around the pro-Russian stronghold of Slaviansk, a city of 118,000, where rebel fighters ambushed Ukrainian forces early in the day.

The interior ministry said five Ukrainian paramilitary police were killed. Separatists said four of their number had also been killed.

The sound of an air-raid siren could be heard in the centre of Slaviansk, and a church bell rang in the main square.

Russia’s foreign ministry called on Kiev to “stop the bloodshed, withdraw forces and finally sit down at the negotiating table”. It also published an 80-page report detailing “widespread and gross human rights violations” in Ukraine over the past six months for which it blamed the new government and its Western allies.

Russia denies Ukrainian and Western accusations it is seeking to undermine the country of 45 million and using special forces to lead the insurgency across the border, as it did before annexing Crimea in March.

The self-declared pro-Russian Mayor of Slaviansk Vyacheslav Ponomarev told Reuters by telephone: “[The Ukrainians] are reinforcing, deploying ever more forces here. Recently there was a parachute drop... For us, they are not military, but fascists.”

Ukraine’s defence ministry said rebels had shot down a Ukrainian military helicopter, the fourth since Friday, with heavy machinegun fire. The helicopter crashed into a river and the crew were rescued alive, but there were no details of their condition.

Diana, 15, who lives near Slaviansk in a single-storey house at the strategic junction of the road between Kharkiv and Rostov, said she saw Ukrainian tanks fire on rebel cars. A fuel tank at a petrol station exploded and fighters fired at houses.

“My father was injured in the head by glass splinters. It’s terrifying. There’s just nowhere to live now. Everything is broken, our television, our computer; they shot at our car.”

The violence in Odessa marked a watershed for Ukraine.

It increased fears that trouble could spread to the capital in the approach to Friday’s celebrations of the Soviet victory in World War II, an event that could kindle tensions over Kiev’s relations with its former communist masters in Moscow.

Over 40 people were killed in Friday’s clashes, the worst since pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych fled to Moscow in February amid protests by Ukrainians demanding closer ties to Europe. Most were pro-Russians killed when the building they occupied was set ablaze by petrol bombs.

It is not clear who started the fire, but Moscow accuses Kiev of inciting violence.

On Sunday, hundreds besieged a police station where fellow pro-Moscow activists had been held since the shooting and fighting that led up to the house blaze. Police then freed 67 of them, infuriating Kiev.

“The police in Odessa acted outrageously,” Interior Minister Arseny Avakov wrote on his Facebook page. “The ‘honour of the uniform’ will offer no cover.”

He said he had sent the newly formed Kiev-1 force of “civil activists” to Odessa following the sacking of the entire Odessa force leadership.

The units Avakov referred to emerged partly from the uprising against Yanukovych early this year.

That could fuel anger among the government’s opponents, who accuse it of promoting “fascist” militant groups, such as Right Sector, that took part in the Kiev uprising over the winter.

Odessa’s economic importance

Loss of control of Odessa would be a huge economic and political blow for Ukraine, a country the size of France that borders several NATO countries and harbours aspirations to join the military alliance, a primary source of concern for the Kremlin.

Many on the streets said they were shocked by the violence.

“People who brought this to our city were not and are not and will not be true citizens of Odessa,” said Alexey, 40, an ethnic Russian. “We are Odessa, and this is a special place.”

Rabbi Fichel Chichelnitsky, a, official with Odessa’s 70,000-strong Jewish community, said: “I’m hoping these deaths serve as a stern warning to everyone that this is not a game.”

Odessa, a city of a million people, with a grand history as the cosmopolitan southern gateway for the tsars’ empire, has two ports, including an oil terminal, and is a key transport hub.

Unrest there would also heighten Western concern that Ukraine, already culturally divided between an industrial, Russian-speaking east and a more westward-looking west, could disintegrate. As well as the humanitarian problems that could entail, neighbouring NATO and EU countries would face a deep crisis in relations with Moscow, which supplies much of Europe’s gas via Ukraine.

The chant “Odessa is a Russian city!” was heard at pro-Russian demonstrations through the weekend.

Many Russians agree. Founded by Empress Catherine the Great, it has played a key role in Russian imperial history.

Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein set scenes of a massacre of civilians during a 1905 uprising on the grand steps that sweep down to the port. The images from “The Battleship Potemkin” are among the most famous in cinema history.

Diplomacy

Diplomacy continued over the weekend.

Germany said on Sunday it was pressing for a second meeting in Geneva to bring Russia and Ukraine together with the United States and European Union. Moscow and Kiev accuse each other of wrecking an earlier accord on April 17.

Berlin said on Monday it was doing what it could to make sure a presidential election planned for May 25 went ahead.

“The election would be not just a means for stabilisation but also a strong signal for a better future for Ukraine,” Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

He said a referendum planned by pro-Russian separatists in the eastern city of Donetsk, where rebels have proclaimed a “Donetsk People’s Republic”, would increase tensions.

Certainly, failure by Kiev authorities to conduct the election in rebel-controlled eastern cities would give Moscow grounds to question the legitimacy of any government emerging, just as it challenges the present administration.

ABUJA — The Islamist militant group Boko Haram claimed responsibility on Monday for the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls in northeast Nigeria last month and threatened to “sell them on the market”, the French news agency AFP reported, citing a video.

Boko Haram on April 14 stormed an all-girl secondary school in the village of Chibok, in Borno state, then packed the teenagers, who had been taking exams, onto trucks and disappeared into a remote area along the border with Cameroon.

The brazenness and sheer brutality of the school attack shocked Nigerians, who have been growing accustomed to hearing about atrocities in an increasingly bloody five-year-old Islamist insurgency in the north.

“I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah,” Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said in the video, according to AFP, which is normally the first media outlet to get hold of Shekau’s videos.

It did not immediately give further details.

Boko Haram, now seen as the main security threat to Africa’s leading energy producer, is growing bolder and extending its reach. The kidnapping occurred on the same day as a bomb blast, also blamed on Boko Haram, that killed 75 people on the edge of Abuja and marked the first attack on the capital in two years.

The militants, who say they are fighting to reinstate a mediaeval Islamic caliphate in northern Nigeria, repeated that bomb attack more than two weeks later in almost exactly the same spot, killing 19 people and wounding 34 in the suburb of Nyanya.

The girls’ abductions have been hugely embarrassing for the government and threaten to completely overshadow its first hosting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) for Africa on May 7-9.

Nigerian officials had hoped the event would highlight their country’s potential as an investment destination since it became Africa’s biggest economy after a GDP recalculation in March.

Protester arrested

The apparent powerlessness of the military to prevent the attack or find the girls in three weeks has triggered anger and protests in the northeast, and in Abuja.

On Sunday, authorities arrested a leader of a protest staged last week in Abuja that had called on them to do more to find the girls. The arrest has further fuelled outrage against the security forces.

Naomi Mutah Nyadar was picked up by police after a meeting she and other campaigners had held with President Goodluck Jonathan’s wife, Patience, concerning the girls.

Nyadar was taken to Asokoro police station, near the presidential villa, said fellow protester Lawan Abana, whose two nieces are among the abductees.

Police were not immediately available to comment on the incident, but a presidency source said Nyadar had been detained because she had falsely claimed to be the mother of one of the missing girls. Abana said she had made no such claim.

In a statement, Patience Jonathan denied local media reports that she had ordered Nyadar’s arrest but urged the protesters in Abuja to go home, the state-owned News Agency of Nigeria said.

“You are playing games. Don’t use school children and women for demonstrations again. Keep it to Borno, let it end there,” the agency quoted her as saying.

More protests are planned from 3pm (1400 GMT) on Monday. These could become a major headache for the government if they continue and coincide with the WEF event, where security arrangements will involve some 6,000 army troops.

In a televised “media chat” late on Sunday, President Jonathan pledged that the girls would soon be found and released, but also admitted he had no clue where they were.

“Let me reassure the parents and guardians that we will get their daughters out,” he said, adding that extra troops had been deployed and aircraft mobilised in the hunt for the girls.

SYDNEY — Australia, China and Malaysia pledged on Monday not to give up searching for a Malaysia Airlines jetliner that disappeared almost two months ago, despite lingering questions about how to proceed and who will pay.

No trace of Flight MH370 has been found since it vanished on a scheduled service from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, despite the most intensive search in commercial aviation history.

With the air and surface search now halted, a new search phase costing around A$60 million ($55 million) will begin after existing visual and sonar search data is analysed and a contractor is found to lease the sophisticated equipment needed, officials said after meeting in Canberra.

Financial responsibility is a major focus of the talks and Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss seemed to open the door to manufacturers including Boeing, which produced the 777-200ER jet, and engine maker Rolls Royce, to contribute financially.

“They also have a vested interest in what happened on MH370 so they can be confident about the quality of their product, or take remedial action if there was some part of the aircraft that contributed to this accident,” he told reporters.

“So, I think we will be looking for increasing involvement from the manufacturers, and their host countries.”

Boeing said it was providing technical expertise to the investigation.

“Boeing provides experts who assist on site as well as many more within the company who, because of the detailed knowledge of the airplane, its performance and behaviour, are called upon to contribute,” the company said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters.

Experts have narrowed the search area where the plane is presumed to have crashed to a large arc of the Indian Ocean about 1,600km northwest of the west Australian city of Perth.

Last week, Malaysia released its most comprehensive account yet of what happened to Flight MH370, detailing the route the plane probably took as it veered off course and the confusion that followed.

The officials have said the focus will be on 60,000sqkm. of seabed in the Indian Ocean that could take a year to search.

US President Barack Obama had publicly promised to commit more assets, but government sources say the United States is keen to begin passing on the costs of providing the expensive sonar equipment the officials say they are trying to source.

The United States said over the weekend that it would only contribute its sophisticated Bluefin-21 underwater drone for one more month, placing pressure on Australia, China and Malaysia to find funding for the next phase of the search. A majority of the 239 people on board were Chinese nationals.

“At the request of the Australian government, the US navy will continue supporting the MH370 sub-surface search effort with the Bluefin-21 side scan sonar for approximately 4 more weeks,” US Navy Commander William Marks of the 7th Fleet said.

For now the search is on hold as the Ocean Shield, an Australian naval vessel carrying the drone, resupplies and conducts maintenance at a military base in western Australia.

The officials will meet again in Canberra on Wednesday, they said, where they will begin thrashing out the details of how to proceed and who precisely will shoulder the costs of doing so. 

ODESSA, Ukraine — Thousands of pro-Russian protesters assaulted Odessa’s police headquarters Sunday, days after deadly clashes and a fire there killed dozens of their comrades in what Kiev charged was a Russian plot to “destroy Ukraine”.

The unrest in the southern port city threatened a new front in the Ukrainian government’s battle against pro-Moscow militants, with an expanded military operation under way in the east against gunmen holding more than a dozen towns.

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Russia was executing a plan “to destroy Ukraine and its statehood”.

He was in Odessa to observe mourning for the 42 people who died there in clashes and the fire on Friday — most of them pro-Russian militants.

The unrest shaking the Black Sea city of one million people, he said, aimed “to repeat in Odessa what is happening in the east of the country”.

In an effort to head off any retribution on the streets for Friday’s bloodshed, Yatsenyuk sacked Odessa’s police chiefs and ordered an inquiry.

The police in the headquarters managed to calm the crowd outside by releasing 67 pro-Russian militants they were holding, nearly half the 150 total who had been arrested in Friday’s clashes. One person, though, was reported wounded by gunshot in the city.

Although Moscow has admitted sending troops into Crimea ahead of annexing the strategic peninsula in March, it denies having a hand in Ukraine’s unrest in the east and in Odessa.

Instead it blames the Kiev government and its Western backers for the carnage.

Moscow has also demanded a halt to the Ukrainian military offensive in the east, saying it has received “thousands” of calls for help from the population there for it to intervene.

Tens of thousands of Russian troops have been parked on Ukraine’s border for two months, ready for an invasion Russian President Vladimir Putin says he has a right to launch — but “hopes” he won’t have to.

But Ukrainian officials have pushed on with the operation, determined to crush the pro-Kremlin rebels.

Late Sunday, a spokeswoman for rebels in the insurgent-controlled bastion of Slavyansk said “the town is completely surrounded”.

AFP confirmed that, observing seven armoured vehicles blocking the last main route out, the road to the regional hub of Donetsk.

Ukrainian authorities have already put all armed forces on “combat alert” and brought back conscription as the risk of invasion looms.

The three-day death toll from the eastern offensive meanwhile stood at 10 at least — half of them servicemen — as soldiers confronted gunmen in towns around Slavyansk.

AFP reporters near the eastern town of Kostyantynivka saw a pro-Russian checkpoint abandoned and smouldering while barricades were hastily erected in the centre.

Rebels defending Kostyantynivka told AFP there had been fighting overnight near the town’s television tower.

In nearby Kramatorsk, pro-Russians were holed up in the town hall while burned-out trolley buses and minivans blocked off streets in the city centre.

But in the centre of besieged Slavyansk — whose outskirts saw fierce gun battles on Saturday — the situation remained relatively calm. Some of its 160,000 citizens reported increasing difficulty obtaining basic foodstuffs.

In annexed Crimea there were clashes between police and 2,000 pro-Kiev Tatars demonstrating against Russia’s refusal to allow their leader Mustafa Dzhemilev into the peninsula.

The spreading violence eclipsed the small nugget of positive news in Ukraine on Saturday: the release of seven European OSCE inspectors, who were all safely home after a Russian envoy went to Slavyansk to organise their release.

AAB BAREEK, Afghanistan — Aid groups on Sunday rushed to help survivors of a landslide in northern Afghanistan that entombed a village, killing hundreds of people and leaving 700 families homeless in the mountains.

Much of Aab Bareek village in Badakhshan province was swallowed on Friday by a fast-moving tide of mud and rock that swept down the hillside, and left almost no trace of 300 homes.

Government officials said the current death toll was at least 300 and warned it could rise by hundreds more, after initial reports suggested that as many as 2,500 people may have died.

Large crowds gathered at the remote disaster site, where rescue efforts were abandoned due to the volume of deep mud covering houses.

Only a few bodies have been pulled from the debris.

“Around 1,000 families are thought to have been affected with some 300 houses totally destroyed,” the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement.

“Assessments to determine priorities on immediate child protection and water, sanitation and hygiene needs for [displaced] families are continuing.”

It added that 700 families were displaced, with many fleeing their homes in fear the unstable hillside could unleash more deadly landslides.

Tents, emergency food supplies, health services and support for children who lost parents were being organised after many survivors spent another night in the open.

Wailing near her father’s destroyed house, Begum Nisa, a 40-year-old mother of three, described the moment when the wall of mud smashed through the village.

“I was eating lunch by the window of my house, then suddenly I heard a huge roar,” she said.

“I shouted to my family to save themselves, but it was too late. I have lost my dear father and mother. I also lost my uncle and five members of his family.”

Local people and emergency workers had used shovels to try in vain to dig out anyone trapped alive. Relief work has now turned to caring for survivors.

‘Our life is destroyed’ 

“We have erected 150 tents, handed out food and set up a mobile health clinic,” Abdullah Faiz, provincial director of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, told AFP.

“It is a difficult operation because of rough terrain and lack of roads, and there is still a possibility of another landslide.”

Many villagers were at Friday prayers in two mosques when they were engulfed by the torrent of mud and a second landslide hit people who came to help those in need.

“Our house were totally destroyed, we are destroyed and our life is destroyed,” said Bibi Khanum, 55, sitting in a tent provided by the Red Crescent.

“My husband was killed under the rubble and four of my young children. I am going crazy without them, repeating their names time and time again.”

Afghanistan held a national day of mourning on Sunday after President Hamid Karzai expressed his condolences to those who had lost loved ones.

“We have a list of around 300 people confirmed dead,” Badakhshan governor Shah Waliullah Adeeb told reporters at the scene on Saturday.

“We cannot continue the search and rescue operation anymore, as the houses are under metres of mud.”

There was no official update on the death toll Sunday and the exact number of fatalities may never be known.

Badakhshan is a mountainous northeastern province bordering Tajikistan, China and Pakistan.

It has been relatively peaceful since the US-led military intervention began in 2001, but has seen increasing Taliban activity in recent years.

The landslides follow recent severe flooding in other parts of northern Afghanistan, with 159 people dead and 71,000 people affected by floods in Jowzjan, Faryab and Sar-e-Pul provinces.

Flooding and landslides often occur during the spring rainy season in northern Afghanistan, with flimsy mud houses offering little protection against rising water levels and torrents of mud.

Afghanistan is in the middle of presidential elections, with former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and ex-World Bank economist Ashraf Ghani due to compete in a head-to-head run-off vote on June 7.

Both candidates called for urgent action to support those hit by the landslide.

KABUL — Afghan officials gave up hope on Saturday of finding any survivors from a landslide in the remote northeast, putting the death toll at more than 2,100, as rescuers turned their attention to helping the over 4,000 people displaced.

Officials expressed concern the unstable hillside above the site of the disaster may cave in again, threatening the homeless as well as the UN and local rescue teams that have arrived in Badakhshan province, which borders Tajikistan.

“More than 2,100 people from 300 families are all dead,” Naweed Forotan, a spokesman for the Badakhshan provincial governor, told Reuters.

Villagers and a few dozen police, equipped with only basic digging tools, resumed their search when daylight broke but it soon became clear there was no hope of finding survivors buried in up to 100 metres of mud.

“Seven members of my family were here, four or five of them were killed... I am also half alive, what can I do?” said an elderly woman, her hair covered in a pink shawl.

The UN mission in Afghanistan said the focus was now on the more than 4,000 people displaced, either directly as a result of Friday’s landslide or as a precautionary measure from villages assessed to be at risk.

Their main needs are water, medicine, food and emergency shelter, said Ari Gaitanis, a spokesman from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

The impoverished area, dotted with villages of mud-brick homes nestled in valleys beside bare slopes, has been hit by several landslides in recent years.

Plea for help

The side of the mountain above Ab Barak collapsed at around 11am (0630 GMT) on Friday as people were trying to recover belongings and livestock after a smaller landslip hit a few hours earlier.

Hundreds of homes were destroyed in the landslides that were triggered by torrential rain. Officials worry another section of the mountainside could collapse at any time.

The Afghan military flew rescue teams to the area on Saturday, as the remote mountain region is served by only narrow, poor roads which have themselves been damaged by more than a week of heavy rain.

“We have managed to get one excavator into the area, but digging looks hopeless,” Colonel Abdul Qadeer Sayad, a deputy police chief of Badakhshan, told Reuters.

He said the sheer size of the area affected, and the depth of the mud, meant that only modern machinery could help.

NATO-led coalition troops are on stand-by to assist but on Saturday said the Afghan government had not asked for help.

“I call on the government to come and help our people, to take the bodies out,” said a middle-aged man, standing on a hill overlooking the river of mud where his village once stood.

“We managed to take out only 10-15 people, the rest of our villagers here are trapped.”

Hundreds of people camped out overnight in near freezing conditions, although some were given tents. Officials distributed food and water.

At least 100 people were being treated for injuries, most of them by medics who set up facilities in a stable building.

Seasonal rains and spring snow melt have caused devastation across large swathes of northern Afghanistan, killing more than 100 people before this latest disaster.

US President Barack Obama said American forces were on stand-by to help.

“Just as the United States has stood with the people of Afghanistan through a difficult decade, we stand ready to help our Afghan partners as they respond to this disaster, for even as our war there comes to an end this year, our commitment to Afghanistan and its people will endure,” he said.

About 30,000 US soldiers remain in Afghanistan, although that number is falling as Washington prepares to withdraw all combat troops who battled Taliban insurgents by the end of this year.

Police said they had provided a security ring around the area, which has been relatively free of insurgent attacks. The Taliban said in a statement they were also willing to provide security.

BEIJING — Relatives of passengers aboard missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 were leaving their Beijing hotel on Friday, a day after the airline said it would stop providing them with accommodation.

“I’m very angry,” said Steven Wang, whose mother was on the flight, adding: “Malaysia Airlines have suddenly told us to leave.”

“They should have at least given us an adjustment period for us to make preparations and collect our things,” said Wang, who himself lives in Beijing and has emerged as a spokesman for the relatives.

There was a heavy police presence at the Lido Hotel in Beijing Friday, with dozens of uniformed officers inside, following previous chaotic clashes between angry family members and Malaysia Airlines staff.

The airline has provided the service for relatives in Malaysia and China — where they have suffered an agonising wait for news since the flight mysteriously disappeared on March 8.

The carrier announced late Thursday in a statement that it was ending all hotel accommodation for passenger relatives by next Wednesday, but several staying in Beijing said they had been told to leave even sooner.

In the statement, the airline said it was advising families “to receive information updates on the progress of the search and investigation, and other support by Malaysia Airlines within the comfort of their own homes”.

Malaysia’s Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Hamzah Zainuddin told reporters in Kuala Lumpur on Friday that the time had come for relatives to return home.

The airline “has been supporting these family members in Beijing for the last 55 days”, he said.

“That’s the reason I think it’s about time for us to actually accept the reality that the family members should go back and wait for the answer in their hometowns.”

‘I’m looking for a lawyer’ 

Relatives’ tempers have repeatedly flared throughout the ordeal of the missing plane, particularly at the Lido, where Chinese families have lashed out at officials from the Malaysian government and the airline over their inability to explain the disappearance.

Chinese passengers account for about two-thirds of the total on the flight.

“I’ve left the hotel,” said Wen Wancheng, whose son was on MH370. “I’m already on the train going back home,” he told AFP by phone.

“We were asked to leave too suddenly,” he said. “The impact on our family is big. Our family is in a bad state.”

Steven Wang said that a protest or group action of any kind was unlikely, adding that families would leave one by one rather than as a group.

Low level local government officials have gone to Beijing to persuade relatives to leave the hotel and return home, some relatives said.

“They said if we went home they could help us,” a relative surnamed Wang, who had already returned home, told AFP.

She added that three officials from her local neighbourhood committee, the lowest level of government administration in China, had accompanied her and other family members on a flight to her home in the eastern city of Nanjing.

“I am looking for a lawyer and intend to sue Malaysia Airlines,” she said.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement that China “was willing to work with the Malaysian side to make progress in comforting the families of passengers”.

Chinese relatives posting in a group on China’s popular WeChat social networking service said that the airline notified them it would offer initial $50,000 payments to families for each of the passengers to “meet their economic needs”.

Relatives were to be notified of details about the payments two weeks after they return home, the relatives said, citing the notice.

KIEV — Ukraine’s armed forces are on “full combat alert” against a possible Russian invasion, Kiev said Wednesday, as pro-Kremlin insurgents tightened their grip on the increasingly chaotic east of the country.

Rebels stormed the regional police building and town hall in the eastern Ukrainian city of Gorlivka, local officials told AFP, bringing to more than a dozen the number of locations under their control.

The new seizure followed clashes in nearby Lugansk late Tuesday, as hundreds of pro-Russia protesters spearheaded by a heavily armed mob took control of the police station after a fraught stand-off.

Ukraine’s interim president Oleksandr Turchynov told his Cabinet that the nation’s armed forces were on “full combat alert” as fears grew in Kiev that Russia could mount an armed invasion of the ex-Soviet republic.

“The threat of a Russia starting a war against mainland Ukraine is real,” he said.

Turchynov urged “Ukrainian patriots” to bolster the beleaguered police force, which he has criticised for “inaction and in some cases treachery”. His priority was to prevent “terrorism” spreading in the restive east of the country, he said.

The West has accused Russia of fomenting the crisis and backing the rebels and has imposed sanctions to try to get Moscow to back down.

The United States and EU members see the insurgency as a bid to destabilise Ukraine ahead of presidential elections slated for May 25, but Moscow denies it has a hand in the rebellion.

President Vladimir Putin insisted to reporters late Tuesday that there were “neither Russian instructors, nor special units, nor troops” operating in Ukraine.

Opening up another front in the war of words between Washington and Moscow, Putin warned that the sanctions against his country could harm Western interests in Russia’s lucrative energy sector.

Putin said: “If this continues, we will of course have to think about how [foreign companies] work in the Russian Federation, including in key sectors of the Russian economy such as energy,” said Putin, speaking at a regional summit in Minsk.

The Russian president’s comments threaten the operations of some of the world’s biggest energy companies in the resource-rich country — once viewed as a reliable alternative to unstable natural gas and oil-producing countries in the Middle East.

Among those targeted by the US sanctions is the president of Rosneft, Russia’s top petroleum company and one of the world’s largest publicly traded oil companies.

The EU said talks with Russia and Ukraine will take place in Warsaw on Friday to try to resolve a $3.5-billion gas bill Gazprom calculates Kiev owes. Putin has threatened to cut off the gas flow to Ukraine if it is not quickly paid.

Russian officials have accused the United States of wanting to reinstitute “Iron Curtain”-style policies and warned the sanctions would “boomerang” back to hurt it.

But the tensions are already having an impact on the Russian economy, as the International Monetary Fund announced Wednesday that the country was already “experiencing recession”.

The IMF also drastically slashed its 2014 growth forecast for Russia to 0.2 per cent from 1.3 per cent, amid massive capital outflows over the Ukraine crisis.

US moves to restrict high-tech exports to Russia appeared to touch a nerve in Moscow which warned Washington was “exposing their astronauts” on the International Space Station to consequences.

SYDNEY — The Australian agency heading up the search for the missing Malaysian jet has dismissed a claim by a resource survey company that it found possible plane wreckage in the northern Bay of Bengal.

The location cited by Australia-based GeoResonance Pty Ltd. is thousands of kilometres north of the remote area in the Indian Ocean where the search for Flight 370 has been concentrated for weeks.

“The Australian-led search is relying on information from satellite and other data to determine the missing aircraft’s location. The location specified by the GeoResonance report is not within the search arc derived from this data,” the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, which is heading up the search off Australia’s west coast, said in a statement Tuesday. “The joint international team is satisfied that the final resting place of the missing aircraft is in the southerly portion of the search arc.”

GeoResonance stressed that it is not certain it found the Malaysia Airlines plane, which vanished March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, but called for its findings to be investigated.

The company uses imaging, radiation chemistry and other technologies to search for oil, gas or mineral deposits. In hunting for Flight 370, it used the same technology to look on the ocean floor for chemical elements that would be present in a Boeing 777: aluminum, titanium, jet fuel residue and others.

GeoResonance compared multispectral images taken March 5 and March 10 — before and after the plane’s disappearance — and found a specific area where the data varied between those dates, it said in a statement. The location is about 190 kilometres south of Bangladesh.

Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said China and Australia were aware of the announcement. “Malaysia is working with its international partners to assess the credibility of this information,” a statement from his office said Tuesday.

Hishammuddin said Malaysia would release a preliminary report of its investigation into the missing plane on Thursday.

Angus Houston, head of the search effort off Australia’s west coast, said Wednesday that he was confident crews were already searching in the right place, but that Malaysia should investigate the GeoResonance report. He said he only discovered this week that the Bay of Bengal information had been passed directly to Malaysia.

“Any sort of information that comes forth needs to be investigated,” he told Australia’s Sky News. “It’s certainly something that needs to be looked at and I believe it probably has been looked at, but I’m not aware of any of that detail. I’m focused on the search in our area of responsibility.”

GeoResonance said it began trying to find the plane before the official search area moved to the southern Indian Ocean.

India, Bangladesh and other countries to the north have said they never detected the plane in their airspace. The jet had contact with a satellite from British company Inmarsat for a few more hours and investigators have concluded from that data that the flight ended in the southern Indian Ocean.

No wreckage from the plane has been found and an aerial search for surface debris ended Monday after six weeks of fruitless hunting. An unmanned sub is continuing to search underwater in an area where sounds consistent with a plane’s black box were detected earlier this month. Additional equipment is expected to be brought in within the next few weeks to scour an expanded underwater area. Houston has predicted that the search could drag on for as long as a year.