Several wounded North Korean soldiers died after being captured by Ukraine: Zelensky

Several wounded North Korean soldiers died after being captured by Ukraine: Zelensky
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said several North Korean soldiers were captured but too badly injured to survive. (AFP)
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Updated 28 December 2024
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Several wounded North Korean soldiers died after being captured by Ukraine: Zelensky

Several wounded North Korean soldiers died after being captured by Ukraine: Zelensky
  • Ukrainian president says some captured North Korean soldiers were very seriously wounded and could not be saved
  • Ukraine says North Korea has sent thousands of soldiers to support Russia’s army

KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that “several” wounded North Korean soldiers died after being captured by Ukrainian forces, as he accused Russia of throwing them into battle with “minimal protection.”
Ukraine and its western allies say North Korea has sent thousands of soldiers to support Russia’s army, in what is seen as a major escalation in the nearly three-year war following Moscow’s 2022 invasion.
“Today there were reports about several soldiers from North Korea. Our soldiers managed to take them prisoner. But they were very seriously wounded and could not be resuscitated,” Zelensky said in an evening address posted on social media.
South Korea’s spy agency said earlier on Friday that a North Korean soldier who was captured while fighting in Russia’s war against Ukraine had died of his wounds.
Zelensky did not specify how many North Koreans had died after being captured by Ukrainian troops.
Zelensky had earlier said that nearly 3,000 North Korean soldiers had been “killed or wounded” so far as they joined Russia’s forces in combat in its western Kursk border region, where Ukraine mounted a shock incursion in August.
South Korea’s intelligence service had previously put the number of killed or wounded North Koreans at 1,000, saying the high casualty rate could be down to an unfamiliar battlefield environment and their lack of capability to counter drone attacks.
The White House on Friday confirmed the South Korean estimates, saying that Pyongyang’s troops were being sent to their deaths in futile attacks by generals who see them as “expendable.”
“We also have reports of North Korean soldiers taking their own lives rather than surrendering to Ukrainian forces, likely out of fear of reprisal against their families in North Korea in the event that they’re captured,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
North Korea and Russia have strengthened their military ties since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
A landmark defense pact between Pyongyang and Moscow signed in June came into force this month, with Russian President Vladimir Putin hailing it as a “breakthrough document.”
North Korean state media said Friday that Putin sent a New Year’s message to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying: “The bilateral ties between our two countries have been elevated after our talks in June in Pyongyang.”
Seoul’s military believes that North Korea was seeking to modernize its conventional warfare capabilities through combat experience gained in the Russia-Ukraine war.
NATO chief Mark Rutte had also said that Moscow was providing support to Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear programs in exchange for the troops.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday that Pyongyang is reportedly “preparing for the rotation or additional deployment of soldiers” and supplying “240mm rocket launchers and 170mm self-propelled artillery” to the Russian army.
Pyongyang’s involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine had prompted warnings from Seoul.
South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol, currently suspended, said in November that Seoul was “not ruling out the possibility of providing weapons” to Kyiv, which would mark a major shift to a long-standing policy barring the sale of weapons to countries in active conflict.


EU to sanction nine over Congo violence

The M23 armed group has waged a lightning offensive in the mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in recent months.
The M23 armed group has waged a lightning offensive in the mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in recent months.
Updated 6 sec ago
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EU to sanction nine over Congo violence

The M23 armed group has waged a lightning offensive in the mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in recent months.
  • The EU summoned the ambassador of Rwanda last month, calling on the country to “immediately withdraw” troops from Congolese territory and to “stop supporting the M23 and any other armed group”

BRUSSLES: The EU is expected to sanction nine individuals in connection with violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, two EU diplomats said on Friday.
They did not identify the people set to be listed, in keeping with the practice of not revealing such details before the sanctions are officially approved.
EU foreign ministers are expected to approve the sanctions in Brussels next Monday.
Rebels of the M23 group have seized east Congo’s two biggest cities since January in an escalation of a long-running conflict rooted in the spillover into Congo of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and the struggle for control of Congo’s vast mineral resources.

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The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has said at least 7,000 people had died in the fighting since January.

Congo is considering sending representatives to peace talks with the M23 group that Angola plans to host next week, government sources said on Thursday.
Rwanda is accused of backing the Tutsi-led M23 rebels, a charge it denies.
The EU summoned the ambassador of Rwanda last month, calling on the country to “immediately withdraw” troops from Congolese territory and to “stop supporting the M23 and any other armed group.”
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has also said that the 27-nation bloc will review its agreement with Rwanda over critical raw materials due to the country’s links with the M23 rebels.
Rwanda denies providing arms and troops to M23 rebels.
Congo’s government has said at least 7,000 people have died in the fighting since January.
According to the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office, at least 600,000 people have been displaced by the fighting since November.
With Congo’s army and allied forces putting up weak resistance to the rebel advance, regional powers appear in agreement that dialogue is the only way forward, diplomats and analysts said.
“I haven’t talked to a single African country that says Kinshasa shouldn’t talk to M23,” one senior diplomat said.
“The line of everyone is, ‘How do you stop the fighting if you don’t engage with them?’“
One source said on Friday that government participation was a sure thing but that it was still too early to say who would represent Kinshasa in Luanda.
Other sources said the debate was still ongoing and a final decision would not likely be made until next week.
M23, for its part, said on Thursday it was demanding an unequivocal commitment from DRC President Felix Tshisekedi to engage in talks.
Both sides said they had questions about the framework and how the Angola-hosted talks would comply with decisions from regional bodies attempting to resolve the conflict.
Southern and East African foreign and defense ministers are due to meet in Harare on Monday to discuss the push for a cessation of hostilities and political dialogue.
Sitting down with M23 would likely be deeply unpopular in Kinshasa, especially after Tshisekedi’s repeated vows never to do so.
But it would amount to an acknowledgment that Tshisekedi’s pursuit of a military solution has “failed,” said Congolese analyst Bob Kabamba of the University of Liege in Belgium.
“Kinshasa’s position of dialogue is understandable because it finds itself stuck, thinking that the (rebel alliance) must not reach a critical threshold,” he said.
Stephanie Wolters, a Congo analyst with South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies, said Angola had “clearly decided that it is necessary to intervene to prevent the advance of the M23 toward the west of the DRC.”
The lack of faith in Tshisekedi’s ability to turn the tide militarily was also seen this week in Southern African leaders’ approval of the “phased withdrawal” of a regional deployment known as SAMIDRC that had a mandate to fight rebels.
Although the deployment was too weak to mean much in the fight against M23, its presence was an essential sign of regional support for Congo, Wolters said, making its departure a “significant blow.”

 


Global displacement ‘to rise by 6.7m people by end of 2026’

Charlotte Slente, Secretary-general of Danish Refugee Council. (Supplied)
Charlotte Slente, Secretary-general of Danish Refugee Council. (Supplied)
Updated 8 min 50 sec ago
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Global displacement ‘to rise by 6.7m people by end of 2026’

Charlotte Slente, Secretary-general of Danish Refugee Council. (Supplied)
  • Danish Refugee Council’s projection is based on an AI-driven model

GENEVA: Some 6.7 million additional people are expected to be newly displaced worldwide by the end of next year, the Danish Refugee Council said on Friday, just as aid cuts from key donors take effect.

The UN refugee agency said last year that the number of forcibly displaced people around the globe stood at over 117 million people and warned that number could rise.
“These are not cold statistics. These are families forced to flee their homes, carrying next to nothing, and searching for water, food, and shelter,” said Charlotte Slente, secretary-general of the Danish Refugee Council in a statement.

These are not cold statistics. These are families forced to flee their homes, carrying next to nothing, and searching for water, food, and shelter.

Charlotte Slente, Secretary-general of Danish Refugee Council

Twenty-seven countries account for nearly a third of all global displacements.
The projection is based on an AI-driven model that predicts displacement trends by analyzing over 100 indicators, including security, politics, and economics in those countries.
It forecasts that nearly a third of new displacements will be from Sudan, which is already the world’s worst refugee crisis after almost two years of war.
“Starvation has been used as a weapon of war, pushing Sudan from one catastrophic famine to another,” the report said.
Another 1.4 million people are expected to be forcibly displaced from Myanmar, the report said.
The US is cutting billions of dollars in foreign aid programs globally as part of a significant spending overhaul by the world’s biggest aid donor.
The Danish Refugee Council is one of the aid groups hit and has had more than 20 contract terminations.
Cuts from Washington and other key donors are already impacting refugees.
The UN refugee agency said that funding shortages had shuttered programs to protect adolescent girls from child marriage in South Sudan and a safe house for displaced women in danger of being killed in Ethiopia.
“Millions are facing starvation and displacement, and just as they need us most, wealthy nations are slashing aid. It’s a betrayal of the most vulnerable,” said Slente.
She blasted the decision to cancel 83 percent of USAID’s humanitarian aid programs around the world.
Slente said: “We’re in the middle of a global ‘perfect storm’: record displacement, surging needs, and devastating funding cuts.”
She said major donors “are abandoning their duty, leaving millions to suffer. This is more than a crisis. It is a moral failure.”


African Union expresses ‘deep concern’ over crisis in Tigray

African Union expresses ‘deep concern’ over crisis in Tigray
Updated 15 min 46 sec ago
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African Union expresses ‘deep concern’ over crisis in Tigray

African Union expresses ‘deep concern’ over crisis in Tigray
  • “The AU emphasizes that adherence to the 2022 peace agreement is crucial for maintaining the hard-won peace and fostering an environment conducive to sustainable peacebuilding, reconciliation and development,” the statement said

ADDIS ABABA: The African Union said on Friday it was following events in the Ethiopian region of Tigray with “deep concern” as tensions between rival factions threaten a fragile peace agreement.
“The African Union has been closely monitoring the evolving situation within the Tigray People’s Liberation Front with deep concern,” it said in a statement.
A peace agreement in 2022 ended a brutal two-year war between Tigrayan rebels and the federal government that claimed up to 600,000 lives, according to some estimates.
However, a failure to fully implement the terms has fueled divisions within the Tigrayan political elite and, combined with deteriorating ties between Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea, raised fears of a new conflict.
“The AU emphasizes that adherence to the 2022 peace agreement is crucial for maintaining the hard-won peace and fostering an environment conducive to sustainable peacebuilding, reconciliation and development,” the statement said.
Also on Friday, Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, warned that at least 31 people had died from more than 1,500 cholera cases in Ethiopia’s Gambella region over the past month, adding that the outbreak is “rapidly spreading.”
The international NGO said the situation has worsened with the arrival of people fleeing violence in neighboring South Sudan.
“Cholera is rapidly spreading across western Ethiopia and in parallel, the outbreak in South Sudan is ongoing, endangering thousands of lives,” MSF said in a statement.
Several regions of Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous nation with around 120 million people, are battling cholera outbreaks, with Amhara — its second-largest region — among the hardest hit.
In South Sudan’s Akobo County, located in the Upper Nile region, 1,300 cholera cases have been reported in the past four weeks, according to MSF.
It said recent violence in Upper Nile between the South Sudanese government and armed groups is “worsening the outbreak.”
“Thousands are being displaced, losing access to health care, safe water, and sanitation,” MSF said.
South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation and still hit by chronic instability and poverty, declared a cholera epidemic in October.
The World Health Organization says some 4,000 people died from the “preventable and easily treatable disease” in 2023, up 71 percent on the previous year, mostly in Africa.+

 


Benin’s President Talon rules out third term

Benin’s President Talon rules out third term
Updated 24 min 57 sec ago
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Benin’s President Talon rules out third term

Benin’s President Talon rules out third term
  • “The next president of Benin will be my president, from my country, my family, my community and everything that is dear to me,” he added

COTONOU: Benin President Patrice Talon on Friday said he would not stand for an unconstitutional third term in office but would be watching the choice of his successor closely.
The former businessman has been in charge of the nation since 2016, and his second office term ends next year.
“I’m telling you again for the umpteenth time, no, I will not be a candidate,” he said in an interview with Jeune Afrique.
“This question troubles me. I have strengthened the constitution myself to stipulate that no one can serve more than two terms in their life.”
The question over his succession was revived in September last year when one of his close friends, Olivier Boko, was arrested on suspicion of attempting a coup with the former sports minister Oswald Homeky.
The two men were sentenced to 20 years in prison in January for “plotting against the authority of the state.”
“I experienced the Olivier Boko episode like a drama and personal tragedy,” Talon was quoted as saying in the interview.
He said he would also be “careful” about the choice of his successor and intended to ensure that whoever took over did not want to reverse what he said was a decade of reforms.
“The next president of Benin will be my president, from my country, my family, my community and everything that is dear to me,” he added. Talon went on to criticize “deteriorating” relations with Benin’s Sahelien neighbors Niger and Burkina Faso and the lack of security cooperation.
“We contact them regularly,” he said. “We don’t get a response.”
“Our army is facing terrorist groups that operate freely in sanctuaries deserted by the defense and security forces” of Niger and Burkina Faso, “which allows them to regroup and attack en masse,” he added.
Niger and Burkina Faso, with which Benin shares a northern border, are governed by military juntas which have turned their back on Western support.
Extremist violence has spilled over Benin’s border, but the authorities in Niamey and Ouagadougou accuse Benin of hosting foreign military bases to destabilize them.
“There is obviously nothing like this on Beninese soil,” he added.

 


US says South Africa’s ambassador ‘is no longer welcome’

US says South Africa’s ambassador ‘is no longer welcome’
Updated 6 min 7 sec ago
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US says South Africa’s ambassador ‘is no longer welcome’

US says South Africa’s ambassador ‘is no longer welcome’
  • Rubio accused Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool of being a “race-baiting politician” and Trump hater
  • Trump earlier signed an executive order that cut aid and assistance to the Black-led South African government

WASHINGTON: Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that South Africa’s ambassador to the United States “is no longer welcome” in the country.
Rubio, in a post on X, accused Ebrahim Rasool of being a “race-baiting politician” who hates President Donald Trump and declared him “persona non grata.” He didn’t give further reasoning.
The State Department did not have additional details, and it was unclear whether the ambassador was even in the US at the time the decision was made. Rubio posted as he was flying back to Washington from a Group of 7 foreign ministers in Quebec.

 

It is highly unusual for the US to expel a foreign ambassador, although lower-ranking diplomats are more frequently targeted with persona non grata status.
At the height of US-Russia diplomatic expulsions during the Cold War and then again over Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, allegations of interference in the 2016 election and the Skripal poisoning case in Britain, neither Washington nor Moscow saw fit to expel the respective ambassadors.
It comes after Trump signed an executive order that cut aid and assistance to the Black-led South African government. In the order, Trump said South Africa’s Afrikaners, who are descendants of mainly Dutch colonial settlers, were being targeted by a new law that allows the government to expropriate private land.
The South African government has denied its new law is tied to race and says Trump’s claims over the country and the law have been full of misinformation and distortions.
Phone calls to the South African Embassy seeking comment, made at the end of the work day, were not answered.
Rasool previously served as his country’s ambassador to the US from 2010 to 2015 before returning this year.
As a child, he and his family were evicted from a Cape Town neighborhood designated for whites. Rasool became an active anti-apartheid campaigner, serving time in prison and proudly identifying as a comrade of the country’s first post-apartheid president, Nelson Mandela. He later became a politician in Mandela’s African National Congress political party.
Trump said land was being expropriated from Afrikaners — which the order referred to as “racially disfavored landowners” — when no land has been taken under the law.
Trump also announced a plan to offer Afrikaners refugee status in the US. They are only one part of South Africa’s white minority.
The Expropriation Act was signed into law by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa earlier this year and allows the government to take land in specific instances where it is not being used, or where it would be in the public interest if it is redistributed.
It aims to address some of the wrongs of South Africa’s racist apartheid era, when Black people had land taken away from them and were forced to live in areas designated for non-whites.
Elon Musk, a close Trump ally and head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, has highlighted that law in social media posts and cast it as a threat to South Africa’s white minority. Musk grew up in South Africa.