KYIV: A series of explosions rocked Kyiv on Saturday morning and minutes later air raid sirens started to wail as an apparent missile attack on the Ukrainian capital was underway.
Deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office Kyrylo Tymoshenko said on Telegram that critical infrastructure in Kyiv was targeted.
Kyiv’s city military administration said that an unidentified object of infrastructure was hit in the city and emergency services were operating at the site of the strike.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said that explosions were heard in the Dniprovskyi district of the city and that fragments of a missile fell on a non-residential area in the Holosiivskyi district. No casualties have been reported so far.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether several facilities in Kyiv were targeted or just the one that was reported hit. The Ukrainian capital hasn’t been attacked with missiles since New Year’s night.
In the outlying Kyiv region, a residential building in the village of Kopyliv was hit, and windows of the houses nearby were blown out, Tymoshenko said.
Earlier on Saturday, two Russian missiles hit Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, the governor of the Kharkiv region reported.
Oleh Syniehubov said Russian forces fired two S-300 missiles at the industrial district of Kharkiv. The extent of the damage from the strike wasn’t immediately clear, but no casualties have been reported.
Ukrainian officials report Russian missile attack on Kyiv
https://arab.news/ny5gv
Ukrainian officials report Russian missile attack on Kyiv
- Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said that “explosions were heard in Dniprovskyi district, left bank of Kyiv”
Thailand heads into political turbulence as Cambodia row festers
Tensions with Thailand and Cambodia remain elevated, with the Southeast Asian neighbors announcing tit-for-tat measures that are stoking nationalist fervor on both sides and stymieing bilateral trade, including a suspension by Phnom Penh of all Thai fuel and gas imports that came into effect on Monday.
In Bangkok, days after the parliamentary majority of the ruling coalition led by Paetongtarn’s Pheu Thai party was threatened by the exit of a major alliance member, Deputy Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai sought to project unity.
“I’m 100 percent confident that we will move ahead strongly after the cabinet reshuffle is completed this week,” he told reporters.
“You will see a new way of working that’s different from before.”
Paetongtarn, a 38-year-old political novice and daughter of divisive former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, has come under fire after a phone call between her and former Cambodian leader Hun Sen to diffuse a long-festering border dispute became public last Wednesday.
In the audio, which was released in full by Hun Sen after the initial leak of a clip, the Thai premier appears to grovel before the Cambodian politician and also denigrates a senior Thai military commander in charge of the disputed border area.
Hours after the audio became public, the second-largest coalition member, the Bhumjaithai Party, quit the government, putting its parliamentary majority and Paetongtarn’s premiership under threat.
Pheu Thai has managed to hold the remainder of its coalition together, with the cabinet reshuffle meant to redistribute ministerial positions previously held by Bhumjaithai.
The coalition’s stability will be tested in parliament, which reconvenes next week, and on the streets as anti-government groups plan a major protest to call for the prime minister’s resignation which will start on Saturday.
Adding to the pressure, Paetongtarn also faces scrutiny from the judiciary after a group of senators seeking her removal petitioned the Constitutional Court and an anti-graft body to investigate her conduct over the leaked phone call.
“The government cannot take anything for granted,” said Titipol Phakdeewanich, a political science professor at Ubon Ratchathani University.
“There’s more instability ahead.”
TRADE UNDER THREAT
At the root of the current crisis for Paetongtarn and Pheu Thai is a historic border dispute with Cambodia, which has previously led to violent clashes, including the death of a Cambodian soldier during a skirmish last month.
Partly banking on strong ties between the Shinawatra family and Hun Sen, the government initially pushed for a diplomatic solution to the flare-up, even as Cambodia moved to petition the International Court of Justice to resolve the matter.
However, the unexpected release of the audio not only brought the Thai government to the brink, it has also led to a further deterioration in relations between the neighbors.
Hun Manet, Cambodia’s prime minister and Hun Sen’s son, said on Sunday that his administration would stop all fuel and gas imports from Thailand, following an earlier move to stall the entry of some Thai agricultural produce.
“Fuel supply companies in Cambodia are able to import sufficiently from other sources to meet domestic fuel and gas demands,” he said in a post on Facebook.
For its part, the Thai government has handed over control of border crossings along the Cambodian frontier to its military, which has tightened entry restrictions and shut down one crossing point, citing security concerns.
Cambodia was Thailand’s 11th largest export market last year, with $10.4 billion in bilateral trade between the neighbors, dominated by precious stones, jewelry and fuels, according to Thai government data.
And more than half a million Cambodian workers are employed in Thailand, according to the Thai Labour Ministry.
“The Cambodia situation is complex; it isn’t about just a conflict between the two countries,” said Titipol, “There is also a Hun-Shinawatra dimension that could still shake the government.”
President Lee picks South Korea’s first civilian defense chief in 64 years
SEOUL: South Korean President Lee Jae Myung nominated a five-term liberal lawmaker as defense minister Monday, breaking with a tradition of appointing retired military generals.
The announcement came as several prominent former defense officials, including ex-Defense Minister Kim Yong Hyun, face high-profile criminal trials over their roles in carrying out martial law last year under then-President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was indicted on rebellion charges and removed from office.
Ahn Gyu-back, a lawmaker from Lee’s Democratic Party, has served on the National Assembly’s defense committee and chaired a legislative panel that investigated the circumstances surrounding Yoon’s martial law decree.
Yoon’s authoritarian move involved deploying hundreds of heavily armed troops to the National Assembly and election commission offices in what prosecutors described as an illegal attempt to shut down the legislature and arrest political opponents and election officials.
That sparked calls to strengthen civilian control over the military, and Lee promised during his election campaign to appoint a defense minister with a civilian background.
Since a 1961 coup that brought military dictator Park Chung-hee to power, all of South Korea’s defense ministers have come from the military — a trend that continued even after the country’s democratization in the late 1980s.
While Ahn will face a legislative hearing, the process is likely to be a formality, since the Democrats hold a comfortable majority in the National Assembly and legislative consent isn’t required for Lee to appoint him. Among Cabinet appointments, Lee only needs legislative consent for prime minister, Seoul’s nominal No. 2 job.
“As the first civilian Minister of National Defense in 64 years, he will be responsible for leading and overseeing the transformation of the military after its mobilization in martial law,” Kang Hoon-sik, Lee’s chief of staff, said in a briefing.
Ahn was among 11 ministers nominated by Lee on Monday, with longtime diplomat Cho Hyun selected as foreign minister and five-term lawmaker Chung Dong-young returning for another stint as unification minister — a position he held from 2004 to 2005 as Seoul’s point man for relations with North Korea.
Tokyo voters punish Japan ruling party ahead of national election
- Public support for PM Ishiba has been at rock bottom for months, partly because of high inflation, with rice prices doubling over the past year
TOKYO: Voters in Tokyo knocked Japan’s ruling party from its position as the largest group in the city assembly, results showed Monday, a warning sign for Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s unpopular government before July elections.
Japanese media said it was a record-low result in the key local ballot for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has led the country almost continuously since 1955.
Public support for Ishiba, who took office in October, has been at rock-bottom for months, partly because of high inflation, with rice prices doubling over the past year.
The LDP took 21 Tokyo assembly seats in Sunday’s vote, including three won by candidates previously affiliated with the party but not officially endorsed following a political funding scandal.
This breaks the party’s previous record low of 23 seats from 2017, according to the Asahi Shimbun and other local media.
Ishiba described the results as a “very harsh judgment.”
“We will study what part of our campaign pledge failed to resonate with voters and ensure we learn from this,” he told reporters on Monday.
Tomin First no Kai, founded by Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike, increased its seats in the 127-member assembly to 31, becoming the largest party.
The funding scandal “may have affected” the result, Shinji Inoue, head of the LDP’s Tokyo chapter, said Sunday as exit polls were released.
Policies to address inflation “didn’t reach voters’ ears very well” with opposition parties also pledging to tackle the issue, Inoue said.
Within weeks Ishiba will face elections for parliament’s upper house, with reports saying the national ballot could be held on July 20.
Voters angry with rising prices and political scandals deprived Ishiba’s LDP and its junior coalition partner of a majority in the powerful lower house in October, marking the party’s worst general election result in 15 years.
Polls this month showed a slight uptick in support, however, thanks in part to policies to tackle high rice prices.
Several factors lie behind recent shortages of rice at Japanese shops, including an intensely hot and dry summer two years ago that damaged harvests nationwide, and panic-buying after a “mega-quake” warning last year.
Some traders have been hoarding rice in a bid to boost their profits down the line, experts say.
Not including volatile fresh food, goods and energy in Japan were 3.7 percent higher in May than a year earlier.
To help households combat the cost of living, Ishiba has pledged cash handouts of 20,000 yen ($139) for every citizen ahead of the upper house election.
Masahisa Endo, a politics professor at Waseda University, described the Tokyo assembly result as “severe” for the ruling party.
“Tokyo is not a stronghold for the LDP, but it’s possible that its support is weakening across the nation,” he said.
Even if Ishiba fails to win an upper-house majority, it is hard to see who would want to take his place, while Japan’s opposition parties are too divided to mount a credible challenge to the LDP’s power, Endo told AFP.
The opposition Democratic Party For the People (DPP) won seats for the first time in the Tokyo assembly vote, securing nine.
The DPP’s campaign pledge for the July election includes sales tax cuts to boost household incomes.
Sunday’s voter turnout rate was 47.6 percent, compared to the 42.4 percent four years ago, according to local media.
A record 295 candidates ran — the highest since 1997, including 99 women candidates, also a record high.
The number of women assembly members rose to 45 from 41, results showed.
Mahmoud Khalil vows to continue protesting Israel and the war in Gaza after release from detention
NEWARK: A Palestinian activist who was detained for more than three months pushed his infant son’s stroller with one hand and cheered as he was welcomed home Saturday by supporters including US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Mahmoud Khalil greeted friends and spoke briefly to reporters at New Jersey’s Newark International Airport a day after leaving a federal immigration facility in Louisiana. A former Columbia University graduate student and symbol of President Donald Trump ‘s clampdown on campus protests, he vowed to continue protesting Israel and the war in Gaza.
“The US government is funding this genocide, and Columbia University is investing in this genocide,” he said. “This is why I will continue to protest with every one of you. Not only if they threaten me with detention. Even if they would kill me, I would still speak up for Palestine.”
Joining Khalil at the airport, Ocasio-Cortez said his detention violated the First Amendment and was “an affront to every American.”
“He has been accused, baselessly, of horrific allegations simply because the Trump administration and our overall establishment disagrees with his political speech,” she said.
“The Trump administration knows that they are waging a losing legal battle,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “They are violating the law, and they know that they are violating the law.”
Khalil, a 30-year-old legal resident whose wife gave birth during his 104 days of detention, said he also will speak up for the immigrants he left behind in the detention center.
“Whether you are a citizen, an immigrant, anyone in this land, you’re not illegal. That doesn’t make you less of a human,” he said.
Khalil was not accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. However the administration has said noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country for expressing views it considers to be antisemitic and “pro-Hamas,” referring to the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Khalil was released after US District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal resident who was unlikely to flee and had not been accused of any violence. The government filed notice Friday evening that it was appealing Khalil’s release.
More than 50 Colombian soldiers held by residents in restive region: army
- In conflict addled regions of Colombia, some illegal groups at times order civilians to carry out actions to impede the advance of security forces
- Those civilians are usually released hours later after the intervention of human rights organizations
BOGOTA: More than 50 Colombian soldiers were being held captive Sunday by residents of a guerrilla-controlled region in the southwest of the country, the army said.
A first platoon of soldiers was carrying out an operation in El Tambo, a municipality part of an area known as the Micay Canyon — a cocaine-producing enclave — when civilians detained them on Saturday.
On Sunday another group of soldiers was surrounded by at least 200 residents as they headed toward El Plateado, another town in the region.
“As a result of both events, a total of four non-commissioned officers and 53 professional soldiers remain deprived of their liberty,” the army said.
In conflict-ridden regions of Colombia, some illegal groups at times order civilians to carry out actions to impede the advance of security forces. They are usually released hours later after the intervention of human rights organizations.
General Federico Alberto Mejia said in a video that it was a “kidnapping” by guerrillas who had “infiltrated” the community.
The army has maintained that the farmers receive orders from the so-called Central General Staff (EMC), the main FARC dissident group that did not sign the 2016 peace agreement with the then government.
President Gustavo Petro on Sunday urged farmers to “stop believing in armed groups who obey foreigners,” referring to the guerrillas’ alleged ties to Mexican cartels.
“We want to spread peace, but freeing the soldiers, who are their own children, is imperative,” the leftist president wrote on social media platform X.
Petro has been trying for months to ensure that the Armed Forces gain access to the entire Micay Canyon.
In March, 28 police officers and a soldier were held captive by local residents in the same area. All were released two days later.
Colombia is experiencing its worst security crisis in the last decade. Petro attempted to negotiate peace with the EMC, but its main leader, known as “Ivan Mordisco,” abandoned the talks.
