Russians keep pressure on Mariupol after hospital attack; massive convoy breaks up

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Cars drive past a destroyed Russian tank as a convoy of vehicles evacuating civilians leaves Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 9, 2022. (AP)
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Updated 11 March 2022
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Russians keep pressure on Mariupol after hospital attack; massive convoy breaks up

  • Residents of the southern seaport of 430,000 have no heat or phone service, and many have no electricity
  • Russian convoy stalled by food and fuel shortages and Ukrainian attacks

MARIUPOL, Ukraine: Civilians trapped inside Mariupol desperately scrounged for food and fuel as Russian forces kept up their bombardment of the port city Thursday, while satellite photos showed that a massive Kremlin convoy that had been mired outside the Ukrainian capital dispersed and redeployed.
International condemnation escalated over an airstrike in Mariupol a day earlier that killed three people at a maternity hospital, with Western and Ukrainian officials calling the attack a war crime. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian refusal to permit evacuations from the port city amounted to “outright terror.”
Meanwhile, the highest-level talks held since the invasion began two weeks ago yielded no progress, the number of refugees fleeing the country topped 2.3 million, and Kyiv braced for an onslaught, its mayor boasting that the capital had become practically a fortress protected by armed civilians.
Satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showed that 40-mile (64-kilometer) convoy of vehicles, tanks and artillery has broken up and been redeployed, with armored units seen in towns near the Antonov Airport north of the city. Some of the vehicles have moved into forests, Maxar reported.

 

The convoy had massed outside the city early last week, but its advance appeared to have stalled amid reports of food and fuel shortages. US officials said Ukrainian troops also targeted the convoy with anti-tank missiles.
In Mariupol, a southern seaport of 430,000, the situation was increasingly dire. More than 1,300 people have died in the 10-day siege of the frigid city, according to Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
Residents of the southern seaport of 430,000 have no heat or phone service, and many have no electricity. Nighttime temperatures are regularly below freezing, and daytime ones normally hover just above it. Bodies are being buried in mass graves. The streets are littered with burned-out cars, broken glass and splintered trees.
“They have a clear order to hold Mariupol hostage, to mock it, to constantly bomb and shell it,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation. He said the Russians began a tank attack right where there was supposed to be a humanitarian corridor.
On Thursday, firefighters tried to free a boy trapped in the rubble. One grasped the boy’s hand. His eyes blinked, but he was otherwise still. It was not clear if he survived. Nearby, at a mangled truck, a woman wrapped in a blue blanket shuddered at the sound of an explosion.
Grocery stores and pharmacies were emptied days ago by people breaking in to get supplies, according to a local official with the Red Cross, Sacha Volkov. A black market is operating for vegetables, meat is unavailable, and people are stealing gasoline from cars, Volkov said.
Places protected from bombings are hard to find, with basements reserved for women and children, he said. Residents, Volkov said, are turning on one another: “People started to attack each other for food.”
The local fire department and the city’s State Technical University were bombed.
An exhausted-looking Aleksander Ivanov pulled a cart loaded with bags down an empty street flanked by damaged buildings.
“I don’t have a home anymore. That’s why I’m moving,” he said. “It doesn’t exist anymore. It was hit, by a mortar.”
Repeated attempts to send in food and medicine and evacuate civilians have been thwarted by Russian shelling, Ukrainian authorities said.




Cars drive past a destroyed Russian tank as a convoy of vehicles evacuating civilians leaves Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 9, 2022. (AP)

“They want to destroy the people of Mariupol. They want to make them starve,” Vereshchuk said. “It’s a war crime.”
All told, some 100,000 people have been evacuated during the past two days from seven cities under Russian blockade in the north and center of the country, including the Kyiv suburbs, Zelenskyy said.
Zelenskyy told Russian leaders that the invasion will backfire on them as their economy is strangled. Western sanctions have already dealt a severe blow, causing the ruble to plunge, foreign businesses to flee and prices to rise sharply.
“You will definitely be prosecuted for complicity in war crimes,” Zelenskyy said in a video address. “And then, it will definitely happen, you will be hated by Russian citizens — everyone whom you have been deceiving constantly, daily, for many years in a row, when they feel the consequences of your lies in their wallets, in their shrinking possibilities, in the stolen future of Russian children.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed such talk, saying the country has endured sanctions before.
″We will overcome them,” he said at a televised meeting of government officials. He did, however, acknowledge the sanctions create “certain challenges.”
In addition to those who have fled the country, millions have been driven from their homes inside Ukraine. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said about 2 million people — half the population of the metropolitan area — have left the capital.
“Every street, every house … is being fortified,” he said. “Even people who in their lives never intended to change their clothes, now they are in uniform with machine guns in their hands.”
On Thursday, a 14-year-old girl named Katya was recovering at the Brovary Central District Hospital on the outskirts of Kyiv after her family was ambushed as they tried to flee the area. She was shot in the hand when their car was raked with gunfire from a roadside forest, said her mother, who identified herself only as Nina.
The girl’s father, who drove frantically from the ambush on blown-out tires, underwent surgery. His wife said he had been shot in the head and had two fingers blown off.
Western officials said Russian forces have made little progress on the ground in recent days and are seeing heavier losses and stiffer Ukrainian resistance than Moscow apparently anticipated. But Putin’s forces have used air power and artillery to pummel Ukraine’s cities.


Early in the day, the Mariupol city council posted a video showing a convoy it said was bringing in food and medicine. But as night fell, it was unclear if those buses had reached the city.
A child was among those killed in the hospital airstrike Wednesday. Seventeen people were also wounded, including women waiting to give birth, doctors, and children buried in the rubble. Images of the attack, with pregnant women covered in dust and blood, dominated news reports in many countries.
French President Emmanuel Macron called the attack “a shameful and immoral act of war.” Britain’s Armed Forces minister, James Heappey, said that whether the hospital was hit by indiscriminate fire or deliberately targeted, “it is a war crime.”
US Vice President Kamala Harris, on a visit to Ukraine’s neighbor Poland, backed calls for an international war-crimes investigation into the invasion, saying, “The eyes of the world are on this war and what Russia has done in terms of this aggression and these atrocities.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed concerns about civilian casualties as “pathetic shrieks” from Russia’s enemies, and denied Ukraine had even been invaded.
Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, held talks in a Turkish resort in their first meeting since the invasion.
The two sides discussed a 24-hour cease-fire but made no progress, Kuleba said. He said Russia still wanted Ukraine to surrender but insisted that will not happen.
Lavrov said Russia is ready for more negotiations, but he showed no sign of softening Moscow’s demands.
Russia has alleged that Western-looking, US-backed Ukraine poses a threat to its security. Western officials suspect Putin wants to install a government friendly to Moscow in Kyiv as part of an effort to draw the former Soviet state back into its orbit.
In Vienna, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said it had scheduled inspections of Ukraine’s nuclear facilities. Rafael Grossi would give no details on how or when the inspections would take place.
Ukraine has 15 nuclear reactors at four power plants across the country, plus the closed plant in Chernobyl, scene of a 1986 nuclear disaster. Fighting around Chernobyl and another plant have raised global fears of another disaster.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, 91-year-old Alevtina Shernina sat wrapped in a blanket, an electric heater at her feet, as cold air blew in through a damaged window. She survived the brutal World War II siege of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg.
Her daughter-in-law Natalia said she was angry that Shernina “began her life in Leningrad under the siege as a girl who was starving, who lived in cold and hunger, and she’s ending her life” in similar circumstances.
“There were fascists there and there are fascists here who came and bombed our buildings and windows,” she said.


India broadens cooperation with Dubai as emirate’s crown prince visits

Updated 7 sec ago
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India broadens cooperation with Dubai as emirate’s crown prince visits

  • Dubai-India Business Forum takes place on sidelines of Sheikh Hamdan’s trip
  • India-UAE Friendship Hospital to be established in Dubai for Indian workers

NEW DELHI: Indian authorities and businesses have expanded cooperation with Dubai during the emirate’s crown prince’s two-day state trip to India.

Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum arrived in New Delhi on Tuesday for his first official visit, during which he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and members of his Cabinet.

From the capital, he traveled to Mumbai for the Dubai-India Business Forum co-organized by the Dubai Chambers, the Confederation of Indian Industry, and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

“Delighted that his first official visit to India coincides with the 100th anniversary year of the visit of his grandfather His Highness Sheikh Saeed to India,” Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal told the forum’s participants.

“We witnessed the signing of MoUs focusing on future-ready supply chains and modernizing India’s maritime infrastructure … I underlined our deep cultural, economic, and trade ties that have further strengthened in the last decade with high-level engagements between our leadership that (go) beyond the realm of diplomacy.”

India’s economic ties with the UAE, including Dubai, have grown rapidly since the 2022 Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement came into power, eliminating trade barriers, lowering tariffs, and easing business operations.

In 2024, the UAE ranked as India’s third-largest global trade partner, following China and the US, with imports valued at $60.1 billion and exports at $37.8 billion.

In Dubai in particular, India has emerged as a top investor. Last year alone, India’s foreign direct investment into Dubai surged to over $3 billion.

The most populous of the UAE’s seven emirates, Dubai is also home to the majority of India’s 4.3 million diaspora.

“Indian investors form a key part of Dubai’s business landscape, with 72,651 active Indian companies registered as members of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce by the end of March 2025,” Mohammed Ali Rashed Lootah, CEO of Dubai Chambers, said during the Mumbai forum.

“Dubai holds a strategic position for Indian companies as a preferred investment destination due to its unique competitive advantages.”

Venues for cooperation with the emirate were further explored during the business forum in Mumbai, which saw dozens of Dubai business leaders arriving during Sheikh Hamdan’s visit and in which a new agreement between the Dubai Chambers and CII was signed.

“The forum focused on enhancing strategic economic opportunities between the two markets and was attended by more than 200 businesses from both sides. During the forum, many avenues were explored to enhance trade and investment opportunities (and) identify new opportunities to launch new joint ventures and strategic partnerships,” Manish Mohan, CII regional director-international, told Arab News.

“The MoU between CII and Dubai Chambers is significant in trying to see how we can improve and expand business between the Emirate of Dubai and India.”

On the sidelines of Sheikh Hamdan’s visit, India and Dubai also agreed to establish in Dubai the first overseas campuses of the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and of the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade.

“This follows the inauguration of the first-ever campus of the IIT in the Middle East in Abu Dhabi last year,” the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement, adding that it also “positions Dubai and the UAE as a key regional and global destination for eminent Indian educational institutions.”

The new 100-bed India-UAE Friendship Hospital will also be established in Dubai to provide affordable healthcare to Indian workers.

“It is also a recognition of the contribution of millions of Indians for the development and growth of Dubai,” the ministry said.

“These initiatives will benefit the 4.3 million-strong Indian diaspora living in the UAE and around 9 million Indian diaspora in the Gulf region.”


China retaliates with 84% tariffs on US products from Thursday

Updated 24 min ago
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China retaliates with 84% tariffs on US products from Thursday

  • China – Washington’s top economic rival but also a major trading partner – is the hardest hit
  • Tariffs imposed on its products since Trump returned now reaching a staggering 104 percent

BEIJING: China will impose 84 percent tariffs on US imports, up from 34 percent, the finance ministry said Wednesday, hours after similar levies by the United States came into force.

US President Donald Trump’s latest salvo of tariffs came into effect on dozens of trading partners Wednesday, including punishing 104 percent duties on imports of Chinese products.

Beijing has consistently opposed tariff rises and said Wednesday it would take “firm and forceful” steps to protect its interests.

Its finance ministry later said in a statement that “additional tariff rates” on imports originating in the United States would “rise from 34 percent to 84 percent,” effective from 12:01 p.m. on Thursday.

“The tariff escalation against China by the United States simply piles mistakes on top of mistakes (and) severely infringes on China’s legitimate rights and interests,” the ministry said.

Washington’s moves “severely damage the multilateral rules-based trade system,” it added.

In a separate statement, Beijing’s commerce ministry said it would blacklist six American artificial intelligence firms, including Shield AI Inc. and Sierra Nevada Corp.

The companies had either sold arms to Taiwan or collaborated on “military technology” with the island, the commerce ministry said.


India readies for US extradition of Pakistan-born suspect in Mumbai attacks

Updated 5 min 6 sec ago
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India readies for US extradition of Pakistan-born suspect in Mumbai attacks

  • Tahawwur Hussain Rana, Canadian citizen born in Pakistan, due to be extradited “shortly” to face trial, Indian media says
  • India accuses Rana of being member of Pakistan-based LeT group designated by the UN as a ‘terrorist’ organization

NEW DELHI: Indian authorities are readying for the extradition from the United States of a man that New Delhi accuses of helping plan the 2008 Mumbai siege that killed 166 people.
Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 64, a Canadian citizen born in Pakistan, is due to be extradited “shortly” to face trial, Indian media said, reporting that New Delhi had sent a multi-agency team of security officials to collect him.
India accuses him of being a member of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group, designated by the United Nations as a terrorist organization, and of aiding planning the attacks. Pakistan has always denied official complicity.
US President Donald Trump announced in February that Washington would extradite Rana, whom he called “one of the very evil people in the world.”
The US Supreme Court this month rejected his bid to remain in the United States, where he is serving a sentence for a planning role in another LeT-linked attack.
New Delhi blames the LeT group — as well as intelligence officials from New Delhi’s arch-enemy Pakistan — for the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, when 10 gunmen carried out a multi-day slaughter in the country’s financial capital.
India accuses Rana of helping his long-term friend, David Coleman Headley, who was sentenced by a US court in 2013 to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty to aiding LeT militants, including by scouting target locations in Mumbai.
Rana, a former military medic who served in Pakistan’s army, emigrated to Canada in 1997, before moving to the United States and setting up businesses in Chicago, including a law firm and a slaughterhouse.
He was arrested by US police in 2009.
A US court in 2013 acquitted Rana of conspiracy to provide material support to the Mumbai attacks. But the same court convicted him of backing LeT to provide material support to a plot to commit murder in Denmark.
Rana was sentenced to 14 years for his involvement in a conspiracy to attack the offices of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which had published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that angered Muslims around the globe.
But India maintains Rana is one of the key plotters of the Mumbai attacks along with the convicted Headley — and the authorities have welcomed his expected extradition.
In February, Devendra Fadnavis, chief minister of Maharashtra state which includes the megacity Mumbai, said that “finally, the long wait is over and justice will be done.”
Devika Rotawan, a survivor of the Mumbai attacks, said she believed the extradition of Rana would be a “big win for India.”
“I will never be able to forget the attack,” she told broadcaster NDTV on Wednesday.
Counterterrorism experts however suggest Rana’s involvement was peripheral compared to Headley, a US citizen, who India also wants extradited.
“They gave us a small fish but kept David Headley, so the essential outcome is going to be symbolic,” said Ajay Sahni, head of the Institute for Conflict Management, a New Delhi-based think tank.
Rana knew Headley, 64, from their days together at boarding school in Pakistan.
Headley, who testified as a government witness at Rana’s trial, said he had used his friend’s Chicago-based immigration services firm as a cover to scout targets in India, by opening a branch in Mumbai.
Rana has said he visited Mumbai ahead of the attacks — and stayed at the luxury Taj Mahal Palace Hotel that would become the epicenter of the bloody siege — but denied involvement in the conspiracy.
Sahni said that more than 16 years after the attacks, Rana’s extradition is of “historical importance” rather than a source of any “live intelligence.”
But he added that handing him over has “a chilling effect” on others abroad who India seeks to put on trial.


India readies for US extradition of Mumbai attacks suspect

Updated 09 April 2025
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India readies for US extradition of Mumbai attacks suspect

  • Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Canadian citizen born in Pakistan, is due to be extradited ‘shortly’ to face trial
  • India accuses him of being a member of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group

NEW DELHI: Indian authorities are readying for the extradition from the United States of a man that New Delhi accuses of helping plan the 2008 Mumbai siege that killed 166 people.
Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 64, a Canadian citizen born in Pakistan, is due to be extradited “shortly” to face trial, Indian media said, reporting that New Delhi had sent a multi-agency team of security officials to collect him.
India accuses him of being a member of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group, designated by the United Nations as a terrorist organization, and of aiding planning the attacks.
US President Donald Trump announced in February that Washington would extradite Rana, whom he called “one of the very evil people in the world.”
The US Supreme Court this month rejected his bid to remain in the United States, where he is serving a sentence for a planning role in another LeT-linked attack.
New Delhi blames the LeT group – as well as intelligence officials from New Delhi’s arch-enemy Pakistan – for the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, when 10 Islamist gunmen carried out a multi-day slaughter in the country’s financial capital.
India accuses Rana of helping his longterm friend, David Coleman Headley, who was sentenced by a US court in 2013 to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty to aiding LeT militants, including by scouting target locations in Mumbai.
Rana, a former military medic who served in Pakistan’s army, emigrated to Canada in 1997, before moving to the United States and setting up businesses in Chicago, including a law firm and a slaughterhouse.
He was arrested by US police in 2009.
A US court in 2013 acquitted Rana of conspiracy to provide material support to the Mumbai attacks. But the same court convicted him of backing LeT to provide material support to a plot to commit murder in Denmark.
Rana was sentenced to 14 years for his involvement in a conspiracy to attack the offices of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which had published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that angered Muslims around the globe.
But India maintains Rana is one of the key plotters of the Mumbai attacks along with the convicted Headley – and the authorities have welcomed his expected extradition.
In February, Devendra Fadnavis, chief minister of Maharashtra state which includes the megacity Mumbai, said that “finally, the long wait is over and justice will be done.”
Devika Rotawan, a survivor of the Mumbai attacks, said she believed the extradition of Rana would be a “big win for India.”
“I will never be able to forget the attack,” she told broadcaster NDTV on Wednesday.
Counterterrorism experts however suggest Rana’s involvement was peripheral compared to Headley, a US citizen, who India also wants extradited.
“They gave us a small fish but kept David Headley, so the essential outcome is going to be symbolic,” said Ajay Sahni, head of the Institute for Conflict Management, a New Delhi-based think tank.
Rana knew Headley, 64, from their days together at boarding school in Pakistan.
Headley, who testified as a government witness at Rana’s trial, said he had used his friend’s Chicago-based immigration services firm as a cover to scout targets in India, by opening a branch in Mumbai.
Rana has said he visited Mumbai ahead of the attacks – and stayed at the luxury Taj Mahal Palace Hotel that would become the epicenter of the bloody siege – but denied involvement in the conspiracy.
Sahni said that more than 16 years after the attacks, Rana’s extradition is of “historical importance” rather than a source of any “live intelligence.”
But he added that handing him over has “a chilling effect” on others abroad who India seeks to put on trial.


Austrian woman on trial after repatriation from Syrian detention camp

Updated 09 April 2025
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Austrian woman on trial after repatriation from Syrian detention camp

  • Evelyn T., who is accused of having been a member of a terrorist group from 2015 to 2017, could face up to 10 years in prison
  • She left Austria for Syria’s then Daesh controlled area in 2016 to join her husband

VIENNA: An Austrian woman who was brought back alongside her son from a Syrian detention camp went on trial in Vienna on Wednesday, in the first such case in the country.
Since the Daesh group was ousted from its self-declared “caliphate” in 2019, the return of family members of fighters that were either captured or killed has been a thorny issue for European countries.
Evelyn T., 26, has been in detention since she was repatriated to Austria last month, while her son, seven, was placed in social services’ custody.
On Wednesday, she was expected to plead guilty in court to the charges of being part of a terrorist group and a criminal organization, according to her lawyer Anna Mair.
“She takes responsibility for what she has done... and she wants to lead a normal life in the future,” Mair said ahead of the trial’s opening.
Evelyn T., who is accused of having been a member of a terrorist group from 2015 to 2017, could face up to 10 years in prison.
She left Austria for Syria’s then Daesh controlled area in 2016 to join her husband, “supporting him psychologically and taking care of the household,” according to the charges.
Their son was born in 2017. The couple surrendered later that year, with Evelyn T. and her son ending up in a Kurdish-run detention camp for suspected militants.
The two were repatriated together with another woman, Maria G., and her two sons.
Maria, now 28, left Austria in 2017 to join Daesh in Syria. She remains free since her return, while an investigation is ongoing.
Last year, a Vienna court ordered that she and her sons be repatriated, stressing that it was “in the children’s greater interest.”
Austria’s foreign ministry had previously rejected her request to be repatriated, saying that only the children would be accepted.
The EU member previously repatriated several children.
Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands are among other countries that have repatriated relatives of militant fighters.
Many of the women returned have been charged with terrorism crimes and imprisoned.