World

Spain, France and other western European nations braced on Saturday for a sweltering June weekend that is set to break records, with forest fires and warnings over the effects of climate change.

The weather on Saturday will represent a peak of a June heatwave that is in line with scientists’ predictions that such phenomena will now strike earlier in the year thanks to global warming.

Forest fires in Spain on Saturday had burned nearly 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres) of land in the north-west Sierra de la Culebra region.

The flames forced several hundred people from their homes, and 14 villages were evacuated.

Some residents were able to return on Saturday morning, but regional authorities warned the fire “remains active”.

Firefighters were still battling blazes in several other regions, including woodlands in Catalonia. 

Temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) were forecast in parts of the country on Saturday — with highs of 43 degrees C expected in the north-eastern city of Zaragoza.

There have also been fires in Germany, where temperatures topped 40 degrees C on Saturday. A blaze in the Brandenburg region around Berlin had spread over about 60 hectares by Friday evening.

Temperatures in France could reach as high as 42 degrees C in some areas on Saturday, French state weather forecaster Meteo France said, adding that June records had already been beaten in 11 areas on Friday.

Farmers in the country are having to adapt. Daniel Toffaloni, a 60-year-old farmer near the southern city of Perpignan, now only works from “daybreak until 11.30am” and in the evening, as temperatures in his tomato greenhouses reach a sizzling 55 degrees C. 

– Record temperatures –

“This is the earliest heatwave ever recorded in France” since 1947, said Matthieu Sorel, a climatologist at Meteo France.

With “many monthly or even all-time temperature records likely to be beaten in several regions,” he called the weather a “marker of climate change”.

Dutch authorities said they expect Saturday to be the hottest day of the year so far.

The Netherlands’ national meteorological agency has issued a warning for the southern city of Limburg where temperatures could rise to 35 degrees C.

“The elderly and people with vulnerable health can develop health problems due to the heat,” the agency said.

The UK recorded its hottest day of the year on Friday with temperatures reaching over 30 degrees C in the early afternoon, meteorologists said. 

– Drought and climate change –

Several towns in northern Italy have announced water rationing and the Lombardy region may declare a state of emergency as a record drought threatens harvests.

Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the UN convention charged with reversing land degradation, on Friday warned drought was “set to increase in severity and frequency”.

“The consequences of droughts could affect up to three-quarters of humanity by 2050,” he said during a speech in Madrid.

Experts warned the high temperatures were caused by worrying climate change trends.  

“As a result of climate change, heatwaves are starting earlier,” said Clare Nullis, a spokeswoman for the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva.

“What we’re witnessing today is unfortunately a foretaste of the future” if concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to rise and push global warming towards 2 degrees C from pre-industrial levels, she added.

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Gunmen stormed a Sikh temple in the Afghan capital on Saturday, killing at least one member of the community and wounding seven more, the interior ministry said.

Ministry spokesman Abdul Nafi Takor said the attackers lobbed at least one grenade when they entered the temple, setting off a blaze in the complex.

Minutes later, a car bomb was detonated in the area but caused no casualties, he added.

“One of our Sikh brothers has been killed and seven others (were) wounded in the attack,” Takor said in a statement.

Two attackers were killed in an operation to secure the temple following the raid, he said, with one Taliban fighter also killed.

While the number of bombings across Afghanistan has dropped since the Taliban seized power in August, several fatal attacks have hit the country in recent months.

“I heard gunshots and blasts,” Gurnam Singh, a Sikh community leader, told AFP from close to the scene of Saturday’s attack soon after the raid began.

“Generally at that time in the morning we have several Sikh devotees who come to offer prayers at the gurdwara (temple complex).”

Footage posted on social media after the attack showed shattered pillars and walls in the temple’s main prayer hall, with debris scattered across the floor.

A section of a building near the temple also caught fire, an AFP correspondent reported from the area.

The windows of several residential buildings were broken from the impact of the car bomb. Nearby streets were littered with shattered glass.

Taliban forces cordoned off the neighbourhood, preventing journalists from speaking with residents and witnesses.

– Repeated attacks –

A Taliban fighter deployed in the area told AFP that some Sikhs in the temple at the time of the attack managed to flee from a back door.

Some of Kabul’s other Sikh temples were closed for security reasons as reports of the attack spread.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the raid.

The attack came days after an Indian delegation visited Kabul to discuss the distribution of humanitarian aid from India to Afghanistan.

Afghan and Indian media reports said the delegation also discussed with Taliban officials the possibility of reopening the Indian embassy.

New Delhi, which had close relations with the previous US-backed Afghan government, shut its mission in Kabul and evacuated all its diplomatic and other staff when the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan on August 15.

Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar in a tweet condemned Saturday’s “cowardly attack” on the temple.

The number of Sikhs living in Afghanistan has dwindled to around 200, compared to about half a million in the 1970s.

Most of those who remain are traders involved in selling herbal medicines and electronic goods brought from India.

The community has faced repeated attacks over the years. At least 25 people were killed in March 2020 when gunmen stormed another Sikh temple in Kabul.

The jihadist group Islamic State claimed responsibility for that attack, which forced many Sikhs to leave the country even before the Taliban returned to power.

IS has a history of targeting Afghan Sikhs, Hindus and other members of minority communities — including Muslim Shiites and Sufis.

A string of bombings hit the country during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ended in Afghanistan on April 30, some of them claimed by IS.

IS is a Sunni Islamist group, like the Taliban, but the two are bitter rivals.

The Taliban have pursued an Afghanistan free from foreign forces, whereas IS want an Islamic caliphate stretching from Turkey to Pakistan and beyond.

Thousands of Singaporeans dressed in pink gathered at a park Saturday calling for greater recognition of LGBTQ rights, the first such rally since 2019 after coronavirus restrictions were eased.

While the city-state is prosperous and developed, social attitudes remain conservative and sex between men is still illegal, although the statute is not actively enforced. 

Singapore’s “Pink Dot” gay rights rally started in 2009 and has regularly attracted sizeable crowds despite a backlash from some quarters.

After holding online-only events during the pandemic, large numbers turned out Saturday as the rally returned to a downtown park — the only place in the city-state where protests are allowed without a police permit.

“I want to have my voice heard, I want to know that we matter and I want to have equality in Singapore,” Susan Helen, a 39-year-old business manager taking part, told AFP. 

“We are human beings, so we just want to be treated equal in the face of the law. I want to be able to marry my partner.”

Others at the rally waved rainbow flags, danced and brandished placards with slogans such as “We’re not nuclear, we are queer”, and “Power to the queers”.

Organisers did not release figures on the crowd size, but an AFP reporter estimated that thousands attended.  

Critics say that Singapore’s slow progress on gay rights is a contrast to advances made in other parts of Asia such as Taiwan and India.

They point to authorities maintaining the British colonial-era law that prohibits sex between men. Several attempts to overturn the legislation have failed in recent years. 

The latest challenge was dismissed by Singapore’s top court in February, which ruled that the law would be maintained but on the basis that it “would not be proactively enforced”.

Open support for gay rights is growing, aided by changing social norms among the younger generation and a large influx of tourists and expatriates.

The percentage of people in Singapore who support the gay sex ban fell from 55 percent in 2018 to 44 percent this year, while citizens are becoming more supportive of same-sex relationships, a survey released this month by market research firm Ipsos found. 

Officials have maintained that most in socially conservative Singapore would be against repealing the law, which carries a maximum of two years in jail for homosexual acts.

But Law Minister K. Shanmugam has acknowledged shifting attitudes, telling parliament earlier this year that the government is considering the best way forward.

Shanghai authorities on Saturday announced an investigation into a massive chemical plant blaze that left one person dead and another injured in the first major industrial accident since the city lifted lockdown in early June. 

The fire at a Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co. plant in outlying Jinshan district broke out at around dawn on Saturday, and was brought under control within hours, according to state news agency Xinhua.

Aerial drone footage shared with AFP by a resident showed thick clouds of smoke hanging over a vast industrial zone as three fires blazed in separate locations, turning the sky black. 

“At present, on-site disposal work is being implemented in an orderly manner, and protective combustion is being carried out,” the Shanghai government said on social media, adding that “safety risks” were “controllable”. 

“Monitoring data … show that the air quality has basically returned to normal.”

The Shanghai government added that its emergency management bureau has launched an investigation into the cause of the accident.

The company said in a separate Weibo post Saturday afternoon that it would cooperate with the investigation, and that the closure of relevant facilities “will not have a significant impact on the market”. 

The person who died was a “third-party transport vehicle driver” and an employee was suffered minor injuries, the company said.

The refinery is located near the south Shanghai seafront and a wetland park. The company said it was conducting environmental monitoring of the nearby area.

“At present, no environmental impact on the surrounding bodies of water has been found,” it said.

The fire erupted as Shanghai, China’s industrial engine and most populous city, gingerly resumes business after being sealed off for around two months to counter a coronavirus outbreak driven by the Omicron variant.

While the lockdown was officially lifted at the beginning of June, the snarling of supply chains and shutting of factories continues to have far-reaching consequences for the global economy.

– Sky ‘full of fire’ –

At the petrochemical plant, an early morning explosion was heard by residents up to six kilometres (four miles) away, according to local media.

One person said that tremors from the explosion caused their apartment door to shake violently. 

“Half the sky was full of red fire and thick black smoke, there was dust and cotton-like things floating in the air,” the anonymous resident told Chongqing-based newspaper Upstream News.

“The sound of burning could be heard — a huge roar like the sound of a plane in flight.”

Images on social media showed a large cloud of fire and ash billowing upwards behind rooftops.

The Shanghai fire department said on Weibo that it had dispatched more than 500 personnel immediately after the incident occurred.

The Ministry of Emergency Management had also dispatched an expert group to the scene, state-run CCTV reported.

An F-14 fighter jet crashed on Saturday while on a mission in central Iran, causing injuries to its two crew members, media in the Islamic republic reported.

“The fighter jet suffered a technical fault… and the pilot and co-pilot landed with parachutes,” said Rassoul Motamedi, spokesman for the military in Isfahan province where the crash occurred.

“The pilot and co-pilot were injured… and were immediately taken to hospital for treatment,” he was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency, adding that the plane was destroyed.

It was the second such incident in Isfahan province in less than a month, after two air force crewmen were killed when their F-7 training aircraft went down.

The air force in sanctions-hit Iran has suffered several crashes in recent years, with officials complaining of difficulties in acquiring spare parts to keep its ageing fleet in the air.

In February, an Iranian F-5 jet crashed in a residential area of the northwestern city of Tabriz, killing three people including its two-man crew.

Iran has mostly Russian MiG and Sukhoi fighter jets that date back to the Soviet era, as well as some Chinese aircraft, including the F-7, French Mirage jets and American F-4 and F-5 fighter planes.

The Islamic republic has 80 F-14 Tomcats, a warplane that served in the US Navy from 1972 until 2006, when it was withdrawn.

Tehran has continued to use them because American sanctions against Iran in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution prevent it from buying more modern Western jets.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed Brussels’ support for Kyiv’s European Union bid as a historic achievement, as “fierce battles” raged again in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. 

The European Commission spearheaded a powerful show of solidarity on Friday by backing Ukraine for EU candidate status, an endorsement that could add it to the list of countries vying for membership as early as next week. 

All 27 leaders must back Ukraine’s candidacy at a Brussels summit next week but the heads of the bloc’s biggest members — France, Germany and Italy — gave full-throated support to the idea during a highly symbolic visit to Kyiv this week.

Even though EU membership could still be years away, Zelensky called the decision a “historic achievement” and said it would “certainly bring our victory closer” against Russia.

“Ukrainian institutions maintain resilience even in conditions of war. Ukrainian democratic habits have not lost their power even now,” Zelensky said in a video address. 

On Friday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made her support of clear by donning a striking outfit in Ukraine’s national colours in blue and yellow.

“We all know that Ukrainians are ready to die for the European perspective. We want them to live with us for the European dream,” she said.

– ‘More destruction’ –

Zelensky’s comments came as fighting raged in villages outside the eastern city of Severodonetsk in the Donbas region, which Moscow’s forces have been trying to seize for weeks.  

“Now the most fierce battles are near Severodonetsk. They (Russia) do not control the city entirely,” the governor of the eastern Lugansk region, Sergiy Gaiday, said on Telegram.

“In nearby villages there are very difficult fights — in Toshkivska, Zolote. They are trying to break through but failing,” he said, adding that Ukrainian forces were “fighting Russians in all directions.”

Gaiday said there was “more destruction” at the besieged Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk, where he said 568 people were sheltering, including 38 children.

He also said Lysychansk — a Ukrainian-controlled city across a river from battered Severodonetsk — is being “heavily shelled”. 

Lysychansk residents were preparing to be evacuated. 

“We’re abandoning everything and going. No one can survive such a strike,” said history teacher Alla Bor, waiting with her son-in-law Volodymyr and 14-year-old grandson.

“We are abandoning everything, we are leaving our house. We left our dog with food. It’s inhumane but what can you do?”

– US veterans on Russian TV –

Russian state television meanwhile aired social media videos of two US military veterans who went missing last week while fighting alongside the Ukrainian army, stating they had been captured by Russian forces.

US President Joe Biden had said on Friday he did not know the whereabouts of Alexander Drueke and Andy Huynh, after their relatives lost contact with the pair.

The missing Americans — including a third identified as a former US Marines captain — are believed to be part of an unknown number of mostly military veterans who have joined other foreigners to volunteer alongside Ukrainian troops.

Ukrainian civilian volunteers however continue to sign up, with a group performing military exercises on Friday in fortified positions left by Russian troops in Bucha, a town synonymous with war crimes blamed on Moscow’s forces.

“Most of those who are here aren’t soldiers. They’re just civilians who want to defend their country — 50 percent of them have never held a weapon until today,” a sergeant known as “Ticha” told AFP.

Moscow has warned Western countries against getting involved in its ex-Soviet neighbour, saying it invaded to “de-nazify and de-militarise” a country that was getting too close to the West.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had “nothing against” Ukraine joining the EU, saying it was “their sovereign decision to join economic unions or not” — unlike the security risk he sees in Kyiv joining NATO.

But he said European Union membership would turn Ukraine into a “semi-colony” of the West.

Putin also insisted that the Russian invasion was not the cause of global inflation and grain shortages, blaming Western sanctions that he said threatened starvation “primarily in the poorest countries”.

– Eurovision battle –

Moscow has turned up the pressure on Western allies by sharply reducing flows of natural gas in its pipelines to western Europe, driving up energy prices in a region dependent on Russian gas.

France’s network provider said it had not received any Russian gas by pipeline from Germany since June 15, and Italy’s Eni said it expected Russian firm Gazprom to cut its supplies by half on Friday.

Ukraine was meanwhile battling on another front — the right to host next year’s Eurovision song contest after its morale-boosting win this year.

Kyiv condemned a decision by organisers to move the 2023 version of the world’s biggest live music event on security grounds, possibly to Britain.

“We will demand to change this decision, because we believe that we will be able to fulfil all the commitments,” Ukrainian Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko said.

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Monsoon storms in Bangladesh and India have killed at least 41 people and unleashed devastating floods that left millions of others stranded, officials said Saturday.

Floods are a regular menace to millions of people in low-lying Bangladesh, but experts say climate change is increasing their frequency, ferocity and unpredictability.

Relentless downpours over the past week have inundated vast stretches of Bangladesh’s northeast, with troops deployed to evacuate households cut off from neighbouring communities.

Schools have been turned into relief shelters to house entire villages inundated in a matter of hours by rivers that suddenly burst their banks.

“The whole village went under water by early Friday and we all got stranded,” said Lokman, whose family lives in Companiganj village.

“After waiting a whole day on the roof of our home, a neighbour rescued us with a makeshift boat. My mother said she has never seen such floods in her entire life,” the 23-year-old added.

Asma Akter, another woman rescued from the rising waters, said her family had not been able to eat for two days.

“The water rose so quickly we couldn’t bring any of our things,” she said. “And how can you cook anything when everything is underwater?”

Lightning triggered by the storms has killed at least 21 people around the South Asian nation since Friday afternoon, police officials told AFP.

Among them were three children aged between 12 and 14 who were struck by lightning on Friday in the rural town of Nandail, said local police chief Mizanur Rahman.

Another four people died when landslides hit their hillside homes in the port city of Chittagong, police inspector Nurul Islam told AFP.

At least 16 people have been killed since Thursday in India’s remote Meghalaya, the state’s chief minister Conrad Sangma wrote on Twitter, after landslides and surging rivers that submerged roads.

Next door in Assam state, more than 1.8 million people have been affected by floods after five days of incessant downpours.

Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told reporters he had instructed district officials to provide “all necessary help and relief” to those caught in the flooding.

– ‘The situation is bad’ –

Flooding in Bangladesh worsened on Saturday morning after a temporary reprieve from the rains the previous afternoon, Sylhet region chief government administrator Mosharraf Hossain told AFP.

“The situation is bad. More than four million people have been stranded by flood water,” Hossain said, adding that nearly the entire region was without electricity. 

The flooding forced Bangladesh’s third-largest international airport in Sylhet to shut down on Friday.

Around the regional capital, residents waded through waist-deep water along roads next to partially submerged stuck vehicles.

Forecasters said the floods were set to worsen over the next two days with heavy rains in Bangladesh and upstream in India’s northeast.

Before this week’s rains, the Sylhet region was still recovering from its worst floods in nearly two decades late last month, when at least 10 people were killed and four million others were affected.