World

A mysterious leaden sarcophagus discovered in the bowels of Paris’ Notre-Dame cathedral after it was devastated by a fire will soon be opened and its secrets revealed, French archaeologists said Thursday.

The announcement came just a day before the third anniversary of the inferno that engulfed the 12th century Gothic landmark, which shocked the world and led to a massive reconstruction project.

During preparatory work to rebuild the church’s ancient spire last month, workers found the well-preserved sarcophagus buried 20 metres (65 feet) underground, lying among the brick pipes of a 19th century heating system.

But it is believed to be much older — possibly from the 14th century.

Scientists have already peeked into the sarcophagus using an endoscopic camera, revealing the upper part of a skeleton, a pillow of leaves, fabric and as-yet unidentified objects.

The sarcophagus was extracted from the cathedral on Tuesday, France’s INRAP national archaeological research institute said during a press conference.

It is currently being held in a secure location and will be sent “very soon” to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in the southwestern city of Toulouse. 

Forensic experts and scientists will then open the sarcophagus and study its contents, to identify the skeleton’s gender and former state of health, lead archaeologist Christophe Besnier said, adding that carbon dating technology could be used.

Noting that it was found under a mound of earth that had furniture from the 14th century, Besnier said “if it turns out that it is in fact a sarcophagus from the Middle Ages, we are dealing with an extremely rare burial practice”.

They also hope to determine the social rank of the deceased. Given the place and style of burial, they were presumably among the elite of their time.

However, INRAP head Dominique Garcia emphasised that the body will be examined “in compliance” with French laws regarding human remains.

“A human body is not an archaeological object,” he said. “As human remains, the civil code applies and archaeologists will study it as such.”

Once they are done studying the sarcophagus, it will be returned “not as an archaeological object but as an anthropological asset,” Garcia added.

And could Notre-Dame, this unknown person’s home for so many centuries, serve as their final resting place?

INRAP said the possibility of “re-internment” in the cathedral was being studied. 

Here are the latest developments in the war in Ukraine:

– Russian flagship ‘seriously damaged’ but afloat –

Ukraine claims its missiles struck the Russian navy’s Black Sea flagship, causing a fire that “seriously damaged” the vessel, according to Moscow. 

The Russian defence ministry says the warship, which has been used to launch missiles at Ukraine’s southern coast and interior, remains afloat.

The “Moskva” gained notoriety early in the war when it called on Ukrainian border troops defending the strategic Snake Island to surrender, only to be defiantly refused.

– Russia accuses Ukraine of attacks –

Kyiv rejects Moscow’s claim that it carried out attacks on Russian soil, accusing Moscow of staging “terror attacks” on its own territory to stir up “anti-Ukrainian hysteria” in the country.

Moscow claims Ukraine sent two helicopters across the border to bomb a town in Russia’s southern Bryansk region,

Russia, which had initially reported seven injured in shelling, said at least six residential buildings were damaged and that a toddler was among the injured in the purported helicopter attack.

Elsewhere, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region claims the village of Spodaryushino, “came under shelling” from the Ukrainian side of the border, and that it and a nearby village had been evacuated as a precaution.

There was no way of immediately verifying the reports.

– Ukraine resumes evacuations –

Ukraine says it is reopening humanitarian corridors through nine routes in the country’s east and south, to facilitate the evacuation of civilians from war-scarred regions after a day-long pause that Kyiv attributed to Russian violations.

– Genocide debate –

Leaders on either side of the Atlantic diverge on whether to label Russia’s actions in Ukraine as “genocide”.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says US President Joe Biden, who has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of genocide, was “right” in his choice of words.

But French President Emmanuel Macron, who is campaigning for re-election, said such “verbal escalations” were unhelpful, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz steers clear of using the term. 

– $800 mn US aid package –

The United States unveils a major new package of aid to Ukraine, including equipment such as helicopters, howitzers and armoured personnel carriers.

The package includes equipment Washington had previously refused to provide to Kyiv for fear of escalating the conflict with nuclear-armed Russia.

– Kharkiv offensive continues –

Russia’s offensive on Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv has claimed a further four lives, governor Oleg Synegubov says. The city near the Russian border has been on the eastern frontline since the start of the war and suffered massive destruction.

– Le Pen for NATO-Moscow rapprochement –

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen says she will back closer ties between NATO and Russia and pull Paris out of the alliance’s military command if elected president in an April 24 runoff with Emmanuel Macron.

Following accusations she is too close to President Vladimir Putin, Le Pen said a “strategic rapprochement” is required and questions need to be asked about the role of the alliance after the end of the Warsaw Pact.

– US warns China –

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warns that China’s stance towards Russia and its invasion of Ukraine could affect countries’ willingness to collaborate and trade with Beijing.

– Prisoner swap –

Ukraine says 30 prisoners of war are being returned to the country as part of the most recent exchange of captives with Russia, following an order from President Volodymyr Zelensky.

It says in a statement on social media the swap involves five officers and 17 servicemen, along with eight civilians, including one woman.

– 4.7 million refugees –

More than 4.7 million Ukrainians have fled their country in the 50 days since Russia invaded, the United Nations says.

Lebanon on Thursday ordered the demolition of Beirut’s grain silos which are at risk of collapse following a devastating 2020 port explosion, prompting protests from relatives of blast victims who want the silos preserved.

“We tasked the Council for Development and Reconstruction with supervising the demolition process,” Information Minister Ziad Makari said after a cabinet meeting, without specifying a time frame.

Makari said the government’s decision was based on a report by Lebanon’s Khatib and Alami Engineering Company, which warned that the silos in the port of the capital Beirut could collapse within months.

“Repairing them will cost a lot,” Makari said.

Last year, Swiss company Amann Engineering also called for their demolition, saying the most damaged of the silos were tilting at a rate of two millimetres per day (0.08 inches).

Once boasting a capacity of more than 100,000 tonnes, an imposing 48 metre (157 foot) high remnant of the structure has become emblematic of the catastrophic August 4 port blast.

It killed more than 200 people and devastated entire neighbourhoods of the capital in 2020.

Still, the silos absorbed much of the blast’s impact, shielding large swaths of west Beirut from its ravaging effects.

Activists and relatives of blast victims have called for the grain storage facility to be preserved as a memorial site.

Following Thursday’s announcement, relatives of blast victims gathered near the silos to denounce plans for demolition. 

“We demand that the silos remain as a memorial monument that witnessed” one of history’s largest non-nuclear explosions, said a spokesperson for the families, arguing that damaged sections could be reinforced.

The silos should be preserved so that “people can reconcile with their pain,” he said.

To assuage potential anger over the decision, the cabinet on Thursday tasked the interior and culture ministries with erecting a monument commemorating victims of the explosion.

Authorities say the blast was caused by a shipment of ammonium nitrate fertiliser that caught fire after being impounded for years in haphazard conditions.

Investigations into the tragedy have been paused for months over what rights groups and relatives of the victims have decried as political interference.

Human Rights Watch last year accused top officials in government, parliament and the country’s security agencies of deadly negligence that led to the tragedy. 

Ukrainian academic Nazar Danchyshyn may not have much fighting experience, but to help his country since the start of the war he has deployed his knowledge of language and poetry.

Twice a week, he flips open his laptop for online classes to help fellow countrymen in the former Soviet nation perfect their Ukrainian speaking skills.

“If we all speak Ukrainian in the future that would be a very powerful weapon against aggression,” the 30-year-old researcher and poet said.

A sizeable minority of Ukrainians speak Russian as their mother tongue, and many more are fluent, brought up under Moscow’s cultural influence, especially in the east and south of the country.

But in recent years, increasingly more people have decided to shift linguistic identity in rejection of Russia’s politics.

Since President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in late February, under the pretext of “de-nazifying” its neighbour and protecting Russian speakers there, the trend has soared.

In the western city of Lviv, where the national language is predominant, a group of academics offers free lessons online to those wishing to brush up on their Ukrainian speaking skills.

Organisers say 1,000 people signed up in just three days, and they have so far only managed to find enough tutors for around 800.

Danchyshyn, who was also a guitar player in a band before the war, is one of those teachers.

“People remember that their grandparents and great-grandparents spoke Ukrainian, and then their families switched to Russian” under the Soviet Union, he said.

“Many wanted to return to their native language.”

– ‘I have my own country’ –

The war in Ukraine has killed thousands and displaced millions at home and abroad over the past seven weeks.

With mounting evidence of likely Russian war crimes, US President Joe Biden on Wednesday accused Moscow of “genocide”.

“It’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being able to be a Ukrainian,” the president said.

The conversation classes Danchyshyn gives are online, but organisers say the content is roughly inspired by language textbooks from the Lviv Polytechnic National University.

In their pages appear images of Ukraine’s national hero, 19th-century poet Taras Shevchenko, or modern role models such as Oksana Lyniv, a music conductor from Lviv.

Volodymyr Krasnopolsky, a 52-year-old Russian-speaking academic from the eastern city of Lugansk, is one of Danchyshyn’s students.

After pro-Moscow separatists seized control of Lugansk in 2014, he moved to the small eastern city of Rubizhne.

But the city was hit by a missile on February 24, and he and his daughter — a medic student — spent two weeks sheltering in a basement before they managed to flee westwards.

“There were people of different origins in the bomb shelter with us, but they all felt like Ukrainians,” he told AFP via text message.

“Learning Ukrainian is very important to me because I’m showing the aggressor that I’m a Russian-speaking Ukrainian from a Russian-speaking family, but I don’t need his protection. I have my own country,” he added.

“I believe that the Ukrainian nation is being formed today, regardless of people’s origin,” he said.

– ‘My bullets are words’ –

Yuliya, a school principal and maths teacher, said she had joined the course after the conflict forced her to escape bombardment on Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv near the Russian border.

“I plan to return home as soon as possible,” said the 51-year-old, who teaches in Ukrainian but speaks Russian in her daily life.

But “now is a good time for self-development.”

“I’m fluent in reading and writing in Ukrainian, but I struggle with speaking,” she explained, without giving her surname.

Under the grand ceiling of the Lviv polytechnic, passionate Ukrainian language advocate and one-time lawmaker Iryna Farion said initiating the free classes was part of “the constant struggle of Ukrainians for the right to be Ukrainian”.

Her eyes welled up as she recounted reports that Russians in the southern town of Melitopol had tried last month to force officials to switch the school curriculum to Russian.

“If we do not defend our language, Putin will come here, right into this very building,” she said.

As well as the online classes, she said she was planning to give Ukrainian lessons to the parents of displaced children enrolled at a local school to help them follow their homework.

“This is my frontline. My bullets are words,” she said.

The UN’s envoy to South Sudan warned on Thursday that almost nine million people will be in need of aid this year as the fragile country grapples with a surge in violence between armed factions and a food crisis.

Clashes have flared anew in the world’s youngest nation despite a pledge by President Salva Kiir and his rival, Vice President Riek Machar, to silence their guns and strive towards implementing key provisions of a 2018 peace pact.

Nicholas Haysom, the head of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), called on the leaders to step up efforts to quell the violence and urged the international community to channel in more assistance.

“This year two-thirds of the population or almost nine million people — 4.6 million of which are children — will need aid to survive,” Haysom told reporters in the capital Juba. 

“Food insecurity will be widespread. And that is worsening because of climate change, conflict and displacement.”

Haysom said he was “discouraged by the resurgence of sub-national violence,” highlighting the plight of thousands of people driven from their homes by fighting that erupted last week between pro-Kiir and pro-Machar forces in oil-rich Unity State.

The clashes in Leer County sent 14,000 people fleeing, according to the local authorities, while the UN also voiced alarm about reports of sexual violence, looting and destruction of property.

Traditionally a pro-Machar stronghold, Leer was an epicentre of a humanitarian crisis that emerged out of the 2013-2018 civil war, ravaged by violence as well as a famine.

South Sudan has been wracked by instability since independence in 2011 and is still struggling to draw a line under the war that claimed the lives of almost 400,000 people.

– Seeking ‘renewed momentum’ –

Haysom said the upsurge in fighting was increasing the number of people in need of aid and adding to woes from expected flooding in many areas in the coming months.

“Continued and sufficient funding is urgently needed to stop the worst from happening.”

Kiir and Machar earlier this month agreed on the creation of a unified armed forces command — a key component of the peace deal — and Haysom said he hoped it would open a window of opportunity to address the problems the country faces.

“With 10 months left in the transitional period, I am now strongly encouraging all parties to channel renewed momentum towards completing the remaining benchmarks of the peace agreement and to reach an agreement as to when the elections should be held,” Haysom said.

A two-year transition period laid down in the peace accord is due to end in February 2023, with elections due to be held 60 days beforehand.

“If you ask me if the country is ready for elections right now, I would say no… because the technical conditions have not been put in place,” he said, such as the creation of an election management body and an electoral law.

“They cannot be held if this violence is rampant throughout the country,” Haysom added, calling for a “greater level of commitment to peaceful coexistence across the country.”