World

A farm worker who took part in a road block protest in Peru died Wednesday following clashes with police while several others were injured, a hospital said.

The violence came a day after President Pedro Castillo called off a curfew in Lima aimed at curbing nationwide protests against rising fuel prices.

“Fifteen injured people have come in, we have one seriously injured. There is a civilian who came in dead as a result of the conflict,” Carlos Navea, director of the hospital in Ica some 300 kilometers (180 miles) south of Lima, said on Facebook.

Navea said 12 police officers and three civilians were injured.

A farm workers leader told RPP radio the dead man was a 25-year-old from Huancavelica who worked for a company in Ica.

The clashes broke out on Wednesday morning after police tried to break up a blockade by dozens of farm workers on the Pan-Americana Highway, the country’s most important artery for people and goods.

The fertile Ica region is a hub of the Peruvian agricultural sector.

Tensions had been building in Peru since Monday when truckers called for a strike and protests broke out in Lima, Ica and other parts of the country over rising food and fuel prices.

Castillo reacted late on Monday night by calling a curfew in Lima and the neighboring port city of Callao — together home to 10 million people — on Tuesday.

A widespread public backlash and pressure from the right-wing opposition dominated Congress prompted the leftist Castillo to lift the curfew late on Tuesday afternoon.

That brought celebrations from protesters outside parliament and around the capital but the crisis did not end.

Clashes broke out on Tuesday night in Lima following marches in several parts of the city with demonstrators chanting: “Castillo out!”

Buildings were attacked and shops vandalized.

The interior minister said 25 police officers were injured in the trouble.

It is the first time in the 52-year-old former rural school teacher’s eight months in power that he has faced a social protest movement.

Like much of the rest of the world, Peru’s economy is reeling from damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic.

In an attempt to appease protesters, the government over the weekend eliminated a tax on fuel and decreed a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage from May 1. 

But the General Confederation of Workers of Peru — the country’s main trade union federation — has remained defiant and called for more protests on Thursday.

The US and Britain announced new sanctions against Russia Wednesday after Ukraine said hundreds of civilians were found dead around its capital, as Kyiv warned residents in the east of the country to get out “now” ahead of a feared assault.

The White House unveiled measures targeting Russia’s top public and private banks and two daughters of President Vladimir Putin, while Britain sanctioned two banks — and vowed to eliminate all Russian oil and gas imports by year-end.

Their actions followed an international outcry after Ukraine said its forces found  hundreds of civilians dead around the capital Kyiv, including the town of Bucha, after Russian troops withdrew.

In a video address to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky showed harrowing images of corpses — including of children — that he said were victims of Russian atrocities.

The Kremlin denies responsibility and on Wednesday, Putin accused Ukrainian authorities of being behind “crude and cynical provocations” in Bucha, in a call with Hungary’s prime minister, the Kremlin said.

The Russian withdrawal from areas around Kyiv and the north is part of a shift in focus towards Ukraine’s southeast, in a bid to create a land bridge between occupied Crimea and Moscow-backed separatist statelets in the region of Donbas.

Ukraine Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk on Wednesday warned residents in the eastern Kharkiv, Lugansk and Donetsk regions to leave immediately due a feared Russian attack.

“It has to be done now because later people will be under fire and face the threat of death,” she wrote on Telegram.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said there was no sign Putin had dropped “his ambition to control the whole of Ukraine”.

“We have to be realistic and realise that this may last for a long time, for many months, for even years,” he said ahead of a meeting with NATO foreign ministers. 

– ‘Slashed their throats’ –

Zelensky called for Russia’s exclusion from the UN Security Council, where it is one of five members with veto power, and made an impassioned plea for action in response to the civilian killings.

“They cut off limbs… slashed their throats. Women were raped and killed in front of their children,” he said, after earlier comparing Russia’s assault to the 1937 Nazi bombing of the town of Guernica.

The US and Britain have also pressed to have Russia excluded from the UN Human Rights Council, with a vote in the General Assembly scheduled for Thursday.

At his weekly audience at the Vatican, Pope Francis deplored the “powerlessness of international organisations” before what he called “ever more horrendous cruelties”, before kissing a flag brought from Bucha.

Thousands of people have been killed and more than 11 million displaced as refugees or within Ukraine since Russia invaded, sparking Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II.

Western powers have already pummelled Russia with debilitating economic sanctions, which forced Moscow Wednesday to make foreign debt payments on dollar-denominated bonds in rubles, raising the prospect of a potential default.

Washington’s new sanctions targeted Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova, two adult daughters of Putin, plus the wife and daughter of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and members of the Russia’s Security Council.

The White House also declared “full blocking” sanctions on Russia’s largest public and private financial institutions, Sberbank and Alfa Bank, and said all new US investment in Russia was now prohibited.

Britain meanwhile froze the overseas assets of Sberbank — Russia’s largest bank — and Credit Bank of Moscow.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson had earlier said what happened in Bucha “doesn’t look far short of genocide to me”.

– EU ‘indecisiveness’ –

The EU is also poised to implement a fifth round of sanctions cutting off Russian coal imports — and European Council chief Charles Michel said that “sooner or later”, it must also impose oil and gas sanctions.

Condemning “war crimes” in Russia, he said: “There must be, and there will be, severe consequences for all those responsible.”

But addressing the Irish parliament Wednesday, Zelensky condemned the “indecisiveness” on the part of European nations dependent on Russian energy.

He called for the total exclusion of Russian banks from Western finance.

In other moves to isolate Moscow, EU countries including Germany, France, Italy and Spain have expelled more than 200 Russian diplomats and staff between them this week.

The Kremlin called the mass expulsions a “short-sighted move” that would complicate efforts to negotiate an end to the hostilities.

Peace talks between the sides have so far gone nowhere, though Moscow says it is “ready” to continue.

Putin also warned of “reprisals” for recent European measures targeting Russian gas giant Gazprom — and said Moscow would “monitor” its food exports to “hostile” nations, raising the spectre of shortages and price spikes.

– Cluster bombs flying –

Satellite photos taken while Bucha was still under Moscow’s control show what appear to be bodies lying in streets where the dead were later found by Ukrainian forces and seen by journalists. 

And multiple Bucha residents told AFP they had seen Russian soldiers killing civilians.

“Right in front of my eyes, they fired on a man who was going to get food at the supermarket,” said 43-year-old Olena, who declined to give her family name.

During a grim cleanup, the remains of partially burned bodies in black bags were lifted into a van, with officials telling journalists “dozens of bodies” remained in apartments and in nearby woods.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, who will visit Kyiv this week, has offered the bloc’s assistance in documenting proof of war crimes.

Scenes of devastation have met those venturing into other areas from which Russian forces have withdrawn. 

In the northern city of Chernigiv, which was besieged from the early days of the invasion, a charred children’s hospital, full of bullet and shrapnel holes, served as a shelter.

“Cluster bombs were flying, we have traces of these bombs,” said 51-year-old Olena Makoviy. “The injured were brought to the children’s hospital, both adults and children.”

City officials estimate around 350 civilians have been killed in Chernigiv, with fellow residents digging mass graves to bury them. 

“It was very scary here from the first days of the war,” said Makoviy. “They brought guys, handsome, young, but no longer alive,”

burs-ar/yad

Thousands protested across Sudan against military rule on the anniversary Wednesday of previous popular uprisings, most recently against autocrat Omar al-Bashir three years ago. 

Security forces fired tear gas at demonstrators in the capital Khartoum, its twin city of Omdurman, and in Wad Madani to the south, witnesses and AFP correspondents said. 

They also “stormed Al-Jawda hospital and fired tear gas inside, scaring patients and health workers and causing suffocation among some of them”, said the independent Central Committee of Sudan Doctors. 

Sudan has grappled with an October 25 coup led by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan that has derailed a political transition period and hammered the economy of one of the world’s poorest countries.

Pro-democracy activists had warned online of a people power “earthquake of April 6” — a momentous day in Sudan’s history that was key in bringing down earlier strongmen.

In 1985, the day saw the ouster of president Jaafar Nimeiri following a popular uprising. In 2019 it marked the start of a mass sit-in outside army headquarters, after months of protests, against Bashir’s three decades in power.

“It is an important day… so we expect many to take to the streets despite the heat and Ramadan,” the Muslim month of fasting, said one Khartoum protester, Badwi Bashir.

“We just want to bring down the coup (leadership) and end the prospect of any future coups.”

– ‘No to military rule’ –

Sudan’s latest putsch has “set fire to all aspects of life, turning our country into an arena of crises,” said the civilian alliance Forces of Freedom and Change, or FFC.

Security forces had earlier sealed off key bridges and deployed around the presidential palace and army headquarters.

In Omdurman, protesters broke through barbed wire blockades and marched through streets leading to the parliament building, according to an AFP correspondent. 

Protesters marched in the eastern state of Gedaref with banners that read “No to military rule” and “Away with the government of hunger”, said one witness, Ahmed Salah. 

Demonstrations were also held in several cities across the Darfur region, the central state of North Kordofan and the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, according to witnesses. 

Five days after the start of the 2019 sit-in, generals bowed to the pressure on the streets to remove Bashir. 

But the protesters stayed on to press for civilian rule, only to be dispersed in a crackdown in June that year by men in military fatigues that claimed 128 lives according to medics.

Sudan’s civilian and military leaders later agreed on a transition of power, which promised greater international engagement for the country as well as foreign aid and investment.

But last October’s coup upended those plans, leading to the current wave of protests. At least 93 people have been killed and hundreds wounded in the crackdown since, medics say.

– Partnership ‘failed’ –

“We have to defeat the coup,” FFC spokesman Jaafar Hassan said last week. 

“We have tried a partnership with the military, and it failed, ending in this coup, and we shouldn’t do this again.”

Burhan said last Saturday he would only “hand over power to an honest, elected authority, accepted by the all the Sudanese people”.

The United States on Wednesday warned against “the use of any violence” and demanded Sudanese authorities “keep their word and hold accountable those responsible for abuses.”

Since the coup, Sudan’s already ailing economy has suffered severe blows, as Western donors cut crucial aid pending the restoration of a transition to civilian rule.

Prices of food, fuel and basic commodities have soared and crime has spiked. Violence has intensified in remote areas, particularly the restive Darfur region, the UN says.

Burhan last week threatened to expel UN special representative Volker Perthes, accusing him of “interference” in the country’s affairs after Perthes warned of the deepening crisis in Sudan during a UN Security Council briefing.

Here are the latest developments in the war in Ukraine:

– Leave ‘now’, residents in east Ukraine told –

Ukraine tells residents in the country’s east to evacuate “now” or “risk death” ahead of a feared Russian onslaught on the Donbas region, which Moscow has declared its top prize.

Deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk writes on Telegram that the governors of the Lugansk and Donetsk regions, part of the Donbas, and the nearby city of Kharkiv “are doing everything to ensure that the evacuations take place in an organised manner.”

– Putin speaks on Bucha –

Russian President Vladimir Putin accuses Ukrainian authorities of being behind “crude and cynical provocations”, after they said hundreds of civilians were found dead in the town of Bucha when Russian troops withdrew.

– Denials ‘not tenable’ –

The Berlin government says that satellite images from last month provided strong rebuttal of Russian denials of involvement in civilian deaths in Bucha.

“Russian declarations” that images of civilian deaths “were posed scenes or that they were not responsible for the murders are in our view not tenable”, government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit says.

– Putin daughters sanctioned –

The United States announces sanctions on two daughters of Putin, saying family members are known to hide the Russian president’s wealth.

It also declared “full blocking” sanctions on Russia’s largest public and private financial institutions, Sberbank and Alfa Bank, and says all new US investments in Russia are now prohibited.

The EU is also looking to add Putin’s daughters to its sanctions blacklist, European diplomats tell AFP.

– ‘Long’ war ahead –

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg says there is no sign Putin has dropped “his ambition to control the whole of Ukraine”.

He says the war could last “for a long time, for many months, for even years” saying the West must be prepared for “the long haul”.

– Orban invites Putin, Zelensky –

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, one of Putin’s rare allies in Europe,  says he has urged the Russian leader to declare an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine.

He also invites the leaders of France, Germany and Ukraine to meet Putin in Budapest.

– UN rights body suspension –

The UN General Assembly will vote Thursday on suspending Russia from the UN Human Rights Council as punishment for invading Ukraine, the assembly presidency says.

A day earlier Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had also called for Russia to be expelled from the UN Security Council “so it cannot block decisions about its own aggression, its own war.”

– Dollar debt paid in rubles –

Russia says it had made payments on dollar-denominated foreign debt in rubles, adding to fears the country is headed for a sovereign default.

The finance ministry says it was forced to make the $649.2-million payment in rubles after an intermediary bank refused to execute the payment.

It did not say whether the payment was accepted.

– ‘Not far short of genocide’: Johnson –

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says the alleged massacre in Bucha “doesn’t look far short of genocide to me” and that Britain will also step up sanctions on Russia.

US President Joe Biden has branded Putin a war criminal.

– Pope slams ‘horrendous cruelties’ –

Pope Francis says during his weekly audience the “recent news about the war in Ukraine, instead of bringing relief and hope, instead attests to new atrocities, such as the Bucha massacre.”

– Red Cross convoy –

A Red Cross convoy arrives in the southern Ukrainian town of Zaporizhzhia after failing to reach the besieged port city of Mariupol, an AFP journalist  reports.

Seven buses with around 300 people onboard accompanied by the International Committee of the Red Cross and at least 40 private cars arrive in the southern town.

burs-cb-jmy/pvh

A key member of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s Yamina party said Wednesday she was quitting his coalition government, in a surprise move that leaves him without a parliamentary majority.

Idit Silman’s announcement left Bennett’s coalition, an alliance of parties ranging from the Jewish right and Israeli doves to an Arab Muslim party, with 60 seats — the same as the opposition.

Although Silman´s defection does not mean the fall of the coalition, it raises the spectre of a potential return to office by veteran leader Benjamin Netanyahu, less than a year after he lost the premiership to Bennett. 

“I tried the path of unity. I worked a lot for this coalition,” Silman, a religious conservative who served as coalition chairperson, said in a statement.

“Sadly, I cannot take part in harming the Jewish identity of Israel.”

On Monday, Silman lashed out at Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz, after he instructed hospitals to allow leavened bread products onto their premises during the upcoming Passover holiday, in line with a recent supreme court ruling reversing years of prohibition.

Jewish tradition bars leavened bread from the public domain during Passover.

“I am ending my membership of the coalition and will try to continue to talk my friends into returning home and forming a right-wing government,” Silman said.

“I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.”

Bennett’s coalition may continue ruling with 60 seats, although with difficulty passing new legislation. 

If another member of the coalition defects, however, the Knesset could hold a vote of no confidence and lead Israel back to the polls for a fifth parliamentary election in four years. 

Political analyst Dahlia Scheindlin told AFP that if Silman “is the first person to really prepare to bring down the government, she is doing it from the place of conviction”.

“She is religious, and I think we all underestimate the power of theology,” said Scheindlin. 

In a formal resignation letter addressed to Bennett, Silman said: “We must admit that we tried. It’s time to recalculate and try to form a national, Jewish, Zionist government.”

There was no immediate comment from Bennett, whose Yamina party has suffered numerous splits and defections since its inception in 2019. 

Yamina now holds just five of parliament’s 120 seats.

– ‘Limp government’ –

Following the announcement, Silman was embraced by the same right-wing politicians who had relentlessly attacked her since she followed Bennett into the governing coalition last year, reneging on campaign promises.

“Idit, you’re proof that what guides you is the concern for the Jewish identity of Israel, the concern for the land of Israel, and I welcome you back home to the national camp,” opposition leader Netanyahu said in a video recording.

“I call on whoever was elected with the votes of the national camp to join Idit and come back home, you’ll be received with all due honour and open arms,” the right-wing former prime minister added.

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, who was in office from 1996 to 1999 and again from 2009 until June, had pledged to play the role of spoiler against Bennett’s government which brought an end to his hold on power.

At a special session of the Knesset, which is currently in recess, Netanyahu said: “There is a weak and limp government in Israel today. Its days are numbered.”  

The Knesset will reconvene on May 8 to resume its legislative work. 

“Ï won´t name any names, but there will be more defectors,” Miki Zohar of Netanyahu´s Likud party told Kan public radio.

“We’re in talks with more than two lawmakers who are considering coming to us,” Zohar added.

To form a coalition of his own without new elections, Netanyahu would need the support of at least 61 lawmakers.

Currently he falls well short of that threshold, and does not command the support of all 60 opposition MPs. The six lawmakers of the Arab-led Joint List are fierce opponents of the former premier.

Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionism party, once a political partner of Bennett, predicted the ruling coalition would not survive Silman’s defection.

“This is the beginning of the end of the left-wing, non-Zionist government of Bennett and the Islamist Movement,” he wrote on Twitter.