World

With “tactical socks”, NATO standard sleeping bags and even a sauna, a unit of soldiers from Ukraine’s 5th brigade is preparing for winter in a trench on the eastern front.

“Winter in Donbas is hell. It is a steppe climate with icy nights and temperatures can go down to minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit),” said one of the soldiers, Yury Syrotiuk.

“There is no forest, the wind blows through everywhere. I was here in 2014 and it was unbearable,” the 46-year-old said.

This part of the front has remained relatively static in the conflict but Russian forces are just 700 metres away  away and there is frequent artillery fire.

Still, life goes on in the maze of trenches.

The unit of soldiers and their cat John are deployed in the trenches for a week at a time before they are rotated out.

Following an internet tutorial, they have built a sauna that can also function as a hammam one metre (three feet) underground.

The sauna measures just two square metres and is heated by a wood-fired stove.

The opening and the insides are covered in silver-coloured insulating material.

An ammunition crate by the entrance acts as changing room for the soldiers who enter the sauna naked and wash themselves inside.

Water or snow in a bucket creates the steam.

“After living in the mud, you come out like a new person,” said Syrotiuk, a bearded former local official from the capital Kyiv who has been at the front since February.

– Fear of ‘trench foot’ –

The underground camp, which is covered in camouflage netting, is a sea of mud that sticks to the soles of soldiers’ boots.

Before entering the trench used for living quarters and the kitchen, soldiers have to wash their boots on a metal tube.

Inside, the most valued object is the “burzhuyka” — a small wood-fired stove with a chimney which keeps everyone warm.

Soldiers put their hands near it and then place them between their chests and their bullet proof vests to warm their bodies.

The other home comfort is a gas heater used to make piping hot tea and coffee.

Before entering the insulated sleeping area, where soldiers lie down on wooden crates, everyone has to remove their boots.

A plastic thermometer decorated with pink flowers shows 22 degrees Celsius inside, while outside it is 5 degrees on an autumn morning.

The unit commander, who goes by “Losha”, said the soldiers have received sleeping bags from volunteers that are supposed to be good up to minus 30 degrees Celsius.

“With these you can sleep in the snow,” he said.

The soldiers have also been sent raincoats, special underwear including leggings and “tactical socks” to avoid “trench foot” — a bane for soldiers in the First World War.

“But what warms us up even more than socks or NATO standard sleeping bags, are the words, the calls and the little drawings of our loved ones,” Syrotiuk said, smiling.

Signs are growing that the crucial partnership between Germany and France is stumbling, experts say, just as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and soaring energy costs place extreme stress on the EU.

Amid disagreements over energy, foreign policy, arms procurement and more, a joint cabinet meeting has been pushed back to January, while a parliamentary gathering of French, German and Polish MPs was cancelled at the weekend.

There have always been “difficult moments” in the relationship, said France’s former ambassador to China, Britain and Russia, Sylvie Bermann.

“But we’re clearly in a period of crisis, and the Franco-German relationship seems more strained than ever,” she said.

It did not help that the Ukraine war erupted when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had barely taken office, with insiders saying French President Emmanuel Macron’s relationship with him is nothing like as warm as with former chancellor Angela Merkel, with whom he exchanged text messages daily.

Scholz and Macron are set to meet one-on-one in Paris on Wednesday following last week’s gathering of European leaders.

“There’s a necessary learning process” as Germany’s three-party governing coalition finds its feet, said Alexandre Robinet-Borgomano, a German politics expert at French think-tank Institut Montaigne.

“In future, the German government will have to build compromises with more dialogue, more connection with its European partners,” he added.

– Energy dust-up –

The Berlin-Paris axis has been the foundation of EU compromise for decades, and the bloc’s two biggest and wealthiest countries are still more critical since Britain’s departure.

Europe’s economic heavyweight Germany has sowed discord with plans for a national 200-billion-euro ($197-billion) energy subsidy, rather than an EU-wide agreement to cap prices.

“I don’t think it’s good for Germany or for Europe if it isolates itself,” Macron said last week of the plans, which smaller countries fear could drive up prices for them.

Ironically, the complaints from France and elsewhere come as Germany appears to be caving to long-standing demands, analyst Robinet-Borgomano said.

France has spent 10 years “firstly rebuking (Germany) for not spending enough on defence, for not having a strategic or geopolitical vision, and second rebuking it for staying stuck in austerity policy and spending no money”, he pointed out.

That’s “exactly what we’re complaining about today”, Robinet-Borgomano added.

Berlin “is investing more to stimulate growth and domestic demand, it’s taking on a leadership role and is building European defence” with massive new spending following Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

The energy subsidy dust-up was brushed under the carpet with an agreement for an energy price “roadmap” at last week’s EU summit.

France has also snubbed Germany’s pleas to build a new overland gas pipeline — known as MidCat — from import terminals in Spain and Portugal to European networks.

Instead, Macron last week announced an undersea pipeline from Barcelona to Marseille, with no timetable for completion or details of its funding.

– War means business –

Meanwhile in defence — a field where France and Germany have striven to display unity — differences have also been forced to the surface.

Paris has stayed out of a Germany-led plan for an anti-missile shield stretching across much of Europe, which has so far brought 14 countries including Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands on board.

One Macron adviser said France fears a “restart of the arms race in Europe”, and will stick to its own air defence systems.

Analyst Robinet-Borgomano suggested that Paris was in fact annoyed that the shield would use US- and Israeli-made equipment rather than a French-Italian alternative.

France “ought to have pushed for interoperability between systems to ensure European sovereignty, we can see that it’s about competing for leadership in European defence”, he said.

A still thornier issue is a plan to develop a German-French-Spanish next-generation fighter jet known as the Future Combat Air System (FCAS).

Contracts for the next phase of development on the plane, supposed to replace existing fleets of French Rafales and German and Spanish Eurofighters by 2040, have not yet been signed.

“There’s political agreement, but it’s jammed at the level of the companies,” one senior French official said.

French manufacturer Dassault “is afraid of losing its market position” if forced to work with competitor Airbus, they added.

Peace talks between the warring sides in the brutal two-year-old conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region opened in Pretoria on Tuesday, the South African presidency announced.

The negotiations, led by the African Union (AU), follow a fierce surge in fighting in recent weeks that has alarmed the international community and triggered fears for civilians caught in the crossfire.

“South Africa is hosting peace talks to end the conflict in the Tigray region,” Vincent Magwenya, spokesman for President Cyril Ramaphosa, told reporters.

The talks “have been convened to find a peaceful and sustainable solution to the devastating conflict,” he said, adding that they would run until October 30.

South Africa hopes “the talks will proceed constructively and result in a successful outcome that leads to peace for all the people of our dear sister country,” he said.

The talks between negotiators from the Ethiopian government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the regional authorities in war-stricken Tigray have been launched almost two months to the day since fighting resumed in August, shattering a five-month truce.

They are being facilitated by AU Horn of Africa envoy and Nigeria’s former president Olusegun Obasanjo, supported by Kenya’s former leader Uhuru Kenyatta and South Africa’s ex-vice president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, said Magwenya.

Diplomatic pressure has been mounting in recent weeks to silence the guns in a war which has left millions in need of humanitarian aid and, according to a US estimate, as many as half a million dead.

The talks come as federal government forces and their allies in the Eritrean army appear to be gaining the upper hand on the ground, seizing a string of towns in Tigray in offensives that have sent civilians fleeing.

An initial effort by the AU to bring the two sides to the negotiating table earlier this month failed, with diplomats suggesting logistical issues and a lack of preparedness were to blame.

The South Africa talks are the first public parley between the rivals, although a Western official has confirmed that previous secret contacts took place organised by the United States in the Seychelles and twice in Djibouti.

Abiy first sent troops into Tigray in November 2020, promising a quick victory over the northern region’s dissident leaders, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), after what he said were attacks by the group on federal army camps.

The move followed long-running tensions with the TPLF, which had dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition before Abiy came to power in 2018 and sidelined the party.

In a rare comment on the conflict last week, Abiy — who won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for his rapprochement with Eritrea — said the war “would end and peace will prevail”.

But on Monday, the head of the rebel region, Debretsion Gebremichael, issued a defiant statement saying: “The Tigray army has the capacity to defeat our enemies totally.”

The international community has been calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities, humanitarian access to Tigray and a withdrawal of Eritrean forces, whose return to the battlefield has raised fears of renewed atrocities against civilians. 

Eleven people, mostly children, have perished in a blaze that tore through a dormitory at a school for the blind in Uganda in the early hours of Tuesday as pupils were sleeping.

“The cause of the fire is currently unknown but so far 11 deaths as a result of the fire have been confirmed while six are in critical conditions and admitted (to hospital),” the Uganda Police Force said on Twitter.

The disaster occurred at about 1 am (2200 GMT Monday) at the Salama School for the Blind in the Mukono district, east of the capital Kampala.

Police said an investigation had been launched into the cause of the inferno and more details would be released later.

“Most of the dead are children at the school and our sympathies go to the parents,” Internal Affairs Minister General Kahinda Otafiire told AFP. 

He said the school has been cordoned off as a “crime scene” and vowed that there would be a full investigation.

“As government we shall go to the root cause of the fire and if there are any culprits they will be apprehended and the law will take its course,” he added.

The school’s headmaster Francis Kirube, who is also blind, told AFP the flames swept through the dormitory as the pupils slept.

AFP images showed a charred but still largely intact building where the fire broke out, its window frames and door blackened and the corrugated roof damaged.  

Forensic teams were seen in white protective gear at the school, while grieving parents gathered nearby.

– ‘He is gone’ –

Richard Muhimba, the distraught father of one of the dead children, told AFP: “No words can explain the pain I am going through. 

“I visited my child on Saturday, he was in good health and in less than three days he is gone… Please give me time to go through this pain,” said Muhimba, before hanging up.

A friend told AFP that the child was aged 15 and that Muhimba was a father of five. 

Salama was built in April 1999 by the local government in Mukono and caters for children and young adults between the ages of six to 25.

Princess Anne, the sister of King Charles III, had been due to visit the school during her trip this week to Uganda, which marked its 60th anniversary of independence from Britain earlier this month.

The East African nation has suffered a string of deadly school fires in recent years.

In November 2018, 11 boys perished and another 20 suffered severe burns in a suspected arson attack at a boarding school in southern Uganda.

In April 2008, 18 schoolgirls burned to death along with one adult when a fire engulfed their dormitory at a junior school near the Ugandan capital. 

In March 2006, at least 13 children were killed and several hurt when fire razed an Islamic school in western Uganda. In July the same year, six children died in a similar fire in the east.

Even the exhaustion from walking 40 kilometres, fleeing jihadists who had attacked her village, could not mask the trauma on Maria Lourenco’s face.

An indelible image was imprinted on her mind.

“They beheaded two men and put their heads in a basin,” she told AFP.

“Then they handed over the heads to the wife of one of the victims to present to the authorities,” she said.

“I saw their heads.”

Her village in the Katapua area in Cabo Delgado province, the epicentre of a five-year-old jihadist insurgency in northern Mozambique, came under attack last weekend.

The 60-year-old grandmother fled on foot to the town of Chiure, 25 miles away, with her eight daughters and grandchildren.

Wearing blue flip-flops and clutching an improvised walking stick, she was standing in the town square waiting for her daughter-in-law to take her to the provincial capital Pemba.

The family’s terrifying experience underscores how Mozambique’s jihadist nightmare remains very far from over, despite military gains last year.

The insurgency erupted in October 2017 when fighters — since proclaimed to be affiliated to the Islamic State group — attacked coastal areas in northern Cabo Delgado, close to the Tanzanian border.

Bloody assaults on villages were followed in 2020 with the capture of the port of Mocimboa da Praia — a key part of a huge scheme to develop liquefied natural gas in the region.

In 2021, as Mozambique’s military floundered, Rwanda and the country’s neighbours deployed more than 3,000 troops, helping to push the militants out of their strongholds.

But the jihadists are now making incursions into the previously untouched south of Cabo Delgado and spilling over into neighbouring Nampula and Niassa provinces.

The insurgency has so far claimed more than 4,300 lives, and around a million people have fled their homes.

– ‘Evildoers’ –

An AFP correspondent in Chiure, a town with a population of around 100,000, saw around 500 people who had been uprooted from Katapua since the weekend.

They congregated in front of the town’s main square. Many had slept rough in the open. Others sheltered on shop verandahs watching over a few belongings tied in large sheets, and foam mattresses that they had managed to carry.

Along the dusty road connecting Chiure to Katapua, several women, men and children trekked on foot, their belongings balanced on heads, or on bicycles.

“Many arrived during the early hours exhausted and complaining of pain,” said Consolta Paulo, a nurse in Chiure. 

Villagers reported new raids in Katapua on Monday.

“The evildoers went on the rampage in the village and burned a chapel,” Katapua’s administrative head, Xavier Jamal, told AFP by phone. 

He said it appeared the attackers were the same group which last week had raided on ruby mine near Montepuez.

London-listed ruby mining giant Gemfields halted operations at its Montepuez mine following the attack at a neighbouring site.

Jamal appealed to villagers not to flee, insisting the military “are on the ground, controlling the situation”.

But locals have little trust in Mozambique’s ill-trained and under-equipped forces.

Elias Mario, 36, a peasant farmer, fled Katapua with his wife and two children. He stood next to his bicycle, his shoulders slumped despondently.

“I brought my family here, but we still don’t know where we’re going,” he said.