World

Devastated families gathered Tuesday for the cremation of their loved ones killed in a Thai nursery massacre that claimed 36 lives including 24 children.

Thailand has been left stunned by the tragedy in the northeastern province of Nong Bua Lam Phu, one of the worst mass killings in the country’s history.

As night fell Tuesday at Wat Rat Samakee temple in the Na Klang district where the attack took place, the exhausted and grieving community said a final goodbye as 19 funeral pyres were set ablaze with monks chanting.

Police officers had carried the coffins outside in the dusky light, laying them on top of specially built brick pyres decorated with white and black fabric.

Sobbing families escorted the smallest of the coffins, placing portraits, toys and flowers beside them before the items were removed as the pyres were lit and the crowd quietened.

“An incident like this shouldn’t have happened,” said local Thanakorn Nueangmatcha, 39, ahead of the funeral.

“They were only children.”

Other victims of the attack will be cremated at different temples in the area.

A former police officer armed with a gun and knife went on a rampage through the nursery on Thursday before going on to kill his wife and child and taking his own life.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha visited the temple complex on Tuesday, taking part in a small ceremony while monks chanted, before travelling back to the Thai capital.

It followed a visit on Friday by King Maha Vajiralongkorn who met families of the victims in a hospital.

The funerals, sponsored by the royal household, end three days of rites that began Saturday.

The mass ceremony is highly unusual as bodies are normally cremated alone — but the area’s small local temples have been overwhelmed by the number of victims.

Temporary furnaces have also been set up at other nearby temples, local media reported.

– ‘The old way’ –

The close-knit rural community had already come together on Monday as volunteers, soldiers and officials mixed cement and spread gravel to prepare a field inside the temple complex for the cremations.

They were working to build the pyres in the style traditionally seen in Thailand’s northeast, said Maemon Meeyuan, grandmother of one of the victims.

“We’re doing it the old way,” she told AFP.

Prayut has ordered an investigation into the massacre, with police saying they intend to interview about 180 witnesses.

The attacker, 34-year-old sacked police sergeant Panya Khamrab, was dismissed from his post earlier this year on a drugs charge, with locals saying they suspected he was a methamphetamine addict.

However, preliminary tests found he did not have drugs in his system at the time of the killings.

At the temple ahead of the funerals, 75-year-old Komma Charoenchai said he was “still shocked” by the tragedy but added that people must “let authorities handle the matter”.

Rights groups voiced alarm Tuesday over the extent of an Iranian crackdown on a Kurdish-populated city that has become a hub for protests, as oil refinery workers took industrial action in a new tactic.

Iran’s clerical authorities have been shaken by over three weeks of protests that erupted after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year old Iranian of Kurdish origin, who had been arrested by the notorious morality police.

Despite the use of brutal force by the authorities that activists say has left dozens dead, and led to hundreds of arrests, there is so far no sign of the protest movement coming to an end.

Protests have been especially intense in the city of Sanandaj in the western province of Kurdistan, Amini’s home region, where rights groups fear heavy casualties and accuse authorities of resorting to shelling of neighbourhoods.

The Norway-based Hengaw rights group said an Iranian warplane had arrived at the city’s airport overnight and buses carrying special forces were on their way to the city from elsewhere in Iran.

It said residents were having problems sending video evidence of events due to internet restrictions but said a seven-year-old had been killed on Sunday night. AFP could not immediately verify the claims.

Hengaw said at least seven people had been confirmed killed by the security forces in Sanandaj and other Kurdish-populated cities since Saturday. 

Amnesty International said it was “alarmed by the crackdown on protests in Sanandaj amid reports of security forces using firearms and firing teargas indiscriminately, including into people’s homes”.

On a visit to Sanandaj, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi reaffirmed Tehran’s position — strongly contested by rights groups — that the unrest had been “supported, planned and carried out by separatist terrorist groups”.

– ‘All together!’ –

The New-York based Center for Human Rights in Iran said there was a risk of a similar situation in Sistan-Baluchistan province in the southeast where activists say more than 90 people have been killed since September 30.

“The ruthless killings of civilians by security forces in Kurdistan province, on the heels of the massacre in Sistan-Baluchistan province, are likely preludes to severe state violence to come,” said its director Hadi Ghaemi.

Analysts have said the protests are proving particularly challenging for the authorities under supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 83, due to their duration and multi-faceted nature, ranging from street demonstrations to individual acts of defiance.

In a new development on Monday, protests spread to Iran’s oil refineries with videos showing striking workers burning tyres and blocking roads outside the Asalouyeh petrochemical plant in the southwest.

They could also be heard shouting slogans including “Death to the dictator” and “Don’t be scared, we are all together!”.

Similar actions were in progress on Tuesday with Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR) saying strikes were in progress in Abadan in western Iran and Bushehr to the south.

State news agency IRNA denied there was any strike action in the area. The governor of Asalouyeh, Ali Hashemi, told the Fars news agency that “opportunists” who had caused fires in the area had been arrested.

University campuses and even school classrooms have also seen repeated protests, with students at the Amir Kabir University of Technology in Tehran on Monday shown chanting anti-regime slogans.

In a video shared by the 1500tasvir social media channel that monitors protests and police violations, students at the Tehran Art University were shown spelling out the Persian word for blood in a human chain.

– ‘Vain effort to silence’ –

The crackdown on the protests sparked by Amini’s death on September 16 has claimed at least 95 lives, according to IHR.

Activists say that among those who died in the protests are two teenage girls, Nika Shakarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh. Their families say they were killed by security forces after being detained. Authorities insist they died in falls.

UNICEF executive director Catherine Russel said: “We are extremely concerned by continuing reports of children and adolescents being killed, injured and detained.”

The crackdown has prompted international condemnation with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan telling Iran the “world is watching” and “will hold responsible those using violence in a vain effort to silence” protesters.

Britain said Monday it had imposed sanctions on Iran’s morality police, the unit which arrested Amini and enforces strict dress rules for women including the compulsory headscarf.

Iran said it has summoned the British ambassador to protest against the “baseless” sanctions.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said on Tuesday that five French citizens are currently being held in Iran. Paris had previously said four French were held. According to the Iranian intelligence ministry, at least one of nine foreigners Iran is holding over links to the protests is French.

Turkey on Tuesday called for a ceasefire in Ukraine just days ahead of a likely meeting between the leaders of Turkey and Russia in the Kazakh capital Astana. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who won plaudits for securing a grain deal as well as Russia-Ukraine prisoner swap, has long sought to bring together Kyiv and Moscow for truce talks that neither side particularly wants. 

NATO member Turkey, which has stayed neutral throughout the conflict in Ukraine, has good relations with its two Black Sea neighbours — Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Ukraine. 

“Unfortunately (both sides) have quickly moved away from diplomacy” since the talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul in March, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in a televised interview. 

“As the Ukraine-Russian war drags on, unfortunately, the situation gets worse and more complicated,” added the Turkish diplomat, who called for an immediate ceasefire. 

“A ceasefire must be established as soon as possible. The sooner the better,” he said. 

-‘Viable ceasefire’-

Erdogan, who has a good working relationship with Putin despite disagreements on several issues including in Syria, is likely to meet with the Russian leader in Astana on Thursday, a Turkish official told AFP speaking on condition of anonymity. 

Turkey has refrained from joining Western sanctions against Russia.

Erdogan, who met Putin on the sidelines of a regional summit in Uzbekistan last month, is keen to boost trade with Moscow as he tries to stabilise the battered Turkish economy in the run up to elections next June.

Ankara has bowed to pressure from the United States and confirmed the last three Turkish banks still processing Russian bank card payments were pulling the plug. 

The decision followed weeks of increasingly blunt warnings from Washington for Turkey to either limit economic ties with Russia or face the threat of sanctions itself.

Erdogan has not yet commented on mass Russian strikes across Ukraine on Monday, which Ukrainian emergency services said killed at least 19 people and wounded more than 100. 

Cavusoglu held a telephone call with Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba after the attacks, a Turkish diplomatic source said, without elaborating further.

During the interview on Tuesday, Cavusoglu called for a “just peace” based on Ukraine’s territorial integrity. 

“There must be a just peace for Ukraine. Where is the war going on? It’s going on on Ukrainian soil,” he said. 

“A process that will ensure Ukraine’s border and territorial integrity should start. Without a ceasefire, it is not possible to talk about those issues in a healthy way: a viable ceasefire and a just peace.”

Turkey has rejected Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian provinces as a “grave violation” of international law and called for negotiations to end the conflict.

Russia said on Tuesday it launched “mass” strikes on Ukraine hours ahead of a G7 meeting expected to condemn an earlier missile blitz that Kyiv’s allies said was a mark of Moscow’s desperation.

Officials in Ukraine’s western region of Lviv said at least three Russian missiles targeted energy infrastructure and the mayor of the region’s main city, also called Lviv, said about one-third of the city was without power.

Russia’s defence ministry confirmed the attacks saying it had carried out massive strikes using long-range and high-precision weapons and that “all assigned targets were hit”.

The G7 meeting comes a day after Russian missiles rocked the Ukrainian capital for the first time in months. President Volodymyr Zelensky was defiant, warning his country “cannot be intimidated”.

Moscow’s forces rained down more than 80 missiles on cities across Ukraine on Monday, according to Kyiv.

Ukraine’s emergency services said on Tuesday that the overall toll had risen to 19 dead and more than 100 people wounded.

The United Nations said on Tuesday the wave of attacks may have violated the laws of war and would amount to war crimes if civilians were deliberately targeted.

Monday’s mass barrage came in apparent retaliation for an explosion on Saturday that damaged a key bridge linking Russia to Crimea, a peninsula Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed Ukraine for the bridge blast and warned of “severe” responses to any further attacks.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the strikes on Monday showed Moscow was “desperate” after a spate of embarrassing military setbacks.

Turkey on Tuesday called for a viable ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine “as soon as possible”, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expected to meet Putin this week.

Speaking in a televised interview, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also called for a “just peace” based on Ukraine’s territorial integrity. 

At an urgent meeting of the UN General Assembly on Monday Ukrainian ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya branded Russia a “terrorist state”, noting his own immediate family had come under attack on Monday.

The meeting was called to debate Moscow’s declared annexation of four partly occupied Ukrainian regions.

– ‘Stay the course’ –

Residents across Ukraine expressed shock and rage after Monday’s barrage.

In Dnipro, Ukrainian serviceman Maxim was on leave from the front lines for the first time in six months to celebrate his wife’s birthday when Russian missiles slammed into the central Ukrainian city, damaging their home.

“We are fighting on the front exactly to protect these places” far from enemy lines, he said. “But they still manage to hit them.”

The strike, he said, had made him more determined than ever to repel the Russian forces in northeastern Ukraine.

Zelensky and G7 leaders were set to convene via video link at 1200 GMT on Tuesday to discuss the latest Russian attacks.

– ‘A profound change’ –

The office of UK Prime Minister Liz Truss said she would use the gathering “to urge fellow leaders to stay the course”.

“Nobody wants peace more than Ukraine. And for our part, we must not waver one iota in our resolve to help them win it.”

German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told reporters on Monday that Chancellor Olaf Scholz had spoken with Zelensky and assured him “of the solidarity of Germany and the other G7 states”.

French President Emmanuel Macron convened his defence and foreign affairs ministers over the strikes, which he said signalled “a profound change in the nature of this war”.

US President Joe Biden condemned Monday’s attacks in stark terms, saying they demonstrated “the utter brutality” of Putin’s “illegal war”.

In a statement, the White House said Biden had spoken to Zelensky and had pledged to furnish Ukraine with “advanced air defence systems”. 

Though Russia’s UN representative Vasily Nebenzya did not directly address the missile strikes at the session, he defended his country’s annexation of Ukrainian regions, saying the aim was “to protect our brothers and sisters in eastern Ukraine”.

Putin meanwhile was due to meet the head of the UN’s nuclear energy watchdog, Rafael Grossi, in Saint Petersburg on Tuesday to discuss the Russian-controlled nuclear plant in the Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia.

Fighting around the facility for months has raised fears of a nuclear accident.

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Russia’s deadly air strikes on Ukraine’s cities this week have triggered calls for more military aid, but analysts warn than no air-defence systems can completely defend Ukrainian territory.

Kyiv says a barrage of Russian strikes across the country on Monday killed at least 19 people, wounded more than 100, and damaged infrastructure.

Missiles including cruise missiles rained down on the country’s cities, including in rare strikes on the capital Kyiv, far from the frontlines in the east and south.

Ukraine also accused Russia of using Iranian-made drones launched from neighbouring Belarus and Russia-annexed Crimea.

While Kyiv says its army managed to shoot down more than half of these, Prime Minister Denys Shmygal has called for “more modern weapons to protect the sky and civilians”.

“The cries for Western air defences around Ukrainian population centres will become much louder after” Monday’s strikes, said Tyler Rogoway, editor of the The War Zone website.

“Cruise missiles are a challenge though — even for modern Western air defence systems,” he added in a Twitter thread, as they are not “an impenetrable shield”. 

Francois Heisbourg, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), warned hard choices would have to be made about where best to concentrate defensive weapons.

“What infrastructure and what population centres should be defended, and how efficiently? Defending everything would amount to defending nothing.”

Even in Israel, a country with an area 27-times smaller than Ukraine, the Iron Dome air defence system is not 100 percent effective.

– ‘No one-size-fits-all system’ –

Nicholas Fiorenza, of the British intelligence analysis firm Janes, said full coverage was unlikely.

“Don’t think there is any country capable of stopping (every) single possible missile or UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) or a plane getting through,” he told AFP.

The Ukrainian defence ministry said Monday that Russia had Russia fired 83 missiles at Ukraine, of which its air defences shot down 52, among which were 43 cruise missiles.

The Russians appear to have fired short-range Iskander and Tochka-U ballistic missiles, as well as Kalibr cruise missiles, said Gustav Gressel of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The Ukrainians have S-300 air defence system and others, some of which are running low on munitions. To fend off the drone attacks, it also has Man-portable air-defence systems (MANPADS).

“However defending large cities with MANPADS would require lots of launchers, due to their short range,” Gressel said.

More broadly, “there is no (one-size-fits-all) weapons system to defend (Ukraine), as the targets are fairly different in speed, course, altitude, and numbers,” he added.

“Air defences need to be layered, and different weapons system supporting each other.” 

This was the case around Kyiv in March and April, he said. 

“They intercepted several Tochka-Us and Kalibr missiles, although of course not all in one attack.”

– ‘No impact before spring’ –

Following Monday’s attacks, the United States said it was preparing shipment of “advanced medium- and long-range air defence capabilities” to Ukraine.

Germany promised delivery “in the coming days” of the first Iris-T missile shield system reportedly able to protect a large city. 

Its range spans a height of 20 kilometres (12 miles) and a breadth of 40 kilometres (25 miles).

Berlin’s Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht said the latest Russian strikes highlighted “the importance of the rapid delivery of air defence systems to Ukraine”.

But the contract for the Iris-T systems includes 12 weeks of training Ukrainians to use them, Fiorenza warned. 

“I don’t see them starting to have an impact before next spring,” he said. 

Pressure will also be on Western arms manufacturers to produce air defence weaponry, long put on the back burner as it was deemed less useful in the battle against jihadists from Afghanistan to the Sahel.

Wojciech Lorenz, head of the international security programme at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, said air and missile defence systems were “unfortunately in short supply in the West”.

“But we should find what we can send to further strengthen Ukrainian morale and to limit the destruction if Russia decides to attack civilian targets” across Ukraine, he said.

Michael O’Hanlon, of the Brookings Institution, said air and missile defence systems were “expensive and not fool-proof”, but essential.

“And just as Israel’s Iron Dome has shown over the years, they can give a besieged population a greater sense of hope even when their 100 percent effectiveness cannot be presumed,” he added.