World

Russian forces said Friday they had captured ground in Donetsk in east Ukraine, their first claim of new gains after Kyiv grabbed momentum with a counter-offensive that rattled Russia’s war effort. 

The announcement came as Russia’s Orthodox leader said President Vladimir Putin’s rule had been divined by God, congratulating him on his 70th birthday and as the Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to rights defenders in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

Separatist forces in the war-battered Donetsk region said they had reclaimed a series of villages near the Ukraine-controlled industrial town of Bakhmut, which has been under Russian shelling for weeks.

“On the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic, a grouping of troops of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics, with fire support from Russian forces, liberated Otradovka, Veselaya Dolina and Zaitsevo,” they said on social media.

The Donetsk region, which has been partially controlled by Kremlin-backed separatists for years, is a key prize for Russian troops that invaded Ukraine in February.

But Ukraine’s forces in recent weeks have been pushing back against Russian forces across the frontlines in the south and in the east, including in parts of Donetsk.

AFP journalists in the centre of Bakhmut heard the sound of heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems near the remains of a smashed bridge over the Bakhmutka river.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also pushed to punish Russia further in other areas.

On Friday, he urged Brussels to ramp up pressure on Russia’s energy sector, a day after the EU imposed a fresh round of sanctions on Moscow that included the expansion of import/export bans.

– Plumes of black smoke –

A civilian volunteer from the humanitarian group Vostok SOS, 29-year-old Edvard Skoryk told AFP that there had been “street combat” near his home on the other side. 

South of the city, in the direction of the apparently seized villages, occasional columns of black smoke erupted after shells exploded. 

Civilians flinched and sometimes dived for cover as projectiles whistled overhead. Occasional bursts of machine gun fire was also audible. 

Ukraine’s lightning territorial gains in the east and south have undermined a claim from the Kremlin last week that it annexed Donetsk, neighbouring Lugansk and the southern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

The four territories create a crucial land corridor between Russia and the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014 and together make up around 20 percent of Ukraine.

In Kherson, the Moscow-installed deputy head of the region said Friday that five civilians were killed in shelling by Kyiv’s forces, as Ukrainian forces push their counter-offensive to reclaim the area.

“Militants from the Ukrainian military fired at a bus carrying civilians on the Daryevsky bridge. Civilians were on their way to work,” he said on social media, saying another five people had been wounded. 

Kyiv announced this week that it had recaptured some 500 square kilometres (193 square kilometere) in Kherson. 

This included around 30 towns and villages, potentially trapping as many as 20,000 Russian troops on the western bank of the Dnieper river that cuts through Kherson.

Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov on Friday urged Russian forces to lay down their arms promising their lives would be spared and they would be safe.

– ‘Safety and justice’ –

“You can still save Russia from tragedy and the Russian army from humiliation,” Reznikov said in Russian in a video addressed to Russian troops. 

“We guarantee life, safety and justice for all who refuse to fight immediately. And we will ensure a tribunal for those who gave criminal orders,” he promised.

The Kremlin has not only pushed on in Donetsk, but Russian drones struck the central industrial city of Zaporizhzhia, where Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is located.

Officials said Friday the attacks had hit industrial sites, one day after devastating Russian strikes on the centre of the city killed 11 people.

US President Joe Biden had warned Thursday the world is facing nuclear “Armageddon”, warning that Putin may use his atomic arsenal as Russian troops struggle against a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

After Russia’s invasion over seven months ago, Putin has made thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons.

UN aviation agency members reached an agreement Friday to try to achieve by 2050 net-zero carbon emissions in air travel — often criticized for its outsized role in climate change.

The assembly, which brought together representatives from 193 nations at the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Montreal headquarters, reached a “historic agreement on a collective long-term aspirational goal (LTAG) of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050!” the UN agency said in a Twitter message.

It added that it “continues to advocate for much more ambition and investment by states to ensure aviation is fully decarbonized by 2050 or earlier.”

“It’s an excellent result,” a diplomatic source told AFP, revealing that that only four countries — including China, the main thrust of global growth in air travel — “had expressed reservations.”

The air transportation industry has faced growing pressure to deal with its outsized role in the climate crisis.

Currently responsible for 2.5 percent to three percent of global CO2 emissions, the sector’s switch to renewable fuels is proving difficult, even if the aeronautics industry and energy companies are seeking progress.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said airlines were “strongly encouraged” by the adoption of the climate goal, coming one year after the organization endorsed the same position at its own general meeting.

IATA director general Willie Walsh said now “we expect much stronger policy initiatives in key areas of decarbonization such as incentivizing the production capacity of sustainable aviation fuels.”

According to airlines, it will require investments of $1.5 billion between 2021 and 2050 to decarbonize aviation.

“The global aviation community welcomes this landmark agreement,” said Luis Felipe de Oliveira, the head of Airports Council International, which represents 1,950 airports in 185 countries.

“This is a watershed moment in the effort to decarbonize the aviation sector with both governments and industry now heading in the same direction, with a common policy framework,” he said in a statement.

– Deal is non-binding –

The agreement, however, was far from satisfying for some non-governmental groups expressing regret it didn’t go far enough and was not legally binding.

Planes attract particularly sharp criticism because only about 11 percent of the world’s population fly each year, according to a widely quoted 2018 study by Nordic researchers.

In addition, 50 percent of airline emissions come from the one percent of travelers who fly the most, it found.

“This is not the aviation’s Paris agreement moment. Let’s not pretend that a non-binding goal will get aviation down to zero,” said Jo Dardenne of NGO Transport & Environment.

She also expressed disappointment over tweaks considered by delegates to the sector’s carbon offsetting and reduction scheme, known as CORSIA.

During the 10-day meeting, Russia had also sought but failed to get enough votes to be re-elected to the UN organization’s governing council, which is responsible for ensuring compliance with aviation rules.

Russia was accused of breaking international rules by registering hundreds of leased planes at home rather than returning them, as required by sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine in February.

The ICAO general meeting was the first since the start of the pandemic, which had brought the airline industry to its knees: in 2021 the number of airline passengers was only half the 4.5 billion in 2019, marking a small rebound from the 60 percent year-over-year drop in 2020.

The sector hopes in 2022 to see to 83 percent of its customer levels from three years ago and to become profitable again worldwide next year.

Iran said Friday an investigation into the death in custody of Mahsa Amini found she lost her life to illness rather than reported beatings that sparked three weeks of bloody protests.

Amini, 22, died on September 16, three days after falling into a coma following her arrest in Tehran by the morality police for allegedly breaching the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women.

Anger over her death has triggered the biggest wave of protests to rock Iran in almost three years and a crackdown that has killed dozens of protesters and seen scores arrested.

Despite security personnel using lethal force, the women-led protests have continued for 21 consecutive nights, according to online videos verified by AFP.

Iran’s Forensic Organization said Friday that “Mahsa Amini’s death was not caused by blows to the head and vital organs and limbs of the body”.

The death of Amini, whose Kurdish first name is Jhina, was related to “surgery for a brain tumour at the age of eight”, it said in a statement.

Amini’s bereaved parents have filed a complaint against the officers involved, and one of her cousins living in Iraq has told AFP she died of “a violent blow to the head”.

Other young women and girls have lost their lives at the protests, but rights group Amnesty International says Iran has been forcing televised confessions out of their families to “absolve themselves of responsibility for their deaths”.

– ‘Suicide’ –

The mother of 16-year-old Nika Shahkarami, who died after going missing on September 20, insisted on Thursday she was killed by the state after joining an anti-hijab protest in Tehran.

Nasrin Shahkarami also accused the authorities of threatening her to make a forced confession over her daughter’s death.

“I saw my daughter’s body myself… The back of her head showed she had suffered a very severe blow as her skull had caved in. That’s how she was killed,” she said in a video posted online by Radio Farda, a US-funded Persian station based in Prague.

Iran’s judiciary has since denied reports the security forces killed another teenage girl, Sarina Esmailzadeh, at a rally in Karaj, west of Tehran last month.

Its website quoted a prosecutor as saying an investigation showed Esmailzadeh, also 16, had “committed suicide” by jumping from a building.

Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights said the Esmailzadeh family had come under heavy pressure from government agents to “force them to repeat the suicide state narrative”. 

It said that when the family was asked to identify the teenager’s body, “multiple injuries were clearly visible on her face and the right side of her forehead was completely crushed due to the severity of the blows”.

In a widening crackdown, Iran has blocked access to social media, including Instagram and WhatsApp, and launched a campaign of mass arrests.

Protesters have sought ways to avoid detection, with schoolgirls hiding or blurring their faces while shouting “Death to the dictator” and defacing images of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in verified videos.

Other footage has shown people chanting the protest catchcry “Woman, Life, Freedom!” from their apartment windows under the cover of night.

Another form of protest emerged on Friday morning, with fountains in Tehran appearing to pour blood after an artist turned their waters red to reflect the deadly crackdown.

The BBC’s Persian service said the water was later drained, although traces of red could still be seen on the fountains in images it published on Instagram.

– ‘Toll far higher’ –

The street violence that ensued across Iran, dubbed “riots” by the authorities, has led to dozens of deaths — mostly of protesters but also of members of the security forces.

Iran Human Rights says at least 92 protesters have been killed so far.

A joint letter signed by 21 mainly Iranian human rights groups called on US President Joe Biden to go further to hold Iranian officials to account.

“More urgently needs to be done by the world’s leading democratic power to support the people of Iran, discourage further state violence, and address the long history of atrocities and impunity in that country,” the rights groups said.

Despite the government’s crackdown, the demonstrations have continued in towns and cities nationwide.

“Death to the dictator,” a group of young women can be heard chanting in the northern city of Rasht in a video posted online Thursday and verified by AFP.

Amnesty has verified the deaths of 52 people killed by the security forces, but says it believes the “real death toll is far higher”.

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Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn on Friday visited a hospital treating those wounded in a gun and knife rampage by a sacked policeman that left 36 people dead, ending a day of grief and mourning by relatives.

The king is expected to meet survivors of Thursday’s attack, one of the worst mass killings in Thai history, in a rare public interaction for the monarch, who is officially regarded as a semi-divine figurehead.

Coffins bearing the bodies of the victims — 24 of them children — were earlier transported to temples to be handed over to relatives, many of whom had spent the day mourning at the nursery where their children were slain.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha laid flowers at the nursery in rural northeastern Nong Bua Lam Phu province and handed out compensation cheques to grieving families. 

At one temple, 10 white and gold coffins, some so small they looked like toy boxes, were loaded into fridges in the evening ahead of the customary three days of mourning before cremation.

A young father, his face a mask of tears, staggered away from other mourners after watching his son’s coffin loaded away. 

Earlier at the small, low-slung nursery, a line of heartbroken parents placed white roses on the building’s steps as the baking sun bore down.

The dead include pregnant teacher Supaporn Pramongmuk, whose husband posted a poignant tribute on Facebook.

“I would like to say thank you for all the support for me and my family. My wife has fulfilled her every duty as a teacher,” Seksan Srirach wrote.

“Please be a teacher in heaven, and my child please take care of your mother in heaven.”

– Knife the ‘main weapon’ –

Armed with his own legally purchased 9mm pistol and a knife, former police sergeant Panya Khamrab began his murderous spree at the childcare centre at about 12:30 pm (0530 GMT) on Thursday.

Following the attack, 34-year-old Panya fled the scene in a pickup truck to head home and murder his wife and son before taking his own life, police said, ending the rampage at about 3 pm.

In total, he killed 24 children — 21 boys and three girls — and 12 adults.

Pitak Kongtapthai, head of the police investigations unit in the province, said most of the deaths were caused by a combination of knife wounds and gunshots.

Panya joined the police in 2012 and rose to the rank of sergeant but was suspended from the force in January and sacked in June for drug use, National Police Chief Damrongsak Kittiprapat told reporters.

Damrongsak said initial tests found no drugs in Panya’s body after the attack, though several locals said Panya was known in the area as a methamphetamine user.

The interior ministry said it would “review and intensify our preventative measures on drugs” in the wake of the attack, including tightening rules on gun ownership.

The police chief said the attacker used his knife as the “main weapon” in the nursery.

He had an argument with his wife hours before the attack, Damrongsak said, but “nothing irregular” was noted when he appeared in court that morning on a drugs possession charge. 

Flags on government buildings flew at half-mast on Friday in a gesture of mourning for one of the deadliest days in recent Thai history.

Nanthicha Punchum, acting chief of the nursery, described harrowing scenes as the attacker barged into the building in the rural Na Klang district.

“There were some staff eating lunch outside the nursery and the attacker parked his car and shot four of them dead,” she told AFP.

She said the attacker smashed down the door with his leg and then started stabbing the children.

– PM orders probe –

Witness Pranom Innurak described how her sister, now recovering in hospital, was injured.

“He (Panya) was driving a car on his way back home and he rammed into everyone on his way,” she told AFP, adding that her sister’s daughter was among the dead.

“When my sister got hit, she wasn’t that hurt yet. She flew out from her food stall. He then used a knife to attack her.”

Thai leader Prayut has ordered a rapid probe into the attack, and on Friday police interviewed witnesses and families.

The tragedy came less than three years after a soldier in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima gunned down 29 people and wounded scores more in a 17-hour rampage, before he was shot dead by commandos.

And less than a month ago an army officer shot dead two colleagues at a military training base in the capital Bangkok.