World

Twenty members of a Jewish sect escaped from detention in Mexico following a raid targeting the group, which is accused of drug trafficking and rape, an official said Friday.

The sect called Lev Tahor was formed in the 1980s and members practice an ultra-Orthodox form of Judaism in which women wear black tunics covering them from head to toe.

Twenty sect members were taken to a government-run shelter on September 23, after a raid by the Mexican authorities on the sect compound in the town of Tapachula in southern Chiapas state.

On Thursday dramatic television images showed members of the group dressed in flowing robes pushing past guards at that shelter — one of whom was seen lying on the ground — before walking away.

“They didn’t let us leave. That’s a violation of the right to freedom, the right to be religious,” one member told journalists after the breakout.

“That’s why the community had to make this decision,” he added.

The breakout occurred in Huixtla, located about 190 kilometers (120 miles) from the border with Guatemala, said a government agency official, who asked not to be named.

“They destroyed the shelter” run by Mexican welfare authorities and fled, the official said.

“They hit the guards with stones,” the person added.

The initial raid was revealed on Tuesday by Israel’s foreign ministry, which said that citizens of Israel, Canada, the United States and Guatemala were among a total of 26 people detained.

Two of them were suspected of sex crimes and human trafficking and could face up to 20 years in jail, the ministry said in a statement.

Two others wanted by police were believed to have left the compound days earlier, it added.

“A private Israeli team” accompanied police, the ministry said, while the Israeli consul “was staying nearby” in order to ensure that the members of the sect were well treated and that the children were not separated from their mothers.

A three-year-old boy was handed over to his father who had fled the sect several years ago, and both arrived in Israel on Monday, the statement said.

The US Congress approved $12.3 billion in aid Friday to help Ukraine battle its invasion by Russia as part of a stopgap spending bill that averts a chaotic government shutdown ahead of a midnight deadline.

The package includes $3 billion for arms, supplies and salaries for Ukraine’s military and authorizes President Joe Biden to direct the Pentagon to transfer $3.7 billion in weapons and other hardware to Ukraine.

The so-called “continuing resolution” — passed by 230 votes to 201, with 10 Republicans joining the Democrats — also provides $4.5 billion for Kyiv to keep the country’s finances stable and keep the government running.

The allocation takes the US contribution to the war effort to $65 billion. It was approved just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed four Moscow-occupied Ukrainian regions, in defiance of warnings from the West. 

“This new grant assistance is a further demonstration of US confidence in Ukraine and will support critical government operations and provide relief to Ukrainian people suffering under Russia’s brutal war,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

“Critically, this funding will also help bolster Ukraine’s valiant resistance to Putin’s illegal war of aggression. We call on fellow donors to not only speed up their existing disbursements to Ukraine, but also to increase their scale of assistance.”

Government shutdowns threaten the finances of hundreds of thousands of workers who risk being sent home without pay as parks, museums and other federal properties close. 

The stopgap measure, which keeps federal agencies open until December 16, cleared the Senate Thursday by a comfortable 72 votes to 25.

It includes $1 billion in winter fuel allowance for low-income families, $20 million for a clean water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, and billions in disaster aid for various states. 

Its passage was unusually light on drama this time around, with lawmakers keen to skip town and get back to the campaign trail ahead of midterm Election Day on November 8.

A proposal attached to the package to speed up the approval process for large energy projects provided the only controversy.

But its author Joe Manchin, a Democrat with extensive interests in the fossil fuel industry, agreed to drop the text after conceding it didn’t have the support and risked sinking the entire package. 

Lawmakers rejected a request by the White House for billions of dollars for the nation’s Covid-19 and monkeypox response, amid staunch Republican opposition. 

The president last week declared the pandemic “over,” easing the path for Republicans to reject the request. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday annexed four parts of Ukraine occupied by his army, staging a grand ceremony in Moscow as Kyiv vowed to battle on and pushed for expedited NATO membership.

The event at the Kremlin — a turning point in recent post-Soviet history — came hours after shelling killed 25 people in Ukraine’s southern region of Zaporizhzhia in one of the worst attacks against civilians in months.

Putin was defiant during his address to Russia’s political elite, telling the West that the internationally condemned manoeuvre was irreversible and urging Ukraine’s emboldened army to negotiate a surrender.

“I want to say this to the Kyiv regime and its masters in the West: People living in Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are becoming our citizens forever,” Putin said.

“We call on the Kyiv regime to immediately stop fighting and stop all hostilities… and return to the negotiating table,” the Russian leader added.

The packed hall erupted into chants of “Russia! Russia” after the four leaders inked the deal. 

Putin — rarely seen making physical contact since the pandemic — joined hands with his proxy leaders and they shouted along in unison on state TV.

Washington announced “severe” new sanctions against Russian officials and the country’s defence industry, and said G7 allies support imposing “costs” on any nation that backs the annexation.

President Volodymyr Zelensky immediately urged the US-led military alliance NATO to grant Ukraine expedited membership, a move Kyiv had threatened earlier and that rattled Putin.

– No talks with Putin –

The Ukrainian leader doubled down in an address to the nation, vowing never to hold talks with Russia so long as Putin was in power.

“We will negotiate with the new president,” Zelensky said.

US President Joe Biden condemned Russia’s “fraudulent” declaration, vowing to keep backing Kyiv army. 

“We will continue to support Ukraine’s efforts to regain control of its territory by strengthening its hand militarily and diplomatically,” he said.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg condemned the annexation as “illegal and illegitimate” but remained non-committal after Ukraine said it was applying to join the Western alliance.

“France opposes this and stands with Ukraine against Russian aggression,” President Emmanuel Macron said, according to his office.

Despite warnings from Putin prior to the annexation that he could use nuclear weapons to defend the captured territories, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Kyiv would “continue liberating our land and our people”.

Hours ahead of the ceremony, an attack in Zaporizhzhia in the south, killed at least 25 people as civilians were preparing to leave to pick up relatives, Ukrainian officials said.

Bodies clothed in civilian wear were strewn across the ground after the attack and windows of cars blown out, an AFP photographer said.

One man, 56-year-old Viktor, said his life was saved because he went to get a coffee.

“The waitress gave it to me. And there was a bang. She got scared and left the cafe. A few minutes later, there was another explosion. Now she is on the floor,” he said.

“I managed to hide. She did not.”

– ‘Scared’ –

But pro-Kremlin regional chief Vladimir Rogov however said Kyiv was responsible attack in Zaporizhzhia and accused Ukrainian troops of carrying out a “terrorist act”.

In central Moscow, at least 10,000 people convened for state-organised annexation celebrations, with huge banners emblazoned: “Donetsk. Lugansk. Zaporizhzhia. Kherson. Russia!”

“I’m happy if they want to join Russia,” Natalya Bodner, a 37-year-old lawyer told AFP. “They have more hope than we do”.

“It should have been done a long time ago,” a Russian serviceman Ildar Babaev from the southern region of Dagestan said.

The four territories create a crucial land corridor between Russia and the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014.

– Ukraine forces press Donetsk –

Together, all five regions including Crimea, make up around 20 percent of Ukraine, whose forces in recent weeks have been clawing back wins as part of a counter-offensive.

In Sloviansk, a city in Donetsk, a military medic who goes by the name of Coconut said the annexations were nonsense.

“If my neighbour comes to my house and announces that it’s his, nobody believes it actually belongs to him,” he told AFP.

Ukrainian forces were also on the doorstep of Lyman in Donetsk, which Moscow’s forces pummelled for weeks to capture this summer.

“Lyman is partially surrounded,” said Denis Pushilin, the pro-Moscow leader in the breakaway region of Donetsk, on social media adding later that Russian forces were holding out “with the last of their strength”.

The four regions’ Kremlin-installed leaders formally requested annexation after claiming residents backed the move in hastily organised referendums that were dismissed by Kyiv and the West as fraudulent.

The UN Security Council will vote Friday on a resolution condemning the referendums, according to France, the council’s current president, but it has no chance of passing due to Moscow’s veto power.

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Ukraine’s forces pushed forward their counteroffensive against Russian troops in the Kharkiv region on Friday, as more evidence emerged of violence against civilians in formerly occupied territory.

Just to the east of the village of Kyrylivka in the Kharkiv region, on an exposed section of road close to the frontline, lay the bodies of a group of at least 11 civilians gunned down in cars and a minibus.

The Ukrainian troops who have recently recaptured the area told AFP the six-vehicle convoy had been attacked by the retreating Russians, who had occupied Kyrylivka until earlier this week.

There was no way to independently confirm this version of events, and reporters were only able to remain on the scene for a short time before artillery fire began to erupt on the still active frontline.

On Wednesday, an official from the Kremlin proxy administration in the neighbouring region of Lugansk had accused Kyiv’s forces of firing on a civilian convoy in the area, allegedly killing 30 people.

– Bullet holes –

The area where the attack took place, a road through farmland east of the Kharkiv region industrial town of Kupiansk, was recaptured in the last week and there have been heavy exchanges of fire.

“The vehicles were moving all together as a civilian convoy. We can see that there is almost no distance between the vehicles,” said “Filya”, a Ukrainian soldier who guided AFP to the scene. 

“And obviously they were attacked by gunfire because you can see the bullet holes… One car was set on fire and it’s impossible to recognise the people without an expert,” he said.

Ukrainian troops recaptured Kupiansk — a rail hub once used by the Russians to supply their troops — and a crossing point on the Oskil river in early September after a lightning counteroffensive.

But villages like Kyrylivka on the east bank of the Oskil were not secured until four or five days ago, and the slaughtered civilian convoy was close to an area where both sides had fought.

Russian forces have often been accused of murdering civilians in occupied areas during the seven-month-old war, and on Friday a Russian strike killed 25 civilians in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia.

But when Ukrainian forces recaptured eastern Kupiansk they shot up civilian model cars daubed with the Russian occupier’s “Z” symbol and driven by uniformed men, leaving now bloated bodies by the roadside. 

Whoever shot up the convoy, the victims appear to be civilians.

A small van or minibus was completely burnt out, with the carbonised remains of four people within. At least one of these corpses was small enough to have been a child.

A cream-coloured Lada car with its boot open is stopped ahead of the bus, with a middle-aged man in a hat and blue jeans lying dead in the road beside a plastic bag of luggage.

On the rear seat of a blue car, an elderly lady lies curled as if asleep, under a down jacket. In the front seat, the slain driver has a blanket across his knees, suggesting he had been parked.

In all, AFP reporters counted 11 bodies at the scene, which has yet to be cleared or visited by prosecutors or forensic investigators.   

A short distance away in Kyrylivka, confident Ukrainian forces are now in charge and a thin but steady stream of refugees are filing through on foot towards the bridge across the river and safety.

– ‘Kamikaze drone’ –

Smoke is still curling up from the front left tyre of a Russian APC that Ukrainian troops say was destroyed by a “kamikaze drone”, and three Russian tanks have been captured more-or-less intact.

One, a T-90A, is seen as a great prize. 

The model entered service in 2004 and is the most modern tank fielded by Russian forces in Ukraine. This one wasn’t destroyed, but seems to have been left behind after it was crashed in a ditch.

Filya’s unit is confident they can recover it, fix it and return it — and its relatively advanced thermal imaging sensors — to the fight, along with two more decrepit looking older and abandoned T-72s.

The Russian troops did not only abandon their hardware. One dead or wounded soldier was already on a stretcher when his comrades placed him by the roadside before making their escape.     

Rescue workers went door-to-door in Florida on Friday to assist survivors of Hurricane Ian as the Carolinas braced for the arrival of the Category 1 storm.

Ian, one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to hit the United States, left a trail of devastation across Florida and officials said they have received reports of at least 20 deaths in the southern state.

After weakening as it crossed over Florida, the storm regained strength over the Atlantic and is bearing down on the coast of South and North Carolina packing maximum sustained winds of 85 miles per hour (140 kilometers per hour), the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

It warned Carolina residents that Ian could bring “life-threatening storm surge” of up to seven feet (two meters) and damaging winds.

The storm left hundreds of people in need of rescue in Florida, many trapped in flooded homes.

Governor Ron DeSantis said more than 1,000 rescuers were going “up and down the coastline” checking on residents.

“Rescue personnel have gone to more than 3,000 homes in the hardest hit areas, going door to door to check on the occupants of those residences,” he told reporters.

Helicopter crews also plucked people from the rooftops of homes inundated by floodwater while other rescues were made by boat.

DeSantis said the coastal town of Fort Myers where the hurricane made landfall on Wednesday afternoon, was “ground zero” but “this was such a big storm that there are effects far inland.”

Many people evacuated, but thousands chose to shelter in place. DeSantis said Florida officials had so far contacted 20,000 people who chose to stay.

DeSantis said that it was too early to give a death toll, and that concrete information about casualty numbers could be expected over several days.

State officials said there had been one confirmed death from the hurricane and at least 20 others had been reported but have not yet been confirmed as being due to the storm.

In addition, 17 migrants were missing from a boat that sank during the hurricane on Wednesday, with one person found dead and nine others rescued, the Coast Guard said. Among them were four Cubans who swam to shore in the Florida Keys.

– ‘It was all submerged’ –

In Bonita Springs, Jason Crosser, 37, was inspecting the damage to his small store.

“The water went over the whole building. It was all submerged,” Crosser said. “It’s all saltwater and water damage.”

After making landfall in South Carolina, Ian is expected to weaken fast and dissipate by Saturday night.

Fort Myers, where Ian came ashore as a monster Category 4 storm, took much of the brunt, as streets became rivers and seawater poured into houses.

Dozens of boats moored in the marina were sunk while others were tossed onto downtown streets.

DeSantis described the destruction as a “500-year flood event.”

He said about 1.9 Florida residents remained without power on Friday. 

Two barrier islands near Fort Myers, Pine Island and Sanibel Island, popular with vacationers, were essentially cut off when the storm damaged causeways to the mainland.

– Electricity returning in Cuba –

Before pummeling Florida, Ian plunged all of Cuba into darkness after downing the island’s power network.

Electricity was gradually returning, but many homes remain without power.

Laura Mujica, 20, joined dozens of Cuban women gathered in the capital Havana on Thursday to demand electricity be restored.

“We took to the street, because we haven’t had electricity for several days and we are tired of it,” Mujica said. 

Human-induced climate change is resulting in more severe weather events across the globe, scientists say — including with Ian.

According to a rapid and preliminary analysis, human-caused climate change increased the extreme rain that Ian unleashed by over 10 percent, US scientists said.

The body of a man in a chequered jumper inside a car with blown-out windows, his tattooed hand still clutching the steering wheel.

A woman’s purple manicure and golden rings visible as her body lies in a pool of blood on the ground.

These are just some of at least 25 civilians killed in a strike on a humanitarian convoy outside Ukraine’s southern city of Zaporizhzhia on Friday.

The deadly attack came in the morning, when hundreds of people were waiting in a line of vehicles to cross into the Russian-controlled part of the region. 

Obtaining permission to move between Kyiv- and Moscow-held territory can be a lengthy process, with families divided by a moving frontline in a conflict that has ravaged Ukraine for seven months.

The strike came just hours before President Vladimir Putin declared four Ukrainian regions — including Zaporizhzhia — to be Russian in a lavish annexation ceremony at the Kremlin.

An AFP journalist at the scene saw bodies lying between damaged cars, with suitcases and handbags scattered nearby. 

One man, 56-year-old Viktor, said his life was saved by the fact that he left the queue to find coffee. 

“The waitress gave it to me, then there was a bang. She got scared and ran out. A few minutes later, another one. Now she is on the floor,” he said.

“I managed to hide. She did not.”

A few metres behind him, the body of a young woman in a pink jacket was lying on the ground, her leg contorted. 

Another woman’s body was lying face down.  

Both were killed between two rows of cars, the front of a convoy hoping to return to parts of southern Ukraine under Russian control.

Drivers and passengers were waiting outside a logistics centre for permission to cross, which can take days or even weeks, according to Viktor.

Another woman who survived and asked to use the pseudonym Katya said some 300 cars were waiting around 08:00 am when the rockets hit. 

Ukrainian security forces said three S-300 missiles hit the transit centre and a small forest nearby.

Police inspected a large crater several meters deep near the line of cars. 

– ‘Ukrainian, not Russian’ –

AFP saw more than a dozen damaged cars and vans on Friday afternoon, all with their windows blown out.

The bodies of their former passengers, covered with a white sheet, were still inside.

A soldier opened a minivan door, first discovering a small dog that had been killed, before pulling out the body of a man by his black jacket. 

The remains of half a dozen victims in black body bags were placed in an ambulance nearby.

President Volodymyr Zelensky called Russia “bloodthirsty scum” after the attack.

“Only complete terrorists could do this,” the Ukrainian leader said. 

His aide Kyrylo Tymoshenko said it was an “inhumane” attack. 

Moscow-backed forces claimed Kyiv was behind the attack. 

Inside the makeshift logistics centre near the line of cars, signs bore the names of cities under Russian occupation — Melitopol, Berdyansk and others that people in their cars had been hoping to reach.

Moscow has held so-called “referendums” in the occupied areas that Kyiv and the West have decried as a sham. 

Katya, who was on her way to Moscow-held territory, said “the referendum means nothing”.

“I am Ukrainian, not Russian,” said the mother of two children, who are being looked after in Dnipro, a central city under Ukrainian control.

She said she was returning to the south to be able to earn a living.

“I have no work elsewhere,” she said.