Cincunri Sakia

Minggu, 23 Juni 2024

At least 1,300 hajj pilgrims died during extreme heat, Saudi Arabia says - The Guardian

At least 1,300 people have died during the hajj pilgrimage, which took place during intense heat, Saudi Arabia has said, adding that most of the deceased did not have official permits.

“Regrettably, the number of mortalities reached 1,301, with 83% being unauthorised to perform hajj and having walked long distances under direct sunlight, without adequate shelter or comfort,” the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.

A tally last week, compiled by Agence France-Presse and based on official statements from diplomats, put the toll at more than 1,100. Arab diplomats told AFP that Egyptians accounted for 658 deaths, 630 of them unregistered pilgrims.

Riyadh had not publicly commented on the deaths or provided its own toll until Sunday. On Friday, however, a senior Saudi official gave a toll of 577 deaths for the two busiest days of hajj: 15 June, when pilgrims gathered for hours of prayers in the blazing sun on Mount Arafat; and 16 June, when they participated in the “stoning of the devil” ritual in Mina.

The Saudi health minister, Fahd al-Jalajel, on Sunday described the management of the hajj this year as “successful”, SPA reported.

He said there had been attempts to raise public awareness of the dangers of extreme heat, and added: “May Allah forgive and have mercy on the deceased. Our heartfelt condolences go to their families.”

The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam that all Muslims with the means must complete at least once in their lives. Saudi officials said 1.8 million pilgrims took part this year, a similar number to last year, and that 1.6 million came from abroad.

For the past several years, the mainly outdoor rituals have fallen during the sweltering Saudi summer. Temperatures in Mecca this year climbed as high as 51.8C (125.2F).

On Saturday, the Egyptian prime minister, Mostafa Madbouly, ordered 16 tourism companies to be stripped of their licences and referred their managers to the public prosecutor over illegal pilgrimages to Mecca, Egypt’s cabinet said.

It said the rise in the number of deaths of unregistered Egyptian pilgrims stemmed from some companies that “organised the hajj programmes using a personal visit visa, which prevents its holders from entering Mecca” via official channels.

Hajj permits are allocated to countries on a quota system and distributed to individuals by lottery.

Even for those who can obtain them, the steep costs spur many to attempt the hajj without a permit, though they risk arrest and deportation if caught.

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2024-06-24 01:31:00Z
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Wagner uprising: A year after mutiny, Russia controls group's remnants - BBC

Matt Murphy

BBC News, in London

20 minutes ago

Russia has effectively dismantled and replaced the Wagner Group in the year since the mercenaries shocked the world by launching a mutiny against President Vladimir Putin’s government, experts have told the BBC.

Yevgeny Prigozhin – the late leader of the paramilitary force – crossed from Ukraine on 23 June 2023 and seized the southern city of Rostov after months of increasing tensions with military leaders in Moscow.

His forces then began a brief charge towards the capital, meeting virtually no resistance. The “march for justice”, as Prigozhin called it, came to an abrupt end the following day after he called off the advance.

Just two months later, Prigozhin's plane crashed and he was killed along with several other senior Wagner members, throwing the group’s future into uncertainty.

Dr Sorcha MacLeod, a member of the UN's working group on mercenaries and lecturer at the University of Copenhagen, said ex-Wagner troops had fragmented across the Russian state.

"[Wagner] may not exist in exactly the form it did previously, but a version - or even versions - of it continue to exist," she told the BBC. "There's been this sort of dispersal amongst the Russian state so there is no one overall controller."

"The Wagner Group was incredibly important geopolitically and economically to Russia, so it was never going to disappear as some people suggested," she added.

For years, Prigozhin’s forces had been a valuable and deniable tool for Russian operations across Africa and Syria. But it was in Ukraine – as Moscow’s conventional forces struggled to dent Kyiv’s defences – that Prigozhin and Wagner came into the open.

Throughout late 2022 and early 2023, Wagner was key to Russia’s few battlefield victories. Its forces – largely made up of ex-prisoners – managed to take the eastern city of Soledar, before it became entrenched in months of intense fighting in the meat-grinder of Bakhmut.

At its peak Wagner had around 50,000 mercenaries in Ukraine, according to the US National Security Council.

Now, experts say Wagner’s operations in Ukraine have been subsumed by other Russian state and paramilitary units. One ex-Wagner commander recently told BBC Russian that the mercenaries had been ordered to “join the ministry of defence” or to go away.

equipment seized from Wagner after uprising

UK intelligence officials have suggested that some of the group's infantry units have been subsumed by the Rosgvardia, or National Guard. The unit, established in 2016, has been described as Mr Putin’s “private army” and is controlled by his former bodyguard Viktor Zolotov.

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said elements of the Wagner Group started coming under the National Guard’s control in October 2023. Referred to as “volunteer formations”, the ex-Wagner troops were to be deployed to Ukraine on six-month contracts and to Africa on nine-month contracts, it said.

Anton Yelizarov – a long term Wagner operator who is said to have commanded the mercenaries' bloody operations in Bakhmut – appeared to confirm the integration days later. In a video posted to a Wagner-linked Telegram channel, he said he was present at the construction of a camp where Wagner troops would “work for the good of Russia” and join with National Guard units in a new formation.

UK officials said the “incorporation of former Wagner assault detachments into Rosgvardia’s Volunteer Corps highly likely indicated that Wagner has been successfully subordinated into Rosgvardia, increasing the Russian state control over the Wagner Group”.

Other ex-Wagner forces have signed up to fight with Vladimir Putin’s strongman in Chechnya – Ramzan Kadyrov – and his Akhmat forces, a recent BBC Russian investigation found.

A tangible example of the group’s decline came when its logo was reportedly stripped from the tower block it had occupied in Russia’s second city of St Petersburg.

In the days after the mutiny, Prigozhin was said to have cut a deal with Mr Putin to focus his group’s operations in Africa, propping up regimes and securing resources for Russia. Following his death, deputy Defence Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov reportedly toured African capitals, assuring officials that the services provided by the group would not dissipate.

Earlier this month the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) think tank observed that in the wake of Prigozhin's death "the Russian state’s attention in [Africa] not only did not weaken, but strengthened".

In February, the BBC obtained documents revealing that Moscow was offering a “regime survival package” in exchange for access to strategically important natural resources – an approach previously favoured by the Wagner Group.

The plan was being offered by a so-called Russian “expeditionary group” – nicknamed the Africa Corps – and commanded by former GRU Gen Andrey Averyanov. He previously oversaw secretive operation specialising in targeting killings and destabilising foreign governments.

Experts told the BBC that the Africa Corps has effectively replaced Wagner in West Africa. On Telegram, the unit boasted of offering recruits salaries of up to 110,000 roubles per year and service under “under the leadership of competent commanders with extensive combat experience”.

In January, it announced its first deployment of 100 troops to Burkina Faso. Another 100 reportedly arrived in Niger in April.

Ruslan Trad, a security analyst with the Atlantic Council, told the BBC that, in effect, Wagner "became the Africa Corps and now serves the full purposes of military intelligence" and the ministry of defence.

"In Africa, these soldiers are doing much the same thing - guarding trade routes, securing resources that Moscow uses to circumvent sanctions, and more - serving local juntas and directing the flow of migrants," he observed.

The PISM noted that the Africa Corps is intended to be used "more openly" than Wagner was on the continent with the intention of replacing Western - and particularly French - influence in Africa.

BBC Russian reported that only in the Central African Republic (CAR) is Wagner still operating in any shadow of its former shape, allegedly controlled by Prigozhin’s son Pavel.

"Moscow has given the heir the go-ahead to continue doing what his father did in Africa, on condition that it does not contradict Russia's interests," a source who used to work with Yevgeny Prigozhin told BBC Russian.

Last week, Le Monde reported that around 1,500 Wagner troops had assisted local security forces in attacks on rebel-held areas.

However, the PISM observed that the overall importance of the CAR in Moscow's strategic thinking "is diminishing".

Dr MacLeod suggested that Wagner's original goal in the CAR had been to show "proof of concept" that mercenary groups can be "used as a successful counter-terrorism actor", a goal Moscow may now view as having been achieved.

But she added that Wagner was "utterly enmeshed" within the CAR, making it harder to replace it with the new, developing Africa Corps.

Despite the threat posed by Prigozhin's mutiny, Sunday's anniversary largely passed without incident in Russia.

Dan Storyev of the OVD-Info monitoring group told the BBC that Prigozhin's legacy mostly lay with those aligned with the Kremlin.

"Generally speaking the Wagner mutiny hasn’t had much, if any, real grassroots support for there to be, say, mass rallies marking the anniversary - perhaps because it had no genuine anti-war messaging," he noted.

"There are people who organise protests in Russia, but they’re focused on anti-war activism and don’t have anything to do with [Prigozhin]."

Sabtu, 22 Juni 2024

'At least 42 killed' in Gaza strikes, as Israeli man shot dead in West Bank - Sky News

At least 42 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza, the director of the Hamas-run government media office has said.

An Israeli strike on houses in Al Shati refugee camp in Gaza City killed 24 people, Ismail Al Thawabta told Reuters.

Another 18 Palestinians were killed in a strike on houses in the city's Al Tuffah neighbourhood, he added.

The Israeli military confirmed in a statement on Saturday that IDF fighter jets "struck two Hamas military infrastructure sites in the area of Gaza City", while saying it would release more details later.

Hamas did not comment on whether its military infrastructure had been hit, as per the Israeli claim.

Hamas said the attacks targeted the civilian population. The group vowed in a statement: "The occupation and its Nazi leaders will pay the price for their violations against our people."

Footage showed dozens of Palestinians rushing to search for victims amid the destroyed houses in the Shati refugee camp.

It comes after the Hamas-run health ministry said at least 25 Palestinians were killed in Mawasi in western Rafah and 50 wounded on Friday.

Palestinians said a tank shell hit a tent housing displaced families.

The Israeli military said: "An initial inquiry conducted suggests that there is no indication that a strike was carried out by the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] in the Humanitarian Area in Al Mawasi."

Strike in Lebanon and shooting in West Bank

A separate Israeli strike in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley on Saturday killed a member of the military wing of the Islamic Group, a Sunni Muslim faction closely allied with Hamas, according to the group.

It was the seventh member killed by Israeli strikes since the war began.

Meanwhile, an Israeli man was shot dead in a Palestinian town in the northern West Bank, according to Israel's army.

The army said the man was pronounced dead in the town of Qalqilya and Israeli troops were currently occupying the area.

Israeli forces shot dead two militants in the same West Bank town on Friday.

Israeli nationals are prohibited from entering the town and other areas of the West Bank that fall under the authority of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

There have been flare-ups of violence in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war erupted last October.

Since then at least 549 Palestinians in the territory have been killed by Israeli fire, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

In the same period of time, Palestinians in the West Bank have killed at least nine Israelis, including five soldiers, according to UN data.

Hamas says more than 37,500 Palestinians killed in Gaza

The war between Israel and Hamas erupted when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage.

Israel bombed and invaded Gaza in response, killing more than 37,500 people there, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

After more than eight months of war, Israel's advance is focused on the last two areas its forces are yet to seize: Rafah on Gaza's southern edge and the area surrounding Deir Al Balah in the centre of the territory.

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2024-06-22 17:36:44Z
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Russia launches 'massive' overnight attack on Ukraine power grid - BBC

A woman leans on a bicycle near a dog, looking up at a damaged building

Jacqueline Howard

BBC News

1 hour ago

Ukraine says its energy facilities have come under a “massive” attack from Russia overnight, in the latest onslaught targeting the country's power grid.

It is the eighth time Russia has launched an attack on energy infrastructure facilities in the past three months, Ukraine’s energy ministry said.

Air defence systems shot down 12 of 16 missiles and all 13 drones launched by Russia at several regions through the night, the Ukrainian air force said.

Two energy workers were wounded and taken to hospital in the Zaporizhzhia region, and energy equipment was damaged in the Western city of Lviv, officials added.

In the south-western region of Ivano-Frankivsk, the authorities also reported damage to houses and a kindergarten.

Russia has renewed its campaign of strikes on Ukrainian energy targets over spring and early summer, causing frequent blackouts across the country. President Volodymyr Zelensky recently said Moscow had destroyed half of his country’s electricity-generating capacity since it began pummelling its energy facilities in late March.

Saturday night's attack is the second to target energy infrastructure this week.

On Thursday, Ukrainian authorities said seven employees were wounded and energy infrastructure, including a power station, had been damaged in a major overnight attack.

Ukraine is buying energy from the European Union, however, this is not enough to make up the deficit.

This means that most days involve a planned nationwide blackout to protect critical infrastructure such a hospitals and military facilities.

"We urgently need to close our skies or Ukraine faces a serious crisis this winter," the chief executive DTEK, of one of Ukraine's largest private energy companies, Maxim Timchenko said.

"My plea to allies is to help us defend our energy system and rebuild in time.”

Mr Zelensky has repeatedly called on Ukraine's allies to send more air defence systems. He has specifically requested seven sophisticated air defence systems called Patriots from the US.

Ivan Fedorov, Zaporizhzhia's governor, echoed Mr Zelensky's message on Saturday morning in a message posted to Telegram.

"We can say for sure: the enemy will not stop. Ukraine needs air defence systems." he said.

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Thursday that Washington would put Ukraine at the top of the queue for Patriot deliveries, ahead of other countries that have ordered them.