Ukraine war: At least six killed in ‘barbaric’ Russian missile and drone airstrikes
Russia has launched a massive missile attack across Ukraine – striking targets in the capital Kyiv, the second biggest city of Kharkiv and the Black Sea port of Odesa – killing at least six people.
The northern city of Chernihiv and the western Lviv region, as well as the cities of Dnipro, Lutsk and Rivne, also came under fire, and Ukrainian media reported explosions in the western regions of Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil.
The Russian attack – targeting the country’s energy infrastructure but also hitting residential areas – was the first of its kind on such a scale for three weeks.
Ukraine war – latest: Russia launches massive missile attack
The airstrikes caused widespread power cuts and set off air raid sirens. Many areas were left without water too.
Ukraine’s military said Russia had fired 81 missiles and eight drones during the early morning offensive.
Defense systems were activated and 34 cruise missiles and four drones were destroyed.
The country’s energy minister Herman Halushchenko condemned the missile strikes as “another barbaric massive attack on the energy infrastructure of Ukraine”.
The Ukraine capital Kyiv was among the targets of the Russian missile strikes
Andriy Yermak, chief of the Ukrainian presidential staff, wrote on the Telegram messaging app: “The terrorists are doing everything they can to leave us without power… They are continuing their terror against peaceful people.”
Five people were killed in the Lviv region after a missile struck a residential area, its governor Maksym Kozytskyi said. Three buildings were destroyed by fire after the strike and rescue workers were searching the rubble for more possible victims, he said.
A fifth person was killed in several airstrikes in the Dnipropetrovsk region that targeted its energy infrastructure and industrial facilities, Governor Serhii Lysak said.
Rescuers in a residential area destroyed in the Russian airstrikes in the Lviv region. Pic: State Emergency Service of Ukraine/via Reuters
Officials said the capital was attacked with both missiles and exploding drones and that many were intercepted but that its energy infrastructure was hit.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said explosions were reported in the city’s Holosiivskyi district and emergency services were heading there.
“Objects of critical infrastructure is again in the crosshairs of the occupants,” said Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov in a Telegram post after 15 missiles struck the eastern Ukrainian city and the outlying northeastern region, hitting residential buildings.
The city’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, reported “problems with electricity” in some parts of the city.
The aftermath of a Russian missile strike in the capital Kyiv
Energy facilities and residential buildings were also hit in the southern Odesa region, according to its governor Maksym Marchenko.
“The second wave is expected right now, so I ask the residents of the region to stay in shelters!” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Preventive emergency power cuts were applied in Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk and Odesa regions, supplier DTEK said.
Ukrainian Railways also reported power outages in areas.
The power supply at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was also knocked out during the offensive.
Energoatom state company said in a statement: “The last link between the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the Ukrainian power system was cut off.”
It said the fifth and sixth reactor had been shut down and electric power needed for the plant to function was being supplied by 18 diesel generators which had enough fuel for 10 days.
Nuclear plants need constant power to run cooling systems and avoid a meltdown.
“The countdown has begun,” the company added.
The nuclear power plant was captured by Russian forces early on in their invasion of Ukraine and remains under their control.
It is strategically critical to both sides of the Ukraine-Russia conflict but its ongoing stalemate has led to increasing concerns about nuclear safety.
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Why is Bakhmut so important?
The missile offensive came as Ukrainian forces fought off fierce assaults by Russian soldiers on the eastern mining town of Bakhmut.
“The enemy continued its attacks and has shown no sign of a let-up in storming the city of Bakhmut,” the General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said on Facebook.
“Our defenders repelled attacks on Bakhmut and on surrounding communities.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address late on Wednesday that the battle for Bakhmut and the surrounding Donbas region is “our first priority”.
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Russia’s Wagner mercenary group claimed control of the eastern part of Bakhmut.
“Everything east of the Bakhmutka River is completely under the control of Wagner,” the group’s leader and founder Yevgeny Prigozhin wrote on Telegram.
Control of Bakhmut would give Russia a stepping stone to advance on two bigger cities it has long coveted in the Donetsk region: Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Russian has said it has annexed nearly 20% of Ukrainian territory.
At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.
A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.
Two people remain in a critical condition following the blaze. Pic: AP
They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.
Several residents were treated for smoke inhalation. Pic: AP
Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.
The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.
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The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.
All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.
Relatives wait for news outside the care home. Pic: AP
Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.
It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.
The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.
UN climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and should only be hosted by countries who are trying to give up fossil fuels, veterans of the process have said.
An open letter to the United Nations, signed by former UN chief Ban Ki-moon, made a dramatic intervention in the 29th COP climate summit, under way in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Frustration over petrostate hosts – following last year’s summit in UAE – as well as the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists, prohibitive costs, and slow progress have been mounting in recent years.
The letter acknowledges the strides COPs have made on ramping up climate policies.
“But it is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,” the authors said.
“Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity.”
The letter’s 22 signatories also include former Ireland President Mary Robinson and Christiana Figueres, former head of the UN climate body (UNFCCC) that runs the annual COP summits.
It called for the process to be streamlined and for countries to be held accountable for their promises.
Sky News analysis has found only “marginal” progress has been made since the “historic” pledge from COP28 last year to transition away from fossil fuels.
Pic: AP Photo/Peter Dejong
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The letter also called for “strict eligibility criteria” for host countries to exclude those “who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy”.
This year’s host country, petrostate Azerbaijan, has been engulfed in controversy.
Its authoritarian president Ilham Aliyev used his opening address to criticise western hypocrisy and praise oil and gas as a “gift” from God. His criticism of France, with whom relations have long been tense, drove the French minister to cancel a trip to the summit.
While the government and its COP team run separate operations, host countries are supposed to smooth over disagreements and find consensus between the almost 200 countries gathered.
COP presidencies are also nominating themselves to be climate leaders and throwing their own countries under the spotlight.
Azerbaijan is a small developing country that relies significantly on oil and gas revenues. But it has made slow progress on building out clean power – getting just 1.5% of its energy from clean sources – and led a harsh crackdown on critics in the run up to the COP.
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Azerbaijan team ‘optimistic’ about talks
In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, its lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev was unable to say whether Azerbaijan preferred to extract all its oil and gas or seek another, cleaner economic pathway – hard though that would be.
In a news conference yesterday, Mr Rafiyev said the president had been “quite clear” and he would not comment further.
“We have opened our doors to everybody,” he added.
Some diplomats here have hinted that Azerbaijan’s presidency team mean well but might be a little out of their depth. They have never been out in front at previous COPs, but they also only had a year to prepare for their turn hosting the mighty summit.
“My sense of this is that they’re a little underprepared, a little overwhelmed and a little bit short,” said one, speaking anonymously, as is customary for diplomats trying to maintain good relations.
“But I’m not sure that that’s politics. It might just be bandwidth and preparation and things like that.”
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Different regions in the world take turns to host a COP. This year it was up to Eastern Europe, but the selection process took longer than usual due to tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine and between Azerbaijan and rival Armenia.
Achim Steiner of the UN Development Programme, called it “troubling” that some countries face questions over their host roles.
“Are there countries that are by definition good hosts and others are bad hosts?” he asked.
“In the United Nations, we maintain the principle of every nation, first of all, should have a right to be heard.
“Labels are not always the fairest way of describing a nation. Some of the largest oil producers have hosted this COP in the past, and seemingly this seemed to be a perfectly acceptable phenomenon.”
COP stands for “conference of the parties” and refers to countries (“parties”) who have signed the underlying climate treaty.
Azerbaijan’s COP29 team and the UN’s climate body have been contacted with a request to comment.
World
Body pulled from mine after police cut off supplies to ‘smoke out’ thousands of illegal miners
A body has been recovered from a South African mine after police cut off basic supplies in an effort to force around 4,000 illegal miners to resurface.
The body has emerged from the closed gold mine in the northwest town of Stilfontein a day after South Africa’s government said it would not help the illegal miners.
Around 20 people have surfaced from the mineshaft this week as police wait nearby to arrest all those appearing from underground.
It comes a day after a cabinet minister said the government was trying to “smoke them [the miners] out”.
The move is part of the police’s “Close the Hole” operation, whereby officers cut off supplies of food, water and other basic necessities to get those who have entered illegally to come out.
Local reports suggest the supply routes were cut off at the mine around two months ago, with relatives of the miners seen in the area as the stand-off continues.
Relatives of miners and community members wait at the mine shaft. Pic: AP
A decomposed body was brought up on Thursday, with pathologists on the scene, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said.
It comes after South African cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday that the government would not send any help to the illegal miners, known in the country as zama zamas, because they are involved in a criminal act.
“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped; criminals are to be prosecuted. We didn’t send them there,” Ms Ntshavheni said.
An aerial view of a mineshaft. Pic: AP
Senior police and defence officials are expected to visit the area on Friday to “reinforce the government’s commitment to bringing this operation to a safe and lawful conclusion”, according to a media advisory from the police.
In the last few weeks, over 1,000 miners have surfaced at various mines in South Africa’s North West province, where police have cut off supplies.
Many of the miners were reported to be weak, hungry and sickly after going for weeks without basic supplies.
Illegal mining remains common in South Africa’s old gold-mining areas, with miners going into closed shafts to dig for any possible remaining deposits.
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Relatives of miners and community members wait near the mine shaft. Pic: AP
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The illegal miners are often from neighbouring countries, and police say the illegal operations involve larger syndicates that employ the miners.
Their presence in closed mines has also created problems with nearby communities, which complain that the illegal miners commit crimes ranging from robberies to rape.
Illegal mining groups are known to be heavily armed and disputes between rival groups sometimes result in fatal confrontations.
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