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Ukraine Ceasefire Talks Begin

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Talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials began on the Belarusian border on Monday, Moscow said, as Russia’s diplomatic and economic isolation deepens four days after invading Ukraine.

The invasion of Ukraine has become the biggest assault on a European state since World War II.

Russian forces seized two small cities in southeastern Ukraine and the area around a nuclear power plant, the Interfax news agency said on Monday but ran into stiff resistance elsewhere.

Talks began with the aim of an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian forces, the Ukrainian president’s office said, after a Russian advance that has gone more slowly than some expected.

Russia has been cagier, with the Kremlin declining to comment on Moscow’s aim in negotiations.

It was not clear whether any progress could be achieved after President Vladimir Putin on Thursday launched the assault and put Russia’s nuclear deterrent on high alert on Sunday.

The talks are being held on the border with strong Russian ally Belarus, where a referendum on Sunday approved a new constitution, ditching the country’s non-nuclear status at a time the former Soviet republic has become a launchpad for Russian troops invading Ukraine.

The Western-led response to the invasion was sweeping, with sanctions that effectively cut off Moscow’s major financial institutions from successive Western markets sending Russia’s rouble currency down 30 per cent against the dollar on Monday.

Countries also stepped up weapons supplies to Ukraine.

Blasts were heard before dawn on Monday in the capital of Kyiv and in the major eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian authorities said.

But Russian ground forces’ attempts to capture major urban centres had been repelled, they added.

Russia’s defence ministry, however, said its forces had taken over the towns of Berdyansk and Enerhodar in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhya region as well as the area around the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, Interfax reported.

The ministry added, however, that the plant’s operations continued normally.

Ukraine denied that the nuclear plant had fallen into Russian hands, according to the news agency.

There was fighting around the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol throughout the night, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional administration, said on television on Monday.

He did not say whether Russian forces had gained or lost any ground or provide any casualty figures.

At least 102 civilians in Ukraine have been killed since Thursday, with a further 304 wounded, but the real figure is feared to be “considerably higher”, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Monday.

More than half a million people have fled to neighbouring countries, according to the UN Refugee Agency.

A senior U.S. defence official said Russia had fired more than 350 missiles at Ukrainian targets since Thursday, some hitting civilian infrastructure.

“It appears that they are adopting a siege mentality, which any student of military tactics and strategy will tell you when you adopt siege tactics, it increases the likelihood of collateral damage,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Partners in the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) defence alliance were providing Ukraine with air-defence missiles and anti-tank weapons, Chief Jens Stoltenberg said in a tweet on Monday.

The Kremlin accused the European Union (EU) of hostile behaviour, saying weapons supplies to Ukraine were destabilising and proved that Russia was right in its efforts to demilitarise its neighbour.

It declined to comment on whether there was a risk of confrontation between Russia and NATO.

Russia has demanded that NATO never admit Ukraine.

Germany said it would increase defence spending massively, casting off decades of reluctance to match its economic power with military clout.

Russia’s rouble plummeted nearly 30 per cent against the dollar on Monday, after Western nations had unveiled sweeping sanctions on Saturday including blocking some Russian banks from the SWIFT international payments system.

Russia’s central bank scrambled to manage the broadening fallout, saying it would resume buying gold on the domestic market, launch a repurchase auction with no limits and ease restrictions on banks’ open foreign currency positions.

It also ordered brokers to block attempts by foreigners to sell Russian securities.

Several European subsidiaries of Sberbank Russia, majority-owned by the Russian government, were failing or were likely to fail due to the reputational cost of the war in Ukraine, the European Central Bank said.

Britain said on Monday it was taking further measures against Russia in concert with the United States and EU.

Corporate giants also took action, with British oil major BP, the biggest foreign investor in Russia, saying it would abandon its stake in the state oil company Rosneft at a cost of up to 25 dollars billion.

Rolling protests have been held around the world against the invasion, including in Russia, where almost 6,000 people have been detained at anti-war protests since Thursday, the OVD-Info protest monitor said.

The UN Human Rights Council agreed on Monday to Ukraine’s request to hold an urgent debate this week on Russia’s invasion, minutes after Kyiv’s envoy told the Geneva forum that some of Moscow’s military actions “may amount to war crimes”.

The 47-member council adopted the proposal by a vote of 29 in favour, with five against, including Russia and China.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday asked the EU to allow Ukraine to gain membership immediately.

“Our goal is to be with all Europeans and, most importantly, to be equal… I am sure we deserve it,” he said in a video speech shared on social media.

U.S. President Joe Biden will host a call with allies and partners on Monday to coordinate a united response, the White House said.

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” that it says is not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its southern neighbour’s military capabilities and capture what it regards as dangerous nationalists.

The EU shut all Russian planes out of its airspace, as did Canada, forcing Russian airline Aeroflot to cancel all flights to European destinations until further notice.

The EU also banned the Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik. (Reuters/NAN)

Foreign News

Militants in Lebanon Launched 6 Suicide Drones at Israel, Causing Fire

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Militants in Lebanon launched six unmanned aerial vehicles at northern Israel on Tuesday, causing fire and damage.

Only one of the drones was intercepted by the country’s Aerial Defense Array, the Israeli military said in a statement.

“One of the drones exploded near the community of Yiftah, close to the Israel-Lebanon border, sparking a fire,” he said.

The Israeli military added that several other drones caused light damage, with no causalities reported.

Israel’s state-owned Kan TV news reported that the drones were launched by Hezbollah, a Lebanese armed group and party, which had been fighting against Israel along the border since Oct. 7, 2023.

Lebanese military sources, who spoke anonymously, said that Israel’s F-15 warplanes intercepted, at very low altitudes, several drones that were heading from Lebanon to northern Israel.

Hezbollah said on Tuesday that its military wing, the Islamic Resistance, targeted Israeli officers and soldiers in the Yiftah barracks with drones while reporting casualties.

The drones targeted an Iron Dome platform in the Ramot Naftali Barracks, damaging it, he said.

The drones came after Israeli troops fired at Aalma El Chaab in southern Lebanon.

On Monday, Israeli warplanes stroked a Hezbollah military structure and infrastructure in the area of Mazraat Aaqmata in southern Lebanon.

Earlier Tuesday, Lebanese Labor Minister, Moustafa Bayram, said that Israeli attacks caused damage to around 3,000 business facilities in southern Lebanon, according to the National News Agency (NNA).

Bayram said he would contact the Arab Labor Organization and Arab member states as soon as the war ends to request a grant for people affected by Israeli attacks. (Xinhua/NAN)

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Flames, Smoke Continue to Emerge from Massive Landfill in Delhi

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Flames and columns of thick smoke continued to emerge from a massive landfill in the Indian capital city of New Delhi on Monday, officials said.

Fire fighting operations were underway and fire-fighters were splashing water on the burning mounds of garbage.

The fire has continued at the colossal landfill site since it broke out on Sunday evening.

Meanwhile, toxic fumes emanating from the landfill have left residents in the neighbourhood to gasp for breath.

“There is a pungent smell all around. The smoke is poisonous and causes irritation in the eyes,’’ Dileep Pandey said.

Pandey is a local resident, living within the area.

“We are also facing difficulty in breathing.

’’

While the cause of the fire remained undetermined, authorities have initiated legal proceedings against unidentified individuals in relation to the incident.

According to the Delhi Fire Services department, the landfill caught fire because of the methane produced in the heaps of waste.

Officials listed hot and dry weather conditions as the reason behind the blaze. (Xinhua/NAN)

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Israeli Forces Vow Response to Iran’s Attack Despite Calls for Restraint

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Israelis awaited word on how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would respond to Iran’s first-ever direct attack as international pressure for restraint grew amid fears of an escalation of conflict in the Middle East.

Netanyahu on Monday summoned his war cabinet for the second time in less than 24 hours to weigh a response to Iran’s massive weekend missile and drone attack, a government source said.

While the attack caused no deaths and little damage, thanks to the air defences and countermeasures of Israel and its allies, it has increased concerns that violence rooted in the Gaza war is spreading, and fears of open war between the long-time foes.

Israeli military chief of staff Herzi Halevi said on Monday that “this launch of so many missiles – cruise missiles and drones – into Israeli territory will be met with a response” but gave no details.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani told state TV on Monday night that Tehran’s response to any Israeli retaliation would come in “a matter of seconds, as Iran will not wait for another 12 days to respond”.

But the prospect of Israeli retaliation has alarmed many Iranians already enduring economic pain and tighter social and political controls since protests in 2022-23.

Iran launched the attack in retaliation for an airstrike on its embassy compound in Damascus on April 1 attributed to Israel, and signalled that it did not seek further escalation.

U.S. President Joe Biden told Netanyahu at the weekend that the United States, which helped Israel blunt the Iranian attack, would not participate in an Israeli counter-strike.

Since the war in Gaza began in October, clashes have erupted between Israel and Iran-aligned groups based in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq.

Israel said four of its soldiers were wounded hundreds of metres inside Lebanese territory overnight, the first known Israeli ground penetration into Lebanon since the Gaza war erupted, although it has traded fire with the Lebanese Hezbollah militia.

“We’re on the edge of the cliff and we have to move away from it,” Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief, told Spanish radio station Onda Cero.

French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Foreign Secretary David Cameron made similar appeals.

Washington and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also have called for restraint.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby declined on Monday to say if Biden had urged Netanyahu in talks on Saturday night to exercise restraint in responding to Iran.

“We don’t want to see a war with Iran. We don’t want to see a regional conflict,” Kirby told a briefing, adding that it was for Israel to decide “whether and how they’ll respond”.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz said he was “leading a diplomatic attack” alongside Israel’s military response, writing to 32 countries to place sanctions on Iran’s missile programme and proscribe its Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organisation.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Iran’s actions threatened stability in the Middle East and could cause economic spillovers.

The U.S. would use sanctions, and work with allies, to keep disrupting Iran’s “malign and destabilising activity”, she added.

However, some analysts said the Biden administration was unlikely to seek to sharpen sanctions on Iran’s oil exports due to worries about boosting oil prices and angering top buyer China.

In a call between the Chinese and Iranian foreign ministers, China said it believed Iran could “handle the situation well and spare the region further turmoil” while safeguarding its sovereignty and dignity, according to Chinese state media.

Russia has refrained from publicly criticising its ally Iran but has also warned against further escalation.

Iran’s retaliatory attack, involving more than 300 missiles and drones, caused modest damage in Israel and wounded a 7-year-old girl.

Most missiles and drones were shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome defence system and with help from the U.S., Britain, France and Jordan.

In Gaza itself, where more than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive according to Gaza health ministry figures, Iran’s action drew applause.

Israel began its campaign against Hamas, the Iranian-backed Palestinian militant group that runs Gaza, after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 253 hostages, by Israeli tallies.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the Group of Seven major democracies were working on a package of coordinated measures against Iran.

Italy, which holds the rotating G7 presidency, said it was open to new sanctions and suggested any new measures would target individuals.

Iran’s attack prompted at least a dozen airlines to cancel or reroute flights, with Europe’s aviation regulator still advising caution in using Israeli and Iranian airspace. (Reuters/NAN)

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