SINGAPORE: The terrorist threat facing Southeast Asia is growing as foreign fighters return to the region, Southeast Asian defense ministers said in a joint statement on Tuesday in which they pledged to improve cooperation to tackle militancy.
Six Southeast Asian nations launched an intelligence pact last month aimed at combating Islamist militants and improving co-operation on security threats, overcoming what analysts described as a high level of distrust. They also pledged to increase cooperation in July.
“We, the Defense Ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), note with grave concern the rise of terrorism in our region, perpetrated by individuals and groups with increasingly sophisticated and deadly tactics and weapons,” they said at the conclusion of their two-day meeting in Singapore.
“The scale and complexity of the terrorist threat faced by our region continues to grow with the influx of returning foreign terrorist fighters and cross-border movement of terrorists.”
The ministers said they would also improve cooperation with external partners.
The push for further regional cooperation comes after insurgents aligned to Daesh laid siege to the southern Philippine city of Marawi last year.
That battle sparked alarm that as Daesh suffered reversals in Iraq and Syria, it was seeking to create a stronghold in Southeast Asia, buttressed by fighters returning from the Middle East.
ASEAN consists of Indonesia, which has the world’s biggest Muslim population, and mostly Muslim Malaysia alongside Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Singapore, ranked one of the safest countries in the world, has also been stepping up efforts to deter terrorism in recent years.
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Scale and complexity of terror threat to Southeast Asia growing, ASEAN says
Scale and complexity of terror threat to Southeast Asia growing, ASEAN says
Russia puts death toll from Ukrainian strike on occupied village at 27. Kyiv rejects accusation
Russian authorities said Friday that the death toll from a Ukrainian drone strike they said struck a café in a Russian-occupied village in Ukraine’s Kherson region rose to 27 people. Kyiv denied attacking civilian targets.
Svetlana Petrenko, spokeswoman of Russia’s main criminal investigation agency, the Investigative Committee, said in a statement that a Ukrainian drone strike on a café and hotel in the village of Khorly, where at least 100 civilians were celebrating New Year’s Eve overnight into Thursday, killed 27 people, including two minors. A total of 31, including five minors, were hospitalized with injuries.
A criminal probe on the charges of carrying out an act of terrorism has been opened, Petrenko said.
Kyiv denied attacking civilians. Spokesman of Ukraine’s General Staff, Dmytro Lykhovii, told Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne on Thursday that Ukrainian forces “adhere to the norms of international humanitarian law” and “carry out strikes exclusively against Russian military targets, facilities of the Russian fuel and energy sector, and other lawful targets.”
Lykhovii said that General Staff has published an explicit list of targets that the Ukrainian army struck on the night of New Year’s Eve. The list did not include strikes on occupied parts of the Kherson region.
Lykhovii noted that Russia has repeatedly used disinformation and false statements to disrupt the ongoing peace negotiations.
The Associated Press could not independently verify claims made about the attack.
Russia’s accusations against Ukraine come amid a US-led diplomatic push to end the nearly four-year war in Ukraine. Earlier this week, Moscow alleged that Kyiv launched a long-range drone attack against a residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin in northwestern Russia overnight from Sunday to Monday.
Kyiv has called the allegations of an attack on Putin’s residence a ruse to derail ongoing peace negotiations, which have ramped up in recent weeks on both sides of the Atlantic.
In his New Year’s address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that a peace deal was “90 percent ready” but warned that the remaining 10 percent, believed to include key sticking points such as territory, would “determine the fate of peace, the fate of Ukraine and Europe, how people will live.”
Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said Wednesday that he, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner had a “productive call” with the national security advisers of Britain, France, Germany and Ukraine “to discuss advancing the next steps in the European peace process.”
Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia conducted what local authorities called “one of the most massive” drone attacks at Zaporizhzhia overnight.
At least nine Russian drones struck the city, damaging dozens of residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure, head of the regional administration, Ivan Fedorov, wrote on Telegram on Friday. There were no casualties, the official said.
Overall, Russia fired 116 long-range drones at Ukraine last night, according to Ukraine’s Air Force, which said that 86 drones were intercepted, while 27 more have reached their targets.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported Friday that its air defenses intercepted 64 Ukrainian drones overnight over multiple Russian regions.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of Russia’s Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine, on Friday also accused Ukrainian forces of carrying out a missile strike on the city of Belgorod. Two women were hospitalized with injuries, Gladkov said. The strike shattered windows in multiple residential buildings and damaged an unspecified “commercial” facility and a number of cars, according to the official.
Svetlana Petrenko, spokeswoman of Russia’s main criminal investigation agency, the Investigative Committee, said in a statement that a Ukrainian drone strike on a café and hotel in the village of Khorly, where at least 100 civilians were celebrating New Year’s Eve overnight into Thursday, killed 27 people, including two minors. A total of 31, including five minors, were hospitalized with injuries.
A criminal probe on the charges of carrying out an act of terrorism has been opened, Petrenko said.
Kyiv denied attacking civilians. Spokesman of Ukraine’s General Staff, Dmytro Lykhovii, told Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne on Thursday that Ukrainian forces “adhere to the norms of international humanitarian law” and “carry out strikes exclusively against Russian military targets, facilities of the Russian fuel and energy sector, and other lawful targets.”
Lykhovii said that General Staff has published an explicit list of targets that the Ukrainian army struck on the night of New Year’s Eve. The list did not include strikes on occupied parts of the Kherson region.
Lykhovii noted that Russia has repeatedly used disinformation and false statements to disrupt the ongoing peace negotiations.
The Associated Press could not independently verify claims made about the attack.
Russia’s accusations against Ukraine come amid a US-led diplomatic push to end the nearly four-year war in Ukraine. Earlier this week, Moscow alleged that Kyiv launched a long-range drone attack against a residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin in northwestern Russia overnight from Sunday to Monday.
Kyiv has called the allegations of an attack on Putin’s residence a ruse to derail ongoing peace negotiations, which have ramped up in recent weeks on both sides of the Atlantic.
In his New Year’s address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that a peace deal was “90 percent ready” but warned that the remaining 10 percent, believed to include key sticking points such as territory, would “determine the fate of peace, the fate of Ukraine and Europe, how people will live.”
Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said Wednesday that he, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner had a “productive call” with the national security advisers of Britain, France, Germany and Ukraine “to discuss advancing the next steps in the European peace process.”
Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia conducted what local authorities called “one of the most massive” drone attacks at Zaporizhzhia overnight.
At least nine Russian drones struck the city, damaging dozens of residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure, head of the regional administration, Ivan Fedorov, wrote on Telegram on Friday. There were no casualties, the official said.
Overall, Russia fired 116 long-range drones at Ukraine last night, according to Ukraine’s Air Force, which said that 86 drones were intercepted, while 27 more have reached their targets.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported Friday that its air defenses intercepted 64 Ukrainian drones overnight over multiple Russian regions.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of Russia’s Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine, on Friday also accused Ukrainian forces of carrying out a missile strike on the city of Belgorod. Two women were hospitalized with injuries, Gladkov said. The strike shattered windows in multiple residential buildings and damaged an unspecified “commercial” facility and a number of cars, according to the official.
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