ATHENS: Greek firefighters on Wednesday struggled to contain uncontrolled fires throughout the country for a fifth day, several of them bordering an acrid, smoke-filled Athens.
In the last two days, 19 people believed to be migrants — including two children — have been killed in forest blazes.
Hundreds of firefighters were battling on two major fronts, one near Athens and the other in northeastern Greece, in addition to several other smaller fires.
One fire fanned by strong winds ripped through the foothills of Mount Parnitha, the largest forest adjoining the capital, burning near the outskirts of a national park.
“The situation in Parnitha is extremely critical,” Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias told a news conference.
The European Commission said 246 firefighters, 40 vehicles and eight aircraft from eight member states had been sent to help.
Evacuations were ordered on Wednesday morning for several settlements on the outskirts of the capital, including three nursing homes.
The blaze damaged homes in the northwestern Athens district of Menidi, and briefly threatened an army camp.
“Many people don’t want to leave their homes,” Nikos Kountromichalis, a Hellenic Red Cross organizer, told state TV ERT in Menidi.
“We found some elderly people who had fainted in their own yards,” he said, adding that his team had treated several residents for burns and respiratory problems.
Fires have already destroyed homes and properties in the nearby suburbs of Hasia and Fyli.
A migrant detention center in Amygdaleza, north of Athens, was also evacuated.
Another fire in Boeotia, north of Athens, came perilously close to a UNESCO-listed Byzantine monastery.
Greek firefighters have battled over 350 fires over the last five days, including over 200 in the last 48 hours, Kikilias said.
Nearly a hundred were currently unchecked, the fire service said.
Fire department spokesman Yiannis Artopios said 140 people had been arrested on suspicion of arson, most of it accidental.
Most cases were related to welding and agricultural work that ignored high-risk weather warnings.
“It’s an unprecedented situation, this is not a figure of speech,” he said.
Kikilias said the country was going through the worst summer of fires since fire-risk maps were introduced in 2009.
He noted that the number of fire emergency warnings issued this year were “twice as many as in 2021, four times those of 2019 and seven times those of 2012.”
In 32 years of service “I’ve never seen such extreme conditions,” Greek fire department chief Yiorgos Pournaras told reporters, noting that even during the night winds remained high.
The Parnitha fire had spread even though water bombers were on-site in minutes, Pournaras said.
The Greek capital woke up Wednesday to the smell of scorched earth and thick black smoke covering the sky.
“Unfortunately, the wind does not help at all,” Stathis Topalidis, deputy mayor of Menidi, told state TV ERT.
On Tuesday, authorities ordered the evacuation of Ano Liosia in northwest Athens — a district of over 25,000 people — although several stayed at their houses to try and protect their properties.
Flames continued to spread unchecked for a fifth day in the northeastern region of Evros, close to the Turkish border in Alexandroupolis and the Dadia forest, and home to rare birds of prey.
More evacuations were ordered in the region overnight.
Unfounded rumors and allegations have also been spreading rapidly on social media blaming migrants for responsibility for the outbreak of the fires.
Greece’s Supreme Court Prosecutor on Wednesday ordered local officials to investigate both the causes of the catastrophic fire and alleged claims of racism toward migrants.
Greek authorities on Tuesday arrested three people in northern Greece who had forced undocumented migrants into a cargo trailer, accusing them of being responsible for the fires.
Twenty people have been killed in this week’s wildfire wave.
Eighteen people including two children were found dead Tuesday in a forest fire near the Turkish border, north of Alexandroupolis.
As no local residents had been reported missing “the possibility that they are people who entered our country illegally is under investigation,” fire department spokesman Yiannis Artopios said in a televised address.
Another person believed to be a migrant was found dead in a nearby forest on Monday. An elderly shepherd had been found earlier Monday in central Greece.
Over 40,000 hectares (nearly 99,000 acres) were destroyed in wildfires in just three days from August 19 to 21, according to a report by the National Observatory of Athens.
The very hot and dry conditions which increase the fire risk will persist until Friday, according to meteorologists.
Greek firefighters battle major blazes on multiple fronts
https://arab.news/v2akn
Greek firefighters battle major blazes on multiple fronts
- In the last two days, 19 people believed to be migrants — including two children — have been killed in forest blazes
- Hundreds of firefighters were battling on two major fronts, one near Athens and the other in northeastern Greece
Putin removes defense minister Shoigu
- That included when Wagner paramilitary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin launched a bloody insurrection last year calling for Shoigu’s removal
MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday moved to replace defense minister Sergei Shoigu in a major shake-up to Russia’s military leadership more than two years into its Ukraine offensive.
Putin proposed economist Andrey Belousov as Shoigu’s replacement, according to a list of the ministerial nominations published by the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament.
The move comes at a key time in the conflict with Russian troops advancing in eastern Ukraine and having just launched a major new ground operation against the northeastern Kharkiv region.
Despite a string of military setbacks in the first year of the campaign — including the failure to capture the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and retreats from the Kharkiv and southern Kherson regions — Putin had stood by Shoigu until now.
That included when Wagner paramilitary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin launched a bloody insurrection last year calling for Shoigu’s removal.
Explaining the timing of the decision, the Kremlin on Sunday said it needed the defense ministry to stay “innovative.”
“The defense ministry must be absolutely open to innovation, to the introduction of all advanced ideas, to the creation of conditions for economic competitiveness,” state media quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying in a briefing on the appointments.
“The battlefield is won by whoever is more open to innovation,” Peskov said.
“That is likely why the president has settled on the candidacy of Andrey Belousov,” he added.
Belousov, who has no military background, has been one of Putin’s most influential economic advisers over the last decade.
UK defense minister Grant Shapps said the Ukraine conflict had left more than 355,000 Russian soldier casualties under Shoigu’s watch as well as “mass civilian suffering.”
“Russia needs a Defense Minister who would undo that disastrous legacy” and end the conflict, “but all they’ll get is another of Putin’s puppets,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Shoigu, 68, was appointed Russian defense minister in 2012 and has had a decades-long political career of unmatched longevity in post-Soviet Russia.
His presence at the center of power in Moscow predates that of Putin himself.
Prior to Russia launching its full-scale military campaign on Ukraine in February 2022, he was seen as one of Putin’s most trusted lieutenants.
The pair were regularly photographed on macho nature retreats in the Siberian wilderness, hunting and fishing together.
In one famous snap from 2017 shared by the Kremlin, they are sitting bare-chested under the sun on a beach by a lake.
On Sunday, Putin simultaneously issued decrees naming Shoigu as the new secretary of the Security Council, replacing his longstanding ally Nikolai Patrushev.
The Kremlin also said Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of the General Staff, would stay in post overseeing daily military operations in Ukraine.
Along with Shoigu, Gerasimov had been targeted by a hardcore group of influential pro-offensive military bloggers for Moscow’s perceived military failures.
Prigozhin, who marched on Moscow calling for the pair’s removal, died in an unexplained plane crash weeks after his aborted mutiny.
Putin is constitutionally required to name a new set of government ministers — or reappoint existing ones — following his victory in a March election devoid of opposition.
Lawmakers in Russia’s rubber-stamp parliament need to approve the president’s nominations, which they are set to do over the coming days.
The future of Patrushev, an arch-hawk who is sometimes seen as a possible successor to Putin, was unclear.
There was no immediate high-level reaction to the shake-up in Ukraine.
The changes come at a crucial time in the conflict, which had been showing signs of a stalemate for months.
Putin casts the fight against Ukraine as a near-existential battle for his country, calling it just one front of a “hybrid war” between Russia and the West.
India vote to resume with Kashmir poised to oppose Modi
- Modi remains popular across much of India and his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is widely expected to win the poll when it concludes early next month
SRINAGAR, India: India’s six-week election is set to resume Monday including in Kashmir, where voters are expected to show their discontent with dramatic changes in the disputed territory under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
Modi remains popular across much of India and his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is widely expected to win the poll when it concludes early next month.
But his government’s snap decision in 2019 to bring Kashmir under direct rule by New Delhi — and the drastic security clampdown that accompanied it — have been deeply resented among the region’s residents, who will be voting for the first time since the move.
“What we’re telling voters now is that you have to make your voice heard,” said former chief minister Omar Abdullah, whose National Conference party is campaigning for the restoration of Kashmir’s former semi-autonomy.
“The point of view that we want people to send out is that what happened... is not acceptable to them,” he told AFP.
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence in 1947. Both claim it in full and have fought two wars over control of the Himalayan region.
Rebel groups opposed to Indian rule have waged an insurgency since 1989 on the side of the frontier controlled by New Delhi, demanding either independence or a merger with Pakistan.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands of soldiers, rebels and civilians in the decades since, including a spate of firefights between suspected rebels and security forces in the past month.
Violence has dwindled since the Indian portion of the territory was brought under direct rule five years ago, a move that saw the mass arrest of local political leaders and a months-long telecommunications blackout to forestall expected protests.
Modi’s government says its canceling of Kashmir’s special status has brought “peace and development,” and it has consistently claimed the move was supported by Kashmiris.
But his party has not fielded any candidates in the Kashmir valley for the first time since 1996, and experts say the BJP would have been roundly defeated if it had.
“They would lose, simple as that,” political analyst and historian Sidiq Wahid told AFP last week.
The BJP has appealed to voters to instead support smaller and newly created parties that have publicly aligned with Modi’s policies.
But voters are expected to back one of two established Kashmiri political parties calling for the Modi government’s changes to be reversed.
India’s election is conducted in seven phases over six weeks to ease the immense logistical burden of staging the democratic exercise in the world’s most populous country.
More than 968 million people are eligible to vote in India’s election, with the final round of polling on June 1 and results expected three days later.
Turnout so far has declined significantly from the last national poll in 2019, according to election commission figures.
Analysts have blamed widespread expectations that Modi will easily win a third term and hotter-than-average temperatures heading into the summer.
India’s weather bureau has forecast more hot spells in May and the election commission formed a taskforce last month to review the impact of heat and humidity before each round of voting.
Civilians evacuated from northeast Ukraine as Russia steps up assault
- Heavy fighting raged on Sunday as Russia attacks 27 settlements
KYIV: Thousands more civilians have fled Russia’s renewed ground offensive in Ukraine’s northeast that has targeted towns and villages with a barrage of artillery and mortar fire, officials said Sunday.
The intense battles have forced at least one Ukrainian unit to withdraw in the Kharkiv region, capitulating more land to Russian forces across less defended settlements in the so-called contested “gray zone” along the Russian border.
Meanwhile, a 10-story apartment block collapsed in the Russian city of Belgorod, near the border, with several deaths and injuries reported. Russian authorities said the building collapsed following Ukrainian shelling. Ukraine has not commented on the incident.
HIGHLIGHT
The Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday that Moscow’s forces had captured five villages on the border of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and Russia. Ukraine’s leadership has not confirmed Moscow’s gains.
At least 4,000 civilians have fled the Kharkiv region since Friday, when Moscow’s forces launched the operation, Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said in a social media statement. Heavy fighting raged Sunday along the northeast front line, where Russian forces attacked 27 settlements in the past 24 hours, he said.
Analysts say the Russian push is designed to exploit ammunition shortages before promised Western supplies can reach the front line. Ukrainian soldiers said the Kremlin is using the usual Russian tactic by launching a disproportionate amount of fire and infantry assaults to exhaust their troops and firepower.
It comes after Russia stepped up attacks in March targeting energy infrastructure and settlements, which analysts predicted were a concerted effort by Moscow to shape conditions for an offensive.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that disrupting Russia’s offensive in the area was a priority, and that Kyiv’s troops were continuing counteroffensive operations in seven villages around the Kharkiv region.
“Disrupting the Russian offensive intentions is our number one task now. Whether we succeed in that task depends on every soldier, every sergeant, every officer,” Zelenskyy said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday that Moscow’s forces had captured five villages on the border of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and Russia. These areas were likely poorly fortified due to the dynamic fighting and constant heavy shelling, easing a Russian advance.
Ukraine’s leadership has not confirmed Moscow’s gains.
Black, Asian and minority ethnic people make up nearly 70% of UK’s anti-terror detentions, data shows
- Fewer than 1 in 5 who were stopped were recorded as white
LONDON: Nearly 70 percent of people stopped at UK ports under anti-terrorism laws since 2021 were from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, new figures released on Sunday show.
The Guardian newspaper requested police data under freedom of information laws, which also revealed fewer than one in five who were stopped were recorded as white.
Campaigners have criticized the statistics, saying they prove the UK’s anti-terrorism laws are disproportionately affecting Black and minority ethnic groups and not being used effectively enough to arrest the rise of far-right, white extremism, The Guardian reported.
Of the 8,095 people stopped at UK ports since 2021 under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, 5,619 (69.4 percent) were recorded as being from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, compared with 1,585 (19.6 percent) recorded as white British, white Irish or white other stopped under the same law.
The head of public advocacy at the anti-Islamophobia group Cage International has also pressed British police to publish data on the religious background of those stopped under the Terrorism Act.
Anas Mustapha said: “This new data reaffirms what we already know about its racist and Islamophobic impact. However, despite evidence demonstrating that the majority of those stopped are Muslim and that forces record data on religion, the government has resisted calls to produce a religious breakdown of those harassed at the borders.
“Schedule 7 is one of the most intrusive and discriminatory of all police powers. We’ve supported hundreds of British holidaymakers impacted by the policy and it’s clear that the power is abused and must be repealed.”
A spokesman from the UK’s counter-terrorism police said the law was a “vital tool” in collecting evidence to support convictions of terrorists, as well as helping with intelligence-gathering in the prevention of attacks on British streets.
“The use of Schedule 7 powers regularly features in some of our most complex and high-risk investigations and prosecutions,” the spokesman said.
“We face an enduring terrorist threat from overseas, and whilst we are seeing a much greater prevalence of online activity, travel remains an element of terrorist methodology that provides us with potentially crucial opportunities to act.
“Where the powers are used, there are a range of robust safeguards and measures in place to ensure appropriate usage.”
OIC calls for immediate aid amid Afghan flood crisis
- Flash floods from seasonal rains in Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan
RIYADH: The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has issued an urgent appeal to its member states as well as relief organizations to provide aid to the Afghan people amid catastrophic flooding which has hit the country, Saudi Press Agency reported on Sunday.
Flash floods from seasonal rains in Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan killed at least 315 people since striking on Friday, a UN report said.
Rains also caused heavy damage in northeastern Badakhshan province and central Ghor province, officials said.
Since mid-April, floods have left about 100 people dead in 10 of Afghanistan’s provinces, with no region entirely spared, according to authorities.
Farmland has been swamped in a country where 80 percent of the more than 40 million people depend on agriculture to survive.
