At least 18 dead in Nepal plane crash, officials say

Rescuers and army personnel stand at the site after a Saurya Airlines’ plane crashed during takeoff at Tribhuvan International Airport in Katmandu on July 24, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 01 October 2024
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At least 18 dead in Nepal plane crash, officials say

  • The plane was carrying two crew members and 17 technicians to Pokhara city to repair another aircraft
  • Only the captain was rescued alive and is receiving treatment at a hospital

KATMANDU: At least 18 people were killed when a small plane crashed and caught fire while it was taking off from Nepal’s capital Katmandu on Wednesday, officials said.
The plane was carrying two crew members and 17 technicians to Pokhara city to repair another aircraft, officials said.
“Only the captain was rescued alive and is receiving treatment at a hospital,” said Tej Bahadur Poudyal, the spokesman for Katmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport.
Television visuals showed fire fighters trying to put out the blaze and thick black smoke rising into the sky. They also showed the plane flying a little above the runway and then tilting before it crashed.
Other visuals showed rescue workers rummaging through the charred remains of the plane, strewn in lush green fields.
Bodies were carried to ambulances on stretchers as local residents looked on, the television showed.
The plane was a Bombardier, officials said, and media reported it belonged to local Saurya Airlines. The airport had been temporarily closed, the officials added.
Saurya operates domestic flights in Nepal with two Bombardier CRJ-200 regional jets, both around 20 years old, according to Flight Radar 24.
Nepal has been criticized for a poor air safety record, and nearly 350 people have died in plane or helicopter crashes in the Himalayan country since 2000.
The deadliest incident occurred in 1992, when a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus crashed into a hillside while approaching Katmandu, killing 167 people.
Most recently, at least 72 people were killed in a Yeti airlines crash in January 2023 that was later attributed to the pilots mistakenly cutting off power.


Indian FM’s visit to Pakistan unlikely to thaw frosty ties, experts say

India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar arrives to visit the India Coast Guard Ship Samudra Paheredar docked in Manila.
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Indian FM’s visit to Pakistan unlikely to thaw frosty ties, experts say

  • Jaishankar has said he will not discuss bilateral relations during trip
  • High-level visit may still contribute to ‘slight improvement’ in India-Pakistan ties  

NEW DELHI: Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s visit to Islamabad is unlikely to thaw frosty relations between India and Pakistan as both countries struggle with domestic issues, experts said on Monday ahead of the first such trip by a high-level Indian official.

The Ministry of External Affairs confirmed last Friday that Jaishankar will be leading the Indian delegation to attend the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — a 10-member trans-regional economic and security body established by China and Russia — from Oct. 15-16 in the Pakistani capital. 

Jaishankar has said he will not discuss bilateral relations during the visit.

India has fought three wars with its nuclear-armed neighbor, including two over control of the disputed Kashmir region in the Himalayas.

India controls Jammu and Kashmir, which is part of the larger Kashmiri territory that has been the subject of international dispute since the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.

Both countries, which claim Kashmir in full and rule in part, further downgraded their diplomatic ties in tit-for-tat moves in 2019, after India unilaterally stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its limited constitutional autonomy. In protest, Pakistan also suspended all bilateral trade.

“It (the visit) would contribute in certain ways in thawing the relationship that has been frozen for the last 10 years and may provide an opportunity for India to construct (and) begin conversation with Pakistan,” Sanjay Kapoor, analyst and political editor, told Arab News.

However, Pakistan’s political instability and security challenges are also a drawback to potential bilateral engagements, said Prof. Harsh V. Pant, vice president of the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

“Pakistan is in such a febrile (state) that who to talk to is a big question,” he told Arab News.

“The way political challenges are rising for the Pakistani government, they are quite substantive and there is no way in which a unified machinery exists … even if India wants to have a conversation with Pakistan and take that conversation forward.”

Unless “something fundamental shifts” in Islamabad concerning its approach to regional security and terrorism, Pant said that India will not be “very incentivized to engage with Pakistan.”

Cross-border terrorism was a top-of-mind issue for the Indian government, said Manish Chand, the CEO of the think tank Center for Global India Insights.

“Pakistan has not done anything tangible, concrete” to address Delhi’s concerns over the matter, he told Arab News, adding that any dialogue with Islamabad also depended on the Indian public perception and mood, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party lost its absolute majority in parliament in June.

“This government, the BJP, does not want to be seen as soft on Pakistan or cross-border terror, so they don’t want to take a political chance because that would mean that it could be they will face cracking political scrutiny,” Chand told Arab News.

Despite the challenges, Jaishankar’s trip should still be seen as a “very positive gesture” that may lead “to a slight improvement” in bilateral relations, which “may eventually lead to some tangible move leading to reengagement at some level or revival of the dialogue process,” he said.

But Prof. Siddiq Wahid, a Srinagar-based political analyst, said engaging with Pakistan was not a priority for the Indian government.

“The current Indian government is hampered by its self-image of India in the world. That self-image is of a major global player. As a result it thinks that time is on its side and it does not have to deal with Islamabad,” he told Arab News.

“Meanwhile, the regional rivalry between Delhi and Islamabad continues to fester.” 


Father accused of Sara Sharif’s murder confessed to UK police, jurors told

Sara Sharif was found dead in August 2023 at her home in Woking, a town southwest of London. (File/Surrey Police)
Updated 14 October 2024
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Father accused of Sara Sharif’s murder confessed to UK police, jurors told

  • Sharif was found dead in August 2023 at her home in Woking, after what prosecutors say was a campaign of “serious and repeated violence”

LONDON: The father of Sara Sharif, a 10-year-old girl who was found dead in her home in Britain, told police “I beat her up too much,” prosecutors said at his murder trial on Monday.
Sharif was found dead in August 2023 at her home in Woking, a town southwest of London, after what prosecutors say was a campaign of “serious and repeated violence.”
Her father Urfan Sharif, 42, his wife and Sara Sharif’s stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, and the girl’s uncle Faisal Malik, 29, are on trial at London’s Old Bailey court charged with her murder.
The trio are alternatively charged with causing or allowing the death of a child. All three deny the charges against them and blame each other for her death, prosecutors say.
Prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones told jurors on the first day of the trial on Monday that Urfan Sharif called British police, having fled to Pakistan after Sara Sharif’s death.
“He used what you may think is an odd expression,” Emlyn Jones said. “He said: ‘I legally punished her and she died’.”
Emlyn Jones said that Urfan Sharif also told police: “I beat her up. It wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much.”
The prosecutor said a note in Urfan Sharif’s handwriting was also found next to his daughter’s body, which read: “I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it.”
Emlyn Jones told the jury that each of Urfan Sharif, Batool and Malik “played their part in the violence and mistreatment which resulted in Sara’s death.”
The three defendants all deny responsibility for any of violence and abuse and each “seeks to deflect the blame onto one or both of the others,” Emlyn Jones said.
Urfan Sharif blames his wife Batool, Emlyn Jones said, and his apparent confessions to the police were designed to “protect the true guilty party.”
The prosecutor added that Batool’s case is that Urfan Sharif was a “violent disciplinarian” and that she was scared of him, while Malik says he was unaware of any abuse or violence.
The trial is expected to run until December.


India accuses Canada of ‘deliberate’ smear campaign in latest diplomatic row

Updated 14 October 2024
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India accuses Canada of ‘deliberate’ smear campaign in latest diplomatic row

  • Last year’s murder of a Sikh separatist activist in Surrey is at the center of diplomatic row
  • India ‘reserves the right to take further steps’ after latest allegations, foreign ministry says

NEW DELHI: India said on Monday that the Canadian government was deliberately smearing New Delhi for political gain, after being told by Canada that its envoy and other diplomats in Ottawa were named ‘persons of interest’ in an investigation.

India and Canada have been under diplomatic strain since last September, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country was investigating “credible allegations” that agents of the Indian government were involved in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen of Indian descent who was shot dead by masked gunmen in Surrey, British Columbia.

The Indian government rejected the allegation as “absurd” then, and the two countries expelled their senior diplomats in reciprocal moves. India also moved to suspend visa services for Canadian citizens, which have since been restored.

After over a year, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said the government received diplomatic communication from Canada on Sunday “suggesting that the Indian High Commissioner and other diplomats were ‘persons of interest’”in an ongoing investigation.

“The Government of India strongly rejects these preposterous imputations and ascribes them to the political agenda of the Trudeau Government that is centered around vote bank politics,” the ministry said in a statement issued on Monday.

“This latest step follows interactions that have again witnessed assertions without any facts. This leaves little doubt that on the pretext of an investigation, there is a deliberate strategy of smearing India for political gains.”

The Canadian government “has not shared a shred of evidence” with New Delhi since their allegations last year, it added.

At the center of the Canadian investigation is Nijjar, who was an outspoken supporter of the Khalistan movement, which calls for a separate Sikh homeland in parts of India’s Punjab state.

The movement is outlawed in India and considered a national security threat by the government, which formally designated Nijjar as a terrorist.

He was shot dead last June outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, which has a significant number of Sikh residents.

Canada is home to the world’s largest Sikh community outside India — about 770,000 people, or 2 percent of its entire population.

The Indian government said Trudeau has long been hostile to India, adding that his government “has consciously provided space to violent extremists and terrorists to harass, threaten and intimidate” Indian diplomats and community leaders in Canada.

“India now reserves the right to take further steps in response to these latest efforts of the Canadian Government to concoct allegations against Indian diplomats,” the Foreign Ministry said.


Spanish PM says ‘no withdrawal’ of UN force from Lebanon

Updated 14 October 2024
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Spanish PM says ‘no withdrawal’ of UN force from Lebanon

  • Spain condemns Netanyahu’s call for the force to pull back
  • Sanchez affirmed his commitment to a UN Security Council resolution that bolstered the force’s role in 2006

MADRID: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday said there would be “no withdrawal” of the UN peacekeeping force from southern Lebanon after Israeli attacks and calls to leave.
Israel’s offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia has thrust the UNIFIL force deployed in Lebanon since 1978 into the spotlight.
The force, which involves about 9,500 troops from some 50 nations led by a Spanish general, has reported multiple Israeli attacks in recent days that injured five of its troops and sparked international condemnation.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on them to withdraw for their own safety and said their presence had “the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields.”
Spain condemns Netanyahu’s call for the force to pull back and “there will be no withdrawal of UNIFIL,” Sanchez told a forum in Barcelona.
Sanchez affirmed his commitment to a UN Security Council resolution that bolstered the force’s role in 2006 following the last major conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which stipulated that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in south Lebanon.
That commitment “makes more sense today than ever after seeing what is happening on the ground,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez has been one of the most strident critics of the Netanyahu government’s war in Gaza, which was sparked by last year’s unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel.
The war has drawn in Iran-backed groups from across the region including Hezbollah, with Israel last month escalating its cross-border fire with the group and launching a ground offensive in southern Lebanon.


EU sanctions Iran over ballistic missiles for Russia

Updated 14 October 2024
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EU sanctions Iran over ballistic missiles for Russia

  • European Union foreign ministers approved the sanctions on seven entities

BRUSSELS: The EU imposed sanctions on Monday on prominent Iranian officials and entities, including airlines, accused of taking part in the transfer of missiles and drones for Russia to use against Ukraine.
European Union foreign ministers approved the sanctions on seven entities, including Iran Air, and seven individuals, including deputy defense minister Seyed Hamzeh Ghalandari and senior officials of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, the bloc said.
Leading European powers Britain, France and Germany adopted similar sanctions last month over Iranian missile transfers to Russia, as did the United States.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the adoption of the sanctions by the entire bloc, while adding: “More is needed.”
“The Iranian regime’s support to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is unacceptable and must stop,” she posted on X.
Two other Iranian airlines, Saha Airlines and Mahan Air, were hit under the EU measures, along with two procurement firms blamed for the “transfer and supply, through transnational procurement networks, of Iran-made UAVs and related components and technologies to Russia.”
The sanctions also target two companies involved in the production of propellant used to launch rockets and missiles.
Those targeted are subject to an asset freeze and banned from traveling to the European Union.
Iran rejects Western accusations it has transferred missiles to Russia for use in Ukraine.
According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, dozens of Russian military personnel have received training in Iran on using the Fath-360 missile, which has a range of 120 kilometers (75 miles).