Russia renews strikes on Ukraine capital, hits other cities
Kyiv(AP): Russian forces accelerated scattered attacks on Kyiv, western Ukraine and beyond Saturday in an explosive reminder to Ukrainians and their Western supporters that the whole country remains under threat despite Moscow's pivot toward mounting a new offensive in the east.
Stung by the loss of its Black Sea flagship and indignant over alleged Ukrainian aggression on Russian territory, Russia's military command had warned of renewed missile strikes on Ukraine's capital. Officials in Moscow said they were targeting military sites, a claim repeated and refuted by witnesses throughout 52 days of war.
The toll reaches much deeper. Each day brings new discoveries of civilian victims of an invasion that has shattered European security. As Russia prepared for the anticipated offensive, a mother wept over her 15-year-old son's body after rockets hit a residential area of Kharkiv, a city in northeast Ukraine. An infant and at least eight other people died, officials said.
In the towns and villages just outside Kyiv, authorities have reported finding the bodies of more than 900 civilians, most shot dead, since Russian troops retreated two weeks ago. Smoke rose from the capital again early Saturday as Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported a strike that killed one person and wounded several.
The mayor advised residents who fled the city earlier in the war not to return.
We're not ruling out further strikes on the capital, Klitschko said. If you have the opportunity to stay a little bit longer in the cities where it's safer, do it.
It was not immediately clear from the ground what was hit in the strike on Kyiv's Darnytskyi district. The sprawling area on the southeastern edge of the capital contains a mixture of Soviet-style apartment blocks, newer shopping centers and big-box retail outlets, industrial areas and railyards.
Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said an armoured vehicle plant was targeted. He didn't specify where the factory was located, but there is one in the Darnytskyi district.
He said the plant was among multiple Ukrainian military sites hit with air-launched high-precision long-range weapons. As the U.S. and Europe send new arms to Ukraine, the strategy could be aimed at hobbling Ukraine's defenses ahead of what's expected to be a full-scale Russian assault in the east.
It was the second strike in the Kyiv area since the Russian military vowed this week to step up missile strikes on the capital. Another hit a missile plant Friday.
The Russian missiles hit the city just as residents were emerging for walks, foreign embassies planned to reopen and other tentative signs of the city's prewar life started resurfacing, following the failure of Russian troops to capture Kyiv and their withdrawal.
Kyiv was one of many targets Saturday. The Ukrainian president's office reported missile strikes and shelling over the past 24 hours in eight regions across the country.
The governor of the Lviv region in western Ukraine, which has been only sporadically touched by the war's violence, reported airstrikes on the region by Russian Su-35 aircraft that took off from neighbouring Belarus.
In apparent preparations for its assault on the east, the Russian military has intensified shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, in recent days. Friday's attack killed civilians and wounded more than 50 people, the Ukrainian president's office reported.
On Saturday an explosion believed to be caused by a missile sent emergency workers scrambling near an outdoor market in Kharkiv, according to AP journalists at the scene. One person was killed, and at least 18 people were wounded, according to rescue workers.
All the windows, all the furniture, all destroyed. And the door, too," recounted stunned resident Valentina Ulianova. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said Saturday's toll was three dead and 34 wounded.
Nate Mook, a member of the World Central Kitchen NGO run by celebrity chef Jose Andres, said in a tweet that four workers in Kharkiv were wounded by a strike. Jos Andr s tweeted that staff members were unnerved but safe.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who met with Vladimir Putin this past week in Moscow the first European leader to do so since the invasion began Feb 24 said the Russian president is in his own war logic on Ukraine.
In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, Nehammer said he thinks Putin believes he is winning the war and we have to look in his eyes and we have to confront him with that, what we see in Ukraine.''
Nehammer said he confronted Putin with what he saw during a visit to the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where more than 350 bodies have been found along with evidence of killings and torture under Russian occupation, and it was not a friendly conversation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview with Ukrainian journalists that the continuing siege of the port city of Mariupol, which has come at a horrific cost to trapped and starving civilians, could scuttle attempts to negotiate an end to the war.
The destruction of all our guys in Mariupol what they are doing now can put an end to any format of negotiations, he said.
Later, in his nightly video address to the nation, Zelenskyy said Ukraine needs more support from the West to have a chance at saving Mariupol.
Either our partners give Ukraine all of the necessary heavy weapons, the planes, and without exaggeration immediately, so we can reduce the pressure of the occupiers on Mariupol and break the blockade, he said, or we do so through negotiations, in which the role of our partners should be decisive.
Zelenskyy said the situation in Mariupol remains inhuman and Russia is deliberately trying to destroy everyone who is there.
Konashenkov, the Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, said Saturday that Ukrainian forces had been driven out of most of the city and remained only in the huge Azovstal steel mill.
Capturing Mariupol would allow Russian forces in the south, which came up through the annexed Crimean Peninsula, to fully link up with troops in the Donbas region, Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland.
Zelenskyy estimated that 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian troops have died in the war, and about 10,000 have been wounded. The office of Ukraine's prosecutor general said Saturday that at least 200 children have been killed, and more than 360 wounded.
Russian forces also have taken captive some 700 Ukrainian troops and more than 1,000 civilians, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Saturday. Ukraine holds about the same number of Russian troops as prisoners and intends to arrange a swap but is demanding the release of civilians without any conditions, she said.
Russia's warning of stepped-up attacks on Kyiv came after it accused Ukraine on Thursday of wounding seven people and damaging about 100 residential buildings with airstrikes in Bryansk, a region bordering Ukraine. Ukrainian officials have not confirmed hitting targets in Russia.
Russian Maj. Gen. Vladimir Frolov, whose troops have been among those besieging Mariupol, was buried Saturday in St. Petersburg after dying in battle, Gov Alexander Beglov said. Ukraine has said several Russian generals and dozens of other high-ranking officers have been killed in the war.
In the Vatican, Pope Francis on Saturday invoked gestures of peace in these days marked by the horror of war in an Easter vigil homily at St Peter's Basilica that was attended by the mayor of the occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol and three members of Ukraine's parliament. Francis did not refer directly to Russia's invasion but has called, apparently in vain, for an Easter truce to reach a negotiated peace.
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Tension grips Bangladesh after unrest over uprising leader’s death; vandalism at several places
Dhaka (PTI): Bangladesh interim government on Friday urged citizens to resist violence by “a few fringe elements” as the body of a prominent July Uprising leader, who died in Singapore six days after he was shot, reached the capital.
Various parts of the country were rocked Thursday night by attacks and vandalism, including stone-hurling at the Assistant Indian High Commissioner's residence in Chattogram, after Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus confirmed Sharif Osman Hadi's death in a televised address to the nation.
There were, however, no reports of fresh violence since Friday morning.
Hadi, one of the leaders who had taken part in the student-led protests last year – termed as July Uprising - and a candidate for the scheduled February 12 general elections, died while undergoing treatment at a Singapore hospital six days after he was shot by unidentified men.
Body of Hadi, who was the spokesperson of the Inqilab Mancha, arrived at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport (HSIA) at around 6 pm on a Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight, amid tight security and widespread public mourning, state-run news agency Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) said quoting Biman General Manager (Public Relations) Boshra Islam.
Members of the Bangladesh Army, Armed Forces Battalion (AFB) and police were deployed in large numbers to maintain security when Hadi's body was taken out of the airport, it added.
Hadi's passing away at the Singapore General Hospital triggered widespread mourning across political circles, activists of Inqilab Mancha and the general public, BSS said.
Yunus has declared a one-day state mourning on Saturday following Hadi's death.
Earlier on Thursday, soon after Yunus' announcement, protesters took to the streets and attacked offices of leading newspapers, vandalised 32 Dhanmandi with hammers, and also demolished an office of deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina's disbanded Awami League party in Rajshahi city.
Regarded as the centre point of Bangladesh’s pre-independence struggle for autonomy for decades, 32 Dhanmandi was largely demolished with excavators on February 5 this year. It was also set on fire soon after the August 5, 2024 fall of the then Awami League government and Hasina fleeing to India.
Protesters also hurled bricks and stones at the residence of the Assistant Indian High Commissioner in Chattogram at 1:30 am, but failed to cause any damage.
Police responded with tear gas and baton charges, dispersing the crowd and detaining 12 protesters. A few injuries were also reported.
Senior officials assured the assistant high commissioner of enhanced security.
In Dhaka, protesters attacked the office of a leading cultural group, Chhayanaut, and brought out the furniture, setting it on fire.
Sporadic violence was also reported from other parts of the country overnight.
Meanwhile, after the flight from Singapore landed in Dhaka, local media reports and videos shared on social media showed Hadi's followers lining up on both sides of the road from the airport to Shahbagh to receive him before his coffin was brought to the Dhaka University Central Mosque for a public meeting.
In a Facebook post, Inqilab Mancha announced that a janaza will be held in Bangladesh on Saturday after Zuhr prayers (afternoon) at Manik Mia Avenue in the capital.
Hadi was shot in the head last week by masked gunmen as he initiated his election campaign at central Dhaka’s Bijoynagar area. He died while undergoing treatment at a Singapore hospital after fighting for his life for six days.
On Thursday night, the National Citizen Party (NCP), a large offshoot of Students Against Discrimination (SAD) that led the July Uprising, which ousted the Hasina-led government, joined a mourning procession on the Dhaka University campus.
Supporters of the group chanted anti-India slogans alleging that Hadi’s assailants fled to India after committing the murder. They called upon the interim government to close the Indian high commission until they were returned.
“The interim government, until India returns assassins of Hadi Bhai, the Indian High Commission to Bangladesh will remain closed. Now or Never. We are in a war!” said Sarjis Alm, a key leader of NCP.
Starting Thursday through night, a group of people, believed to be part of the protesters, also attacked the offices of Bangla newspaper Prothom Alo’s office and the nearby Daily Star at the capital's Karwan Bazar, near the Shahbagh intersection.
Reports said they vandalised several floors while journalists and staff of the newspaper were trapped inside, and the mob ignited a fire in front of the building.
Critically ill former prime minister Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) strongly condemned the vandalism and said that the Yunus-led interim government will have to shoulder its responsibility.
In his address on Thursday, Yunus vowed to bring those involved in Hadi's brutal murder to justice quickly, saying, “No leniency will be shown” to the killers.
“I sincerely call upon all citizens – keep your patience and restraint,” he said.
“No one can stop the democratic progress of this country through threat, terrorist activities or bloodshed,” he said, adding that the responsibility of realising Hadi's dream lies on the shoulders of the entire.
