ISLAMABAD – Eight members of a family were killed when their car fell into a deep ravine in Pakistan’s northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, officials said.
The accident occurred on Thursday evening in Kohistan district along the Karakoram Highway, an official of the state-run Rescue 1122, told Xinhua.
XINHUA
BERLIN – Two people were injured in a violent shooting incident in Berlin, Germany, on Thursday evening, according to local police.
The incident occurred in the Kreuzberg district, where suspects fired multiple shots from one or more vehicles, Berlin police said on the social media platform X.
The two victims were transported to hospital. According to the newspaper BILD, their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.
Two individuals have been arrested in connection with the incident. The motive behind the attack remains unclear.
XINHUA
KYIV – A Russian drone attack late on Thursday set buildings ablaze in Ukraine’s southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, injuring 29 people, including a child, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said.
He said Russian forces had made at least 10 strikes on the city, damaging private homes, tens of high-rise apartment buildings, educational institutions and infrastructure sites.
Three people were rescued from the rubble and 12 people were being treated in hospital, Fedorov added.
The Ukrainian air force said it shot down 64 of 150 drones launched by Russia overnight.
Another 62 drones did not reach their targets, likely due to electronic warfare countermeasures, it said.
It did not specify what happened to the remaining 24 drones.
Pictures posted online showed a building ablaze and rescue teams making their way through rubble and clambering up the side of damaged buildings on extended ladders. One picture showed a rescue team carrying an injured man to safety.
Ukraine’s state-owned railway Ukrzaliznytsia said the attack on Zaporizhzhia also damaged its locomotive repair plant, an enterprise which specializes in the repair of passenger electric locomotives.
The plant will not be able to function anymore due to significant damage, Fedorov said in televised remarks.
REUTERS
May 1 – President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he is nominating national security adviser Mike Waltz to be the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
Trump also said in a social media post that Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as interim, national security advisor.
REUTERS
NEW YORK, May 1 – U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz will leave his post, according to multiple media reports.
Both Waltz and his deputy Alex Wong are expected to leave as soon as Thursday, which would mark the first major shakeup in Donald Trump’s second term of presidency.
The White House has not made a formal announcement on Waltz’s departure from the Trump administration.
Waltz came under fire in recent weeks for a leaked group chat discussing an upcoming strike in Yemen.
He has been marginalized in policy-making though Trump publicly defended him in the beginning.
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was invited on March 11 to join a group chat named “Houthi PC Small Group” on Signal, a popular encrypted messaging app used by journalists and government officials.
High-ranking officials from the Trump administration, including Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, discussed plans for a forthcoming strike on the Houthis in Yemen.
On March 25, Waltz said he took “full responsibility” for the incident.
XINHUA
NEW YORK, May 1, 2025 – The UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator strongly warned today about the continuing Israeli blockade of aid into Gaza, calling on Israel to lift restrictions that have left civilians without food, medical care, and hope.
In a press statement on Thursday, Tom Fletcher condemned Israel’s decision to halt humanitarian assistance as a “cruel collective punishment” of the Palestinian population.
The UN relief chief stressed that “international law is unequivocal: As the occupying power, Israel must allow humanitarian support in… Aid, and the civilian lives it saves, should never be a bargaining chip,” he added. “Blocking aid kills.”
Fletcher warned that the aid blockade “starves civilians”, denies them basic medical services, and “strips them of dignity and hope.”
He underscored the neutrality and impartiality of humanitarian efforts, adding: “We believe that all civilians are equally worthy of protection. We remain ready to save as many lives as we can, despite the risks.”
However, the latest delivery mechanism proposed by Israel, he said, “does not meet the minimum bar for principled humanitarian support.”
“To the Israeli authorities, and those who can still reason with them, we say again: lift this brutal blockade. Let humanitarians save lives,” he pleaded.
Addressing civilians in Gaza, Fletcher said: “No apology can suffice… But I am truly sorry that we are unable to move the international community to prevent this injustice. We won’t give up.”
WAFA
An earthquake of magnitude 5.83 struck La Rioja Province in Argentina on Thursday, the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) said.
The quake was at a depth of 10 km (6.21 miles), GFZ said.
REUTERS
CAIRO – At least seven people were killed and nine others wounded on Thursday when a pickup truck, speeding and overloaded, overturned on the road leading to the Egyptian north coast city of Alamein, the Marsa Matrouh governorate said in a statement.
The statement said the truck was commuting laborers to work early in the morning.
According to local media, the driver lost control of the wheel due to the high speed. Eleven ambulances rushed to the scene, and the victims were transferred to Alamein Model Hospital.
Pickup trucks are designed to transport goods, not people.
XINHUA
ISTANBUL – Turkish police charged May Day protesters in Istanbul on Thursday, detaining hundreds of people and dragging some away in buses after they tried to defy a ban on public gatherings and march towards Taksim Square.
Unions and NGOs had called for protests and marches across Istanbul, which has seen a wave of mass demonstrations in recent weeks over the detention of its mayor and President Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival, Ekrem Imamoglu.
On Thursday, protesters attempted to march towards central Istanbul’s Taksim Square, where all protests have been banned for years, under overcast and rainy weather.
Police blocked them in Istanbul’s central Besiktas and Sisli districts and pushed them back, scuffling with some who attempted to break through barricades.
Footage from Istanbul showed riot police and protesters charging at each other. Protesters held up signs and chanted slogans as police forcefully hauled detainees to waiting buses.
The Istanbul governor’s office said in a statement that 384 people who demonstrated without authorisation had been detained.
Gatherings in Turkey for International Labour Day are held annually, but police have often intervened in recent years.
Last year, police detained more than 200 people attempting to march to Taksim Square. In 1977, 34 people were killed during May Day demonstrations in the square.
Ozgur Ozel, head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), to which Imamoglu also belongs, said the ban on demonstrations and marches in Taksim Square showed “the ruling party’s insecurity and lack of confidence”.
“Imprisoning a square with thousands of police shows those who lead the country have no real authority and have turned the state into a police state,” Ozel told reporters.
In Ankara, Erdogan hosted representatives from unions and various professional fields to mark May Day. He said his government had, over the years, lifted some restrictions on labourers and implemented several legal amendments to improve working conditions.
Thousands more rallied in Ankara for largely peaceful marches and demonstrations, while gatherings were held in other cities as well.
REUTERS
MANILA, Philippines – A speeding passenger bus slammed into a row of vehicles lined up at a highway toll booth Thursday in the northern Philippines, killing 10 people, including children, police said.
More than two dozen others were injured in the multiple-vehicle collision in Tarlac city, north of Manila, at a heavy travel time on May Day holiday, police said.
The bus driver, who was among the injured, was taken into custody and initially told investigators that he dozed off shortly before the crash, Tarlac police chief Lt. Col. Romel Santos told reporters.
The bus crashed into a van, which was lined up with three other vehicles at the toll booth. Eight of the dead, including children, were in the van, which was pinned between the wayward bus from behind and another car in front, police said.
A couple died in a car in the collisions that happened around midday in the scorching summer heat, police said, adding that many of the injured were bus passengers.
Vehicular accidents are common in the Philippines because of poor enforcement of safety and traffic regulations, faulty vehicles and reckless driving.
AP
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan – The government of Pakistan-administered Kashmir has closed all religious seminaries in the region for 10 days, officials said on Thursday, citing fears they would be targeted by Indian strikes following a deadly attack on tourists in Indian Kashmir.
Islamabad says it has credible intelligence that India intends to launch military action soon, with New Delhi alleging that the attack on tourists was carried out by Pakistani nationals with ties to Islamist organisations based there.
The director of Pakistani Kashmir’s Department of Religious Affairs, Hafiz Nazir Ahmad, told Reuters that security officials feared Indian forces may target seminaries and label them as militant training centres.
The notification seen by Reuters, dated April 30, only cited a heatwave as the reason for the closure.
“Right now, we are facing two kinds of heat — one from the weather and the other from (Indian Prime Minister) Modi,” Ahmad said of the notification, saying they did not mention the risk of attacks in a bid to avoid panic.
India’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. India has previously targeted sites in Pakistan alleging they were bases of Islamist militants close to the Kashmir border.
“We held a meeting yesterday in which it was unanimously decided not to put innocent children at risk,” Ahmad said. The President’s Office of Pakistani Kashmir also said the closure was due to “precautionary reasons.”
There are 445 registered seminaries with over 26,000 students enrolled in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, according to the religious affairs department.
The seminaries – locally known as madrasas – are Islamic educational institutions run by religious organisations, providing cheap, often free, alternatives to regular schools.
Pakistan has said it will respond “assuredly and decisively” to any military action from India, raising the spectre of war between the two nuclear-armed countries.
Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, is claimed in full, but ruled in parts by both India and Pakistan, and has been the site of two wars and multiple skirmishes.
Many Muslims in Indian Kashmir have long resented what they see as heavy-handed rule by India. In 1989, an insurgency by Muslim separatists began. India poured troops into the region and tens of thousands of people have been killed.
India accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants, which Islamabad denies, saying it offers only moral and diplomatic support. Seminaries have been criticised for radicalising youth towards Islamist extremism.
REUTERS
TOKYO – A man was arrested in the western Japanese city of Osaka on suspicion of attempted murder after he allegedly plowed his car deliberately into seven schoolchildren on Thursday, local media said.
At around 1:30 p.m. local time, the children, who had been on their way home from an elementary school in Nishinari Ward, Osaka, were hit by the car near the school. They were injured and rushed to hospital, but all seven reportedly remained conscious, public broadcaster NHK said.
Police said the 28-year-old suspect, Yuki Yazawa from Higashimurayama City, admitted to the allegation.
The suspect told investigators that he was “fed up with everything,” so he rammed the car into the group of children in an attempt to kill them, the report said.
XINHUA
HONG KONG – A bus accident on the West Kowloon Highway at around 12:30 p.m. on Thursday left at least 22 people injured, with four in serious condition.
Authorities are investigating the cause of the incident, which involved the bus colliding with a roadside barrier.
The bus was on its way to the airport when it crashed, resulting in shattered windshields and bloodstains throughout the vehicle.
XINHUA
GAZA – At least eight Palestinian civilians were killed and several others were wounded on Thursday in Israeli airstrikes targeting several areas across the Gaza Strip, including Al-Mawasi in Rafah, Beit Lahia, Deir al-Balah, and Khan Yunis.
Local sources reported that three civilians were killed and another was injured in an Israeli drone attack targeting farmers in the Al-Mawasi area west of Rafah city.
Three more civilians were killed in an Israeli strike on the town of Beit Lahia in the northern Strip, while a young girl succumbed to her injuries in Khan Yunis in the south.
Another civilian was also killed in an Israeli drone shelling that targeted the Al-Manara area, southeast of Khan Yunis.
In central Gaza, several civilians were injured in an Israeli airstrike that struck a home east of Deir al-Balah city.
WAFA
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Pakistani security forces overnight raided a militant hideout in northwest Pakistan, sparking a shootout in which three officers and one suspect were killed, police said Thursday.
The raid occurred in Bannu, a district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police Arshad Khan said. Other insurgents fled the scene.
Khan said the insurgents were “Khwarij” — a phrase the government uses for the Pakistani Taliban.
The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, are separate from but allied with the Afghan Taliban, which seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.
Last week, Pakistani security forces killed 71 militants when they attempted to cross into the country from Afghanistan, according to the military.
AP
NAIROBI, Kenya – A Kenyan opposition legislator was shot dead in the capital Nairobi in what police have described as a “targeted and premeditated” crime.
MP Charles Were was shot on Wednesday night after his car stopped at a roundabout on a busy major road.
President Willian Ruto urged police to conduct a “through investigation” and said Thursday that those responsible “must be held to account.”
Were was in the company of his driver and bodyguard when a motorcycle taxi approached their car, and a passenger disembarked and approached their car before firing at the MP, police said in a statement.
The legislator was reelected in 2022 to represent Kasipul constituency in western Kenya for the Orange Democratic Movement party.
AP
KYIV – Russian drones attacked Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa early on Thursday, killing two people and injuring five more, in addition to sparking fires and damaging infrastructure, the regional governor said.
“The enemy attack damaged residential high-rises, private houses, a supermarket, a school, and cars,” Oleh Kiper wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
“Fires broke out in some places and are being extinguished by our rescuers.”
Ukraine’s state-owned railway Ukrzaliznytsia said the overnight attack also damaged its tracks, the contact network and three freight cars.
“Railway employees are carrying out rapid repair work to ensure that freight trains run to ports without interruption. They are currently following an alternative route.”
Passenger trains were running on schedule, it added on Telegram.
One of the people killed in his home during the attack on Odesa was a railway employee, according to the company.
Videos posted by Kiper showed heavily damaged facade of a high-rise building, a storefront with shattered windows and fire-fighters battling flames at one of the sites in the city.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city in the northeast, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said a drone had struck a petrol station in the city centre, sparking a fire.
Terekhov provided no further details.
REUTERS
OKLAHOMA CITY – A least two people drowned when their vehicles were caught in floodwaters in Oklahoma on Wednesday as slow-moving thunderstorms inundated roads across parts of that state and Texas, authorities said, while Pennsylvania residents picked up from a powerful storm that left three people dead.
Heavy rains and severe thunderstorms will mean a heightened risk of flash flooding across the south-central U.S. through early Thursday, the National Weather Service said.
The storms drenched much of southern Oklahoma and northern Texas, flooding and washing out roads and causing hundreds of flights to be canceled or delayed at major airports.
One man drowned in Oklahoma after his vehicle got swept off a Pottawatomie County highway, said Sheriff Freeland Wood.
“My deputy went in to try and save him, and he got caught up in the same mess,” Wood said.
The deputy was treated at a local hospital and released, Wood said. Floodwaters closed nearly three dozen roadways in the county.
Another drowning was reported in neighboring Lincoln County after a driver’s vehicle got trapped in floodwaters along a highway northwest of Prague, Oklahoma Highway Patrol spokesperson Sarah Stewart said.
Authorities in the state reported that numerous drivers were rescued from floodwaters, while some residents in the small city of Lexington were evacuated from homes as the waters rose.
Oklahoma City set a record Wednesday with 11.94 inches (30.33 centimeters) of rain in April, surpassing the 1947 mark of 11.91 inches, according to Oklahoma State Climatologist Gary McManus.
AP
DAMASCUS – Israeli warplanes launched two airstrikes Wednesday afternoon on the town of Ashrafiyat Sahnaya, southwest of Damascus, amid rising sectarian tensions and ongoing clashes in the area, Syrian state media reported.
According to Syrian state-run Al-Ekhbariya TV, the strikes caused injuries among civilians, including members of the Druze community, who have been at the center of recent unrest near the capital. The report did not specify the number or severity of casualties.
Explosions were heard across Damascus shortly after Israeli jets were reported flying at low altitude over the city.
The reported strikes came shortly after Israel issued a warning that it would target positions in Syria if necessary to protect Druze communities, following days of deadly violence involving local Druze fighters and pro-government forces in southern Damascus suburbs.
Ashrafiyat Sahnaya has been the site of intense clashes since Tuesday night.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 39 people have been killed in Jaramana, Sahnaya, and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya over the past 72 hours, including Druze locals, security forces, and pro-government militia members.
Syrian authorities have not officially commented on the Israeli strikes beyond confirming the attacks and injuries.
XINHUA
DAMASCUS/JERUSALEM – The death toll from ongoing sectarian clashes in the southern suburbs of Damascus climbed to 39, including 16 security personnel, after ceasefire efforts collapsed and intense fighting resumed in Ashrafiyat Sahnaya, officials and monitoring groups said Wednesday.
According to the Syrian interior authorities, armed groups launched coordinated attacks overnight on security checkpoints and patrols in agricultural zones surrounding the town, targeting both civilian and security vehicles.
Eleven officers from the General Security Directorate were killed in the initial assault, and another five fell during a renewed attack Wednesday morning, bringing the total number of fallen security personnel to 16.
The ministry confirmed that ceasefire attempts involving local elders and government representatives were violated when the armed groups reneged on their commitments and resumed attacks.
“Any assault on public security forces is an assault on national stability,” the interior authorities said, vowing a firm response.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 22 people have been killed in Ashrafiyat Sahnaya alone, including six local Druze fighters and 16 members of pro-government and security forces. The confrontations have involved light and medium weapons, and the situation on the ground remains volatile.
The recent violence stems from the leak of an audio recording attributed to a member of the Druze community containing comments deemed offensive to Islam.
The recording triggered widespread outrage and incitement on social media, setting off deadly clashes earlier this week in Jaramana, where 17 people were killed.
In total, at least 39 people have been killed in the latest wave of violence across Jaramana, Sahnaya, and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya, including both government forces and local armed factions.
Local officials are continuing efforts to prevent further escalation, but as of Wednesday afternoon, fighting was ongoing, and fears persist that the unrest may drag on if not contained quickly.
Meanwhile, Israeli military chief Eyal Zamir ordered the army to prepare for possible strikes on Syrian government targets if violence against Druze communities continues, the military said.
The military said in a statement that the instruction followed a situational assessment.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Israeli air force struck what, according to the military, were “operatives on the outskirts of Damascus who had attacked Druze civilians.”
The military said it was “monitoring developments in the region,” and its troops are “deployed and prepared for defense and developments in the area of Syria.”
XINHUA