Ukrainian drones attacked an infrastructure facility storing fuel in central Russia’s Oryol region, sparking a fire and smashing windows in homes, regional governor Andrei Klychkov said early on Saturday.
Klychkov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said a “mass attack” on an infrastructure site caused fuel to catch fire.
Fragments from downed drones smashed windows in homes, he said.
Video posted on Ukrainian military blogs showed a fire blazing at what was described as a fuel storage facility. Reuters could not independently verify reports from either side.
Drone attacks were reported in other Russian regions.
The governor of Krasnodar region, Vladimir Kondratyev, said air defenses had destroyed Ukrainian drones in several areas of the region south and east of Ukraine. One drone smashed windows in village houses, but there were no injuries.
Air defenses destroyed seven drones over Bryansk region on Ukraine’s northern border, regional governor Alexander Bogomaz said.
And in Russia’s Belgorod region, often targeted by Ukraine’s military on the northeastern border, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said Ukrainian forces attacked two villages, injuring one resident and triggering a fire in a house that was quickly extinguished.
KATHMANDU – Sebuah kenderaan utiliti sukan terbabas dari lebuh raya di timur Nepal pada petang Jumaat, menyebabkan lima maut dan tiga lagi cedera.
Kenderaan membawa lapan orang itu jatuh kira-kira 300 meter ke bawah tebing di daerah Ramechhap wilayah Bagmati, kata Pradip Kumar Singh, ketua polis daerah.
Seorang pengerusi wad Perbandaran Luar Bandar Gokulganga di daerah itu adalah antara yang maut dan seorang daripada yang cedera dalam keadaan serius, Singh memberitahu Xinhua.
Kemalangan jalan raya adalah perkara biasa di pergunungan Nepal, membunuh ratusan nyawa setiap tahun.
Smoke billows during Israeli airstrikes in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiyeh on Oct. 16, 2024. (AFP)
BEIRUT — Lebanon’s health ministry said five people were killed in Israeli strikes Wednesday on the municipality of the southern city of Nabatiyeh, after an official said the mayor was among the dead.
“The Israeli enemy raid… on two buildings, that of the Nabatiyeh municipality and the union of municipalities, killed five people in a preliminary toll,” the ministry said in a statement, adding rescuers were searching for survivors under the rubble.
The mayor of Nabatiyeh was among those killed, authorities said.
“The mayor of Nabatiyeh, among others… was martyred. It’s a massacre,” Nabatiyeh governor Howaida Turk said, adding he had been in the municipality building.
Hezbollah-affiliated rescuers also said several people were killed in the strike on the municipality building including mayor Ahmad Kahil.
The Israeli military launched strikes in southern Beirut on Wednesday, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon, saying it would leave Hezbollah forces near his country’s border.
An AFP journalist saw black smoke rising from Beirut’s Haret Hreik area after two strikes, which followed an Israeli military warning for residents to evacuate.
One of the strikes targeted weapons “stockpiled by Hezbollah in an underground storage facility,” the military said.
Protesters gather to partially block the road near the main Kosovo-Serbia border crossing in Merdare, Serbia Sept. 6, 2024. (Reuters)
PRISTINA — Kosovo has closed two of its four border crossings with Serbia following protests on the Serbian side that have blocked cross-border traffic, the interior minister said on Saturday.
The Kosovo government shut the border at Brnjak and the larger Merdare crossing overnight from Friday to Saturday.
Both are in the troubled north of Kosovo, where ethnic Serbs are the majority in several districts, outnumbering the ethnic Albanians who overwhelmingly populate the rest of the Balkan country.
Justifying the move, Kosovar Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla said on Facebook “masked extremists” on the Serbian side of the border were “selectively stopping… citizens who want to transit through Serbia” to third countries.
“And all this in plain sight of the Serbian authorities,” he complained.
On Friday, dozens of demonstrators in Serbia blockaded the two border crossings to prevent traffic entering Serbia from Kosovo.
They said they were protesting against the closure of parallel administrations that ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo had set up to rival the official ones.
The Serbian government in Belgrade — which has never recognized the independence of Kosovo, its former southern province — finances a parallel health, education and social security system in Kosovo for the latter’s ethnic Serb population.
The Serbian demonstrators told the media their border blockade would last until Kosovo police were “withdrawn from the north of Kosovo and the usurped institutions are returned to the Serbs.”
They also demanded that the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo (KFOR) “take over control in the north of Kosovo.”
The border blockade began a few days after police in northern Kosovo raided and then closed five administrative offices linked to the Belgrade government.
On Saturday, Kosovo’s foreign ministry urged people to avoid trying to transit through Serbia because of the protests on the Serbian side.
Foreign Minister Donika Gervalla told reporters on Friday the Serbian protests were “yet more proof” that Belgrade was trying to provoke and destabilize its southern neighbor.
Animosity has persisted between Serbia and Kosovo since a war in the 1990s between Serbian armed forces and Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian separatists.
Kosovo declared independence in 2008. But Serbia has refused to recognize the move and has encouraged ethnic Serbs living in Kosovo to remain loyal to Belgrade.
Tensions ratcheted up a notch earlier this year, when Kosovo made the euro the only legal currency, effectively outlawing the use of the Serbian dinar.