• Russia unleashes biggest aerial barrage on Ukraine, killing four.
• Kyiv govt complex roof burns after direct Russian strike.
• Macron, Starmer, EU condemn strikes as “terror” and “cowardly”.

Russia fired its biggest-ever aerial barrage at Ukraine early Sunday, killing four people and setting the seat of the Ukrainian government in Kyiv ablaze in an attack President Volodymyr Zelensky warned would prolong the war.

The Sunday attack was the first to hit Ukraine’s cabinet of ministers, a sprawling government complex at the heart of Kyiv.

An AFP reporter saw the roof of the building in flames and smoke billowing over the capital.

Drone strikes also damaged several high-rise buildings in Kyiv, according to emergency services.

Russia has shown no sign of halting its three-and-a-half-year invasion of Ukraine, pushing hardline demands for ending the war despite efforts by the United States to broker a peace deal.

Residents in Kyiv spoke of their frustration following the strikes.

“This is already routine for us, unfortunately,” Olga, a 30-year-old resident of a damaged building told AFP.

The Russians first “grab the Shaheds (Iranian-designed drones), then the rockets come,” she said.

An AFP reporter saw helicopters dropping what buckets of water over its roof, as emergency services rushed to the scene.

European condemnation

Russia, which denies targeting civilians in Ukraine, said it had struck a plant and a logistics hub in Kyiv.

Its defence ministry said “no strikes were carried out on other targets within the boundaries of Kyiv”, explicitly denying responsibility for the government building strike.

Police cordoned off the area surrounding the building, the roof and upper floors of which sustained damage.

“We will restore the buildings. But we cannot bring back lost lives. The enemy terrorises and kills our people every day throughout the country,” Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.

She later posted a video from inside the damaged floor showing shattered offices and burned walls.

Russia fired at least 810 drones and 13 missiles at Ukraine between late Saturday and early Sunday, in a new record, according to the Ukrainian air force.

“Such killings now, when real diplomacy could have already begun long ago, are a deliberate crime and a prolongation of the war,” Zelensky said.

He discussed the attack in a call with French President Emmanuel Macron and said that France would help Ukraine strengthen its defence.

Macron, on X, condemned the attack and said Russia “is locking itself ever deeper into the logic of war and terror”. France stood by Ukraine, he said.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen also slammed the attack.

“Once again, the Kremlin is mocking diplomacy,” von der Leyen wrote on X.

The “cowardly strikes” show that Russian President Vladimir Putin “is not serious about peace”, Starmer said in a statement.

Strikes kills four

AFP reporters heard explosions over the capital early Sunday.

A strike on a nine-story residential building in the west of Kyiv killed at least two people, a mother and her two-month-old son, prosecutors said.

More than two dozens others were wounded in Kyiv, according to the emergency service.

Among them was a 24-year-old pregnant woman, who delivered a premature baby shortly after the attack, and doctors were fighting for her life and that of her baby, state TV Suspilne reported.

Two more died and dozens other wounded in overnight strikes across the country´s east and southeast, authorities said.

The attack also killed seven horses at an equestrian club in Kyiv’s suburbs, according to Ukraine’s foreign ministry.

“The world cannot stand aside while a terrorist state takes lives — human or animal — every single day,” it wrote on X.

The barrage came after more than two dozen European countries pledged to patrol any agreement to end the war, some of whom said they were willing to deploy troops on the ground.

Kyiv insists on Western-backed security guarantees to prevent future Russian attacks, but Putin warns that any Western troops in Ukraine would be unacceptable and legitimate targets.

Efforts in recent weeks by US President Donald Trump to end the war have so far yielded little progress.

Meantime, on the front line in the east, Moscow continued to claim territory in costly grinding battles, capturing another village in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Russia occupies around 20% of the country in total.

Tens of thousands have been killed in three-and-a-half years of fighting, which has forced millions from their homes and destroyed much of eastern and southern Ukraine in Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.

LONDON: UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has named Kashmiri and Pakistani-origin Shabana Mahmood as the new home secretary – this is for the first time in the UK’s history that anyone from a Pakistani and Muslim background has risen to the powerful position of the head of the Home Office.

The announcement came in the wake of Angela Rayner’s resignation as Deputy Prime Minister over her flat’s scandal. The Home Office oversees immigration, policing, and national security administration.

“It is the honour of my life to serve as Home Secretary. The first responsibility of the government is the safety of its citizens. Every day in this job, I will be devoted to that purpose,” Mahmood said.

Mahmood was born to Kashmiri-Pakistani parents, Zubaida and Mahmood Ahmed, in Birmingham in 1980. Her parents are originally from Mirpur in Azad Kashmir, but decades ago moved to Jhelum’s Bohriyan village near Ludhar. Shabana spent her early years in Saudi Arabia before returning to the UK. She pursued her law degree at Lincoln College, Oxford, and qualified as a barrister specialising in professional indemnity cases.

She entered politics in 2010. She was elected as an MP from Birmingham Ladywood, marking a turning point in her political career. She was one of the UK’s first female Muslim MPs. Since then, she has held several key roles, including Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury and Shadow Minister for Prisons.

Last year, she spoke to Geo News at length on how she has faced harassment and intimidation from members of the local Pakistani community. She is now facing the worst kind of racist and Islamophobic attacks from the far-right extremists after her appointment as the Home Secretary.

After winning the 2024 election, she was appointed as justice secretary and lord chancellor. She introduced several schemes to manage the overcrowded prisons and to address the court backlogs. Last week, she introduced major legislation in Parliament aimed at reforming the prison system in the UK.

Home Secretary Mahmood is set to take on one of the toughest briefs in government as pressure mounts over record Channel crossings, asylum hotels, and migration.

As lord chancellor and justice secretary over the past year, Mahmood has been tasked with tackling the jail overcrowding crisis and has just introduced major legislation to Parliament to overhaul the prison system earlier this week.

The courts’ backlog has also been a key focus of her brief, but the daughter of immigrants, of Kashmiri origin, has also been drawn into immigration policy that will form much of her new day job.

Mahmood backed Sir Keir Starmer after he said that Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers” in May, although she avoided using the term.

Asked whether she would repeat the Prime Minister’s language, she said: “I agree with the Prime Minister that without curbs on migration, without making sure that we have strong rules that everyone follows, and that we have a pace of immigration that allows for integration into our country, we do risk becoming a nation of people estranged from one another.

“And what he has described is something that I absolutely believe in, and which are the values of the Labour Party, which is a desire to see this country as a nation of neighbours.”

Earlier this summer, Mahmood also said the European Convention on Human Rights must be reformed to win back public confidence across the continent.

On Tuesday, she further told the Lords Constitution Committee that it is “perfectly fine” for ministers to question the UK’s interpretation of upholding the treaty, adding that European colleagues view the UK as being more on the “maximalist end of the spectrum”.

The former barrister will now be in charge of proposals to tighten the use of Article 8, the right to family and private life, of the ECHR in immigration cases, which are expected to be brought this autumn.

As justice secretary, she also proposed a change in the law for foreign criminals to be deported immediately when they receive a custodial sentence, at a time the Home Office has been working to increase the number of returns of migrants with no legal right to be in the UK.

Announcing the plan last month, she said: “If you abuse our hospitality and break our laws, we will send you packing. Deportations are up under this Government, and with this new law, they will happen earlier than ever before.”

Her appointment has been welcomed by the founder of Blue Labour, Lord Glasman, who told Politico the move was “fantastic”.

“She’s now clearly the leader of our part of the party.”

Mahmood told Geo News last year that in her 14 years of public life as a Pakistani-Kashmiri origin Muslim woman in the UK, she has encountered intimidation and harassment, emphasising that being a Muslim woman in public life is challenging.

Mahmood explained that she had not previously discussed such harassment because she did not want people, “especially our sisters, daughters, to perceive politics negatively and be deterred by the challenges of intimidation and harassment”.

In her constituency in Birmingham, which she won around 15 years ago, Mahmood, a leading figure in Starmer’s closest circle, faced a lot of misinformation, fake news, and misogynistic attacks from a group of men who were vying to oust her in this election.

In several parts of the constituency, her posters were ripped off. She had been accused of the things she has not done, and for that purpose social media sites such as TikTok and Instagram have been used to direct hate at her.

She expressed that being the sole Muslim woman in a key role in parliament is a motivating factor.

Responding to a query about the Palestine issue and the ongoing war in Gaza, she said innocent children are being killed, cruelty is rampant, and millions of people are deeply saddened and affected by it.

She stated that the Labour Party believes in a two-state solution and that is the only way to end the Palestine-Israel conflict.

Saudi Arabia announced on Sunday humanitarian projects for Syria including the removal of wartime rubble around Damascus, weeks after inking investment deals worth billions to help rebuild the country’s infrastructure.

The oil-rich Gulf kingdom has been a major backer of the new Syrian government, which came to power after an Islamist-led offensive toppled longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad in December.

At an event Sunday in Damascus, the Saudi state-run King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre (KSrelief) announced an aid package that includes a project to clear more than 75,000 cubic metres of rubble from the capital and its surroundings.

The Saudi organisation’s president Abdullah Al Rabeeah and Syrian minister for emergencies and disaster management Raed al-Saleh signed an agreement for the initiative, which includes plans to recycle at least 30,000 cubic metres of debris from destroyed homes and other buildings.

Saleh said the rubble hinders humanitarian efforts and reconstruction, and that unexploded “war remnants threaten the lives of civilians”.

Other agreements inked on Sunday would see Riyadh support the reconstruction of 34 schools in Syria’s Aleppo, Idlib and Homs provinces, as well as provide equipment for 17 hospitals nationwide, help rebuild some 60 bakeries, and rehabilitate sewage and water infrastructure in Damascus.

KSrelief chief Rabeeah said that the projects seek to “address several high-priority areas of urgent needs” and “alleviate the suffering of affected people”.

Since Assad’s overthrow in December, Syria’s new authorities have worked to attract investment for the reconstruction of infrastructure destroyed in the country’s 14-year civil war.

In late July, Riyadh pledged $6.4 billion in investment and partnership deals with Syria.

The war devastated much of Syria’s infrastructure, with UN estimates putting the cost of reconstruction at more than $400 billion.