Politics
Drone strike in southern Sudan kills 6 UN peacekeepers
- UNISFA base in Kadugli targetted while peacekeepers were inside building.
- Bangladesh interim leader Yunus expresses grief, pledges support to families.
- Sudan’s war killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, creating severe crisis.
Six United Nations peacekeepers from Bangladesh were killed on Saturday in a drone strike on Sudan’s southern Kordofan region, the UN mission said, with Dhaka sharply condemning the attack.
The United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) said “six troops were killed and six injured”, including four seriously, when a drone hit their camp in Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan state.
All of the victims are from Bangladesh, it said.
UN chief Antonio Guterres condemned the “horrific” attack, saying it “may constitute war crimes under international law”.
“Attacks as the one today in South Kordofan against peacekeepers, are unjustifiable. There will need to be accountability,” he said in a statement.
Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus, in a statement, said he was “deeply saddened” by the attack, and put the toll at six dead and eight wounded.
He asked the UN to ensure that his country´s personnel were offered “any necessary emergency support”.
“The government of Bangladesh will stand by the families in this difficult moment,” Yunus added.
Dhaka’s foreign ministry said it “strongly condemned” the attack.
UN peacekeepers are deployed to Abyei, a disputed region between Sudan and South Sudan.
Fires blazing
A medical source had earlier told AFP that the strike on a United Nations facility in Kadugli killed at least six people, with witnesses saying they were UN employees.
“Six people were killed in a bombing of the UN headquarters while they were inside the building,” the medical source at the city´s hospital said.
Eyewitnesses said a drone had hit the UN facility.
The Sudanese army published a video on its Facebook page showing fires blazing and two columns of smoke rising from the UNISFA base.
The army-aligned government based in Port Sudan issued a statement condemning the attack and accusing the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of being behind it.
In a statement, the Sovereignty Council, headed by army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, called the attack a “dangerous escalation”.
The RSF in a statement on Telegram said it rejected “the claims and allegations… regarding an air attack that targeted the United Nations headquarters in Kadugli, and the accompanying false accusations against our forces of being behind it through the use of a drone”.
Meanwhile, Sudanese Prime Minister Kamil Idris said that “the terrorist rebel militia has met all the conditions to be classified as a terrorist group”, and urged the UN to “bring the perpetrators to justice”.
Kadugli, where famine was declared in early November, has been besieged for a year and a half by the RSF.
Strategic position
Following their late-October capture of El-Fasher — the army’s last stronghold in Sudan’s western Darfur region — the RSF have pushed eastward into the oil-rich Kordofan region, divided into three states.
Kordofan is a vast agricultural region that lies between RSF-controlled Darfur in the west and army-held areas in the north, east and centre.
Its position is important for maintaining supply lines and moving troops.
The RSF has been at war with the military since April 2023 and has deployed fighters, drones and allied militias to the fertile region.
Analysts say the RSF seek to punch through the army’s defences around central Sudan, paving the way for recapturing Khartoum.
Last week, strikes on a kindergarten and hospital in Kalogi in South Kordofan killed 114 people, including 63 children, according to the UN’s World Health Organisation.
Sudan’s war has so far killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and resulted in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Efforts to end the war have so far failed.
Last month, US President Donald Trump said he would move to end the conflict following discussions in Washington with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but the initiative has yet to materialise.
- Multiple people injured as first responders “work to save lives”.
- Thirteen people taken to hospital, NSW ambulance says.
- Israel’s president says Hanukkah candle-lighters attacked.
SYDNEY: Australian police say 10 people are dead on Sunday after a shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach
Multiple people were injured and first responders were “working to save lives”, officials said.
Thirteen people were taken to hospital after the shooting, a New South Wales ambulance spokesperson said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the incident “shocking and distressing”, adding that “emergency responders are on the ground and working to save lives”.
ABC aired footage showing people lying on the ground.
“I saw at least 10 people on the ground and blood everywhere,” 30-year-old local Harry Wilson, who witnessed the shooting, told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Jewish people who had gone to light the first candle of the Hanukkah holiday on the beach had been attacked by “vile terrorists”.
One of the world’s most famous beaches, Bondi is typically crowded with locals and tourists, especially on warm weekend evenings.
“If we were targeted deliberately in this way, it’s something of a scale that none of us could have ever fathomed. It’s a horrific thing,” Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told Sky News, adding his media adviser had been wounded in the attack.
- Thailand’s curfew covers five districts of Trat province
- Cambodia accuses Thailand of striking civilian infrastructure.
- Thailand is open to diplomatic solution: defence ministry
Thailand announced a curfew in its southeastern Trat province on Sunday as fighting with Cambodia spread to coastal areas of a disputed border region, two days after US President and would-be peacemaker Donald Trump said the sides had agreed to stop.
The Southeast Asian neighbours have resorted to arms several times this year since a Cambodian soldier was killed in a May skirmish, reigniting a conflict that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the border.
“Overall, there have been clashes continuously” since Cambodia again reiterated its openness to a ceasefire on Saturday, Thai Defence Ministry spokesman Rear Admiral Surasant Kongsiri told a press conference in Bangkok after announcing the curfew.
Thailand is open to a diplomatic solution, but “Cambodia has to cease hostility first before we can negotiate,” he said.
Thai forces on Saturday said they had destroyed a bridge that Cambodia used to deliver heavy weapons and other equipment to the region and launched an operation targeting pre-positioned artillery in Cambodia’s coastal Koh Kong province.
Cambodia accused Thailand of striking civilian infrastructure.
Thailand’s curfew covers five districts of Trat province that neighbour Koh Kong, excluding the tourist islands of Koh Chang and Koh Kood. The military had previously imposed a curfew in the eastern Sakeo province, which remains in force.
Thailand and Cambodia have exchanged heavy-weapons fire at multiple points along their 817-kilometre (508 mile) border since Monday, in some of the most intense fighting since a five-day clash in July that ended with Trump and Malaysian mediation.
Trump said he spoke to Thailand’s caretaker Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul and Cambodian Premier Hun Manet on Friday, and said they had agreed to “cease all shooting”.
On Saturday, Anutin vowed to keep fighting “until we feel no more harm and threats to our land and people”.
A White House spokesperson later said Trump expected all parties to honour commitments and that “he will hold anyone accountable as necessary to stop the killing and ensure durable peace”.
NEW YORK: Two people were killed and eight were critically wounded at a shooting Saturday at Brown University, the prestigious Ivy League school in Rhode Island, the mayor of Providence told reporters.
Mayor Brett Smiley said police were still searching for the shooter, who struck at Brown’s Barus and Holley engineering building, where exams were taking place at the time. Officials at a news conference said police were looking for a male dressed in black.
Smiley said officials could not yet disclose details about the victims, including whether they were students.
Brown is on College Hill in Providence, Rhode Island’s state capital. The university has hundreds of buildings, including lecture halls, laboratories and dormitories. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and other US federal officials were on the scene, said officials.
Officials said there were no suspects in police custody.
In comments to reporters at the White House, US President Donald Trump said he’d been briefed on the situation, which he called “terrible.”
“All we can do right now is pray for the victims and for those that were very badly hurt,” he added.
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