Politics
Two dead, three wounded in UK synagogue attack
- Manchester police activate counter-terror response protocol.
- PM Starmer chairs emergency meeting after leaving summit early.
- King Charles, Israel condemn attack on Yom Kippur as horrific.
Two people were killed on Thursday and three badly wounded outside a packed synagogue in Manchester in a car and stabbing attack, with the suspect believed shot dead by UK police.
As the Jewish community marked the holiday of Yom Kippur in the northwestern city, police were called to the incident, activating a national terrorism-response protocol.
The attack struck days ahead of the second anniversary of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, raids on Israe,l which sparked a fierce offensive in Gaza, inflaming passions in Britain.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer swiftly condemned the attack as “horrific”, and announced security was being boosted at UK synagogues.
He left a European political summit in Denmark early to chair an emergency security meeting in London.
King Charles III said he and Queen Camilla were “deeply shocked and saddened to learn of the horrific attack in Manchester, especially on such a significant day for the Jewish community”.
Greater Manchester Police declared a “major incident” shortly after 9:30am (0830 GMT) after officers were called to the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in the Crumpsall neighbourhood.
The force initially said paramedics were treating four people for “injuries caused by both the vehicle and stab wounds” while confirming firearms officers had shot one man “believed to be the offender”.
Within hours, it announced two people had died and the suspected offender shot by officers was “also believed to be deceased”.
Police said the death could not be confirmed due to “suspicious items on his person”, noting a bomb disposal unit was at the scene.
Three people were also in a “serious condition”, police added.
Starmer said he was appalled and pledged to “do everything to keep our Jewish community safe”.
“The fact that this has taken place on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, makes it all the more horrific,” he added.
Israel’s embassy in the UK said it was “abhorrent and deeply distressing” that “such an act of violence should be perpetrated on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar”.
“The safety and security of Jewish communities in the United Kingdom must be guaranteed,” it added on X.
Police said officers first responded to calls from the public about a car driving into people outside the synagogue, as well as reports that a security guard had been attacked with a knife.
A witness told BBC Radio he saw police shooting a man after a car crash.
“They give him a couple of warnings, he didn’t listen until they opened fire,” he said.
“He went down on the floor, and then he started getting back up, and then they shot him again.”
Police said “a large number of people worshipping at the synagogue… were held inside while the immediate area was made safe”, but then evacuated.
Manchester mayor Andy Burnham told the BBC police had “dealt with it very quickly with some amazing support from members of the public”.
He urged people “not to speculate on social media”, while noting the Jewish community “will be very worried by the news”.
The city, famous around the world for its two Premier League football clubs and industrial history, is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the UK.
It totalled more than 28,000 in 2021, according to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.
MP Graham Stringer said the area was home to both large Jewish and Muslim communities.
“By and large, community relations are excellent between all the different ethnic groups and religious groups,” he told BBC Radio Manchester.
The Community Security Trust (CST), a Jewish charity that records antisemitic incidents, said it was “working with police and the local Jewish community”.
“This appears to be an appalling attack on the holiest day of the Jewish year,” CST added.
The city has witnessed several deadly terror attacks, notably in 2017 when Salman Abedi detonated a homemade suicide bomb outside an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester Arena.
It killed 22 people, some of them children, and injured hundreds more.
A man in India’s south brutally killed his estranged wife at a women’s hostel and took a selfie with her dead body, according to NDTV.
The victim, identified as Sripriya, employed at a private firm in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, had separated from her husband, Balamurugam, who was from Tirunelveli.
Police said the suspect arrived at the hostel on Sunday afternoon, concealing a sickle in his clothes, and was seeking to meet her.
They had an argument soon after the couple met, and the feud turned into a violent attack by Balamurugan, who drew the sickle and hacked the woman to death.
Furthermore, the police said he then took a selfie with her body and shared it on his WhatsApp status, accusing her of “betrayal”.
The incident spread panic and chaos in the hostel.
Following the brutal murder, the suspect did not escape from the spot but waited until the police arrived, and he was arrested at the crime scene. The murder weapon was recovered.
The initial investigation suggested that he suspected his wife of being in a relationship with another man.
- Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand witness large scale devastation.
- At least 176 people perish in Thailand and three in Malaysia.
- Indonesia’s death toll reaches 502 with 508 more still missing.
PALEMBAYAN: Rescue teams in western Indonesia were battling on Monday to clear roads cut off by cyclone-induced landslides and floods, as improved weather revealed more of the scale of a disaster that has killed close to 700 people in Southeast Asia.
Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have seen large scale devastation after a rare tropical storm formed in the Malacca Strait, fuelling torrential rains and wind gusts for a week that hampered efforts to reach people stranded by mudslides and high floodwaters.
At least 176 have been killed in Thailand and three in Malaysia, while the death toll climbed to 502 in Indonesia on Monday with 508 missing, according to official figures.
Under sunshine and clear blue skies in the town of Palembayan in Indonesia’s West Sumatra, hundreds of people were clearing mud, trees and wreckage from roads as some residents tried to salvage valuable items like documents and motorcycles from their damaged homes.
Men in camouflage outfits sifted through piles of mangled poles, concrete and sheet metal roofing as pickup trucks packed with people drove around looking for missing family members and handing out water to people, some trudging through knee-deep mud.
Months of adverse, deadly weather
The government’s recovery efforts include restoring roads, bridges and telecommunication services.
More than 28,000 homes have been damaged in Indonesia and 1.4 million people affected, according to the disaster agency.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto visited the three affected provinces on Monday and praised residents for their spirit in the face of what he called a catastrophe.
“There are roads that are still cut off, but we’re doing everything we can to overcome difficulties,” he said in North Sumatra.
“We face this disaster with resilience and solidarity. Our nation is strong right now, able to overcome this.”
The devastation in the three countries follows months of adverse and deadly weather in Southeast Asia, including typhoons that have lashed the Philippines and Vietnam and caused frequent and prolonged flooding elsewhere.
Scientists have warned that extreme weather events will become more frequent as a result of global warming.
Marooned for days
In Thailand, the death toll rose slightly to 176 on Monday from flooding in eight southern provinces that affected about three million people and led to a major mobilisation of its military to evacuate critical patients from hospitals and reach people marooned for days by floodwaters.
In the hardest-hit province of Songkhla, where 138 people were killed, the government said 85% of water services had been restored and would be fully operational by Wednesday.
Much of Thailand’s recovery effort is focused on the worst-affected city Hat Yai, a southern trading hub which on November 21 received 335 mm (13 inches) of rain, its highest single-day tally in 300 years, followed by days of unrelenting downpours.
Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has set a timeline of seven days for residents to return to their homes, a government spokesperson said on Monday.
In neighbouring Malaysia, 11,600 people were still in evacuation centres, according to the country’s disaster agency, which said it was still on alert for a second and third wave of flooding.
- Ex-Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina, sister Rehana also sentenced.
- Case relates to illegal allocation of a plot of land: local media.
- Prosecutors highlight political influence, collusion abuse of power.
DHAKA: A Bangladesh court sentenced British parliamentarian and former minister Tulip Siddiq to two years in jail in a corruption case involving the alleged illegal allocation of a plot of land, local media reported.
The verdict was delivered in absentia as Siddiq, her aunt and former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and Hasina’s sister Sheikh Rehana — all co-accused in the case — were not present in court.
Hasina was sentenced to five years in jail and Rehana to seven, the local media reports said.
Hasina, who fled to neighbouring India in August 2024 at the height of an uprising against her government, was sentenced to death last month over her government’s violent crackdown on demonstrators during the protests.
Last week, she was handed a combined 21-year prison sentence in other corruption cases.
Prosecutors said that the land was unlawfully allocated through political influence and collusion with senior officials, accusing the three powerful defendants of abusing their authority to secure the plot, measuring roughly 13,610 square feet, during Hasina’s tenure as prime minister.
Most of the 17 accused were absent when the judgement was pronounced.
Siddiq, who resigned in January as the UK’s minister responsible for financial services and anti-corruption efforts following scrutiny over her financial ties to Hasina, has previously dismissed the allegations as a “politically motivated smear”.
Britain does not currently have an extradition treaty with Bangladesh.
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