Foreign News
European leaders outraged after Russian strikes kill 23 and damage EU’s HQ
The head of the European Union’s executive Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has spoken of her outrage at Russia’s deadliest onslaught on Kyiv since July – which also damaged the EU’s delegation office in the Ukrainian capital.
At least 23 people, including four children, were killed and dozens more wounded in the bombardment, Ukrainian officials said.
A five-storey residential building was destroyed, and the EU mission and nearby British Council were damaged.
In a strongly worded statement, von der Leyen said that Russian missiles struck in close proximity to the diplomatic mission: “Two missiles hit in a distance of 50m (165ft) of the delegation within 20 seconds.”
Ukrainian forces said Russia had fired almost 600 drones and more than 30 ballistic and cruise missiles – the biggest attack on the capital this month.
Many of those killed were in the five-storey residential building in the south-eastern Darnytskyi district on Kyiv’s left bank.
A missile tore through the block of flats at about 03:00, causing it to collapse.
Diggers removed rubble, and rescue workers clambered on top of smouldering parts of the building looking for survivors.
Officials said three of the children killed were aged two, 14 and 17. Several other youngsters were wounded.
The overnight attacks followed a US-led diplomatic offensive aimed at bringing an end to the war and infuriated the UK as well as the EU.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer accused Russia’s Vladimir Putin of “sabotaging hopes of peace”, while EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said they showed “a deliberate choice to escalate and mock peace efforts”.
Moscow had chosen “ballistics instead of the negotiating table”, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who reiterated the need for “new, tough sanctions” on Russia.
Although the Kremlin said Russia was “still interested” in negotiations, von der Leyen said the strikes were “another grim reminder” that Russia would “stop at nothing to terrorise Ukraine”, killing men, women and children and even targeting the EU.
The US special envoy on Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said Russia’s “egregious attacks” on residential areas threatened the peace that President Donald Trump was pursuing.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Russia had “shown its true face again”, and the fact that the EU delegation had come under fire was an indication of the Kremlin’s increasing brazenness.
An EU spokeswoman said no diplomatic mission should ever be targeted and the Russian charge d’affaires in Brussels was being summoned in response to the attack.
Russia’s ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin, was summoned to the foreign office.
Zelensky said the attack on Ukraine’s cities and communities was a clear response from the Kremlin to everyone who had called for weeks and months “for a ceasefire and for real diplomacy”.
The wave of missiles came after more than 100,000 Ukrainian homes were left without power by Russian drone attacks on energy infrastructure on Wednesday. Another 60,000 consumers were left without power in the central Vinnytsia region in the latest attacks, officials said.
Russian forces also struck a Ukrainian naval vessel, killing one member of the crew and wounding several others. The Russian defence ministry claimed it had used an unmanned speedboat to target the reconnaissance ship Simferopol in the mouth of the River Danube, although Ukraine’s military gave no details of where the attack took place.
European Council President Antonio Costa said he was horrified by the latest Russian attacks on Kyiv.
The British Council, which fosters cultural relations with other countries and is housed in the same block as the EU’s mission, said its office was severely damaged and would be closed to visitors until further notice.
Ursula von der Leyen said the EU was preparing a 19th package of sanctions on Russia and announced she would visit seven EU member states who shared a border with Russia and its ally Belarus over the next few days.
The Commission said she would travel to Latvia and Finland on Friday before going on to Estonia, Poland, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Romania.
President Trump had hoped to organise a summit involving Zelensky and Russia’s Vladimir Putin to bring an end to the war, but those efforts have since stalled. He first met Putin in Alaska before holding talks with Zelensky and European leaders in Washington.
Ukraine’s president has backed the move, but the Kremlin has played down any chance of a Putin-Zelensky summit.
Despite the latest setback, US officials will hold talks with a Ukrainian delegation in New York on Friday. Zelensky said they would discuss “military, political and economic components of security guarantees” for Ukraine.
Ukraine is working with its European allies on guarantees aimed at preventing any future Russian attack in the event of a peace deal. Zelensky had talks in Kyiv this week with the head of Britain’s armed forces, Adm Sir Tony Radakin.
Russia says it will not accept European troops on the ground and says discussing them without Moscow’s involvement is a “road to nowhere”.
[BBC]
A car has crashed into a crowd of rugby league supporters in the eastern Australian city of Newcastle, injuring 10 people, including three children.
New South Wales police said on Saturday that two of the injured – a five-year-old girl and a 67-year-old man – were in a critical condition and the other eight were in stable condition in hospital.
Police said they had arrested the 18-year-old man driving the vehicle and were investigating what happened. They said the crash was not believed to be related to “terrorism”.
The crowd had gathered to farewell the local rugby league side, the Newcastle Knights, ahead of their grand final against the Sydney Roosters on Sunday.
Newcastle Lord Mayor Gavin Morris said the driver, a rugby league fan, had lost control of his vehicle and had been taken into custody.
“He was revving the car, he was excited, he was a supporter, he was there for the joy of the moment,” Morris told the national broadcaster ABC.
“Somehow he lost control of the car … and he’s gone into the crowd,” he added.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: “My thoughts are with everyone injured or involved in the horrible incident this morning in Newcastle.”
“Rugby league brings people together, and this should have been a weekend of excitement and pride for Newcastle fans,” he wrote in a social media post.
[Aljazeera]
Polls have opened in Latvia for an election taking place against the backdrop of perceived security threats from Russia and a nationwide cost-of-living squeeze.
Saturday’s vote is the first electoral test for Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs after coming to power in May this year when his predecessor resigned due to a backlash from stray drone incursions from Ukraine.
Kulbergs, whose right-wing United List party is currently polling at about 20 percent, is expected to hold onto his position, but the decline of two allies in his current coalition means he is set for a complicated negotiation over the makeup of any future government.
Polls opened at 05:00 GMT and will close at 17:00 GMT. The results are not expected to change Latvia’s pro-European and pro-Ukrainian course.
About 1.5 million people are eligible to vote in the country’s 11th parliamentary election since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Latvian politics are highly fragmented, with parties rarely seeing above 20 percent vote share and coalitions being the norm.
This year, 14 electoral lists are contesting the election, but polls indicate only seven are likely to enter parliament, with the rest expected to fail to meet the minimum 5 percent vote threshold.
Rising living costs, low wages, strains on the healthcare system and long-term population decline have all featured prominently in campaign debates.
Most parties in Latvia are pro-Ukraine; however, the populist Sovereign Power party – which says it wants Ukraine to win but argues money spent supporting Kyiv would be better spent at home – looks likely to become the country’s second-biggest party, with more than 9 percent of the vote. Most other parties have ruled out forming a coalition with Sovereign Power.
Latvia First, a pro-Ukraine and populist nationalist party currently polling at about 9 percent, could be a potential coalition partner for PM Kulbergs.
The Progressives, a pro-European social democratic party, are polling at 6 percent.
Ethnic Russians make up roughly one in four Latvian citizens, but their vote, which has traditionally been cast along identity-based lines, looks set to be made according to economic and social issues.
Latvia is the poorest of the Baltic states, and it has sharply increased its defence spending since Russia invaded Ukraine, now allocating nearly 5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to defence.
[Aljazeera]
A flight from the United Arab Emirates to Israel was diverted to Saudi Arabia after issuing a distress signal, in what appeared to be a hijacking attempt, on Wednesday.
The Flydubai flight FZ1073 was diverted as it flew from Dubai to Tel Aviv through Jordanian airspace, prompting Israel to deploy warplanes, the Reuters news agency reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said one of the pilots had stabbed the other and then tried to crash the plane. He added that Israel was preparing for other “potential threats” after the incident.
There has been no official confirmation of a hijacking attempt, however.
Flydubai said an altercation had occurred on the flight deck and that all passengers were safe and accounted for. The plane was secured by on-duty crew travelling onboard, it added.
At Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk airport, where the plane landed, officials said both the plane’s captain and the first officer had been hospitalised after sustaining injuries. Both were taken to the hospital, according to a statement from the Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Tabuk carried by the Saudi state-run Alekhbariya television.
The UAE has become a popular vacation destination for Israeli tourists since the countries normalised ties in 2020. Here’s what we know about what happened.
Footage taken onboard the plane appears to show the captain of the aircraft lying on the ground with several stab wounds, and a passenger with a bloody wound to the head.
In another video, passengers weep and cry out in distress as the aircraft shakes.
Yasmin Abukasis, the mother of one of the passengers onboard, said her daughter Miriam thought she was going to die. “The plane started to lose control,” she told journalists at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, before other pilots onboard took control of the aircraft.
Flight tracking data indicated the plane descended over 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds around two and a half hours after leaving Dubai. Flightradar24 said on X that an initial general emergency signal designated by code 7700 was issued at around 05:31 UTC and was later changed to another emergency signal with code 7500 declaring “unlawful interference”.
Passenger Dalia Shpigel told Israeli newspaper Haaretz that some people seated towards the front of the plane broke into the cockpit after the plane began to descend and they realised something was wrong.
“An hour before landing, we felt that there was no control over the plane, that it was starting to jump,” she said. “The guys saw that the plane had begun to dive and broke into the cockpit.”
Netanyahu said he later spoke to one of the Israeli passengers who broke into the cockpit and overpowered one of the pilots who was reportedly trying to sabotage the aircraft’s systems.
“I salute these heroes who demonstrated extraordinary resourcefulness and courage,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “They saved many lives and prevented a major disaster.”
Timeline of events
03:05 – Flight FZ1073 takes off from Dubai05:21 – Altitude fluctuations begin05:22 – Aircraft drops more than 14,000 ft in under 30 seconds05:31 – Signal from aircraft changes to 7700 (general emergency)05:38 – Signal changes to 7500 (unlawful interference)06:45 – Aircraft lands at Tabuk Regional Airport
[Aljazeera]
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