Author: AFP

Tens of thousands of people in Bosnia were still without electricity Friday due to a snowstorm, as rescuers found the body of a weather station employee dead on a mountain. The storm, which started on Sunday night, initally left more than 170,000 people without electricity and cut off parts of the Balkan nation. Although the weather has improved across the country, local officials and power firms said thousands of people were still cut off by blocked roads and tens of thousands of households were without electricity, notably in northern Bosnia. Meanwhile, a weather station employee was found dead in the…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Friday for a “thorough investigation” into the Azerbaijan Airlines crash and pointed to “clear visual evidence” of Russian involvement. “Every loss of life deserves a thorough investigation to establish the truth. We can see how the clear visual evidence at the crash site points to Russia’s responsibility for the tragedy,” Zelensky said in a social media post, addressing reports the plane was hit by a Russian air defence missile.

Mexican authorities have discovered 12 bodies buried in clandestine graves in Mexico’s northern Chihuahua state, officials said Thursday. Authorities discovered 11 graves containing 12 skeletons in Ascension municipality near the US border, the state prosecutor’s office said in a statement. “The discovery was made during tracking operations that took place on December 18, 19 and 20,” it said. “The unidentified skeletons and evidence were transferred to the laboratories of the Forensic Medical Service” to the city of Ciudad Juarez, it said. Chihuahua has been hit for years by violence linked to organized crime as a route for drug trafficking and…

Huge crowds demonstrated in Yemen’s capital on Friday, a day after Israeli jets pounded Huthi rebel targets in response to missile and drone attacks by the Iran-backed group. Tens of thousands of people gathered in rebel-held Sanaa, chanting and brandishing Kalashnikovs, placards and pistols as they listened to fiery anti-Israel speeches. Large-scale demonstrations are a regular occurrence in Sanaa under the Iran-backed Huthis but Friday’s protest followed a surge in hostilities with Israel, which struck multiple sites on Thursday. Six people were killed, including four at Sanaa’s international airport where World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was waiting for…

NATO is ready to help Finland and Estonia as Finnish authorities probe an oil tanker that sailed from a Russian port over the possible “sabotage” of a power cable linking the two member countries, alliance chief Mark Rutte said Thursday. “Spoke with (Estonian Prime Minister) Kristen Michal about reported possible sabotage of Baltic Sea cables. NATO stands in solidarity with Allies and condemns any attacks on critical infrastructure. We are following investigations by Estonia and Finland, and we stand ready to provide further support,” Rutte said on X.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that his country’s strikes on Yemen’s Huthi rebels would continue “until the job is done”. “We are determined to cut this branch of terrorism from the Iranian axis of evil. We will continue until the job is done,” he said in a video statement released after Israel struck multiple sites in Yemen.

The UN mission to Afghanistan on Thursday called for an investigation into Pakistani air strikes in Afghanistan, in which the Taliban government said 46 people were killed, including civilians. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said it had “received credible reports that dozens of civilians, including women and children, were killed in airstrikes by Pakistan’s military forces in Paktika province, Afghanistan, on 24 December”. “International law obliges military forces to take necessary precautions to prevent civilian harm,” the agency said in a statement, adding an “investigation is needed to ensure accountability”. The Taliban government said the 46 deceased…

The Arab League regional bloc called on Iran on Thursday not to fuel “strife” in Syria, after the ouster of Tehran ally Baath regime leader Bashar al-Assad ended decades of rule by his clan. Assad’s government crumbled on December 8 and he fled for Russia, another key backer of his rule, after an opposition coalition of fighters wrested control of city after city until they reached Damascus. With Assad’s fall, Iran lost a key ally in the region, just as its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah emerged massively weakened but not crushed from a year of war with Israel. The Arab League,…

A “terrorist act” sank the cargo ship that went down in international waters in the Mediterranean, the Russian state-owned company that owns the vessel said Wednesday. The Oboronlogistika company, which belongs to the Russian defence ministry, said it “thinks a targeted terrorist attack was committed on December 23, 2024, against the Ursa Major,” it said in a statement cited by Russian news agencies, without indicating who may have been behind the act or why.

An Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet crashed on Wednesday in western Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people on board, officials said. The Embraer 190 aircraft that was supposed to fly northwest from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the city of Grozny in Chechnya in southern Russia but instead flew across the Caspian Sea and went down near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan. The plane’s course on Flight Radar website showed it flying away from its normal route and then circling over the area where it eventually crashed near Aktau, which is an oil and gas hub on the eastern…