Important Takeaways:
- Survivors were pulled out of rubble in Myanmar and signs of life were detected in the ruins of a skyscraper in Bangkok on Monday as efforts intensified to find people trapped three days after a massive earthquake in Southeast Asia that killed at least 2,000.
- Rescuers freed four people, including a pregnant woman and a girl, from collapsed buildings in Mandalay, the city in central Myanmar near the epicenter of Friday’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.
- Civil war in Myanmar, where a military junta seized power in a coup in 2021, was complicating efforts to reach those injured and made homeless by the Southeast Asian nation’s biggest quake in a century.
- “Access to all victims is an issue … given the conflict situation. There are a lot of security issues to access some areas across the front lines in particular,”
- One rebel group said Myanmar’s ruling military was still conducting airstrikes on villages in the aftermath of the quake, and Singapore’s foreign minister called for an immediate ceasefire to help relief efforts.
- In the Thai capital Bangkok, rescuers pulled out another body from the rubble of an under-construction skyscraper that collapsed in the quake, bringing the death toll from the building collapse to 12, with a total of 19 dead across Thailand and 75 still missing at the building site.
- Realistic chances of survival diminish after 72 hours, she said, adding: “We have to speed up. We’re not going to stop even after 72 hours.”
- In Myanmar, state media said the death toll had reached 2,065 with more than 3,900 injured and over 270 missing and that the military government had declared a week-long mourning period from Monday.
- Reuters could not immediately confirm the new death tolls. Media access has been restricted in the country since the junta took power. Junta chief General Min Aung Hlaing warned at the weekend that the number of fatalities could rise.
- Critical infrastructure – including bridges, highways, airports and railways – across the country of 55 million lie damaged, slowing humanitarian efforts while the conflict that has battered the economy, displaced over 3.5 million people and debilitated the health system, rages on.
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Important Takeaways:
- Eight Israeli soldiers have been killed amid intense clashes in southern Lebanon after commando units were ambushed by Hezbollah fighters earlier today, the IDF has revealed.
- News of the losses came as Hezbollah declared it was ‘only the first round’ of its fight against Israel, while the IDF released video footage showing its special forces carrying out the invasion for the first time.
- Hezbollah’s media officer Mohammad Afif sought to dispel speculation that the Lebanese militant outfit had been weakened by ongoing Israeli attacks
- ‘Our forces and resistance are fully prepared to confront and resist the enemy. I tell everyone that the resistance is fine and the command and control system is fine,’ Afif declared.
- ‘What happened today in Misgav Am, Maroun al-Ras and Adaisseh today is only the beginning,’ Afif said.
- Meanwhile, Israel’s military is preparing a response to yesterday’s shocking attack by Iran that saw nearly 200 ballistic missiles streak across the Middle East and rain down on Israel last night.
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Important Takeaways:
- Wildfires in Brazil’s southern Sao Paulo state have killed at least two people, officials said Saturday. At least 36 cities have been put on high alert.
- The fires have raged in the region outside the city of Sao Paulo, one of Latin America’s most populous cities with more than 11 million residents.
- At least 7,300 government workers and volunteers had been deployed across the state to “contain the advance and put out these fires,” de Freitas told journalists. De Freitas warned that the flames, spurred on by a heat wave and a drought, may be fanned by strong winds.
- The region has been plagued with the worst wildfires in decades, according to local news organization Folha de S.Paulo, which counted 4,973 fires in the region just this year.
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Important Takeaways:
- Four prison employees have been killed after prisoners staged a revolt in a Russian penal colony and took several hostages, federal authorities say.
- Special forces stormed the IK-19 Surovikino facility in the southwestern Volgograd region after knife-wielding prisoners, who identified themselves as Islamic State (IS) militants, claimed to have taken control of the sprawling complex.
- The attack began during a disciplinary commission meeting, Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service said in a statement.
- It was unclear how many hostages had been taken, though some reports in Russian media suggested that the prison’s director and deputy director had been seized
- The Volgograd hostage-taking is the second such incident this summer, after six prisoners who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group captured two guards at a facility in the neighboring Rostov region.
- IK-19 Surovikino is a high-security penal colony. It is believed to hold about 1,200 inmates.
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Important Takeaways:
- One of the multiple fires burning along Colorado’s Front Range this week — the Quarry fire in Jefferson County, just west of Denver — is now being investigated as arson, law enforcement officials announced Friday morning.
- This week’s wildfires have killed one person, damaged or destroyed at least 30 buildings, prompted the evacuation of thousands of people along the Front Range and triggered Gov. Jared Polis to deploy the Colorado National Guard.
- All four major fires currently burning — the Quarry fire in Jefferson County, the Alexander Mountain fire in Larimer County, the Stone Canyon fire in Boulder and Larimer counties and the Bucktail fire in Montrose County — began this week and grew rapidly, fueled by hot, dry weather and arid conditions on the ground.
- The Deer Creek Mesa, Kuehster, McKinney Ranch, Murphy Gulch, Sampson and Maxwell areas remain under mandatory evacuation Friday, according to the county’s evacuation map.
- The Hilldale Pines, Oehlmann Park, Silver Ranch, West Ranch, Homestead and Silver Ranch South neighborhoods are on pre-evacuation notice.
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Important Takeaways:
- Leading shipping groups have urged governments “with influence” to put a stop to Houthi attacks on vessels in the Red Sea after a second freighter sank this week.
- At least three seafarers have been killed in the attacks so far. The latest sinking is likely to have led to another death
- “It is deplorable that innocent seafarers are being attacked while simply performing their jobs, vital jobs which keep the world warm, fed, and clothed,” the shipping associations said in their statement.
- “This is an unacceptable situation, and these attacks must stop now. We call for states with influence in the region to safeguard our innocent seafarers and for the swift de-escalation of the situation in the Red Sea,” they added.
- The Iranian-aligned Houthi rebels, based in Yemen, started launching drone and missile strikes on vessels in the Red Sea in November in what they say is revenge against Israel’s war in Gaza. They have since also seized one vessel and its crew, who are still being held hostage.
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Important Takeaways:
- Moscow concert attack survivors describe nightmare of fear and death
- The four armed men walked calmly towards the metal detectors at Crocus City Hall, firing their automatic weapons point-blank in short bursts at terrified civilians who fell screaming in a hail of bullets.
- Nearby, one witness named Natalya had just taken off her coat and was standing in line on Friday evening at the internal entrance to the 6,200-seat concert hall outside Moscow, where Soviet-era rock group “Picnic” was to perform its hit “Afraid of Nothing.”
- “The shots came from behind us,” Natalya, who asked for her surname not to be used, told Reuters.
- More than 143 people were killed and dozens more injured in the deadliest attack in Russia since the 2004 Beslan school siege. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.
- The Federal Security Service (FSB) said 11 people – including the four alleged attackers – had been detained in the Bryansk region, about 340 km (210 miles) southwest of Moscow, as they headed for the border over which they hoped to escape to Ukraine. Kyiv has denied any involvement in that attack.
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Important Takeaways:
- At least 103 killed in Iran ‘terrorist attack’ at event honoring general taken out in US drone strike, Tehran says
- Explosions at an event honoring a prominent Iranian general slain in a U.S. airstrike in 2020 have killed at least 103 people and wounded 170 others, state-run media in Iran reported Wednesday.
- One official called them a “terroristic” attack.
- Babak Yektaparast, a spokesman for Iran’s emergency service, gave the casualty figure to state media.
- The blasts struck an event marking the fourth anniversary of the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force. who died in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq in January 2020.
- The explosions occurred near his gravesite in Kerman, about 820 kilometers (510 miles) southeast of the capital, Tehran.
- Authorities said some people were injured while fleeing afterward.
- Footage suggested that the second blast occurred some 15 minutes after the first.
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Important Takeaways:
- Prague University shooter named as David Kozak who murdered dad before horror spree
- The evil shooter who killed 14 people at Charles University in Prague and injured at least two dozen more…
- Police say the killer murdered his father in a nearby town before heading into the Czech capital and going on a shooting spree at the historic site, randomly firing at people from a balcony and then taking his own life. It is the worst mass shooting in the Czech Republic’s history.
- None of the victims have yet been identified, and the circumstances surrounding the incident have also not yet been determined or revealed.
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Important Takeaways:
- The death toll from Indonesia’s Marapi volcano eruption jumped to 22 on Tuesday as rescuers found more climbers who had perished near the crater, the head of the West Sumatra rescue agency said on Tuesday, up from 13 earlier in the day.
- About 200 rescuers will resume search operations on Wednesday for one further missing climber.
- The 2,891-metre high volcano in West Sumatra erupted on Sunday, spewing gray clouds of ash as high as 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) into the sky.
- “We are now evacuating the dead bodies from the peak of the volcano,” said the head of the search and rescue team, Abdul Malik.
- Still, there were 75 climbers on the volcano when it erupted, rescuers said.
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