Eleven dead in Indian capital after heavy rain, flight operations stutter

Eleven dead in Indian capital after heavy rain, flight operations stutter
New Delhi faced the biggest downpour in decades on June 28, with rainfall in a single day surpassing the city’s average for the entire month. (AFP)
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Updated 30 June 2024
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Eleven dead in Indian capital after heavy rain, flight operations stutter

Eleven dead in Indian capital after heavy rain, flight operations stutter
  • New Delhi, which endured one of its worst heatwaves in history earlier this month, faced the biggest downpour in decades on June 28
  • Nearly 60 flights were canceled from New Delhi’s main airport in the last 24 hours, according to flight tracking platform Flightaware

NEW DELHI: The death toll from this week’s sudden heavy rain has climbed to 11 in New Delhi, including four citizens who drowned in submerged underpasses, the Times of India reported, while flight operations stuttered in the Indian capital.
New Delhi, which endured one of its worst heatwaves in history earlier this month, faced the biggest downpour in decades on June 28, with rainfall in a single day surpassing the city’s average for the entire month.
The torrential rain caused a fatal roof collapse at one of the three terminals of Delhi’s main airport, disrupted flights, flooded underpasses, and led to massive traffic jams, power and water outages in parts of the city.
Nearly 60 flights were canceled from New Delhi’s main airport in the last 24 hours, according to data from flight tracking platform Flightaware.
Operations were largely normal on Sunday, with most flights from the affected terminal diverted to the other two, an airport official said but did not rule out possible flight cancelations in the course of the day.
The Delhi airport is one of the country’s biggest and busiest.
Terminal 1, the now-closed terminal, is mostly used by low-cost carriers IndiGo, operated by Interglobe Aviation, and SpiceJet, and currently has a capacity to handle 40 million passengers annually.
An Indigo spokesperson did not comment on the flight cancelations and a SpiceJet spokesperson did not immediately respond to a phone call.


Local humanitarian workers dying in silence, Red Cross warns

Local humanitarian workers dying in silence, Red Cross warns
Updated 28 October 2024
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Local humanitarian workers dying in silence, Red Cross warns

Local humanitarian workers dying in silence, Red Cross warns
  • Their deaths are soaring amid clashes in Mideast, Sudan, Ukraine and Myanmar

GENEVA: Local staff and volunteers — the backbone of aid agencies providing help in the world’s worst conflicts — are dying in ever greater numbers. Yet few seem to notice, the head of the Red Cross said in an interview on Monday.

“Almost 95 percent of the humanitarians who are killed are actually the local staff and local volunteers,” Jagan Chapagain, the secretary-general of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

But while the killing of an international staff member of large humanitarian organizations can spark global outrage, there is often little attention paid when a local aid worker suffers the same fate.

“Unfortunately, when a local staffer or volunteer gets killed, it gets hardly any attention,” Chapagain said.

The issue is of particular concern this year, one of the deadliest for humanitarians, with aid worker deaths soaring as conflicts rage in the Middle East, Sudan, Ukraine and Myanmar, among others.

“It has been really the worst year for humanitarian actors, particularly the ones from the local communities,” Chapagain said.

Since the beginning of this year alone, 30 of the network’s volunteers have been killed worldwide, while within the UN system, “they have lost hundreds,” he said.

He decried a clear “erosion” in the respect for international humanitarian law and the principles requiring humanitarians to be protected.

Growing disregard for international law in conflict was significantly “increasing the situation of extreme exposures (and) risk for our humanitarian workers, (with) volunteers getting shot, ambulances getting attacked.”

Respect for the Red Cross Red Crescent emblem, and for people wearing the network’s signatory red vest has “eroded significantly,” he warned.

Asked if he believed humanitarians were being deliberately targeted, he said: “Definitely. Unfortunately, the numbers speak for themselves.”

Chapagain said the IFRC was “seriously, seriously concerned” about the growing dangers facing humanitarians and warned that more people could die if humanitarian workers are not protected.

His IFRC will along with the International Committee of the Red Cross kick off their quadrennial international conference in Geneva on Monday, which is due to focus heavily on the need to boost compliance with international humanitarian law.

It will include participants from the 191 national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, whose staff and volunteers are frequently the ones on the frontlines in conflicts and in the communities under attack.

Chapagain said his team estimated that when “a local gets harmed compared to an international who gets harmed, the attention is one to 500 ratio.”

“Any death is appalling, and we cannot accept that. But what we would also like to see is the same outrage when any humanitarians lose their life.”

“This is something super, super important, because globally... most of the people who are on the frontline providing ... assistance are the people from the local communities,” he said.

“Their lives should be as sacred as anyone else’s.”


Sikh separatist claims Indian ‘spy network’ operates in US and Canada

Sikh separatist claims Indian ‘spy network’ operates in US and Canada
Updated 28 October 2024
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Sikh separatist claims Indian ‘spy network’ operates in US and Canada

Sikh separatist claims Indian ‘spy network’ operates in US and Canada
  • The US Justice Department has unsealed indictments against two Indian nationals in connection with an alleged plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun
  • The two Indians included an ex-government official, who the indictment said worked as an intelligence officer at the time he orchestrated assassination

NEW YORK: Canada and the US must get tougher on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for trying to silence dissidents on foreign soil, a Sikh separatist who was the target of an alleged India-led murder plot said in an interview.
The US Justice Department has unsealed indictments against two Indian nationals in connection with an alleged plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a dual US-Canadian citizen, in New York. The two Indian accused included an ex-government official, who the indictment said worked as an intelligence officer at the time and had orchestrated the assassination plan.
Pannun told Reuters earlier this month that the Modi government should not be allowed to conduct hostile activity in foreign countries and said India’s consulates in the US and Canada were running a “spy network,” although he did not provide any proof.
The US and Canada “need to put their foot down that regimes like Modi’s...should not be allowed to come to America or Canada, challenge their sovereignty and get away with it. They need to put their foot down and close (the consulates) permanently,” he said.
Pannun did not elaborate on the alleged spy network. Similar assertions have been made by Sikh activists in America and Canada.
India’s foreign ministry did not respond to detailed questions from Reuters regarding Pannun’s allegations. India, where Pannun was born, has labelled him a terrorist since 2020.
Authorities in the US and Canada declined comment on Pannun’s allegations.
The US and Canada have alleged Indian agents were involved in assassination plots in their countries last year against campaigners for ‘Khalistan’, a Sikh homeland they want carved out of India’s Punjab state where Sikh militancy in the 1980s and 1990s killed thousands of people.
India has denied involvement in any of the plots.
The allegations have damaged India’s ties with Canada and tested relations between Washington and New Delhi.
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has accused India’s government of involvement in the 2023 murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, another Sikh separatist leader in Canada. In May, Canadian police arrested and charged four Indian men for the murder. They are yet to be tried.
India has said Canada has not provided any evidence to support its allegations and New Delhi and Ottawa expelled six diplomats each earlier this month in a growing diplomatic spat.
However, India has said it is investigating the murder plot against Pannun and US officials have said they want a speedy result.
Pannun said Vikash Yadav, the former Indian official indicted by the US for the alleged attempt on his life, was just a “middle-tier soldier,” assigned the task of organizing the assassination by higher-level Indian officials. He did not offer any proof nor say how he had come to the conclusion.
New Delhi has said Yadav was no longer a government employee, without saying whether he had been an intelligence officer and not detailing when he left. Yadav’s whereabouts are not known but his family told Reuters earlier this month he had been in contact and denied the allegations in the US indictment.
Indian security officials have said they fear that a rise in support for Khalistan overseas may lead to resurgence of militancy that had previously paralyzed Punjab state, the birthplace of Sikh nationalism, where the movement for a separate homeland now commands little support.
Pannun, who has been holding independent referendums in the US, Canada and Europe on creating Khalistan, said in the interview his movement advocates peaceful resolution of the matter, and will continue despite threats to his life.


Suspected militant killed in Indian-administered Kashmir after convoy ambush — Indian army

Suspected militant killed in Indian-administered Kashmir after convoy ambush — Indian army
Updated 28 October 2024
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Suspected militant killed in Indian-administered Kashmir after convoy ambush — Indian army

Suspected militant killed in Indian-administered Kashmir after convoy ambush — Indian army
  • Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between rivals India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947
  • The territory is home to a long-running insurgency and gunmen fired on an army convoy early Monday, but no one was injured

SRINAGAR: Indian troops killed a suspected militant in Indian-administered Kashmir on Monday hours after gunmen sprayed a military convoy with bullets, the army said, the latest attack in the disputed Himalayan territory.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between rivals India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, and is home to a long-running insurgency.
Gunmen fired on the army convoy including an ambulance in the early hours of Monday in the mountainous southern Akhnoor area, near the unofficial border with Pakistan. No one was injured.
Soldiers launched a hunt for the attackers, later reporting that one person had been killed.
“Body of one terrorist, along with weapon has been recovered,” the army’s White Knight Corps said in a statement.
At least 500,000 Indian troops are deployed in Indian-administered Kashmir, battling an insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and militants since 1989.
Earlier this month, gunmen killed seven people near a construction site of a strategic road tunnel to Ladakh, a high-altitude region bordering China.
On Friday, Indian officials said five people — including three soldiers — were killed in an ambush on an army convoy.
New Delhi regularly blames Pakistan for arming the militants and helping them launch attacks, an allegation Islamabad denies.
The army says more than 720 militants have been killed since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government canceled the territory’s limited autonomy in 2019.
In early October, Indian-administered Kashmir held its first elections since 2014 for a regional assembly for the territory of some 12 million people.


Former Philippine President Duterte confirms existence of ‘death squad’

Former Philippine President Duterte confirms existence of ‘death squad’
Updated 28 October 2024
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Former Philippine President Duterte confirms existence of ‘death squad’

Former Philippine President Duterte confirms existence of ‘death squad’
  • Rodrigo Duterte: ‘I had a death squad of seven, but they were not police, they were gangsters’
  • Human rights groups documented about 1,400 suspicious killings in Davao during the 22 years Duterte was mayor

MANILA: Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte confirmed a “death squad” existed under his watch to control crime when he was Davao City mayor, but gave conflicting accounts of its makeup, first saying it was run by police officers, then by gangsters.
When Duterte was president, two men including a former policeman had testified before the Senate they were part of an alleged hit squad in Davao they said killed at Duterte’s behest, but legislators at the time found no proof and Duterte’s aides dismissed the claims as fabrication.
Appearing on Monday before a Senate inquiry into his campaign against illegal drugs, Duterte identified “commanders” of the death squad which he said included former national police chief-turned senator Ronaldo dela Rosa, who was also present at the hearing.
“That is the job of the police,” said Duterte, who admitted to senators thousands of criminals died when he was Davao mayor.
He said he had never ordered the death squad to kill defenseless suspects, but did tell the group “to encourage criminals to fight back, and when they fought back, kill them so my problems in the city will be solved.”
But the 79 year-old Duterte later said gangsters — not police — made up his death squad, adding to the ambiguity surrounding the squad’s operations.
“I can make the confession now if you want,” Duterte said. “I had a death squad of seven, but they were not police, they were gangsters.”
Human rights groups documented about 1,400 suspicious killings in Davao during the 22 years Duterte was mayor and critics say the war on drugs he unleashed as president bore the same hallmarks.
More than 6,200 people were killed in police operations in the drugs campaign, which is also the subject of an International Criminal Court investigation.
Police reject allegations the killings were executions, saying the drug suspects violently resisted arrest and that authorities acted in self-defense.
Senator dela Rosa, who oversaw Duterte’s bloody crackdown when he was national police chief, previously said the death squads were “fiction.” In the hearing on Monday, he downplayed Duterte’s remarks, saying they should be taken as a joke.


NATO chief says he can confirm North Korean troops are in Russia’s Kursk

NATO chief says he can confirm North Korean troops are in Russia’s Kursk
Updated 28 October 2024
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NATO chief says he can confirm North Korean troops are in Russia’s Kursk

NATO chief says he can confirm North Korean troops are in Russia’s Kursk

BRUSSELS: NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte confirmed on Monday that North Korean troops have been sent to Russia and that North Korean military units have been deployed to the Kursk region.
“The deepening military cooperation between Russia and North Korea is a threat to both Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security,” Rutte told reporters after NATO officials and diplomats received a briefing from a South Korean delegation.
Ukrainian forces staged a major incursion into Kursk in August and remain in the region.
Rutte said the North Korean deployment represented “a significant escalation” of Pyongyang’s involvement in “Russia’s illegal war” in Ukraine, a breach of UN Security Council resolutions and a “dangerous expansion” of the war.
Rutte said the deployment of North Korean troops was a sign of “growing desperation” on the part of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Over 600,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in Putin’s war and he is unable to sustain his assault on Ukraine without foreign support,” Rutte said.
The Kremlin had dismissed reports about a North Korean troop deployment as “fake news.” But Putin on Thursday did not deny that North Korean troops were currently in Russia and said that it was Moscow’s business how to implement a partnership treaty with Pyongyang.
A North Korean representative to the United Nations in New York called the reports “groundless rumors.”
Ukraine’s top presidential official said on Monday sanctions would not be a sufficient response to North Korean involvement in the war and called for more Western arms supplies to Kyiv.
“North Korean troops are already in the Kursk region...This is an escalation. Sanctions alone are not enough. We need weapons and a clear plan to prevent North Korea’s expanded involvement in the war in Europe,” Andriy Yermak, president’s chief of staff, said on X.
He added that Ukraine’s Western allies should respond firmly since “the enemy understands strength.”