Category: English

WARSAW – A major wildfire has engulfed approximately 400 hectares of Biebrza National Park in northeastern Poland, local authorities confirmed Monday morning.

The fire, which began Sunday afternoon at the border of Augustow and Monki counties in Podlaskie province, has spread rapidly despite ongoing firefighting efforts.

Justyna Klusewicz, spokesperson for the Podlaskie Provincial Command of the State Fire Service, told the Polish Press Agency on Monday that roughly 180 firefighters, supported by forest services, park rangers and soldiers, are currently battling the blaze.

Overnight, drones were deployed to monitor the situation, and on Monday, additional firefighting aircraft, including helicopters, resumed operations to tackle the fire in the remote and hard-to-reach areas.

The Government Center for Security has issued emergency alerts for residents of the Augustow, Grajewo and Monki regions, advising them to stay clear of the affected areas and follow the guidance of emergency services.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation. No casualties have been reported.

Biebrza National Park, renowned for its vast marshes and unique biodiversity, is one of Poland’s most ecologically significant protected areas.

XINHUA

SANAA – Yemen’s Houthi group said on Monday that it had launched fresh attacks at two Israeli targets and two U.S. aircraft carriers, using drones and cruise missiles.

“We launched a drone attack at a vital target in the city of Ashkelon and another drone attack at a military target in the city of Eilat,” Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said in the statement aired by Houthi-run al-Masirah TV.

He didn’t identify the names of the targets in both cities in southern Israel.

“As part of confronting the American aggression … we targeted the aircraft carrier Truman and its escorting warships in the northern Red Sea, using two cruise missiles and two drones,” Sarea said, referring to the USS S. Harry Truman.

“We also targeted the aircraft carrier Vinson (the USS Carl Vinson) and its escorting warships in the Arabian Sea, using three cruise missiles and four drones,” he said.

Sarea reaffirmed that the group’s attacks “will continue” against Israel and the U.S. naval forces in the region.

According to the Houthi television, the attacks against Israel and the U.S. warships were carried out in the past 24 hours.

The Israeli defense forces have yet to comment on the Houthi claim, nor the U.S. military.

Meanwhile, the U.S. airstrikes in Yemen have been continuing. Early in the day, the Houthi television said the death toll from U.S. airstrikes on Sunday night against a popular market in the Shu’ub neighborhood in central Yemen’s capital Sanaa rose to 12, with 30 other “civilians” wounded.

Also on Sunday night, the Houthi television reported other U.S. airstrikes on several Houthi locations in the northern provinces of Al-Mahwit, Saada, and Marib.

Tensions between the Houthi group and the U.S. military have escalated since Washington resumed airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen on March 15 to deter the group from targeting Israel and U.S. warships.

XINHUA

JERUSALEM – Israel’s military said on Monday that it carried out more than 200 airstrikes across the Gaza Strip over the past three days, killing a member of the Islamic Jihad movement.

The military said the strikes targeted militant infrastructure, militant cells, rocket launch and sniper positions, weapons depots and command centers.

It identified the killed fighter as Ahmad Mansour, who it said participated in the Hamas-led surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and later directed rocket fire during the ongoing war.

In Rafah’s Shabura and Tel al-Sultan neighborhoods, Israeli troops dismantled “terrorist infrastructure” and uncovered a cache of grenades, ammunition and other military gear.

Along the recently constructed Morag Corridor, which bisects Rafah from Khan Younis and the rest of Gaza, troops located weapons, destroyed Hamas infrastructure and killed several militants, the military said.

In northern Gaza, soldiers launched an airstrike on a building containing what was described as underground infrastructure and detected multiple militants. The army also reported dismantling Hamas sniper posts that had threatened its ground forces.

At least eight people were killed in Israeli strikes on Monday and dozens wounded, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

XINHUA

ROME – Pope Francis, the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, died Monday at the age of 88, said the Vatican in a statement.

Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio on Dec. 17, 1936, in Buenos Aires, Francis was head of the Roman Catholic Church since 2013.

His death came weeks after returning home from a 38-day stay in intensive care, and followed an intense Holy Week schedule that included public appearances.

After a period of mourning, the Vatican will turn toward preparations for a gathering of the College of Cardinals to select Francis’ successor.

XINHUA

Three people died and a fourth was critically injured early Easter Sunday when a fire tore through an overcrowded home in Queens, that had no evidence of a working smoke detector and had blocked stairs and exits, fire officials said.

Makeshift walls had been erected in the Jamaica Estates home, including through the middle of the kitchen, New York Fire Department Chief John Esposito said at a news conference.

Officials also said extension cords were found throughout the two story home. The cords can overheat, especially when overloaded or improperly used, leading to fires, according to Electrical Safety Foundation International. The fire department is still determining the fire’s origin.

Firefighters arrived in less than four minutes, but the blaze in the early morning hours spread quickly to the upper floors of the house. There were reports of people jumping out of the attic window, Esposito said.

People lived on both floors of the house, as well as its cellar and attic, Esposito said.

“We are not encouraging, we’re begging all New Yorkers to have a working smoke alarm in their home, and, you know, if possible a CO2 detector as well,” New York City Fire Commissioner Robert S. Tucker said during a Sunday press conference.

About 10 to 15 people reside in the home, including its landlord, second floor resident Adham Ammar told ABC7 Eyewitness News. Ammar was not in the home when the fire happened, he said.

“Part of this, it’s because of the negligence of the landlord,” he said. Attempts by the AP to reach the landlord were unsuccessful.

Three firefighters suffered minor injuries.

AP

Russia launched missiles and drones targeting Ukraine early on Monday, waking up Kyiv and the eastern half of the country, hours after the one-day Easter ceasefire declared by Russian President Vladimir Putin came to an end.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or major damages from the attacks, regional Ukrainian officials said on social media. The scale of the attack was not immediately clear.

Both Kyiv and Moscow had accused each other of thousands of attacks that violated the truce that the Kremlin indicated on Sunday would not be extended.

Washington said it would welcome an extension of the truce, and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy reiterated several times Ukraine’s willingness to pause strikes for 30 days in the war.

But Putin, who launched Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and who ordered on Saturday the halt in all military activity along the front line until midnight Moscow time (2100 GMT) on Sunday, did not give orders to extend it.

“There were no other commands,” Russia’s TASS state news agency cited Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying when asked whether the ceasefire could be prolonged.

While eastern Ukraine was placed under air raid alerts starting minutes after midnight on Monday that are yet to be called off, according to data from the Ukrainian air force, Kyiv and the central regions were placed on alert for about an hour, starting at 0140 GMT.

There were no reports of strikes on the Ukrainian capital, but officials in the port city of Mykolaiv said that it had been hit by Russian missiles. There were no immediate reports of damages.

Russia’s Voronezh region that borders Ukraine was also under air raid alerts for two hours overnight, and the borders regions of Kursk and parts of Belgorod were briefly under missile threat as well, regional officials said.

While there were no air raid alerts in Ukraine on Sunday, Ukrainian forces reported nearly 3,000 violations of Russia’s own ceasefire with the heaviest attacks and shelling seen along the Pokrovsk part of the frontline, Zelenskiy said earlier on Monday.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had shot at Russian positions 444 times and said it had counted more than 900 Ukrainian drone attacks, saying also that there were deaths and injuries among the civilian population.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield reports.

U.S. President Donald Trump, hoping to clinch a lasting peace deal, struck an optimistic note Sunday, saying that “hopefully” the two sides would make a deal “this week” to end the conflict.

On Friday, Trump and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said the U.S. would walk away from peace efforts unless there are clear signs of progress soon.

REUTERS

SEOUL – One person was killed and 11 others injured on Monday morning in what was alleged to be an apartment arson in South Korea’s capital Seoul, Yonhap news agency said, citing the fire authorities.

The fire broke out at about 8:17 a.m. local time (2317 GMT Sunday) in a 21-story apartment building. The flame was extinguished one and a half hours later.

One person was found dead, and two people were taken to a hospital after falling from the apartment. Nine others suffered minor injuries such as smoke inhalation and difficulty with breathing.

Police suspect a man started the fire on purpose, and are tracking down the suspected arsonist, according to Yonhap.

XINHUA

WASHINGTON, April 20 – At least two people, including a child, died in Oklahoma after their vehicle was stranded in flood waters, police said on Sunday, as severe weather and flooding hit parts of the U.S. South and Midwest during the Easter holiday weekend.

“This was a historical weather event that impacted roads and caused dozens of high-water incidents,” police in Moore, Oklahoma, about 11 miles south of Oklahoma City, said in a statement.

“One of (the vehicles) left the roadway and was swept under the bridge. At the time of the incident all but two occupants were rescued. It is with great sadness that we report that two individuals, an adult female and a 12-year-old male, were later located deceased,” they said.

Police in Moore urged people to stay at home and said late on Saturday they responded to over a dozen calls from residents whose vehicles were trapped in high water.

Flood warnings, which suggest that a flood is occurring or is imminent, were in place across Oklahoma.

The National Weather Service said on Sunday severe thunderstorms were expected from east Texas into far southeast Iowa and Illinois while a strong tornado and damaging wind potential will exist from central Arkansas into central Missouri.

A tornado watch was issued for parts of Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Oklahoma, the National Weather Service added.

Earlier this month, a deadly spring storm spawned tornadoes and drenching thunderstorms in a swath of the U.S. stretching from Texas to Ohio, with over a dozen people killed in states of the U.S. South and Midwest.

REUTERS

MOSCOW – Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday that Ukraine had broken the Easter ceasefire declared by Russian President Vladimir Putin more than a thousand times, inflicting damages to infrastructure and causing civilian deaths.

The ministry said that Ukrainian forces had shot at Russian positions 444 times while it had counted more than 900 Ukrainian drone attacks.

It said the border districts of the Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions have been attacked.

“As a result, there were deaths and injuries among the civilian population, as well as damage to civilian objects,” it said in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging app.

Reuters was not able to verify battlefield reports.

The defence ministry also said that the Russian military had gained control of Novomikhailivka in eastern Ukraine before the declaration of ceasefire.

REUTERS

GAZA – Gaza’s civil defense agency reported that Israeli air strikes since dawn on Sunday have killed at least 25 people across the Gaza Strip, including women and children.

Israel resumed its aerial and ground assault on Gaza on March 18, reigniting fighting after a two-month ceasefire that had paused more than 15 months of war in the coastal territory.

“Since dawn today, the occupation’s air strikes have killed 20 people and injured dozens more, including children and women across the Gaza Strip,” Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defense agency told AFP.

In a separate statement later, the agency reported that five people were killed in an Israeli drone strike on a group of civilians in eastern Rafah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday vowed to continue the war and bring home the remaining hostages held in Gaza without yielding to Hamas’s demands.

“We are at a critical stage of the campaign, and at this point, we need patience and determination to win,” Netanyahu said in a statement, rejecting calls from the militants to end the war and withdraw troops from Gaza.

AN-AFP

BERLIN – A large police operation was under way in Germany on Sunday to find one or more shooters who killed two men the day before in the center of the country, police said.

The bodies of the two victims, both with gunshot wounds, were found in front of a residential address in Bad Nauheim, a town north of Frankfurt, on Saturday afternoon, Giessen city police said.

“A big force deployment” of police from uniformed, plain clothes and special forces branches have fanned out, backed by a helicopter, to find the perpetrator or perpetrators, it said.

“The current understanding is that there is no danger for inhabitants or other people,” police said.

There was no information yet about the “circumstances, or the motive of the perpetrators,” they said.

Police and prosecutors have opened an investigation.

Bad Nauheim is 25 kilometers (15 miles) north of Frankfurt and has a population of around 33,000. It was famous for being where Elvis Presley did US military service between 1958 and 1960 and where he met his future wife, Priscilla Presley.

AN-AFP

SYDNEY – A man has died after being stabbed during a fight in Melbourne, Australia.

Police said that officers were called to reports of a stabbing during an altercation in a popular nightlife district in Prahran, 5 km southeast of central Melbourne, at about 1:30 a.m. on Sunday.

The stabbing victim, a man who has not been formally identified, was taken to the hospital by emergency services and later died there.

A police statement said that no arrests were made, and detectives from the homicide squad were investigating the incident.

Local media reported that the victim was in his 20s.

Photographs from the scene published by News Corp Australia newspapers showed a large stretch of street cordoned off by police tape while forensic investigators examined bloody items of clothing and nearby vehicles.

XINHUA

Trilla, Ill. – A single-engine plane crashed in a field in central Illinois on Saturday, killing all four people on board.

Coles County Coroner Ed Schniers said the victims were two women and two men, but he could not release more details pending notification of next of kin.

The Cessna C180G airplane went down shortly after 10 a.m. near the unincorporated community of Trilla, the National Transportation Safety Board said via email. Preliminary information indicated that it struck power lines, the NTSB said.

AP

SANAA – At least three people were killed and four others wounded on Saturday night in fresh U.S. airstrikes on Yemen’s capital Sanaa, its outskirts, and other provinces, Houthi-run al-Masirah TV reported, citing health authorities.

According to the television, the U.S. military launched 21 airstrikes on Sanaa and its western outskirts, killing two people and wounding two others in the Al-Nahda neighborhood, northern Sanaa. A third one was wounded in a cemetery in the Safiah neighborhood in southern Sanaa.

In the Bani Matar district in Sanaa’s western outskirts, the airstrikes killed one person and wounded another one, said the Houthi television

The report did not specify whether the victims were civilians or Houthi operatives.

The airstrikes on the capital also targeted several other locations, including weapons depots in the Al-Hafa military camp in the Mount Nuqum in eastern Sanaa, and two military sites in northeastern Sanaa, according to Sanaa’s residents.

The roar of the fighter jets speeding at full throttle could be heard across the capital before and after the strikes hit.

Ambulances were seen in Sanaa’s streets rushing to the targeted sites as the Houthi-controlled police cordoned off the targeted areas.

Meanwhile, the U.S. fighter jets conducted 13 airstrikes against the Houthi-controlled Hodeidah Airport and the Navy Base in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, western Yemen, according to the Houthi television and local residents.

The other four airstrikes targeted Houthi positions in the district of Sirwah, west of Yemen’s central province of Marib. Another four airstrikes targeted a Houthi military position in the Harf Sufian district in the northern province of Amran, said the television.

The fresh airstrikes came two days after the U.S. airstrikes on the Ras Isa fuel port in the western province of Hodeidah, which killed at least 80 people and wounded 150 others, according to the latest statement by local health authorities.

XINHUA

HONG KONG – An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.9 jolted 45 km SW of Malisbeng, Philippines at 1611 GMT on Saturday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The epicenter, with a depth of 17.9 km, was initially determined to be at 5.80 degrees north latitude and 124.11 degrees east longitude.

XINHUA

NEW DELHI – At least 11 people were killed and 11 others injured Saturday after a multi-storey residential building collapsed in the Indian national capital territory of Delhi, police said.

The building collapsed in Mustafabad area of North East Delhi district in the early hours of Saturday.

Following the building collapse, teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), fire services, police and locals carried out rescue efforts at the spot to pull out survivors and the dead from the debris.

A closed-circuit television camera footage revealed that the building collapsed at 2:39 a.m. (local time) on Saturday.

Reports said 22 occupants who were asleep at that time inside the building got trapped following its collapse.

Officials of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi told local media the building was around 20 years old.

The cause of the building collapse is being ascertained.

XINHUA

YAOUNDE – At least four people were killed after inmates attempted to escape from a prison in Chad, according to local sources and media reports on Saturday.

The incident occurred at 9 p.m. local time on Friday at Mongo Prison in central Chad.

Sources inside the prison said weapons were smuggled into the prison during a protest against poor conditions at the facility. Prisoners then seized the opportunity and broke out of the prison to escape.

Four prisoners were killed, and several prison guards were injured, security sources were quoted by local media as saying.

More than 130 prisoners managed to escape, according to the latest figures reported by local media.

XINHUA

April 19 – Gunmen killed 56 people in central Nigeria, AFP reported on Saturday, citing the governor’s office.

AFP did not provide any further details.

REUTERS

MONGO, Chad – More than 100 inmates escaped a Chad prison during a shoot-out that left three people dead, and wounded a state governor visiting the facility, officials told AFP on Saturday.

The break-out occurred late Friday when an uprising happened in the high-security penitentiary five kilometers (three miles) from the town of Mongo, in the center of the country.

“There are around 100 who escaped, three dead and three wounded,” Hassan Souleymane Adam, secretary general of the Guera province in which Mongo is located, said.

A local Mongo official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said prisoners broke into a manager’s office to steal guns.

“A shootout with guards ensued, at the same time the governor arrived. He was wounded,” he said.

The Mongo official confirmed there were three dead, and put the total number of escaped prisoners at 132.

He said the prisoners revolted after complaining about a lack of food.

Chad’s Justice Minister Youssouf Tom told AFP by telephone that he was about to fly to region and would be able to give “precise information once I am at Mongo in the coming hours.”

AN-AFP

FREMONT, Neb. – Three people died when a small airplane crashed into a river in eastern Nebraska Friday night, authorities said.

The plane was traveling along the Platte River and crashed into the water south of Fremont at 8:15 p.m., Sgt. Brie Frank of the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office said during a news conference.

The bodies of three people were recovered, Frank confirmed.

Authorities did not immediately release the identities of the deceased.

The sheriff’s office said the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will oversee the investigation near Fremont, located about 37 miles (59.5 kilometers) west of Omaha.

AP

COLOMBO – A gunman fired at a church in Sri Lanka, police said Saturday, with the country on high alert six years since Easter Sunday bombings killed hundreds.

The gunman opened fire Friday at a church in Manampitiya, 160 kilometers (100 miles) northeast of the capital Colombo, a police statement said.

The shooting damaged windows and no one was hurt, while a suspect has been arrested, police said.

“Initial investigations suggest that the suspect had targeted the church due to a personal enmity with the pastor,” the statement said.

Armed police and troops have been deployed to nearly all churches nationwide during Easter celebrations, with security heightened following the 2019 attack.

Suicide bombers in 2019 killed 279 people, including 45 foreigners, at three churches and three hotels.

More than 500 people were wounded in the attack, which officials blamed on a home-grown Islamist group.

The Catholic Church will commemorate the victims on Monday, by declaring them “Heroes of the Faith.”

Sri Lanka’s Catholic minority has maintained a campaign for justice since the bombings, saying that prior investigations failed to answer outstanding questions.

The Church has accused successive governments of protecting those behind the attack and several high-level investigations have identified links between military intelligence units and the bombers.

AN-AFP

LAGOS – At least 17 people were killed when suspected cattle herders attacked communities in central Nigeria’s Benue State on Thursday, police said, amid a resurgence of deadly clashes between farmers and herders.

Years of clashes have disrupted food supplies from north-central Nigeria, a significant agricultural area.

The latest attacks came two days after 11 people were killed in the Otukpo area of Benue and barely a week after gunmen attacked villages and killed more than 50 people in neighbouring Plateau State.

Since 2019, the clashes have claimed more than 500 lives in the region and forced 2.2 million to leave their homes, according to research firm SBM Intelligence.

A separate group of suspected herdsmen shot and killed five farmers around Gbagir in Benue’s Ukum Local Government Area, early on Friday, police said.

The attackers opened fire as police were moving in to confront them, police spokesperson Sewuese Anene said in a statement.

While officers were engaging the attackers at Ukum, another 12 people were killed in another attack in Logo local council area, about 70 km away, police said.

REUTERS