Wednesday, Jan 22nd
Last update08:35:36 AM GMT
International Glance
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that “at least 200,000” allied troops would be needed to enforce any peace deal in Ukraine as he urged Europe to “take care of itself” as Donald Trump returns to power in the US.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Zelenskyy said European leaders should not ask themselves what Trump would do next, and said that they instead needed to take collective steps to defend their continent at a time when it was under aggressive attack by Russia.
A senior Taliban figure has urged the group’s leader to scrap education bans on Afghan women and girls, saying there is no excuse for them, in a rare public rebuke of government policy.
Sher Abbas Stanikzai, political deputy at the Foreign Ministry, made the remarks in a speech on Saturday in southeastern Khost province.
He told an audience at a religious school ceremony there was no reason to deny education to women and girls, “just as there was no justification for it in the past and there shouldn’t be one at all.”
The government has barred females from education after sixth grade. Last September, there were reports authorities had also stopped medical training and courses for women.
onday marked the second day of the ceasefire in Gaza, and Palestinians began the work of digging through the rubble in search of the 10,000 bodies that are estimated to be buried under the buildings that were destroyed by Israel’s bombing campaign.
“We are searching for 10,000 martyrs whose bodies remain under the rubble,” Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense, told Reuters. Basal said at least 2,840 bodies were melted, and there were no traces of them.
Medical sources told Al Jazeera that 135 bodies were found in the destroyed southern city of Rafah. Gaza’s Health Ministry said in its daily update that hospitals received 122 bodies in the previous 24 hours, including 62 who were dug out of the rubble.
A huge fire killed at least 66 people as it ripped on Tuesday through a hotel at a popular ski resort in northeastern Turkey that was packed with people enjoying the winter holidays, including families.
The blaze at the Grand Kartal Hotel in Kartalkaya broke out around 3:30 am (0030 GMT), sending huge clouds of smoke into the night air and sparking panic among the guests.
Survivors and eyewitnesses spoke of scenes of desperation as people tried to flee the flames with some leaping out of the windows or using bedsheets as a makeshift rope.
"People on the upper floors were screaming. They threw bedsheets out of the windows, some tried to jump," Atakan Yelkovan, who escaped from the third floor with his wife, told IHA news agency.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said it treated at least 12 people for injuries after Israeli settlers rampaged through two occupied West Bank villages north of Jerusalem, where Palestinian homes, a nursery and a local business were burned
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, warned that Russia’s war against Ukraine would not end “tomorrow or the day after” as Donald Trump, who pledged to quickly wind up the conflict, returned to the White House.
Trump promised over the summer to end Russia’s war against Ukraine “in 24 hours”, although he did not explain how he planned to do that. “Let us not delude ourselves,” Macron said in his new year’s address to the French armed forces. “This conflict will not end tomorrow or the day after.” The third anniversary of Russia’s war against Ukraine approaches next month, and Trump’s administration has more recently been suggesting a timeline of several months to end it.
Nearly 1,660 Afghans cleared by the U.S. government to resettle in the U.S., including family members of active-duty U.S. military personnel, are having their flights canceled under President Donald Trump's order suspending U.S. refugee programs, a U.S. official and a leading refugee resettlement advocate said on Monday.
The group includes unaccompanied minors awaiting reunification with their families in the U.S. as well as Afghans at risk of Taliban retribution because they fought for the former U.S.-backed Afghan government, said Shawn VanDiver, head of the #AfghanEvac coalition of U.S. veterans and advocacy groups and the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. decision also leaves in limbo thousands of other Afghans who have been approved for resettlement as refugees in the U.S. but have not yet been assigned flights from Afghanistan or from neighboring Pakistan, they said.
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