PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 1 (Reuters) – Police investigating a suicide bombing that killed more than 100 people at a Pakistan mosque said on Tuesday that several people had been arrested, and they could not rule out the possibility that the bomber had internal assistance evading security checks.
The bombing was the most deadly in a decade to hit Peshawar, a restive northwestern city near the Afghan border, and all but three of those killed were police, making it most suffered by Pakistan’s security forces in a single attack in recent history.
The bomber struck on Monday as hundreds of worshippers gathered for noon prayers in a mosque that was purpose built for the police and their families living in a highly fortified area.
“We have found some excellent clues, and based on these clues we have made some major arrests,” Peshawar Police Chief Ijaz Khan told Reuters.
“We can’t rule out internal assistance but since the investigation is still in progress, I will not be able to share more details.”
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Investigators, who include counter-terrorism and intelligence officials, are focusing on how the attacker managed to breach the military and police checkpoints leading into the Police Lines district, a colonial-era, self-contained encampment in the city centre that is home to middle- and lower-ranking police personnel and their families.
[1/6] Rescue workers clear the rubble as they search for victims, after a suicide blast in a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan January 31, 2023. REUTERS/Fayaz Aziz
Defence Minister Khawaja Asif had said the bomber was in the first row in the prayer hall when he struck. Remains of the attacker had been recovered, provincial Police Chief Moazzam Jah Ansari told Reuters.
“We believe the attackers are not an organised group,” he added.
The most active militant group in the area, the Pakistani Taliban, also called Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has denied responsibility for the attack, which no group has claimed so far. Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah had told parliament a breakaway faction of the TTP was to blame.
The blast demolished the upper storey of the mosque. It was is the deadliest in Peshawar since twin suicide bombings at All Saints Church killed scores of worshippers in September 2013, in what remains the deadliest attack on the country’s Christian minority.
Peshawar sits on the edge of the Pashtun tribal lands, a region mired in violence for the past two decades.
The TTP is an umbrella group for Sunni and sectarian Islamist factions opposed to the government in Islamabad. The group has recently stepped up attacks against police.
Reporting by Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad; Writing by Miral Fahmy; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
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Trip postponed from July due to pope’s knee ailment
KINSHASA, Jan 31 (Reuters) – Pope Francis denounced the “poison of greed” driving conflicts in Africa as he began a visit to Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday, saying the rich world had to realise that people were more precious than the minerals in the earth beneath them.
Many tens of thousands of people cheered as he travelled from the airport into the capital Kinshasa in his popemobile, with some breaking away to chase it while others chanted and waved flags.
But the joyous mood, one of the most vibrant welcomes of his foreign trips, turned sombre when the 86-year-old pope spoke to dignitaries at the presidential palace. He condemned “terrible forms of exploitation, unworthy of humanity” in Congo, where vast mineral wealth has fuelled war, displacement and hunger.
“Hands off the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hands off Africa. Stop choking Africa: it is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered,” Francis said.
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Congo has some of the world’s richest deposits of diamonds, gold, copper, cobalt, tin, tantalum and lithium, but those have stoked conflict between militias, government troops and foreign invaders. Mining has also been linked to inhumane exploitation of workers, including children, and environmental degradation.
“It is a tragedy that these lands, and more generally the whole African continent, continue to endure various forms of exploitation,” the pope said, reading his speech in Italian while seated. People listening to a French translation applauded repeatedly.
“The poison of greed has smeared its diamonds with blood,” he said, referring to Congo specifically.
Compounding the country’s problems, eastern Congo has been plagued by violence connected to the long and complex fallout from the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda.
Congo accuses Rwanda of backing the M23 rebel group fighting government troops in the east. Rwanda denies this.
“As well as armed militias, foreign powers hungry for the minerals in our soil commit, with the direct and cowardly support of our neighbour Rwanda, cruel atrocities,” Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi said, speaking just before the pope on the same stage on a hot, muggy afternoon.
The pope did not name Rwanda in his address or take sides in the dispute.
Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo rebuffed Tshisekedi’s comments. “It’s obvious that this ridiculous obsession with scapegoating Rwanda is President Tshisekedi’s electoral strategy – a distraction from the poor performance of his government, and failure to deliver to their citizens,” she told Reuters.
[1/9] Pope Francis sits next to Democratic Republic of Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi as he attends the welcoming ceremony at the Palais de la Nation on the first day of his apostolic journey, in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, January 31, 2023. Simone Risoluti/Vatican Media/Handout via REUTERS
‘DEVOURED BY VIOLENCE’
An estimated 5.7 million people are internally displaced in Congo and 26 million face severe hunger, largely because of the impact of armed conflict, according to the United Nations.
About half of Congo’s population of 90 million are Roman Catholics and the Church plays a crucial role in running schools and health facilities in the sprawling central African country, as well as promoting democracy.
The pope criticised rich countries for ignoring the tragedies unfolding in Congo and elsewhere in Africa.
“One has the impression that the international community has practically resigned itself to the violence devouring it (Congo). We cannot grow accustomed to the bloodshed that has marked this country for decades, causing millions of deaths,” he said.
Tshisekedi made a similar point: “While the international community has remained passive and silent, more than 10 million people have been horribly killed.”
First scheduled for last July, the pope’s trip was postponed because of a flare-up of a chronic knee ailment. Francis had originally planned to travel to Goma, in eastern Congo, but that stop was scrapped because of a resurgence in fighting between M23 rebels and government troops.
In an apparent reference to the M23 and other militias active in Congo’s eastern regions, the pope said the Congolese people were fighting to preserve their territorial integrity “against deplorable attempts to fragment the country”.
On Wednesday, Francis will celebrate Mass at a Kinshasa airport that is expected to draw more than a million people. He also will meet victims of violence from the east.
Francis will stay in Kinshasa until Friday morning, when he will fly to South Sudan, another African country grappling with conflict and poverty.
In a first, he will be accompanied for that leg of his journey by the Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the global Anglican Communion, and by the Church of Scotland Moderator. The religious leaders have described their joint visit as a “pilgrimage of peace” to the world’s youngest nation.
South Sudan gained independence in 2011 from predominantly Muslim Sudan after decades of conflict. Two years later inter-ethnic conflict spiralled into a civil war that killed 400,000 people. A 2018 deal stopped the worst of the fighting.
Additional reporting by Justin Makangara, Benoit Nyemba, Sonia Rolley and Stanis Bujakera, and Philbert Girinema in Kigali; Writing by Estelle Shirbon and Philip Pullella; Editing by Alexandra Hudson, Barbara Lewis and Mark Heinrich
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Bomber breached highly fortified Red Zone compound
Up to 400 worshippers in prayer when bomber blew up
Majority of the dead were police officials
No immediate claim of responsibility for attack
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 30 (Reuters) – A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a crowded mosque in a highly fortified security compound in Pakistan on Monday, killing 47 people, the latest attack by resurgent Islamist militants targeting police in the unstable country.
Police said the attacker appeared to have passed through several barricades manned by security forces to get into the “Red Zone” compound that houses police and counter-terrorism offices in the volatile northwestern city of Peshawar.
“It was a suicide bombing,” Peshawar Police Chief Ijaz Khan told Reuters. At least 47 people were killed and 176 wounded, he said, many of them critically.
It came a day before an International Monetary Fund team mission to Islamabad to initiate talks on unlocking funding for the South Asian economy hit by a balance of payment crisis.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attack.
Officials said the bomber detonated his load at the moment hundreds of people lined up to say their prayers.
“We have found traces of explosives,” Khan told reporters, adding that a security lapse had clearly occurred as the bomber had slipped through the most secured area of the compound.
An inquiry was under way into how the attacker breached such an elite security cordon and whether there was any inside help.
Khan said the mosque hall was packed with up to 400 worshippers, and that most of the dead were police officers.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, the worst in Peshawar since March 2022 when an Islamic State suicide bombing killed at least 58 people in a Shi’ite Muslim mosque during Friday prayers.
`ALLAH IS THE GREATEST`
Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told Geo TV that the bomber was standing in the first row of worshippers.
“As the prayer leader said ‘Allah is the greatest’, there was a big bang,” Mushtaq Khan, a policeman with a head wound, told reporters from his hospital bed.
“We couldn’t figure out what happened as the bang was deafening. It threw me out of the veranda. The walls and roof fell on me. Thanks to God, he saved me.”
The explosion brought down the upper storey of the mosque, trapping dozens of worshippers in the rubble. Live TV footage showed rescuers cutting through the collapsed rooftop to make their way down and tend to victims caught in the wreckage.
“We can’t say how many are still under it,” said provincial governor Haji Ghulam Ali.
“The sheer scale of the human tragedy is unimaginable,” Sharif said. “This is no less than an attack on Pakistan. The nation is overwhelmed by a deep sense of grief. I have no doubt terrorism is our foremost national security challenge.”
Witnesses described chaotic scenes as the police and the rescuers scrambled to rush the wounded to hospitals.
Sharif, who appealed to employees of his party to donate blood at the hospitals, said anyone targeting Muslims during prayer had nothing to do with Islam.
“The U.S. mission in Pakistan expressed deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims of the horrific attack,” Washington’s embassy said a statement.
Peshawar, which straddles the edge of Pakistan’s tribal districts bordering Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, is frequently targeted by Islamist militant groups including Islamic State and the Pakistani Taliban.
Reporting by Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad; Writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Asif Shahzad; Editing by Miral Fahmy, Simon Cameron-Moore, Bernadette Baum and Mark Heinrich
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BRUSSELS, Jan 23 (Reuters) – The European Union on Monday imposed sanctions on more than 30 Iranian officials and organisations, including units of the powerful Revolutionary Guards, blaming them for a “brutal” crackdown on protesters and other human rights abuses.
The United States and Britain have also issued new sanctions against Iran, reflecting a deterioration in the West’s already dire relations with Tehran in recent months.
Foreign ministers from the EU’s 27 member countries agreed the measures at a meeting in Brussels.
The sanctions targeted units and senior officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) across Iran, including in Sunni-populated areas where the state crackdown has been intense, a list published in the EU’s Official Journal showed.
Some EU governments and the European Parliament have made clear they want the IRGC as a whole added to the bloc’s list of terrorist organisations. But the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, noted that could only happen if a court in an EU country determined the IRGC was guilty of terrorism.
“You cannot say ‘I consider you a terrorist because I don’t like you’,” he told reporters ahead of the Brussels talks.
The new sanctions were imposed on 18 people and 19 entities. Those targeted cannot travel to the EU and any assets they hold inside the EU can be frozen.
Relations between the EU and Tehran have spiralled downwards during stalled efforts to revive talks on its nuclear programme and as Iran has moved to detain several European nationals.
The bloc has also become increasingly critical of the continuing violent treatment of protesters in Iran, including executions, and the transfer of Iranian drones to Russia.
Sweden, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said the new sanctions targeted “those driving the repression.”
“The EU strongly condemns the brutal and disproportionate use of force by the Iranian authorities against peaceful protesters,” Sweden’s Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said in a Twitter post by the country’s EU diplomatic mission.
The IRGC was set up shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution to protect the Shi’ite clerical ruling system. It has an estimated 125,000-strong military with army, navy and air units, and commands the Basij religious militia often used in crackdowns.
“The Iranian regime, the Revolutionary Guards terrorise their own population day after day,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told Monday’s meeting.
The day before the Brussels meeting, over a thousand people took to the streets of the city to protest against the detention in Iran of Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele.
Iran earlier warned the EU against designating the IRGC as a terrorist entity.
Reporting by Andrew Gray, Bart Meijer Philip Blenkinsop and Parisa Hafezi, Writing by Ingrid Melander and Gabriela Baczynska, Editing by Peter Graff, Timothy Heritage and John Stonestreet
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VATICAN CITY, Jan 13 (Reuters) – Australian Cardinal George Pell was lying in state on Friday, with funeral preparations overshadowed by revelations that he was the author of an anonymous memo that branded Pope Francis’ pontificate a catastrophe.
Pell’s closed dark brown wooden coffin was placed on the floor of the small church of St. Stephen of the Abyssinians, inside the Vatican walls just metres (yards) away from the Santa Marta residence where Francis lives.
Early on Friday, a reporter saw about 20 people kneeling in prayer in the church when it opened for 10 hours of lying in state.
Pell, 81, who spent more than a year in jail before being acquitted of sexual abuse allegations in his native Australia, died on Tuesday night in a Rome hospital of heart failure.
The small church, which is normally used for baptisms and weddings, is one of the oldest in the Vatican. Parts of it date back to the fifth century and it is one of the few structures not demolished to make way for the building of the current St. Peter’s Basilica, which began in the early 16th century.
His funeral is due to take place on Saturday just across the road in St. Peter’s.
In keeping with tradition for deceased cardinals, the Mass will be said by the dean of the College of Cardinals, currently Italian Giovanni Battista Re, and the pope will give the final blessing and commendation.
His surprise death of cardiac arrest during what was expected to be routine hip replacement surgery was followed by another shock the next day.
Last year, respected Italian journalist Sandro Magister, who has a long track record of receiving leaked Vatican documents, published an anonymous memo circulating in the Vatican condemning Pope Francis’ papacy as a “catastrophe”.
Magister disclosed on his widely read blog Settimo Cielo (Seventh Heaven) that it was Pell who wrote the memo and gave him permission to publish it under the pseudonym “Demos” – Greek for populace. It included what the author said should be the qualities of the next pope.
“Everyone here is talking about it,” said one Vatican official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The official said he did not doubt that Pell was the author but said the revelation should have been held back until after his funeral “out of respect for the dead”.
Father Joseph Hamilton, Pell’s personal secretary, declined to comment on Magister’s report and Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni said he had no comment.
Pell will be buried in the crypt at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney, where he served as archbishop, the Australian Church has announced.
Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Nick Macfie
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VATICAN CITY, Jan 3 (Reuters) – Six months ago Pope Francis brushed off speculation he was about to resign due to health problems, but even if he had toyed with the idea, he faced one major obstacle: there was already another ex-pope in retirement.
The death on Saturday of Benedict, who in 2013 became the first pontiff in 600 years to step down instead of reigning for life, should make any decision to step down easier on Francis and the Church, which has struggled enough with having “two popes”, let alone three – two retired and one reigning.
It could also prompt the current pontiff to review what happens to future popes who decide to shuffle away from office because of old age rather than holding on until they die.
Francis is now 86, one year older than Benedict was when he retired. Despite needing a cane and a wheelchair, he shows no sign of slowing down. Trips are planned for Africa this month and Portugal in August.
He has made it clear that he would not hesitate to step down someday if his mental or physical health impeded him from leading the 1.3 billion-member Church.
In an interview with Reuters on July 2, he dismissed rumours of imminent resignation. “It never entered my mind,” he said, also denying rumours among diplomats that he had cancer.
The previous month, the Catholic media world and some secular outlets were caught up in a frenzy of unsubstantiated reports and frivolous tweets speculating he would be out within a few months.
But as he now approaches the 10th anniversary of his election in March, and in four years his life’s ninth decade, the chances of resignation will increase.
Church law says a pope can resign but the decision must be without outside pressure, a precaution that harkens back to the centuries when European potentates influenced the papacy.
NO LONGER UNTHINKABLE
[1/2] Pope Francis leads the Mass to mark the World Day of Peace in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, January 1, 2023. Vatican Media/Handout via REUTERS
Now that longer life spans have made papal resignations no longer unthinkable, there have been repeated calls from Church leaders to regulate the role of former pontiffs, in part because of the confusion stemming wrought by two men wearing white living in the Vatican.
Francis told a Spanish newspaper last month that he did not intend to define the juridical status of popes emeritus, although he had previously indicated privately that a Vatican department could script such rules.
Australian Cardinal George Pell, a conservative who was close to Benedict, has written that while a retired pontiff could retain the title of “pope emeritus”, he should return to being a cardinal, and be known as “Cardinal (surname), Pope Emeritus”.
Pell also said a former pontiff should not wear white, as Benedict did, telling Reuters in a 2020 interview that it was important for Catholics to be clear that “there is only one pope”.
Academics and canon lawyers at Italy’s Bologna University who have studied the issue say the Church cannot risk even the appearance of having “two heads or two kings” and have proposed a set of rules.
They say a former pope should not return to being a cardinal, as Pell proposes, but be called “Bishop Emeritus of Rome”.
Francis told Reuters in July that is precisely what he would want to be called.
In that case there might not be any need for new legislation he would then be subject to existing rules covering retired bishops.
Existing rules say bishops emeritus should “avoid every attitude and relationship that could even hint at some kind of parallel authority to that of the diocesan bishop, with damaging consequences for the pastoral life and unity of the diocesan community”.
Although he had retired, Benedict wrote, gave interviews and, unwittingly or not, became a lightning rod for opponents of Pope Francis, either for doctrinal reasons or because they were loath to relinquish the clerical privileges the new pope wanted to dismantle.
Francis told Reuters that he would not stay in the Vatican or return to his native Argentina but live modestly in a home for retired priests in the Italian capital “because it’s my diocese”. He said he would want it to be near a large church so he could spend his final days hearing confessions.
Reporting by Philip Pullella
Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky
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VATICAN CITY, Jan 2 (Reuters) – A steady stream of tens of thousands of people filed into St. Peter’s Basilica on Monday to pay their respects to former Pope Benedict XVI, whose body was laying in state without any papal paraphernalia ahead of his funeral this week.
Benedict, a hero to conservative Catholics who yearned for a return to a more traditional Church, died on Saturday at the age of 95 in the secluded Vatican monastery where he had lived since 2013, when he became the first pope in 600 years to resign.
“I feel like he was a grandfather to us,” Veronica Siegal, 16, a Catholic high school student from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who is in Rome for a programme of religious study, told Reuters in St. Peter’s Square after viewing the body.
She said she had read one of Benedict’s books on Jesus for one of her courses.
“I know that he is in a better place because he was a holy man and he led so well,” said her classmate, Molly Foley, also 16, from Atlanta, Georgia. A third girl in the group wore an American flag on her back.
Security was tight, with visitors going through several check points before entering the basilica. Many stopped to pray after viewing the body or stayed to attend Mass in side chapels.
Vatican police said that 65,000 people had filed past on the first day.
Benedict’s body, dressed in red and gold liturgical vestments and placed on a simple dais, was moved in a procession just before dawn through the Vatican Gardens from the monastery to a spot in front of the main altar of Christendom’s largest Church.
Two Swiss Guards stood at attention on either side of the body, which bore no papal insignia or regalia, such as a crosier, the silver staff with a crucifix, or a pallium, a band of cloth worn around the neck worn by archdiocesan bishops.
Both were on Pope John Paul’s body when it lay in state in 2005.
[1/17] Faithful pay homage to former Pope Benedict, as his body lies in state at St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican, January 3, 2023. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
It was not clear if the pastoral cross or any other items he used will be buried with him but the decision not to have them during the public viewing appeared to have been decided to underscore that he no longer was pope when he died.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said Benedict will be buried according to his wishes in the same spot in the crypts under St. Peter’s Basilica where Pope John Paul II was originally interred in 2005 before his body was moved up to a chapel in the basilica in 2011.
ITALY’S LEADERS PAY RESPECTS
Before the Church was opened to the public, Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Georgia Meloni were the first outsiders to pay their respects.
Benedict’s closest aide, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, sat in the first pew to the side of the body along with Benedict’s household and medics who looked after him in his final days.
After a few hours, they rose to pray before the body. Ganswein stayed behind to receive condolences from visitors.
“I had to come,” Sri, a woman visiting from Jakarta, Indonesia, told Reuters. “He was the pope and I am a Catholic,” she said, declining to give her surname.
Benedict will lie in state until Wednesday evening. His funeral will be held on Thursday in St Peter’s Square and be presided over by Pope Francis. The Vatican has said it will be a simple, solemn and sober ceremony in keeping with Benedict’s wishes.
The Vatican has painstakingly elaborate rituals for what happens after a reigning pope dies but none for a former pope, so what happens in the next few days could become the template for future ex-popes.
Bruni said the details of the funeral Mass were not yet completed.
While the number of visitors was large, there were no signs of the huge crowds who came to pay their respects to Pope John Paul II, when millions waited for hours to enter the basilica.
Reporting by Philip Pullella, Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Nick Macfie
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VATICAN CITY, Dec 30 (Reuters) – When Pope Gregory XII, the last pope to resign before Benedict, died in 1417, the world was not watching.
Gregory had stepped down two years earlier in 1415 and spent his remaining days in virtual obscurity hundreds of miles from Rome. He was quietly buried in Recanati, a town near the northern Adriatic coast.
It will be vastly different with the passing of ailing 95-year-old Benedict.
The Vatican has painstakingly elaborate rituals for what happens after a reigning pope dies but no publicly known ones for a former pope. It will be at least partially scripting new protocols. They could be a template for other popes who choose to resign instead of ruling for life, including Pope Francis himself someday, Vatican sources say.
Those for a reigning pope include a 30-page constitution called “Universi Dominici Gregis,” Latin for “The Shepherd of the Lord’s Whole Flock,” and “Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis,” (Funeral Rites for a Roman Pontiff) a missal of more than 400 pages that includes liturgy, music, and prayers.
Those rules say a pope’s burial should take place between four and six days after his death as part of a nine-day period of mourning known as the Novendiale.
Vatican officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss such matters, said the script for Benedict’s passing would depend on two key elements: If Benedict himself left any instructions and decisions that will be taken by Pope Francis.
SOLEMN FAREWELL
Francis has often praised his predecessor as a great pope who had the courage to resign, so he would probably like to give Benedict the most solemn ceremonial farewell as possible, perhaps even the whole works, one Vatican official said.
The last pope to die, John Paul II, was buried on April 8, 2005, six days after he died. His body first laid in state in the frescoed Clementine Hall for Vatican staff and then was moved to St. Peter’s Basilica for viewing by the public.
Millions of people queued up for hours to see him, in perhaps the biggest event in Vatican history, and monarchs and presidents attended his funeral.
He was first buried in crypts under St. Peter’s Basilica and moved in 2011 to a chapel on the main level of the largest church in Christendom.
Many people would want to pay their respects to Benedict, who succeeded John Paul in 2005 an resigned in 2013, so a period of lying in state would be likely, the sources said.
In 2020, Benedict’s authorised biographer, Peter Seewald, was quoted as telling Bavarian newspaper Passauer Neue Presse that the emeritus pope had prepared a spiritual testament stating that he wanted to be buried in the same crypt where John Paul II was originally laid to rest.
Benedict, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, presided at John Paul’s funeral in 2005 in St. Peter’s Square and Francis is expected to preside at Benedict’s.
After the death of a reigning pope, the person in charge of ordinary affairs at the Vatican until the election of a new pope is the camerlengo, or chamberlain.
The position is currently held by Irish-American Cardinal Kevin Farrell but because the Church has a pope and there will be no conclave to elect another, Farrell would have no role.
Most of the work, including the scripting of an unprecedented event in Vatican history, will fall to Monsignor Diego Ravelli, the papal master of ceremonies.
Reporting by Philip Pullella
Editing by Tomasz Janowski
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KYIV, Dec 17 (Reuters) – Basic services were being restored in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on Saturday after the latest wave of Russian air strikes on critical infrastructure, as residents navigated a city gripped by fog and girded for a holiday season marked by uncertainty.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a quarter of Kyiv remained without heating but that the metro system was back in service and all residents had been reconnected to water supply by early morning.
Only around one-third of the city remained without electricity, he said, but emergency outages would still be implemented to save power. “Because the deficit of electricity is significant,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Ukrainian officials said Russia fired more than 70 missiles on Friday in one of its heaviest barrages since the Kremlin’s Feb. 24 invasion, forcing emergency blackouts nationwide.
Ukraine has managed to restore power to almost 6 million people in the last 24 hours, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address.
“Repair work continues without a break after yesterday’s terrorist attack. … Of course, there is still a lot of work to do to stabilize the system,” he said.
“There are problems with the heat supplies. There are big problems with water supplies,” Zelenskiy added, saying Kyiv as well as Vinnytsia and Lviv further to the west were experiencing the most difficulty.
Earlier this month, Kyiv Mayor Klitschko had warned of an “apocalypse” scenario for the capital if Russian air strikes on infrastructure continued, though he also said there was no need yet for people to evacuate.
“We are fighting and doing everything we can to make sure that this does not happen,” he told Reuters on Dec. 7.
In a gloomy winter haze on Saturday, officials reopened a popular pedestrian bridge that had been damaged during an earlier air strike and were setting up a smaller-than-usual Christmas tree in a central square.
The vast space in front of the centuries-old St. Sophia Cathedral is traditionally anchored by a hulking evergreen at Christmas. But officials this year opted for a 12-metre (40-foot) artificial tree festooned with energy-saving lights powered by a generator.
Orthodox Christians make up the majority of Ukraine’s 43 million people.
Klitschko said the tree was funded by donors and businesses, and that no public celebrations would take place.
“I doubt this will be a true holiday,” said Kyiv resident Iryna Soloychuk, who arrived with her daughter to see the tree just hours after another round of air-raid alerts wailed across the country.
“But we should understand that we’re all together, that we should help one another.”
Additional reporting by Yurii Khomenko and David Ljunggren
Editing by Frances Kerry
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MITROVICA, Kosovo Dec 11 (Reuters) – Serb protesters in northern Kosovo blocked main roads for a second day on Sunday following a nighttime exchange of fire with police after the arrest of a former Serb policeman, amid rising tensions between authorities and Kosovo’s Serb minority.
In recent weeks Serbs in northern Kosovo – which they believe to be part of Serbia – have responded with violent resistance to moves by Pristina that they see as anti-Serb.
EULEX, the European Union mission tasked with patrolling northern Kosovo, said a stun grenade was thrown on one of its armoured vehicles on Saturday evening, but no one was injured.
Josep Borrell, EU foreign policy chief, warned the bloc will not tolerate violence against members of its mission.
“#EU will not tolerate attacks on @EULEXKosovo or use of violent, criminal acts in the north. Barricades must be removed immediately by groups of Kosovo Serbs. Calm must be restored,” he wrote on Twitter.
The latest protests were triggered by the arrest of a former police officer on Saturday. He was part of a mass resignation of Serbs from the force last month, after Pristina said it would require Serbs to scrap Serbian license plates dating to before the 1998-99 Kosovo War that led to independence.
For a second day on Sunday, trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles blocked several main roads leading to two border crossings with Serbia. Both crossings were closed to traffic.
“The United States expresses its deep concern about the current situation in the north of Kosovo,” the United States embassies in Belgrade and Pristina said in a statement.
“We call on everyone to exercise maximum restraint, to take immediate action to achieve a de-escalation of the situation, and to refrain from provocative acts.”
Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti has asked NATO’s mission KFOR to remove the barricades.
“We call KFOR to guarantee the freedom of movement (and remove roadblocks)…KFOR is asking for more time to finish this … so we are waiting,” Kurti said.
Late on Saturday Kosovo police said they came under fire in different locations close to a lake bordering Serbia. The force said it had to return fire in self-defence. There were no reports of injuries.
EU PLAN IN DANGER
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 with the backing of the West, following the 1998-99 war in which NATO intervened to protect Albanian-majority Kosovo.
Serb mayors in northern Kosovo municipalities, along with local judges and some 600 police officers, resigned last month in protest over a government decision to replace Belgrade-issued car licence plates with ones issued by Pristina.
Police in Pristina said former policeman Dejan Pantic was arrested for allegedly attacking state offices, the election commission offices, and police officers and election officials.
Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic presided over a National Security Council meeting on Sunday. “I call on Serbs to be calm. Attacks against KFOR and EULEX must not happen,” Vucic told RTS national TV.
On Saturday, Vucic said Belgrade would ask KFOR to let Serbia deploy troops and police in Kosovo, but acknowledged there was no chance of permission being granted.
“We do not seek conflict, but dialogue and peace. But let me be clear: the Republic of Kosovo will defend itself – forcefully and decisively,” Kurti said in response to Vucic’s comments.
Kosovo and Serbia are holding talks in Brussels to try to normalise relations and the EU has already presented a plan.
Additional reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic, Florion Goga and Ognen Teofilovski; Editing by Susan Fenton and Ros Russell
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