PAKISTAN
Militants kill nine in north
Militants on Saturday fired on a bus in the northern Gilgit-Baltistan region, killing nine people including two soldiers, and injuring more than 20 others, local police said. The attack happened on the Karakoram Highway, which connects Pakistan with China, police officer Azmat Shah said. The bus was carrying passengers from Gilgit to the Rawalpindi when it was shot at, causing the driver to lose control and crash into a truck, which in turn caught fire. Both drivers were killed on site. At least 26 people were injured — including a local Islamic cleric, Mufti Sher Zaman — and transferred to local hospitals, as police helped reroute traffic in the area after condoning off the site, officials said. No one has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
PHILIPPINES
China vessels ‘swarm’ reef
Manila yesterday said that more than 135 Chinese vessels were “swarming” a reef off its coast, describing the boats’ growing presence as “alarming.” The boats were “dispersed and scattered” within the boomerang-shaped Whitsun Reef, about 320km west of Palawan Island, the coast guard said. The reef is more than 1,000km from the nearest Chinese landmass of Hainan Province. The Philippines said it counted 111 “Chinese maritime militia vessels” on Nov. 13. When the coast guard deployed two patrol boats to the area on Saturday the number had increased to “more than 135,” it said.
PERU
Nine killed in mine attack
Nine people were killed and more than a dozen injured in an attack on a gold mine in Pataz Province, authorities said on Saturday. A group of “armed criminals” raided the Poderosa mine, “violently confronting the company’s internal security,” the Ministry of the Interior wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Seven attackers had been apprehended and police had “taken control of the situation,” it added. Among the dead were seven security guards who tried to repel the attack and two miners. The latter were killed when the assailants threw explosives into the mine shaft, authorities said, adding that they were still investigating the motive for the attack.
GUINEA-BISSAU
Coup foiled: president
President Umaro Sissoco Embalo on Saturday said that gunfire and clashes that had erupted in the capital on Friday were an attempted coup. “I can assure you that the events of Dec. 1, 2023, are yet another attempted coup and those responsible will suffer serious consequences,” he told reporters after arriving from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where he was attending the COP28 UN climate summit. Clashes between two army factions broke out in Bissau on Thursday night and continued on Friday after national guard soldiers freed an opposition minister who was detained in a corruption investigation.
RUSSIA
Security forces raid gay bars
Security forces on Friday night raided gay clubs and bars across Moscow, less than 48 hours after the country’s top court banned what it called the “global LGBTQ+ movement” as an extremist organization. Police searched venues across the capital, including a nightclub, a male sauna and a bar that hosted LGBTQ+ parties, under the pretext of a drug raid, local media reported. Eyewitnesses told journalists that clubgoers’ documents were checked and photographed by the security services. They also said that managers had been able to warn patrons before police arrived.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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