08/09/2025

MONDAY | SEPT 8, 2025

9

Russia hits seat of Ukraine govt

GEORGETOWN: Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali was reelected for a second term, electoral authorities declared on Saturday, after a vote that gave his party a mandate to manage the nation’s newfound oil riches amid a territorial dispute with Venezuela. The elections commission said in a statement released that Ali’s People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) had won Monday’s general election, securing 55% of the vote. Ali had already claimed victory in the elections in statements to AFP on Wednesday. Ali, a 45-year-old centre-left leader, now faces the challenge of ensuring the benefits of Guyana’s vast oil wealth, which has fuelled the world’s fastest-growing economy, reach its 850,000 people, more than half of whom still live in poverty despite the nation’s soaring GDP. Ali’s main rival, multi-millionaire populist Azruddin Mohamed, nicknamed the “Guyanese Trump”, and his newly formed We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) party finished second with 24.8% of the vote. The opposition, A Partnership for National Unity, which represents much of the country’s Afro-Guyanese population, came third. Ali will assume a second five-year term at a time of rising tensions with the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who claims sovereignty over the oil-rich Essequibo region and appointed authorities for that area in controversial elections held in May. The dispute over the Essequibo region is centuries old, but it intensified in 2015 after the discovery of enormous oil resources. Guyana appealed to the International Court of Justice in 2018 to ratify an 1899 award that established its current borders, but Venezuela rejects the court’s jurisdiction and asserts the 1966 Geneva Agreement, which establishes the basis for a negotiated settlement. – AFP Irfaan Ali re-elected Guyana president KYIV: Russia’s largest air attack of the war set the main building of the Ukrainian government in Kyiv on fire on Saturday night and left three people dead, including an infant, whose body was pulled from the rubble. “For the first time, the government building was damaged by an enemy strike – its roof and upper floors,” Ukraine Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on the Telegram messaging app. Witnesses reported the top floor of the main building of the Ukrainian government, located in the historic Pecherskyi district, burning, with thick smoke rising into the clear blue sky just after sunrise. Ukraine Air Force said on Telegram that Russia launched 805 drones into Ukraine and 13 missiles, with Ukrainian defence units downing 751 drones and four missiles. That was the highest number of drones Russia has used to attack the country since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Timur Tkachenko, the head of the capital’s military administration, said the infant’s body was pulled from the rubble in the Darnytskyi district where a four-storey apartment building was damaged. A young woman also died as a result of the attack on the district, which lies to the east of the Dnipro River, Tkachenko said. State emergency officials said 18 people were injured in the attack that sowed fires throughout the city. Moscow did not immediately comment on the attacks. Both sides deny targeting civilians in the strikes, but thousands have died in the war. Earlier, Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said an o Kyiv pleads for weapons and global response

An explosion of a missile lights up the sky during a Russian missile strike in Kyiv. – REUTERSPIC

Svyrydenko called for more weapons for Ukraine and for the world to respond to the Russian attacks. “We will rebuild the buildings. But lost lives cannot be brought back. The enemy terrorises and kills our people across the country every day,” Svyrydenko said. – Reuters

In the western district of Sviatoshynskyi, several floors of a nine-storey residential building were partially destroyed, Klitschko and emergency officials said. Falling drone debris set off fires in a 16-storey apartment building and two more nine-storey buildings, the mayor said.

elderly woman died in a bomb shelter in Darnytskyi and a pregnant woman was among those injured. State emergency officials said a fire broke out in two of the four stories of a residential building in the district that hit in the drone attack, with its structure partially destroyed.

Gunmen launch rockets at Israel TEL AVIV: The Israeli army said two projectiles were launched yesterday from the Gaza Strip, with Islamic Jihad claiming responsibility for the rocket fire, which caused no casualties. flattened a high-rise in the city, the second in as many days, and dropped thousands of leaflets on western neighbourhoods calling on residents to evacuate, witnesses and an AFP journalist said. UN adopts Saudi-French proposal to resume conference on Palestinian peace settlement

Meanwhile, the Global Sumud Flotilla marked the first anniversary on Saturday of the death of Turkish American Aysenur Ezgi Eygi in the occupied West Bank, honouring her memory in a social media post. “Aysenur and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and allies have been killed by the Israeli government,” said the post. The flotilla described its mission as sailing on behalf of those “massacred while standing for humanity and just peace”, and said it views the voyage as “a statement against genocide”. Eygi, 26, was killed on Sept 6, last year, by Israeli forces during a protest against illegal settlements near Nablus. Video evidence and witness accounts show that Eygi was targeted and killed by an Israeli sniper. Despite the evidence, the Israeli military’s preliminary findings claimed she was “highly likely” hit “indirectly and unintentionally” as its forces fired at protesters allegedly throwing rocks. – AFP/Bernama But Jacir, who was born in Bethlehem, said a key goal of the film was to shine a spotlight on the British colonial practice of divide and rule. The narrative in Palestine 36 builds toward the publication of the Peel Commission’s report, an inquiry into the causes of unrest in Palestine. The commission recommended Palestine be partitioned – with separate areas for Jews and Arabs – a finding that influenced the United Nations-backed partition plan that coincided with Israel’s creation. “It was a British policy: first, we’ll bring (Arabs and Jews) together,” Jacir said. Then “we separate ... It was a tactic of control,” she said. – AFP from the British and have used since against Palestinians living under occupation.

“Two projectiles were identified crossing from the central Gaza Strip into Israeli territory,” the army said in a statement, adding that air raid sirens sounded in the area of Netivot, a town about 10km from the Palestinian territory. The military statement said “one projectile was intercepted and one fell in an open area”. The armed wing of Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas in Gaza against Israeli forces, announced that it had targeted Netivot “with two rockets in response to the crimes committed by the Zionist enemy”. It was the first time in several months that launches from Gaza threatened Netivot, home to about 50,000 residents. The launches came as Israel steps up its operations around Gaza City. On Saturday, the army carried out a strike that

In New York, the UN General Assembly on Friday adopted by consensus without a vote a decision presented by Saudi Arabia and France regarding the resumption of the High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the two-State Solution. Saudi Arabia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Dr Abdulaziz Al-Wasil reaffirmed the shared commitment of both nations to international law and relevant UN resolutions. He said the main objectives of the conference are to preserve international legitimacy and to take practical steps toward achieving lasting peace in the Middle East.

Palestine 36 shines light on revolt against British rule TORONTO: In Palestine 36 , director Annemarie Jacir (pic) recounts a year of Arab revolt against British colonial rule that she says is crucial to understanding events in the Middle East. The film features a mostly Arabic-speaking cast, including Hiam Abbass from HBO’s Succession , and Jeremy Irons as a British high commissioner unsettled by rising violence and protests against the colonial administration.

“You can’t understand where we are today without understanding 1936,” Jacir said a day after the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The Palestinian filmmaker, who lives in the Israeli city of Haifa, was motivated to make the film, in part, to redress a lack of awareness about the consequences of British policies during the mandate period, before Israel’s creation in 1948. “I wanted to point the finger at the British.”

With Jewish immigration from Europe increasing and Palestinian villagers concerned about further loss of land, Arab support for armed revolt against the British surges. The film details the brutal crackdown launched to contain the violence. Villagers are beaten, people are arrested en masse while soldiers torch homes after searching them for weapons. They are tactics Jacir said Israel’s army learned