30/09/2025

TUESDAY | SEPT 30, 2025

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QUITO: A protester was killed and 17 soldiers taken hostage during demonstrations in northern Ecuador on Sunday as tensions flared over a sharp rise in fuel prices. The country’s largest indigenous rights organisation, known by its acronym Conaie, had called for a national strike to oppose President Daniel Noboa’s move to slash fuel subsidies. Conaie said indigenous community member Efrain Fuerez, 46, was “shot three times” and died in hospital in Cotacachi, 100km north of Quito. A video shared by Conaie on X show a group of soldiers kicking two men on the ground, one apparently injured and the other trying to help him. “We hold Daniel Noboa responsible, we demand an immediate investigation and justice for Efrain and his community,” the group said. Later that day, the Ecuadoran armed forces in the same city accused protesters of injuring 12 soldiers and holding 17 others hostage. The soldiers were “guarding a food convoy” and were “violently ambushed by terrorist groups”, the military wrote on X. Noboa has battled to address the protests, declaring on Sept 16 a state of emergency in eight of the country’s 24 provinces and a nighttime curfew in five of them. He has claimed that Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua was behind the demonstrations and warned that protesters who break the law “will be charged with terrorism and will go to prison for 30 years”. – AFP president Dmitry Medvedev said yesterday that Europe could not afford a war against Russia but that if its leaders made the mistake of triggering one then it could escalate into a conflict with weapons of mass destruction. Russia, Medvedev said on Telegram, does not need such a war, including with “frigid old Europe”. “They simply cannot afford a war with Russia,” Medvedev said of European powers, adding that “the possibility of a fatal accident always exists”. “And such a conflict has an absolutely real risk of escalating into a war using weapons of mass destruction,” said Medvedev, who is now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council. – Reuters One killed in Ecuador unrest ‘UK, FRENCH ARSENALS MUST BE PART OF TALKS’ MOSCOW: Talks on reducing strategic nuclear weapons must first be conducted between Russia and the US, but the arsenals of Britain and France will ultimately have to be included in negotiations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying on Sunday. Peskov’s remarks come amid a Kremlin proposal to the US this month to voluntarily maintain for a year the limits on deployed strategic nuclear weapons set out in their New START arms control treaty once it expires next year if the US does the same. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Putin’s proposal sounded “pretty good”, but the issue was up to President Donald Trump. Trump has said he wants to open denuclearisation talks with Russia and China. – Reuters MEDVEDEV WARNS OF NUCLEAR WAR DANGER MOSCOW: Former Russian

BR I E F S

Hamas searches for two hostages British protesters sit down outside of the Labour Party’s conference in Liverpool on Sunday. – AFPPIC

the White House yesterday for high stakes talks aimed at pushing an elusive Gaza peace plan over the line. Trump says a deal to end the nearly two-year war in Gaza, free hostages held by Hamas and disarm the group is effectively done following talks with Arab leaders last week. He teased a possible breakthrough on Sunday, saying on his Truth Social network: “All are on board for something special, first time ever. We will get it done!!!” However, Netanyahu has given little reason for optimism. He vowed in a defiant UN address on Friday to “finish the job” against Hamas, and promised to block a Palestinian state that key Western nations recently recognised. The Israeli premier also appears reluctant to halt a military offensive in Gaza City from which hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee in recent weeks. – AFP

In group announced that it had lost contact with an Israeli-American hostage, who was released a few days after that announcement. Since launching its offensive on Gaza City, the Israeli military has repeatedly ordered Palestinians to move south. On Sunday, Gaza’s civil defence agency said 38 people had been killed by Israeli fire, including 14 in Gaza City. In Washington, US President Donald Trump hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the past, the

o Group urges Israel to halt strikes

GAZA CITY: Hamas’s armed wing urged the Israeli military to temporarily halt airstrikes and withdraw from part of Gaza City on Sunday as it tried to locate two Israeli hostages it said it had lost contact with. “The lives of the two prisoners are in real danger, and (Israeli) forces must immediately withdraw to the south of Street 8 and halt aerial operations for 24 hours to PARIS: The French prosecutor whose office was behind the case against former president Nicolas Sarkozy over campaign funding from Libya yesterday denied the investigation into the rightwinger was motivated by “hatred”. Sarkozy was on Thursday sentenced to five years in prison after a court found he had allowed aides to approach the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to help fund his 2007 presidential bid. The former president, who next month will be informed when he is to begin his jail sentence, said immediately after the verdict that the “hatred” towards him “definitely has no limits”. “We have no hatred to express ... Our compass is the law, it is the rule of law,”said France top prosecutor for financial crimes Jean-Francois Bohnert in rare public comments to RTL news outlet. He also echoed condemnation already made by the Elysee and

allow attempts to rescue the prisoners,” the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades said in a statement. In an earlier announcement, the group said the loss of contact was due to Israeli military operations over the previous 48 hours in two southern Gaza City neighbourhoods where Israeli forces have stepped up air and ground assaults. French President Emmanuel Macron over “intolerable” threats made against the judiciary after the verdict, which have already led to the opening of two investigations. Sarkozy, 70, who led France from 2007 to 2012 and still retains influence on the right despite convictions, has remained defiant after the verdict which he said in an interview published on Sunday had “violated ... all the limits of the rule of law”. He has appealed the verdict, although under the terms of the ruling this has no effect on his incarceration. In an interview with the Journal du dimanche newspaper Sarkozy said he would in “no way” ask for a pardon from Macron. “To be pardoned, you must accept your sentence, and therefore acknowledge your guilt. I will never acknowledge my guilt for something I did not do. I will fight until my last breath to have my honesty

French prosecutor rejects Sarkozy’s ‘hatred’ accusations

Sarkozy at the match between PSG and Auxerre. – AFPPIC

recognised,” he said. “I will win.” Even though he is expected to go to prison in the next weeks, Sarkozy

was still spotted on Saturday in the Parc des Princes stadium in Paris watching PSG play Auxerre. – AFP