分类： world

More than two decades after her mutilated body was found hidden in a rural French village, an unidentified murder victim has finally been named, and a suspect has been taken into custody — marking a historic milestone for Interpol’s global cold case initiative.

The victim, now confirmed as 34-year-old Algerian-born Hakima Boukerouis, was the fifth unidentified woman to be identified through Operation Identify Me, an international effort launched in 2023 by the global law enforcement agency Interpol to name hundreds of unclaimed female bodies found across six European countries. Until this breakthrough, investigators had only referred to Boukerouis by the chilling nickname “the woman with the Richmond dental crown”, after a distinct, high-cost dental procedure she had undergone shortly before her death that authorities previously suspected was performed in Germany.

Boukerouis’ remains were first discovered in January 2005, tied, wrapped in black garbage bags, and concealed inside a covered water butt in the small northeastern French village of Saint-Quirin. For nearly 20 years, no matches to missing person reports could be found, leaving the case stuck in the growing backlog of cross-border cold cases. That changed when French law enforcement used familial DNA searching to connect Boukerouis to her relatives, unlocking the long-awaited identification.

The arrest of a suspect in Boukerouis’ murder is the first made since Operation Identify Me launched, a win that Interpol leaders say highlights the value of persistent, cross-border collaboration on unsolved cases. “This identification underscores how important it is to keep investigating unresolved cold cases,” Interpol Secretary General Valdecy Urquiza said in an official statement released Tuesday. “As part of the Identify Me campaign, the efforts of the French authorities have helped identify a murder victim whose case had remained open for many years.”

Due to ongoing investigations and active judicial proceedings, neither French police nor Interpol have released the identity of the arrested suspect, and only limited details about the case have been made public.

Operation Identify Me was created to address a growing challenge for European law enforcement: rising global migration and transnational human trafficking have left an increasing number of people reported missing outside their home countries, making it far harder to match unidentified bodies to missing person reports. The campaign pulls 47 unsolved cases of women found dead under suspicious or violent circumstances in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Spain into a single public, cross-border effort. For the first time, Interpol has issued public black notices — its official requests for information on unidentified deceased persons — for these cases, shared critical records including fingerprints with law enforcement agencies worldwide, and reignited public and investigative attention to these long-forgotten cases.

Before Boukerouis’ identification, four other women have been named through the initiative: 31-year-old British citizen Rita Roberts, murdered in Belgium in 1992 and identified after her family spotted a photo of her tattoo in a BBC report; 33-year-old Paraguayan national Ainoha Izaga Ibieta Lima, found dead in a Spanish poultry shed in 2018; 31-year-old Russian national Liudmila Zavada, found on a Spanish roadside in 2005 and identified in September 2024; and 35-year-old German citizen Eva Maria Pommer, found on a Dutch beach in 2004 and identified the following month.

With five identifications complete, investigators still working through the campaign are pushing to name the remaining 42 women. Most of the remaining unidentified victims are confirmed murder victims, most believed to have been between 15 and 30 years old at the time of their death, with some cases dating back decades.

In a continued escalation of cross-border attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, a key oil refinery on Russia’s Black Sea coast has been targeted for the third time in April 2026 by Ukrainian drones, triggering a massive inferno that forced the evacuation of adjacent residential areas, regional Russian officials confirmed Tuesday.

Located in the southern Russian city of Tuapse, the refinery has faced repeated Ukrainian strikes over the past two weeks. Previous attacks already left severe environmental damage in their wake: a large volume of crude oil spilled into the Black Sea, and local residents reported so-called “black rain” falling across the city, leaving sticky oily residue on homes, streets and public spaces.

Ukraine’s military has publicly taken responsibility for the latest strike, framing attacks on Russian energy facilities as a legitimate strategy to cut off funding for Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022.

In an update posted to his Telegram channel Tuesday, Krasnodar regional governor Veniamin Kondratyev announced that more than 160 firefighters had been deployed to contain the large-scale blaze. The governor noted that first responders were operating in “extremely difficult conditions” and praised their work as “true heroism”, adding that protecting the lives and health of Tuapse residents and visitors remained the government’s top priority. No fatalities or injuries have been reported from the attack or subsequent fire as of Tuesday’s updates.

Local municipal district head Sergei Boyko ordered residents of streets within the immediate vicinity of the refinery to evacuate the area, while emergency authorities set up a temporary evacuation center at a nearby public school to accommodate displaced residents. The regional crisis center issued public health warnings, alerting residents that harmful combustion byproducts were being released into the atmosphere from the ongoing fire. Local residents were advised to wear protective face masks, keep all windows closed, limit time spent outdoors, and rinse exposed mucous membranes including the nose, eyes and throat after being outside.

Anastasia Troyanova, a local correspondent for Russian independent environmental outlet Kedr, reported from the scene that a massive plume of thick black smoke hung over Tuapse, with a strong acrid smell of burning fuel permeating the entire area. Satellite imagery captured earlier in April already highlighted the extensive damage caused by the two prior strikes on the refinery.

Following the attack, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the country’s Minister of Emergency Situations to travel immediately to Tuapse to oversee on-site firefighting operations and post-blaze cleanup efforts. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, accused Kyiv of intentionally targeting energy infrastructure used for export operations, claiming the strikes amount to an attempt to destabilize global energy markets.

For its part, Ukraine’s military reiterated in an official statement that the strike on the Tuapse refinery was part of coordinated, ongoing efforts to “reduce the military-economic potential of the Russian aggressor”. Over the past several months, Ukrainian forces have stepped up long-range drone strikes on critical energy facilities deep within Russian territory, a campaign that Kyiv defends as a legitimate military tactic, since the revenue generated by these oil and gas facilities directly funds Russia’s ongoing war effort.

In a tit-for-tat development that underscores the continuing escalation of reciprocal long-range attacks, a Russian drone strike on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv injured one civilian on the same day as the Tuapse attack, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko. Ukrainian officials reported multiple small blazes across the city, including one that broke out at a local cemetery.

PRAGUE – In a landmark ruling on Tuesday, a regional court in Brno, the Czech Republic’s second-largest urban center, has handed a 20-year-old man a combined seven-year prison sentence for his central role in a foiled terror attack and attempted murder targeting a local Jewish synagogue.

Court documents confirm the defendant, who was just 17 when the plot was carried out in January 2024, planned the arson attack alongside a second underage accomplice. The pair constructed a homemade incendiary device with the explicit goal of setting fire to Brno’s active synagogue and murdering an individual present at the site. The intended victim escaped the attack unharmed, and the incendiary device failed to cause significant structural damage to the place of worship, thwarting the attackers’ deadly plans.

In addition to the seven-year term for the attempted attack and murder, the court added a consecutive two-year prison sentence for separate charges of promoting terrorism. That offense was committed after the defendant turned 18, making him eligible for prosecution as an adult on that count.

Legal authorities confirmed that the defendant’s accomplice, who remains under the minimum age required for public criminal trial in the Czech Republic, has already had their closed-door hearing completed. No details of the accomplice’s case can be released to the public due to Czech juvenile privacy regulations.

The plot is part of a broader interconnected radicalization network uncovered by Czech law enforcement last year. The defendant and his accomplice are two of five teenagers arrested in a cross-border operation targeting a network that officials say was radicalized online by the transnational militant group Islamic State.

Investigations into the group revealed that all five members spread virulent hate speech across multiple social media platforms, targeting Jewish communities, the LGBTQ+ population, and other ethnic and social minorities across Central Europe. Coordinated raids carried out by police in both the Czech Republic and neighboring Austria uncovered a cache of weapons, including edged weapons such as knives, machetes, and axes, alongside several gas pistols.

Officials added that the group participated in private online forums dedicated to recruiting new fighters to join Islamic State militant operations in Syria. All members shared an open obsession with extreme violence and echoed the group’s violent ideology targeting marginalized groups.

The investigation was a cross-border collaborative effort, with Czech law enforcement coordinating closely with law enforcement counterparts in Austria, the United Kingdom, and Slovakia, as well as Europol, the European Union’s dedicated cross-border law enforcement agency, to dismantle the network and prevent further planned attacks.

In a significant milestone for Ukraine’s air defense campaign against Russian aggression, Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced that interceptor systems shot down over 33,000 Russian drones of varying types in March. This figure marks the highest monthly total of intercepted Russian unmanned aerial vehicles since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Alongside defensive advances, Ukraine has expanded its offensive drone capabilities. The country’s domestically produced long-range attack drones carried out a third strike on a key Russian Black Sea oil infrastructure site in less than two weeks, targeting the refinery and terminal at the Black Sea port of Tuapse. The Tuapse refinery, a major asset in Russia’s energy network that generates critical revenue for Moscow’s war effort, has now faced three coordinated attacks by Ukrainian defense and security units this month alone. According to Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, the first two strikes earlier in March destroyed 24 oil storage tanks and damaged four additional facilities. Krasnodar Governor Veniamin Kondratyev confirmed that local residents near the site were evacuated as a precaution on Tuesday, though he did not release details on the number of evacuees or the duration of the evacuation order.

Ukraine’s domestic drone industry has emerged as a game-changing asset in the conflict against Russia’s larger conventional military force. Kyiv’s cutting-edge, battle-proven drone technology has already attracted widespread military procurement interest from the global defense community. Ukrainian officials report that demand for Ukraine’s interceptor drones, a core component of integrated air defense networks, has spiked among Middle Eastern and Gulf nations amid ongoing regional conflicts including tensions with Iran.

To scale up production and operational effectiveness of interceptor drones, Ukraine has established a new dedicated command within its air force, Fedorov shared in a Monday Telegram post. Offensive capabilities have also seen dramatic growth: the Ukrainian Defense Ministry confirmed Tuesday that Kyiv has more than tripled the maximum range of its deep-strike drone operations since the 2022 invasion. What began as a 630-kilometer (400-mile) strike capability early in the war has expanded to roughly 1,750 kilometers (1,100 miles), allowing Ukrainian forces to target critical Russian military supply factories and revenue-generating energy infrastructure deep inside Russian territory.

Cross-border drone exchanges continued to inflict casualties on both sides this week. The Russian Defense Ministry stated Tuesday that its air defense systems intercepted 186 Ukrainian drones overnight across multiple Russian regions, the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula, and the Black and Azov Seas. In the Russian border region of Belgorod, a Ukrainian drone attack left three civilians dead and three others injured, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov confirmed.

On the Ukrainian side, Russian drone attacks claimed three civilian lives and wounded five others across the country over the same period. In the northeastern Kharkiv region’s city of Chuhuiv, two civilians were killed, regional military administration head Oleh Syniehubov reported. One civilian death and five injuries were recorded in Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown. A separate Russian strike on Konotop in the northern Sumy region cut off the city’s electricity and water access. To date, independent third-party verification of all Ukrainian and Russian claims about drone strikes and damage has not been completed.