分类： world

A devastating mid-air collision between two firefighting helicopters has left two people dead in Greece, as the country grapples with a wave of destructive wildfires fueled by record-breaking heatwaves that have swept across much of Southern Europe this summer.

Local authorities confirmed the identities of the victims: a Danish helicopter pilot and a Greek fire service liaison officer assigned to the mission. On board the second helicopter, a British pilot and a second Greek liaison officer walked away from the crash with their lives, though details of their current health conditions have not yet been released to the public.

Footage of the collision, which took place roughly 40 miles west of Athens in the Psatha region near the Attica-Boeotia border, captures one of the leased Bell helicopters striking the rotor blades of the other. The impact immediately ignited an intense blaze on the damaged aircraft, and both helicopters ultimately crashed into a deep ravine below the collision site.

The crash unfolded as hundreds of Greek firefighters have been locked in what local media has called a “titanic battle” to contain multiple large wildfires that have sprung up across the country over the past week. Blazes are burning across a wide swathe of Greek territory, spanning Porto Germeno, Psatha, Fokida, Megara and Kefalonia. Over 500 firefighters have worked around the clock for 72 straight hours to gain control of the spread, forcing mass evacuations of at-risk communities across the affected regions.

Greece is far from the only European nation facing this climate-fueled crisis. Early this same week, large uncontrolled wildfires broke out in both France and Spain, forcing widespread evacuations. The blazes near Madrid, Spain and Bordeaux, France have been partially contained but continue to burn, though approximately 300,000 people who were forced to leave their homes have begun returning to their properties.

Climate scientists and fire officials have repeatedly warned that human-caused climate change is drastically increasing the frequency and severity of extreme wildfire conditions across the Mediterranean. This year, an unusually mild and wet winter across Southern Europe encouraged more abundant vegetation growth across forests and wildlands. As successive record-breaking heatwaves rolled through the region this summer, that extra vegetation dried out completely, creating massive amounts of highly flammable fuel for wildfires to feed on. While most blazes are still ignited by human activity, whether accidental or intentional, the amplified heat and dry conditions driven by climate change make it far easier for small fires to explode into large, uncontrollable infernos.

A shocking act of violence has shaken the Russian capital, after an explosive device detonated inside a popular Italian restaurant in central Moscow. According to preliminary reports released by Russian state and independent media outlets, the blast has claimed three lives and left 21 other people with injuries ranging from minor to critical. Emergency services quickly rushed to the scene of the incident, cordoning off the area to launch forensic investigations into the origin of the explosive and the circumstances surrounding the attack. Local health authorities have confirmed that medical teams are working around the clock to treat the wounded, with several casualties still in intensive care as of the latest updates. The attack has sparked immediate concern across the country, as law enforcement agencies launch a manhunt for those responsible for the bombing, while communities in Moscow grapple with the aftermath of this deadly incident.

After months of largely static ground fighting and no visible progress in international mediation efforts, both Ukraine and Russia have sharply ramped up long-range cross-border strikes targeting key energy, logistics and military infrastructure, marking a new escalation of the three-and-a-half-year conflict.

In overnight strikes carried out deep into Russian territory, Ukraine targeted multiple high-value sites hundreds of kilometers from its own border. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that the attacks hit two key facilities in Russia’s Saratov Region, roughly 600 kilometers northeast of the Ukrainian border: the Engels-2 air base, a central hub for Russia’s strategic long-range aviation fleet, and a major crude oil refinery. Additional strikes were carried out against an oil storage depot in Russia’s Kaluga Region and a drone launch facility in Bryansk Region, which shares a border with northern Ukraine.

Zelenskyy framed these deep strikes as “our long-range sanctions” in a social media post Sunday, noting that the targeted facilities directly contribute to funding and executing Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “These are strategic facilities that enable the Russian war machine,” he stated. The Ukrainian military confirmed that the attack on Engels airfield sparked a large blaze at the base, which regularly deploys Tu-95MC and Tu-160 strategic bombers to launch cruise missile strikes against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.

Russian regional officials acknowledged the damage from the strikes, with Saratov Governor Roman Busargin confirming that drone attacks damaged civilian infrastructure in both Saratov and Engels and killed two people. Across other Russian regions, the death toll from Sunday’s coordinated strikes continued to climb: three people were killed in a drone strike on a civilian vehicle in the Udmurtia Republic, another three died in strikes in the border Belgorod Region, and Russian authorities reported a total of eight fatalities across all overnight attacks. Russian air defense forces also claimed to have intercepted and shot down 635 Ukrainian drones launched across multiple regions in the attack wave.

A separate strike hit a logistics warehouse owned by Wildberries, Russia’s largest domestic e-commerce retailer, in the Samara Region. Samara Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev labeled the attack “another terrorist act” by Ukraine, though no casualties were reported in this strike. In recent weeks, Ukraine has repeatedly targeted Wildberries distribution hubs across Russia, justifying the attacks by claiming the retailer supplies drone components, navigation equipment and other military-grade gear to Russian forces. Often called “Russia’s Amazon,” Wildberries employs roughly 48,000 people nationwide, and repeated strikes on its logistics network have created significant disruptions for hundreds of small and medium-sized Russian businesses that rely on the platform to reach customers.

Russia quickly retaliated for the Ukrainian strikes with its own overnight attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure. Moscow confirmed that its forces targeted two Ukrainian Black Sea ports and struck two commercial cargo vessels operating in the waterway. Later Sunday, a Russian strike on a Nova Poshta postal terminal near the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv killed one Ukrainian civilian, Ukrainian officials confirmed.

Russia has mirrored Ukraine’s strategy of targeting commercial logistics infrastructure in recent weeks, launching repeated strikes on warehouses operated by Ukraine’s leading postal service Nova Poshta and top domestic e-commerce retailer Rozetka. Overnight, Russian drones hit Rozetka’s largest warehouse facility, the company confirmed Sunday. No injuries were reported in the attack, which comes as part of a sustained Russian campaign against Ukrainian logistics and retail networks.

The escalation of cross-border strikes comes as the main front line stretching across eastern and southern Ukraine remains largely stagnant, and US-led international mediation efforts to negotiate a end to the conflict have failed to produce any breakthrough. Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and the conflict has entered its fifth year of continuous fighting with little prospect of a near-term diplomatic resolution.

A new wave of tit-for-tat drone assaults between Russia and Ukraine has left multiple civilians dead on both sides, with Kyiv extending its aerial campaign targeting Russian commercial and industrial infrastructure deep inside Russian territory, local officials confirmed over the weekend.

At the center of Kyiv’s latest strikes is Russia’s largest e-commerce platform Wildberries, often dubbed the domestic equivalent of Amazon. This attack marks at least the latest hit to the retailer’s facilities in less than two weeks, part of a coordinated Ukrainian strategy to disrupt Moscow’s war economy and bring the costs of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine home to the Russian public. Since the first strikes against Wildberries depots in Elektrostal (east of Moscow) and the Tambov region on July 18, Ukraine has targeted more than a dozen of the company’s warehouses across western, southern Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea, leaving at least nine people dead and dozens injured to date.

The most recent Wildberries strike hit a depot in Russia’s Samara region, located roughly 500 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border. Samara Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev reported that the strike sparked a large fire but resulted in no casualties.

Across other regions of Russia, the overnight drone attacks left a devastating civilian toll. In the Saratov region, east of Samara, two civilians were killed when a drone hit a residential building in Engels, Governor Roman Busargin announced. The strike also damaged civilian infrastructure in both Engels and the regional capital Saratov—two locations that have emerged as frequent Ukrainian strike targets in recent years, due to their hosting of a key military airbase (in Engels) and a large-scale oil refinery (in Saratov).

Further north in Russia’s Bashkortostan republic, air defense systems repelled a mass drone attack on industrial facilities in the city of Ufa, Governor Radiy Khabirov stated. While Khabirov did not disclose details on the specific facilities targeted, he confirmed that emergency crews were working to extinguish a post-strike fire.

In the Udmurt Republic, located northwest of Bashkortostan, three additional civilians were killed and two more wounded in a drone strike, according to acting regional head Olga Abramova. Abramova added that Russian air defenses downed two of the attacking drones and foiled another attempted incursion, noting that a civilian car was damaged in the attack, though she did not specify if the damage came from downed drone debris.

Overall, local Russian officials confirmed that the latest round of Ukrainian drone strikes across multiple Russian regions left at least five civilians dead.

In response to the Ukrainian attacks, Moscow claimed its air defense systems shot down 635 Ukrainian drones overnight across occupied Crimea, the Black Sea and the Azov Sea. The Russian Defense Ministry did not provide details on how many drones Ukraine launched total, or how many successfully reached their intended targets.

Russia launched its own large-scale drone assault on Ukraine the same night, according to Ukraine’s Air Force. Ukrainian officials reported that Russia launched 133 drones, 24 of which evaded air defenses to strike targets across the country.

Separate Russian strikes on Ukrainian territory on Sunday left two more civilians dead. In the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, one civilian was killed when a Russian guided bomb hit a residential building, local administration head Ivan Fedorov confirmed. In northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, a second civilian died in a strike that ignited a fire at a postal terminal on the city’s outskirts, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov reported.

CEUTA, Spain — By the end of last weekend, the Spanish North African exclave of Ceuta had begun to return to a superficial sense of normalcy. Storefronts that had closed amid the unprecedented border crisis had reopened their doors, and open-air terraces, restaurants and cafes across the city — home to just 84,000 permanent residents — were once again filled with locals and casual visitors. Yet the chaos that unfolded earlier that week remained the focal point of every conversation, leaving deep, unresolved rifts across the multi-cultural community.

Earlier that week, an estimated 60,000 migrants, the majority of whom were young men, crossed into Ceuta from Morocco in a sudden mass border breach. Many swam across the coastal waters, climbed over border barriers, and pushed through frontier checkpoints to enter the tiny territory. By Sunday, most of these migrants had voluntarily returned to Morocco, while a smaller contingent remained in Ceuta, attempting to integrate into daily life undetected. As the city cleared out, Spanish Civil Guard vessels continued to comb the coastal waters near the breached urban beach, searching for the bodies of migrants who did not survive the crossing.

Spanish authorities confirmed that at least 72 people lost their lives in the surge: some drowned in the choppy coastal waters, while others were killed in a deadly stampede as crowds pushed across a concrete breakwater barrier. This sudden humanitarian catastrophe has reignited fierce, long-simmering debates over immigration policy across Europe, drawing political actors from across the ideological spectrum to Ceuta in the wake of the crisis.

Many local residents, including Ceuta native Mohamad Abdelkader Driss, a 44-year-old fried fish restaurant waiter, place blame for the crisis squarely on political leadership, not the migrants themselves. “If you open the border, of course everyone comes in, but the young men aren’t to blame. The authorities are responsible,” Driss explained. Migrants who returned to Morocco after the surge also reported that the border was effectively open, with Moroccan authorities taking little to no action to stop thousands of people from crossing into Ceuta over the two-day surge on Thursday and Friday. At the peak of the crisis, the influx of migrants swelled Ceuta’s total population by more than 70%, a staggering strain on the small city’s infrastructure. Driss added that despite the unprecedented disruption, the migrants who entered behaved far more calmly than many residents feared, noting “It could have been much worse.”

The crisis quickly drew far-right anti-immigration political figures and high-profile right-wing influencers to Ceuta over the weekend, a move that sparked immediate counter-protests from the city’s large Muslim community, many of whom are of Moroccan descent. On Saturday evening, far-right Member of the European Parliament Alvise Pérez delivered a public call for all remaining migrants to be expelled, speaking to a small group of supporters before he was confronted by an angry crowd of counter-protesters. Pérez was forced to take shelter in a local bar, where residents banged on the windows in protest, until police could escort him out of the area.

Noor Ahmed, a 20-year-old university student and lifelong Ceuta resident who joined the counter-protests, denounced far-right figures like Pérez as opportunists seeking to exploit a humanitarian crisis for political gain. “They just want to take advantage of the humanitarian crisis Ceuta is currently experiencing,” Ahmed said.

Vox Party leader Santiago Abascal, the head of Spain’s largest far-right political party, visited Ceuta on Sunday, doubling down on harsh criticism of the Spanish central government. Abascal framed the migrant surge as “an invasion” and accused the sitting government of failing to protect Spain’s territorial borders. “The frontiers of Ceuta and Melilla are the walls of our home and homeland, and they are not being protected by a corrupt and traitorous government,” Abascal said.

Beyond the high-profile political clashes, the crisis has put Ceuta’s long-held reputation as a haven of cross-cultural tolerance under unprecedented strain. For decades, the city has prided itself on the peaceful coexistence of its four major religious and cultural communities: Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus. But the events of the week have sown doubt among some long-term residents.

Eva Barrientos, a logistics worker and Ceuta resident who attended Saturday’s far-right gathering, said she believed another mass surge would happen in the near future, and questioned the national loyalty of Ceuta’s foreign-born residents. “In Ceuta, we have always lived together. We have four cultures living very well, without any problems,” she said. “But the only thing we are realizing now is that there is an enemy within.” Barrientos accused many foreign-born residents of holding greater loyalty to Morocco than to Spain, their country of residence.

The international community has begun to weigh in on the crisis as well. Pope Leo XIV, who has made immigration reform a central priority of his papacy and highlighted the issue during a recent visit to Spain’s Canary Islands — one of Europe’s busiest entry points for migrant arrivals — released a statement Sunday addressing the situation. “I am following with concern the alarming situation in Ceuta, asking God … that solutions of peace, stability and justice may be found,” the Pope said.

In the wake of the crisis, Spanish authorities have begun installing a new sea barrier along Ceuta’s border with Morocco to prevent future mass breaches, even as local residents remain divided over what caused the surge, who bears responsibility, and how the city should move forward from the event that upended its quiet, multi-cultural way of life.