标签： Oceania

Rescue teams have launched an urgent search and evacuation operation after a fatal overnight collision between two trains on the outskirts of Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, which has already claimed seven lives and left more than 80 others injured, with multiple passengers still trapped inside mangled carriages.

State-owned rail operator Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI) spokesperson Anna Purba confirmed the initial casualty count to local media early Tuesday: seven fatalities and 81 injured people, with two trapped individuals confirmed alive in the wreckage as rescue work continued.

Survivors have described the sudden, terrifying chaos of the incident, which occurred when a long-distance intercity train struck a stationary commuter train that had been halted on the tracks near Bekasi Timur Station, roughly 25 kilometers from central Jakarta. Sausan Sarifah, a 29-year-old commuter who was admitted to RSUD Bekasi hospital with a broken arm and deep thigh laceration, recalled the harrowing moments immediately after impact. She had been traveling home from work when her train stopped at the station, and passengers had already received announcements to prepare to disembark when the collision occurred. “It all happened so fast, in a split second,” Sarifah said from her hospital bed. “There was no time to get out, and everyone ended up piled up inside the train, crushed on top of one another. I thought I was going to die. Thank God I was on top, so I could be evacuated quickly.”

According to KAI spokesperson Franoto Wibowo, the chain of events that led to the collision began when a taxi clipped the commuter train at a nearby level crossing, forcing the train to stop abruptly on the active main line where it was subsequently hit by the oncoming long-distance service. Jakarta police chief Asep Edi Suheri added that the long-distance train collided directly with the last carriage of the commuter train, which was designated as a women-only car. All confirmed fatalities and injuries are from the commuter train; all roughly 240 passengers aboard the long-distance train were evacuated without major harm, Purba confirmed.

Witnesses at the crash site described chaotic scenes in the immediate aftermath of the incident: rescue personnel shouted urgently for emergency equipment such as oxygen tanks, ambulances formed a long, flashing queue along the access road, and stretchers carrying injured survivors were carried out of the wreckage as hundreds of shocked onlookers gathered. The Jakarta search and rescue agency noted in an official statement that the high-force impact caused “significant damage to several train carriages”, leaving multiple passengers pinned inside the twisted metal. Rescuers from the military, local fire department, national search and rescue agency, and Indonesian Red Cross have all been deployed to the site, using specialized extrication equipment to extract trapped survivors.

As of Tuesday morning, evacuation work was still ongoing, and officials warned that the death toll could climb. Deputy house speaker Sufmi Dasco Ahmad, who was at the crash site, told reporters: “Judging from the evacuation process that is still under way, it is possible that the number of victims may continue to rise.”

Local hospitals are also operating at a rush to treat the influx of injured patients, with medical teams conducting triage to prioritize the most severe cases. Eva Chairista, a 39-year-old woman who traveled to RSUD Bekasi after learning her 27-year-old sister-in-law Fira was injured, described a frenzied scene as families waited for updates on their loved ones. “The doctor told us to be patient, there are many whose condition is worse than my sister-in-law’s,” she said.

This collision is the latest serious transport accident in Indonesia, a vast archipelagic nation where chronic underinvestment and poor maintenance have left much of the public transport fleet, including trains, buses and passenger aircraft, aged and unsafe. The previous major train crash in Indonesia, which occurred in West Java province in January 2024, killed four crew members and injured roughly two dozen people. One of the deadliest level crossing accidents in the country’s recent history occurred in Jakarta in 2015, when a commuter train collided with a minibus, killing 16 people.

As a former Irish president who has witnessed decades of global political and environmental shifts, Mary Robinson is positioning the upcoming high-level fossil fuel phaseout conference in Santa Marta, Colombia, as an unprecedented turning point in the global fight against climate change. Speaking to Agence France-Presse ahead of the April 28-29 gathering, the veteran climate advocate says the summit comes at a uniquely opportune moment: amid ongoing global energy market chaos sparked by the Iran conflict, the meeting is throwing a stark spotlight on the steep dangers of continued reliance on coal, oil, and gas — a burden that falls heaviest on the low-income communities Robinson has spent her career championing.

Robinson, a member of The Elders, a collective of former global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela, served as the United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Change when the landmark Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. When asked whether the Santa Marta gathering, which emerged from widespread frustration with slow progress in the UN-led climate negotiation process, undermines the role of the annual Conference of the Parties (COP), Robinson pushed back on that framing. She emphasized that the COP process remains irreplaceable for global climate coordination, noting that the Colombia conference was never intended to replace UN talks — instead, it is designed to complement and accelerate the multilateral process.

She pointed to the failed outcome of COP30 in Belém, where fossil fuel lobbying blocked any official agreement to include explicit language referencing a phaseout of fossil fuels, as the core catalyst for organizing the Santa Marta summit. What was not foreseen when the conference was planned, Robinson noted, was the eruption of one of the most severe global oil and gas crises in modern history. This unexpected timing has only amplified the meeting’s urgency, she argued, making it the ideal moment to break through decades of entrenched “fossil fuel mindset” and accelerate the global transition to renewable, clean energy systems. “It’s the way we have to go, it’s the way we are going, but we need to go far much faster,” she said.

Unlike formal UN climate talks, the Santa Marta conference is not structured around binding, text-by-text negotiations, Robinson explained, which gives participants unprecedented space to collaborate on actionable action. Stakeholders from across sectors — national governments, sub-national governing bodies, private industry, civil society groups, and grassroots activists gathering for the concurrent People’s Summit — are attending ready to share concrete commitments they are prepared to implement, rather than haggling over negotiating language. This open, action-oriented dynamic, Robinson said, makes it likely the summit will spawn new coalitions of actors committed to moving rapidly away from fossil fuels, creating a new, results-first momentum that has been missing from global climate talks to date.

When addressing concerns that hundreds of millions of people around the world still depend on fossil fuels for basic energy access, Robinson tied that reliance directly to the current energy crisis: the ongoing conflict has cut off roughly 20 percent of global oil and gas supplies, sending prices soaring and leaving the world’s poorest communities facing the steepest costs. Farmers have been hit particularly hard by skyrocketing fertilizer prices tied to fossil fuel markets, highlighting that continued reliance on dirty energy offers no long-term path to energy security or stable livelihoods. This reality, she argued, makes the Santa Marta conference a uniquely critical moment to build momentum for change.

Robinson also addressed the growing pressure many governments face to expand fossil fuel production in response to the current energy crisis, arguing that far too many policy decisions around energy security are not grounded in the urgent warnings climate scientists have issued for decades. Drawing a parallel to the COVID-19 pandemic, where most nations relied on top chief medical officers to guide policy, Robinson called on all governments to appoint chief planetary scientists to provide authoritative, science-based guidance for climate and energy policy. “During COVID, lots of countries had chief medical officers, and we listened because we were scared. They had a lot of authority,” she noted. “We’re in the same position. We haven’t thought it through yet, but we are.”

While the latest climate science paints a deeply alarming picture, with the planet approaching irreversible tipping points faster than many researchers predicted, Robinson says she retains cautious optimism for the future. That optimism was crystallized during a scientific expedition to Greenland, where she had a transformative experience listening to a glacier calve — the process where large chunks of ice break off into the ocean as temperatures rise. She described hearing sounds like thunder as a large section of ice split off, followed by smaller cracks that echoed like rifle shots, and found herself crying as the reality of human-caused climate change hit home. That moment, she said, underscored both the urgency of the crisis and the need to seize every available opportunity to act. With the open, action-focused space provided by the Santa Marta conference, the global community finally has a chance to build the momentum needed to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels, she argued, and leaders must not waste this opening.

In a shocking escalation of instability in West Africa, coordinated unprecedented attacks across Mali carried out by an unlikely partnership of Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists and Tuareg separatists have left the country’s military leadership reeling, marking the first full-scale implementation of an alliance struck between the two rival groups one year ago. The assault, which resulted in the death of Mali’s defense minister and the capture of the strategic northern town of Kidal, has thrown the Sahel region’s already fragile security landscape into new turmoil.

The joint operation was officially claimed Saturday by the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), Al-Qaeda’s regional affiliate in the African Sahel, which fought alongside the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a 2024-founded ethnic Tuareg separatist movement pushing for full independence of Mali’s northern Azawad territory. Alongside seizing Kidal — a town Malian government forces backed by Russian paramilitary fighters had captured from rebel groups in November 2023 — the militants targeted government outposts in multiple major population centers and even launched strikes on the outskirts of the capital, Bamako. In addition to Defense Minister Sadio Camara, the head of Mali’s intelligence service Modibo Kone was wounded in gunfire during the attacks, and junta leader Assimi Goita has not been seen or made any public statement since the offensive began. Security sources also confirmed joint JNIM-FLA operations in the northern town of Gao, where government forces repelled the assault but the militant alliance retains a significant presence in surrounding areas.

While the two groups hold fundamentally divergent core objectives, regional security experts emphasize their cooperation is rooted in a shared, urgent enemy: the military junta that has ruled Mali since a 2020 coup, and its Russian paramilitary backers, the current Africa Corps force that has replaced the earlier Wagner Group mercenaries. This is not the first time Tuareg separatists and Sahel jihadists have aligned: a 2012 alliance saw the two capture major northern hubs before their partnership collapsed into open conflict, with jihadists ousting the separatists from seized territory. For years after that split, relations remained deeply hostile, culminating in direct armed clashes between FLA and JNIM along the Mauritanian border in April 2024. But by the end of 2024, the two groups negotiated a new power-sharing partnership, according to Wassim Nasr, a jihadist movement researcher at the Soufan Center think tank.

The terms of the new deal outline clear compromises from both sides: FLA has agreed to accept the application of sharia law in jointly held territory, and requires judicial appointments to receive approval from both organizations. In exchange, the agreement divvies up administrative control: the FLA will govern captured urban centers, while jihadists will oversee rural areas. The partnership also includes critical military knowledge sharing: Nasr notes that JNIM has agreed to share its specialized expertise in building and deploying improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and mortar fire, capabilities the FLA had long struggled to develop independently. Saturday’s offensive marks the first time the full terms of this agreement have been put into operational practice, Nasr explained.

Jean-Herve Jezequel, Sahel project director at the International Crisis Group, pointed out that the coherence of the alliance depends entirely on its unifying opposition to the current Malian regime. “JNIM pursues a political-religious agenda, centred on the establishment of sharia law and the rejection of foreign forces, whilst the FLA champions a territorial and autonomist agenda, centred on Azawad,” Jezequel explained. “This convergence is based above all on the existence of common adversaries, namely the Malian authorities and their Russian partners.”

For the Tuareg people, a historically nomadic ethnic group spread across Mali, Niger, Algeria, Libya and Burkina Faso, the push for autonomy stems from decades of documented political and economic marginalization, particularly in the Kidal region. Their alignment with JNIM reflects a growing desperation to reverse military gains made by the junta and its Russian allies over the past two years.

Experts note that the alliance’s strategic objectives do not include an immediate push to capture Bamako and seize full national power. Instead, their near-term goal is to reassert control over northern Mali’s traditional rebel strongholds. The capture of Kidal, Nasr explained, was achieved by pinning Malian army forces in central Mali, delivering a paralyzing blow to junta leadership in the capital, and consolidating gains in the north. Going forward, the alliance may expand its offensive into central Mali to increase pressure on the junta, with the broader goal of accelerating the regime’s collapse and forcing regime change in Bamako.

Jezequel added that the group’s strategy focuses on steadily eroding the junta’s legitimacy and capacity through sustained security pressure, rather than a direct assault on the capital, which would be logistically difficult in the short term. Unlike the 2012 alliance that fractured almost immediately, experts say the current partnership may prove more durable, though its long-term future remains uncertain. The true test of the alliance, Nasr argued, will come when the groups move into the post-offensive phase of governing captured cities like Kidal — a test that has yet to begin.