标签： Oceania

A sharp escalation of cross-border attacks has sent civilian casualties soaring to their highest level since the early weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with France stepping in Saturday to commit additional air defense interceptor missiles to help Kyiv shore up its vulnerable skies. The new escalation comes as rescuers continued the grim work of clearing rubble from a destroyed Ukrainian shopping center one day after a Russian drone strike left 16 dead and three still missing there.

Across both sides of the frontline, at least 13 people were killed in strikes that unfolded overnight Saturday and through the day: seven fatalities in Ukrainian territory, four inside Russia, and two more in Russia-annexed Crimea. In Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown, the aftermath of Friday’s attack on the crowded downtown shopping center stretched into a second day on Saturday. The strike, which the Ukrainian leader has condemned as a “cynical and despicable” double-tap attack, first ignited a massive blaze that sent bloodied survivors fleeing into the streets, then a second drone struck roughly 30 minutes later as first responders were beginning to arrive. On Saturday, mourners had already set up a makeshift memorial outside the gutted building, laying flowers and handwritten notes on the surrounding grass. Photos from the site show blackened goods still stacked on supermarket shelves beneath a cratered ceiling, surrounded by blown-out window frames and piles of twisted, charred metal cleared by recovery crews. Sixteen people have been confirmed dead, more than 100 wounded, and three remain unaccounted for, regional authorities reported.

Elsewhere in Ukraine on Saturday, four people died in fresh strikes on the frontline Zaporizhzhia region, while two people were killed in attacks on the eastern outskirts of Kyiv near Boryspil. That midday ballistic missile strike came while German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul was in the capital for meetings with Zelenskyy and his Ukrainian counterpart, highlighting the persistent threat even to the country’s seat of government. In southern Russia’s Krasnodar region, a Ukrainian drone strike hit a residential home, killing two children and hospitalizing their parents, regional governor Veniamin Kondratyev called the attack “vile and cynical.”

The surge in deadly attacks has underscored Ukraine’s growing critical shortage of advanced air defense systems, particularly the U.S.-made Patriot interceptors capable of shooting down the fast, hard-to-defend ballistic missiles Russia has increasingly relied on in recent months. These super-weapons travel faster than the speed of sound and reach their targets in minutes, leaving Kyiv residents too little time to reach underground shelters in most cases.

Making the announcement of France’s new support on social media platform X, French President Emmanuel Macron emphasized that “it is crucial to provide Ukraine with all the necessary means to defend its skies and thwart this aggression.” The new interceptors will be brought to Ukraine ahead of a key meeting this coming Monday of the Coalition of the Willing, a air defense initiative co-led by France and Britain that brings together dozens of Kyiv’s international allies. The meeting will focus on new steps to ramp up diplomatic and economic pressure on Moscow to end its illegal invasion.

Diplomatic efforts to end the conflict have largely stalled in recent months. The United States, which previously brokered multiple rounds of direct negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow, has shifted its focus to other regional tensions, particularly its escalating conflict with Iran, and senior officials have privately acknowledged that the conflict has proven far more intractable than previous U.S. leadership once predicted. The United Nations has confirmed that the total civilian death toll across the conflict zone has climbed to its highest monthly level this year since the first months of the 2022 full-scale invasion, a grim marker of the expanding human cost of the 4.5-year conflict.

A deadly attack by a jihadist faction during Friday prayers in Nigeria’s central Niger State has left scores of civilians dead or kidnapped, according to survivor and lawmaker accounts shared with Agence France-Presse on Saturday. The violence unfolded when a clash broke out between two rival militant groups, creating a chaotic window that allowed dozens of captives and survivors to escape.

Nigeria has grappled with a 17-year jihadist insurgency that began with Boko Haram’s 2009 uprising, one of the longest-running and deadliest extremist conflicts in Africa. While the insurgency was originally concentrated in the country’s northeast, where the 2014 mass kidnapping of 276 Chibok schoolgirls drew global outrage, the conflict has splintered and spread in recent years. The attack on Friday took place near Nigeria’s western border with Benin, a region that has seen a sharp spike in militant activity from local armed groups and extremist fighters moving north from the Sahel.

Jibril Ahmad, a survivor of the attack on Dikera village in Borgu Local Government Area, described the sudden assault that came immediately after the community concluded its weekly Friday prayer. “Soon after finishing the normal Friday prayer, the armed group of Lakuwara, in their hundreds, wielding guns, knives and machetes, began to attack us,” Ahmad recalled. He added that the attackers justified the killings by claiming village residents were not following what the group considers “true teachings of Islam.” The neighboring village of Binzi was also targeted in the coordinated assault, both Ahmad and Nigerian federal representative Jafaru Mohammed confirmed to AFP.

Lakurawa, the group that launched the initial attack, is a little-understood extremist faction that regional security researchers have linked to the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), a major jihadist organization that controls large swathes of territory in neighboring Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. The violence took an unexpected turn when a second local jihadist group, called Mahmuda, intervened and opened fire on Lakurawa fighters, the witnesses said.

Many civilians were able to flee to safety as the two rival factions fought each other. “Many of us have escaped, while they were busy trying to confront the Mahmuda fighters,” Ahmad explained. Mohammed confirmed that the clash grew out of ideological divisions between the two groups: “some members of the Mahmuda group were against the doctrine of the Lakurawa and when they heard of what the Lakurawa were doing they fought them.” Despite the intervention, Mohammed said the civilian toll remained severe: “But as of now many of our people have been slaughtered and many have been kidnapped and taken into the bushes.”

As of Saturday morning, local authorities had not released a confirmed casualty count. Niger State police confirmed they had received reports of kidnappings in the area, but said they had not been formally notified of any fatalities.

The attack highlights the evolving and increasingly fragmented security crisis facing Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Twelve months before the assault, in August 2023, the Nigerian government announced it had “dismantled” the Mahmuda faction and another extremist group Ansaru, arresting their top leaders. While overall jihadist violence has declined from its peak a decade ago, during the height of Boko Haram’s insurgency, Nigerian security forces remain overstretched by multiple overlapping conflicts across the country.

Extremist groups have expanded their foothold in northwest and central Nigeria in recent years, operating alongside large criminal networks of non-ideological bandit gangs that raid villages, steal livestock, and abduct residents for ransom. These bandits routinely impose illegal “taxes” on local farmers and miners to fund their operations, and the combination of criminal and ideological violence has destabilized vast rural areas. Late in 2024, the United States military launched airstrikes against jihadist targets in northwest Nigeria in an effort to curb the spread of extremism, but the campaign has not stopped factional violence.

In the northeast, Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province remain capable of large-scale attacks despite years of military pressure. Beyond the jihadist insurgency, Nigeria also faces persistent intercommunal clashes between farmers and herders over land and water resources in central regions, and a low-intensity separatist insurgency in the country’s southeast that has killed hundreds of people since 2020.

Kidnapping for ransom has grown into a multimillion-dollar criminal industry across Nigeria, carried out by both small local gangs and transnational jihadist groups alike. Despite Nigerian laws that ban the payment of ransoms to kidnappers, both victim families and government officials have been repeatedly accused of making payments to secure the release of captives, a practice that has sustained the growth of the kidnapping economy.

The ongoing military confrontation between Russia and Ukraine has entered a new phase of escalating civilian harm, with a series of reciprocal drone and missile strikes leaving multiple non-combatants dead across both territories over the past 48 hours. The deadly sequence of attacks began Friday afternoon, when Russian unmanned aerial vehicles struck a crowded shopping mall in Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Initial casualty reports confirm 16 civilians killed, more than 100 others wounded, and at least nine people still unaccounted for after the strike ignited a massive blaze that gutted the multi-story commercial building.

Just 30 minutes after the initial mall attack, a second Russian drone strike hit the same area, a move Zelensky condemned as a deliberate, cynical and despicable attempt to target first responders who had rushed to the scene to pull survivors from the wreckage. By Saturday, locals had erected a makeshift memorial outside the burned-out structure, laying flowers and handwritten notes for the victims. An AFP correspondent on site observed heavy machinery clearing debris of twisted, charred metal, with fire-blackened supermarket shelves still standing beneath a cratered ceiling and blown-out window frames.

Overnight Friday into Saturday, fresh Russian strikes killed two additional civilians: one in the capital Kyiv and another near the frontline city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian internal officials confirmed.

In response to the Russian attacks, Ukraine launched a wave of counter-drone strikes targeting Russian territory on Saturday. In the Yeysk district of Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, one drone hit a residential home, killing two young children and hospitalizing their injured parents. Krasnodar governor Veniamin Kondratyev called the attack “vile and cynical” in a public statement confirming the casualties. A second, separate Ukrainian drone strike in Russia’s central Samara region left one person dead, according to local regional governor.

Ukrainian forces have also expanded their targeting of Russian e-commerce logistics infrastructure, with a new strike hitting a warehouse owned by major Russian online retailer Ozon. The attack follows a month of repeated strikes on facilities belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest domestic e-commerce platform.

The accelerating cycle of attacks has pushed the 2024 civilian death toll to its highest point since the opening months of the full-scale invasion, according to latest data from the United Nations. As Russian long-range strike operations intensify, Ukrainian military officials report their forces face growing challenges intercepting salvos of Russian ballistic missiles, prompting repeated calls for additional air defense support from Kyiv’s Western allies.

Top leaders from Ukraine’s partner nations are set to hold a virtual summit this coming Monday, which marks Ukraine’s Independence Day, to discuss new packages of military and humanitarian support for the country amid the escalating violence.

Geopolitical chaos triggered by conflict in the Middle East has upended long-standing global shipping patterns, pushing Asian maritime powers to test a melting Arctic shipping corridor as a viable alternative to crowded, high-risk traditional routes. On Saturday, South Korea prepared to make history with its first experimental commercial container voyage through the Northern Sea Route (NSR), a journey that carries both economic promise and steep controversy over climate and sanctions risks. The 45-day trial voyage, operated by the container vessel *PanStar Acro*, is set to depart from Busan New Port for major European ports including Britain’s Felixstowe, Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Poland’s Gdansk, unless unexpected bad weather or other disruptions force a delay, according to South Korea’s Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries.

This trial comes just weeks after China launched its own commercial container voyage through the Arctic, when the *Dubai Tower* departed Ningbo for Europe, traveling north through the Bering Strait before following Russia’s Arctic coast westward. For decades, the primary shipping artery connecting Asia and Europe has run through the Suez Canal, but the ongoing Middle East conflict has put this route under growing strain. The Korea Institute for International Economic Policy estimates that the Arctic route cuts the total journey distance by roughly 7,000 kilometers (4,300 miles) and reduces travel time by about 10 days, a significant saving for commercial shipping firms.

South Korean Vice Oceans Minister Nam Jae-hon framed the Arctic corridor as an inevitable alternative to the vulnerable Middle East shipping lanes, noting that rising geopolitical risks paired with advancing ice navigation technology have made the route increasingly competitive for commercial use. Marc Lanteigne, a political science professor at the Arctic University of Norway, argues that the back-to-back trial voyages from China and South Korea mark a key turning point: the NSR is rapidly becoming normalized as a permanent secondary maritime transit corridor between Asia and Europe. A successful trial would confirm South Korea’s ambition to secure access to alternative shipping lanes, Lanteigne added, as Seoul fears falling behind Chinese firms that are already expanding regular services along the increasingly navigable Arctic route.

However, the plan has sparked significant concerns on two fronts: Western sanctions on Russia and accelerating Arctic climate breakdown. Any vessel traveling the NSR relies on Russian-provided navigation and weather services, which require small but mandatory payments to Russian entities. Experts warn that this could put South Korean shipping operators at risk of violating Western sanctions imposed on Moscow over its war in Ukraine, particularly amid Russia’s growing military alliance with North Korea, South Korea’s primary regional adversary. When reached for comment by AFP, South Korea’s foreign ministry declined to address the sanctions concerns. The oceans ministry, however, noted that it has already completed all required consultations with relevant countries and agencies to clear administrative hurdles for the voyage.

Vladimir Tikhonov, a Korean Studies professor at the University of Oslo, pointed out that U.S. and EU sanctions on Russia are not binding international law, unlike sanctions approved by the United Nations. Given the persistent uncertainty in the Middle East, which is itself partially fueled by U.S. foreign policy actions, Tikhonov noted that South Korea may have few other options if the Arctic route delivers on its promised economic benefits. Lanteigne also drew a distinction between the ambitions of China and South Korea: Beijing’s NSR expansion is largely politically driven, as it frames the Arctic as a strategic new frontier, a stance that has stoked security concerns among Western powers, while Seoul’s interest is primarily focused on securing alternative shipping capacity amid global supply chain disruption.

Beyond geopolitical risks, environmental organizations have sounded the alarm that growing commercial traffic along the NSR will speed up the loss of Arctic sea ice already being decimated by human-caused global warming. The Arctic is warming roughly four times faster than the global average, a trend that has already shrunk summer sea ice extent dramatically and opened the NSR to icebreaker-free transits for longer portions of the year. Several of the world’s largest container shipping firms, including CMA CGM, MSC and Hapag-Lloyd, have already pledged to avoid Arctic shipping routes over climate concerns. South Korean environmental group Paran Ocean Citizen Science Center emphasized in a 2023 statement that while Arctic warming has made the NSR more commercially viable, expanding commercial use of the route will require additional warming, creating a dangerous feedback loop that directly undermines global efforts to curb climate change.