标签： Oceania

A brutal militia assault in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s restless northeastern province of Ituri has claimed the lives of at least 69 people, according to local and security sources who spoke to Agence France-Presse on Saturday. The massacre marks just the latest in a prolonged string of violent incidents that have rocked the gold-rich border region, which has grappled with years of destabilizing armed conflict.

The attack, carried out by gunmen aligned with the Cooperative for the Development of Congo (Codeco) militia, was actually carried out at the end of April, sources confirmed. Ongoing instability driven by the persistent presence of Codeco fighters in the area prevented recovery teams from reaching the site to retrieve victims’ remains for multiple days, delaying the announcement of the full death toll.

While security sources have confirmed a confirmed death toll of 69, Dieudonne Losa, a local civil protection official, told AFP the actual number of fatalities exceeds 70. A full accounting of victims is still ongoing as access to the area remains restricted.

Codeco frames itself as a defender of the rights of the Lendu community, a population primarily made up of agricultural farmers, in long-running tensions with the Hema community, whose members largely work as pastoral herders. A second armed faction, the Convention for the Popular Revolution (CRP), operates in the province and says it advocates for the Hema community.

The two groups are only among several armed actors active in the region. One of the most prominent is the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a faction formed by exiled Ugandan rebels that has sworn loyalty to the Islamic State group. Just two days before Saturday’s announcement of the Codeco attack, local and security sources reported that ADF fighters had killed at least 36 people across two days of assaults in Ituri and neighboring North Kivu province.

Since 2021, the Ugandan People’s Defence Force has operated alongside the Congolese national military in northern North Kivu and across Ituri to coordinate counter-insurgency operations against the ADF. A notable complicating dynamic in the conflict is that the Congolese army has occasionally deployed Codeco fighters as auxiliary forces in its operations against other armed groups.

Earlier on Saturday, the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) issued a public warning of an accelerating “deadly” wave of attacks targeting civilian populations across the country’s unstable eastern borderlands. “Dozens of civilians have been killed in recent days” across Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu, the UN mission said, declining to share further details on the incidents at the time of the statement.

Eastern DRC, a region teeming with valuable untapped mineral reserves, has been engulfed in overlapping cycles of armed conflict for nearly 30 years, involving dozens of militias, rebel factions, and national military forces. Civilians have consistently borne the brunt of the violence, with thousands displaced annually and hundreds killed in targeted attacks across the region.

Renewed naval hostilities in the Persian Gulf have thrown US-Iranian peace diplomacy into uncertainty, with Tehran leaving Washington waiting for a formal response to a US-backed truce proposal as both sides trade accusations of ceasefire violations. The unfolding crisis, which entered its 10th week following the opening US-Israeli strikes on Iran, has put fragile diplomatic efforts at risk and raised new concerns over global energy security and regional stability.

On Friday, US President Donald Trump publicly stated he expected Tehran to deliver its answer to the latest negotiating proposal, shared via Pakistani mediators, by the end of the day. As of Saturday, no official public response had been announced, with Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson confirming only that the plan remained “under review”. In a call with his Turkish counterpart, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi cast serious doubt on Washington’s commitment to diplomacy, pointing to repeated US violations of the existing fragile ceasefire.

“The recent escalation of tensions by American forces in the Persian Gulf and their numerous actions in violating the ceasefire have added to suspicions about the motivation and seriousness of the American side in the path of diplomacy,” Araghchi said, according to an account of the conversation published by Iran’s ISNA news agency. Trump nonetheless told French broadcaster LCI reporter Margot Haddad in a brief interview Saturday that he still anticipated receiving Iran’s response “very soon”.

The latest escalation came Friday, when a US fighter jet attacked and disabled two Iranian-flagged tankers that Washington accused of violating its blockade of Iranian ports. A senior Iranian military official told local media that the Iranian navy had retaliated with defensive strikes against US assets. The incident followed a separate flare-up just one day earlier in the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical chokepoint for global oil shipments.

Iran has long sought greater control over the strategic waterway as a tool to exert economic leverage against the US and its Western and regional allies, a goal Washington has repeatedly described as unacceptable. The US proposal delivered via Pakistan would extend the current fragile truce across the Gulf to create space for negotiations on a permanent end to the conflict, which began 10 weeks ago with joint US-Israeli military strikes on Iranian targets.

Beyond the direct military clashes, the conflict has already created new environmental and economic risks. Satellite imagery collected by global monitoring firm Orbital EOS shows an oil slick spreading across more than 20 square miles off the west coast of Iran’s Kharg Island, the linchpin of the country’s oil export industry and a core asset for its war-battered economy. By Saturday, the UK-based Conflict and Environment Observatory reported the slick had shrunk significantly, adding that the leak likely stemmed from damaged or neglected oil infrastructure affected by ongoing conflict. Iran shut down most traffic through the Strait of Hormuz immediately after the war began on February 28, sending shockwaves through global energy markets and pushing oil prices sharply upward. The US responded with a full blockade of Iranian ports, and earlier this week Trump announced he was ending a short-lived US naval mission aimed at reopening the strait to commercial shipping.

On Saturday, Britain announced it would deploy HMS Dragon, a Royal Navy destroyer, to the region as part of a joint British-French coalition planning to support commercial shipping and mine clearance once a durable ceasefire is reached. UK defence officials said the deployment is part of “prudent planning” intended to boost confidence among commercial vessel operators navigating the strategic waterway.

Diplomatic efforts to de-escalate received support from Qatar, whose Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani met with US Vice President JD Vance in Washington DC Friday to discuss Pakistan’s brokered peace initiative. Qatar has nonetheless been drawn into the conflict: Iran has launched multiple attacks on Qatari territory in recent weeks, citing the country’s hosting of a major US military air base.

Tensions are also running high on the conflict’s secondary front in Lebanon, where a parallel ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah is also teetering amid daily cross-border exchanges of fire. Eight people were killed in Israeli air strikes across southern Lebanon Saturday, according to Lebanese authorities, while state media reported additional raids on a highway south of Beirut, an area outside Hezbollah’s traditional southern strongholds. An AFP correspondent on the scene documented two destroyed vehicles and emergency response teams working roughly 12 miles outside the Lebanese capital.

Hezbollah retaliated Saturday by launching an armed drone attack targeting Israeli soldiers in northern Israel. The Israeli military confirmed multiple explosive drones crossed into its territory, reporting one army reservist suffered severe wounds and two other service members sustained moderate injuries in the attack. The fresh escalation comes just days before Lebanon and Israel — which have been officially at war since 1948 — are set to hold direct peace negotiations in Washington next week, a process Hezbollah has publicly and vehemently opposed.

Three hikers are dead after a sudden eruption of one of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes, and rescuers have recovered the first of the victims’ remains as hazardous conditions forced a temporary pause in search operations, Indonesian disaster management officials confirmed this weekend.

Mount Dukono, located on Indonesia’s Halmahera Island in North Maluku, erupted Friday, blasting a dense ash plume 10 kilometers (6 miles) into the atmosphere. The eruption did not threaten populated areas nearby, with no towns or villages located close enough to face immediate danger, according to geological officials. However, the blast hit a group of 20 hikers who had entered the closed exclusion zone surrounding the volcano’s crater.

Local police chief Erlichson Pasaribu confirmed Friday that three hikers were killed: two citizens of Singapore and one Indonesian national. The remaining 17 members of the hiking group, including seven other Singaporeans, were evacuated from the dangerous area unharmed, authorities said.

On Saturday, a joint team of search and rescue personnel recovered the body of one victim, found alongside the hiker’s backpack at approximately 2:30 p.m. local time (0530 GMT), said Iwan Ramdani, head of the local search and rescue agency. Ramdani did not release the victim’s nationality prior to formal identification. The remains were transferred to a nearby local hospital for official identification processing. Photos released by the rescue agency show the recovery team carrying the victim, sealed in a black body bag, down the volcanic slope on a hand-built stretcher.

Search operations for the two remaining victims have been temporarily suspended due to heavy rainfall and persistent volcanic ash in the area, Ramdani added. Teams are scheduled to resume their search on Sunday, weather conditions permitting.

Indonesia’s national Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation reported that Mount Dukono continued to experience fresh eruptions through Saturday, including one blast that sent an ash column 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) into the sky. Abdul Muhari, spokesman for Indonesia’s national disaster mitigation agency, said preliminary positioning data places the two remaining Singaporean victims roughly 20 to 30 meters (65 to 100 feet) from the volcano’s crater rim.

Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed it is coordinating with the country’s embassy in Jakarta to provide consular support to affected citizens and their families, according to local Singaporean media reports.

Mount Dukono has been classified at level two on Indonesia’s four-tiered volcanic alert system since 2008, marking it as an active, potentially dangerous volcano. In December 2024, Indonesian geological authorities expanded and enforced a 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) exclusion zone around the volcano’s crater, restricting all public access to the dangerous area, confirmed Lana Saria, head of the national Geology Agency.

Despite repeated warnings, the group of hikers intentionally ignored both official warning signs posted at the trail entrance and public appeals shared on social media to stay out of the restricted zone, police chief Pasaribu said Friday.

As a sprawling archipelagic nation located along the Pacific Ring of Fire, the geologically active boundary where multiple tectonic plates collide, Indonesia experiences hundreds of seismic and volcanic events every year. The country is home to roughly 130 active volcanoes, making it one of the most volcanically active regions on Earth.

A cruise ship grappling with a deadly hantavirus outbreak is making its way to Spain’s Canary Islands, where authorities are preparing to evacuate nearly 150 passengers and fly them back to their home countries after weeks of isolation at sea. Three fatalities have already been linked to the outbreak on the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius, and multiple other passengers have fallen ill with the rare pathogen, which is most commonly carried and spread by rodent populations.

The vessel, which departed Cape Verde after three infected people were evacuated earlier this week, is projected to reach offshore waters near Tenerife by early Sunday dawn, between 03:00 and 05:00 GMT. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is personally assisting with coordination of the complicated evacuation operation, after meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Madrid Saturday ahead of traveling to the archipelago with the country’s health and interior ministers.

Confirmed cases on the ship have been identified as Andes virus, the only strain of hantavirus capable of spreading between human beings — a detail that has sparked widespread international concern over potential secondary transmission. To mitigate this risk, regional Canary Islands authorities have rejected requests to allow the ship to dock at a local port. Instead, the MV Hondius will remain anchored offshore during the evacuation, which is scheduled to take place between Sunday and Monday, the only window health officials say weather conditions will permit for the complex operation.

On the quay at Granadilla de Abona port, AFP reporters observed emergency response teams have already erected white screening tents, but daily life across the island has continued largely unchanged. Local lottery vendor David Parada noted that while there is underlying worry about potential community risk, most residents have not panicked over the situation. Tedros sought to further calm public fears in an open letter to Tenerife residents Saturday, stressing that “this is not another Covid” and that the population-wide risk of transmission from the ship remains “low”.

Spanish officials have echoed these assurances, outlining strict protocols to prevent any contact between passengers from the ship and local communities. After completing medical screenings on board the MV Hondius, passengers will be transferred via small boats to shore, then bussed directly to the airport along fully sealed routes. A maritime exclusion zone will be enforced around the anchored vessel, and all areas passengers transit through on shore will be closed off to the public. Evacuations will proceed in groups organized by nationality, with the 14 Spanish citizens on board set to leave first, according to Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia Gomez. A portion of the crew will remain on the ship to sail it onward to the Netherlands after the evacuation is complete.

As of Friday, the WHO confirmed six positive hantavirus cases out of eight earlier suspected cases on the vessel, and no new suspected cases remain on board. Global health authorities are now conducting extensive contact tracing for passengers who disembarked the MV Hondius earlier in its voyage, which began on April 1 when it departed Ushuaia, Argentina for a transatlantic cruise to Cape Verde. Argentine health officials have concluded that the initial infected Dutch passenger almost certainly did not contract the virus in Ushuaia, based on the pathogen’s incubation period.

Multiple secondary testing and monitoring efforts are underway across the globe: A KLM flight attendant who developed mild symptoms after coming into contact with an infected passenger tested negative for the virus, though a Spanish woman who sat two rows away from one of the fatal cases on a Johannesburg-Amsterdam flight has been isolated in a Spanish hospital for testing, with officials noting her infection remains highly unlikely. Two former passengers in Singapore tested negative but will remain in quarantine as a precaution, and British health authorities are investigating a suspected case on the remote South Atlantic outpost of Tristan da Cunha, which is home to just 220 permanent residents.

As the Middle East grapples with sustained regional conflict, a cascade of new developments has unfolded across the Gulf, the Israel-Lebanon border, and global diplomatic channels over the past 24 hours, deepening uncertainty for both regional populations and international stakeholders. Ongoing dual blockades imposed by the United States Navy and Iran continue to choke commercial shipping movement into and out of the Gulf, creating a protracted logjam that has left thousands of seafarers stranded for more than two months.