Category World News

Here is where things stand on Saturday, January 17 :

Fighting

• Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian city of Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region, killing two women and injuring six people, the head of the regional administration, Oleksandr Hanzha, wrote on Facebook.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that Russian forces seized five settlements in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region in the past week, including Zakotnoye and Zhovtnevoye in the past 24 hours, Russia’s TASS state news agency reports.
• Russia’s Defence Ministry acknowledged its forces attacked Ukrainian energy infrastructure and military facilities seven times over the past week, including one operation described as a major strike against its neighbour.
• A Ukrainian drone strike killed a man in Russian-occupied Kherson, Moscow’s appointed official in the region, Volodymyr Saldo, said, according to TASS.
• Ukrainian attacks left 68,000 households without electricity in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, TASS also reported, citing local Russian-appointed official, Yevhen Balitsky.
• Russia and Ukraine on Friday agreed to a localised ceasefire to allow repairs on the last remaining backup power line at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
• Work on the power line, which was damaged and disconnected as a result of military activity on January 2, should start “in the coming days”, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said in a statement.
• ‍Russian Security Council deputy chairman Dmitry Medvedev said that 422,704 people had signed ⁠contracts with the Russian ​Armed Forces last year, state ‍news agencies reported. The number of sign-ups is lower than in 2024, ‍when about 450,000 ⁠people signed contracts to join the Russian army.

Ukraine energy crisis

• Children across Ukraine risk hypothermia in freezing temperatures as emergency stocks of power generators run low following Russian attacks on energy infrastructure, international aid agencies said on Friday.
• Almost the entire Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which is currently occupied by Russian forces, was left without electricity following an explosion, Petro Andriushchenko, head of the Center for the Study of Occupation, said on the Telegram messaging app.
• Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that 67 apartment buildings remain without heat in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, more than a week after a Russian attack left 6,000 apartments without heating, as temperatures continue to fall to -17 degrees Celsius (1.4 Fahrenheit) overnight.
• Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said that “severe weather conditions and frost” are continuing to complicate efforts to restore heat and electricity following Russian attacks, in an update shared on Facebook.
• Svyrydenko said that 17 electrical substations are now being powered by generators, as repair work continues and that 1,300 tents have been deployed in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, where many households still remain without heating.
• Curfew restrictions have been relaxed in places where the energy emergency is ongoing, so that people can access shelters with heating where needed, the prime minister said.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, responding to Svyrydenko’s updates, said that tens of thousands of people are working to restore electricity and heat across the country.
• Zelenskyy also said that he spoke with British Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy and thanked him for the United Kingdom’s decision to provide an “energy support package” for Ukraine.
• The UK announced on Friday that it would provide 20 million British pounds ($26.7m) “of new support … for vital energy infrastructure repairs in Ukraine as Russia’s barbaric attacks on innocent civilians intensify”.

Peace talks

• A Ukrainian delegation is en route to the United States for talks with Washington on security guarantees and a post-war recovery package, Zelenskyy said on Friday, expressing hope the documents could be signed on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos next week.
• During the talks, ⁠Kyiv’s team also hopes to get clarity from the US on the Russian stance towards US-backed diplomatic efforts to end the nearly ​four-year war, Zelenskyy told a news conference in Kyiv alongside visiting Czech President Petr Pavel.
• The European Commission is considering ways to allow Ukraine’s quick accession to the European Union as part of a peace deal with Russia, but without giving Kyiv full membership rights, which would only be “earned” after transition periods, EU officials told the Reuters news agency.

Military aid

• President Zelenskyy said on Friday that allied supplies of air defence systems and missiles were insufficient and warned Russia was preparing new massive strikes. He said it was crucial that allied countries heed Ukraine’s requests for additional supplies.
• The ‌Czech Republic is set to provide Ukraine with combat ‍planes shortly ‍that can shoot down incoming drones, President Pavel told Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Friday. Pavel did not give specifics, but two years ago ⁠said Czech-made subsonic L-159 fighter jets could be transferred to ​Ukraine.

Regional security

• Five men have been charged in Poland with taking part in a Russian-run sabotage plot to send explosive parcels to the UK, the US, Canada and other destinations, and will face life sentences if convicted, prosecutors said ⁠on Friday.
• The four Ukrainian citizens and one Russian were charged “with acting … on behalf of the intelligence ​services of the Russian Federation”, the Polish National Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
• Lithuanian prosecutors charged six foreign nationals accused of planning an arson attack in 2024 on a company producing military equipment for Ukraine, in a plot believed to have been ordered by Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU.
• Those charged include nationals of Spain, Colombia, Cuba, Russia and Belarus, as well as a dual Spanish-Colombian citizen. The company manufactures mobile radio-frequency analysis stations for the Ukrainian armed forces.

Politics and diplomacy

• The Kremlin said Friday it considered calls by some European states to resume dialogue with Russia as “positive”, after French and Italian leaders called for re-engagement with Moscow on Ukraine.
• Dialogue between the EU and Russia has been virtually frozen since Moscow launched its full-scale offensive on Ukraine in 2022, with the bloc imposing huge sanctions and travel restrictions on Russia.
• A court in Kyiv released former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on bail on Friday pending a trial to determine whether she paid members of Ukraine’s parliament to sway their voting. The 65-year-old stalwart of Ukrainian politics, who has denied the charges and said the case is politically motivated, served as prime minister twice after 2005.

Bobi Wine‘s political party says the Ugandan opposition presidential candidate has been “forcibly” removed from his home and taken to an “unknown destination” in an army helicopter.

The National Unity Platform made the announcement in a social media post on Friday, a day after Ugandans cast their ballots in a tense election that took place amid an internet blackout.

There was no immediate comment from the Ugandan authorities.

Wine, the country’s top opposition figure, had challenged longtime President Yoweri Museveni in an election campaign that the United Nations said was marred by “widespread repression and intimidation”.

Reporting from the Ugandan capital, Kampala, early on Saturday, Al Jazeera’s Catherine Soi said the internet shutdown has made getting information about Wine’s whereabouts difficult.

Soi said a National Unity Platform official reached by Al Jazeera could only confirm that “men who appeared to be military and other security agents jumped over the fence” of Wine’s home.

But the official could not say whether Wine was at home or had been taken away.

Soi added that Al Jazeera has been unable to reach the Ugandan military or the police to confirm what happened.

She noted that shortly after Thursday’s vote, Wine had alleged in a social media post that “massive ballot stuffing” was reported across the country.

He had also called on the Ugandan people to “rise to the occasion and reject the criminal regime”.

Wine’s remarks came as Museveni’s government has been accused of leading a years-long crackdown on opposition politicians and their supporters.

The 81-year-old president is seeking to extend his nearly four decades in power, saying ahead of this week’s election that he expected to secure 80 percent support.

Museveni was comfortably leading as votes were counted on Friday, with the Electoral Commission saying he had secured 73.7 percent support to Wine’s 22.7 percent, with close to 81 percent of votes counted.

Final results were due around 4pm local time in Kampala (13:00 GMT) on Saturday.

After a campaign marred by clashes at opposition rallies and the arrests of opposition supporters, voting passed peacefully on Thursday.

But at least seven people were killed when violence broke out overnight in the town of Butambala, about 55km (35 miles) southwest of the capital Kampala.

Local police spokesperson Lydia Tumushabe said machete-wielding opposition “goons” organised by local MP Muwanga Kivumbi attacked a police station and vote-tallying centre.

Kivumbi, a member of Wine’s party, said security forces attacked opposition supporters who had gathered at his home to wait for the election results to come in. The opposition lawmaker said 10 people were killed.

Israeli attacks have killed at least three Palestinians in Gaza in the latest violations of its tenuous ceasefire with Hamas, a day after the United States announced the start of the second phase of President Donald Trump’s plan to end Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in the besieged territory.

A 10-year-old girl, a 16-year-old boy and an elderly woman were killed in Israeli attacks on Friday, as members of a planned Palestinian technocratic committee sat down for the first time in Cairo to prepare for the rollout of phase two of the peace plan.

Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli forces shot dead 16-year-old Mohammad Raed al-Barawi in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya. The boy died “instantly” after being shot in the head by Israeli forces, said the agency.

Earlier, the agency reported the death of 62-year-old Sabah Ahmed Ali Abu Jamea, who was killed by troops firing from military vehicles west of Khan Younis as the army carried out “extensive demolition operations” in the south of the enclave.

Al Jazeera also understands that a 10-year-old girl was struck by a bomb dropped by an Israeli drone in Beit Lahiya, dying shortly after arriving in critical condition at al-Shifa Hospital.

In the 24 hours leading up to Friday afternoon, at least 15 Palestinians were killed, six of them in the bombing of two houses belonging to the al-Hawli and the al-Jarou families in the central town of Deir el-Balah on Thursday evening. Fatalities included a 16-year-old.

Israel announced that day that it had killed Muhammad al-Hawli, a commander in the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas. It said it had hit “several terrorists … across the Gaza Strip”.

On Friday, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the group believed Israel had committed a “new violation” of the ceasefire by carrying out strikes in Gaza.

At least 463 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire entered into force on October 10, according to Gaza authorities.

Israel has reported three soldiers killed over the same period.

Seven years to clear the rubble

As the killing continued in Gaza, a Palestinian technocratic committee set to govern Gaza as part of President Trump’s multi-phase peace plan met for the first time in Cairo.

“The Palestinian people were looking forward to this committee, its establishment and its work to rescue them,” said leader Ali Shaath, an engineer and former deputy minister in the Palestinian Authority (PA), talking to Egypt’s state-owned Al-Qahera News.

The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza will run day-to-day affairs under the oversight of a Trump-led “board of peace”, which is expected to be led by Bulgarian diplomat and politician Nickolay Mladenov.

Shaath has so far been bullish on the committee’s plans, saying he expects reconstruction and recovery to take about three years.

But the United Nations Development Programme estimates it will take seven years just to clear the rubble, and only with uninterrupted supplies of fuel and heavy machinery – by no means guaranteed with Israel continuing to occupy more than 50 percent of the strip behind the so-called “yellow line“.

Little clarity

As the Trump plan enters phase two, there is little clarity over the timing and the extent of Israel’s withdrawal from the enclave.

It also remains unclear how disarmament of Hamas, a key tenet of the plan, will unfold. The armed group has so far refused to lay down weapons.

Nevertheless, Hamas welcomed the establishment of the technocratic committee on Friday, calling it “a step in the right direction” and signalling it was ready to hand over administration of Gaza.

Sultan Barakat, a professor of public policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, told Al Jazeera that Hamas’s approval indicated it had “papered over” its long-running differences with the PA.

Trump has maintained a tough line on Hamas disarmament, telling the group on Thursday that it could disarm “the easy way, or the hard way”, warning it to return the remains of the last Israeli captive “IMMEDIATELY”.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said people in Gaza, hundreds of thousands of whom are living in flimsy makeshift shelters in the depths of winter, had “little expectation that political plans will translate into genuine relief”.

The Iranian authorities say at least 3,000 people have been arrested in weeks of antigovernment demonstrations, state news agencies reported, as the mass protests have largely been quelled.

The streets of the Iranian capital Tehran and other parts of the country were comparatively calm on Friday amid a heavy presence of security forces.

Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi said the public mood was mixed, with many people anxious over the possibility that the situation could escalate again and frustrated by a continuing internet shutdown.

“Internet access is unavailable for almost everyone in Iran,” Asadi said.

Online monitor NetBlocks said on Friday that a nationwide internet blackout had entered its eighth day after Iranian authorities cut off access at the height of the protests last week.

Thousands of Iranians had taken to the streets since late December in anger over soaring inflation and the steep devaluation of the local currency, prompting a harsh crackdown from the Iranian authorities.

Iranian leaders have described the protesters as “rioters” and accused foreign countries, notably the United States and Israel, of fuelling the unrest.

Human rights groups say more than 1,000 protesters have been killed since the demonstrations began, while the Iranian government said at least 100 security officers also were killed in protest-related attacks.

Al Jazeera has not been able to independently verify those figures.

The prospect of a wider escalation loomed this week as US President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to order military action against Iran should more protesters be killed.

But Trump has since softened his rhetoric after telling reporters that Tehran had cancelled plans to execute hundreds of protesters.

“I greatly respect the fact that all scheduled hangings, which were to take place yesterday (Over 800 of them), have been cancelled by the leadership of Iran. Thank you!” Trump wrote on social media on Friday afternoon.

Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, also said on Thursday evening that he hoped “a diplomatic resolution” could be reached to quell tensions between Tehran and Washington.

Roxane Farmanfarmaian, a lecturer at the University of Cambridge specialising in international relations and the Middle East, said the Trump administration has sent “a great deal of mixed signals” in recent days.

“It’s difficult to know where the red lines are, and for [Iran] to then feel any confidence in any talks that might begin,” Farmanfarmaian told Al Jazeera.

For now, she said, the Iranian authorities are moving to “quiet things down” domestically – including by not executing any demonstrators – “and to proceed to try to improve the economic situation, which is what’s truly the threat to this regime”.

The protests were the largest since a 2022-2023 protest movement spurred by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code for women.

While the internet blackout has made it difficult to get information from Iran, Amnesty International warned this week that “mass unlawful killings” appear to have been “committed on an unprecedented scale”.

The rights group urged the international community to demand investigations into what happened and hold any perpetrators to account.

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera’s Asadi said on Friday that the Iranian authorities are “trying to keep the situation under control, both domestically and internationally”, amid the possibility of any re-escalation with the US.