Category World News

The bodies of at least 17 migrants and asylum seekers have been found in a partially deflated boat off the Greek island of Crete, according to the country’s coastguard.

The victims, as well as two survivors, were discovered on Saturday, some 26 nautical miles (48km) southwest of Crete.

A spokeswoman for the Greek coastguard told the AFP news agency that all of the victims were men.

“Two survivors in critical condition have been hospitalised,” the spokeswoman added. “Autopsies have to be carried out as the circumstances of the sinking are not known.”

The Athens News Agency reported that the boat was spotted by a Turkish cargo ship, which alerted the authorities. The Greek coastguard rushed two vessels to the scene, while the European Union’s border agency Frontex sent a boat, an aircraft and a Super Puma helicopter to help in the rescue effort.

The coastguard said that the two survivors had said their vessel had become unstable because of bad weather, and they had no way to cover up, nor to eat or drink anything.

The boat had also been taking on water when it was discovered.

Manolis Frangoulis, the mayor of Cretan port Ierapetra, told reporters that all the victims had been young.

“The vessel the migrants were on was deflated on two sides, which forced the passengers into a reduced space,” he added.

Coroners are looking at the possibility that the migrants died of dehydration, Greek state television channel ERT reported.

Over the last year, migrants and asylum seekers have turned their attention to the Greek island of Crete, in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, as a way of reaching EU territory from Libya, in North Africa.

According to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, more than 16,770 people seeking asylum in the EU have arrived there since the start of the year.

In July, Greece’s conservative government, led by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, suspended asylum hearings for migrants, particularly targeting those arriving on Crete from Libya.

Here’s where things stand on Sunday, December 7:

Fighting

• Russian forces launched a “large-scale” attack on the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk overnight on Sunday, the Kyiv Independent reported, citing local officials. The extent of the damage was not immediately clear, it said.
• A large-scale Russian drone and missile attack damaged power facilities in eight Ukrainian regions, causing blackouts and forcing nuclear power plants to cut power output, officials and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.
• The Ukrainian military said Russia had launched 653 drones and 51 missiles on Ukraine in the overnight attack, adding that its forces downed 585 drones and 30 missiles.
• Power and heat generation facilities in the Chernihiv, Zaporizhia, Lviv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions were targeted in the attack, while port facilities in the Black Sea city of Odesa were also damaged, according to the Ukrainian government.
• The Ukrainian state railway company, Ukrzaliznytsia, a railway hub near the capital, Kyiv, was also hit, with damage caused to the depot and railway carriages. The were no reports on casualties from the attack in the town of Fastiv.
• The IAEA said Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under Russian control, temporarily lost all off-site power overnight due to the widespread military activities. It said the plant reconnected to a 330 kilowatt power line after a half hour outage, but that a 750 kilowatt line is still disconnected.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence confirmed the attack on Saturday, saying its forces launched a “massive strike” in response to what it called Ukrainian assaults on civilian targets in Russia. The ministry said the strike used high-precision, long-range air- and ground-based weapons, including Kinzhal hypersonic missiles and long-range drones.
• The ministry also said its air defences had shot down 116 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory overnight into Saturday.
• Poland also announced scrambling jets due to the Russian attacks on Ukraine on Saturday, but the Operational Command of the Armed Forces said there were no airspace violations.
• Ukraine’s military, meanwhile, said that its forces had hit the Russian Ryazan oil refinery, as well as a shell-casing manufacturing plant located in Alchevsk, in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region.
• Ukraine’s military also denied Russian claims that it had encircled the embattled towns of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad in the Donetsk region, according to the Kyiv Independent. The military said that its defence units were expanding logistics routes and maintaining control over key positions in the area.

Chornobyl

• A protective shield at Ukraine’s Chornobyl nuclear plant, built to contain radioactive material from the 1986 disaster, can no longer perform its main safety function due to drone damage, the IAEA said after a strike that Kyiv blamed on Moscow.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had a long and “substantive” phone call with United States President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, on the push to end Russia’s war on Ukraine.
• “Ukraine is determined to keep working in good faith with the American side to genuinely achieve peace. We agreed on the next steps and formats for talks with the United States,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.
• The call followed talks between Witkoff, Kushner and Ukraine’s negotiator, Rustem Umerov, in the US city of Miami. Ukraine’s envoy to the US, Olha Stefanishyna, told the Axios news website that “the main challenging issues concern territorial matters and security guarantees”.
• Zelenskyy is set to meet British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in London on Monday, according to media reports.
• French President Emmanuel Macron said he would also travel to London for Monday’s meeting to discuss the situation in Ukraine and the ongoing negotiations with Russia under US mediation.

• Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced dispatching a business delegation to Russia in the coming days in preparation for the end of the Ukraine war. Orban addressed the situation during a rally in the central city of Kecskemet, ahead of legislative elections in the spring.

At least 23 people have been killed in the Indian state of Goa when a gas cylinder exploded at a popular nightclub, according to officials and media reports.

The fire broke out at about midnight on Sunday in the village of Arpora in the district of North Goa, the Press Trust of India reported, citing police and officials.

Several tourists and many kitchen workers were killed in the blaze, according to Chief Minister Pramod Sawant.

“Today is a very painful day for all of us in Goa. A major fire incident at Arpora has taken the lives of 23 people,” Sawant wrote on X.

“I visited the incident site and have ordered an inquiry into this incident,” he said. “Those found responsible will face most stringent action under the law – any negligence will be dealt with firmly.”

Images circulating on social media showed rescue personnel rushing several people into emergency vehicles. Video clips posted online also showed balls of fire and thick smoke rising from a low-rise building.

Sawant told journalists at the scene that “three to four” tourists had died.

Three people died from burn injuries, while the others died from suffocation, he said. At least three of the victims were women, he added.

The PTI, citing the police, reported that the fire was caused when a gas cylinder exploded. The ANI news agency reported that the fire was now under control.

Alok Kumar, the director general of police in Goa, told ANI that the bodies of all of the victims have been recovered.

Goa, a former Portuguese colony on the shores of the Arabian Sea, lures millions of tourists every year with its nightlife, sandy beaches and laid-back coastal atmosphere.

Fires are common in India due to poor building practices, overcrowding and a lack of adherence to safety regulations.

In May, at least 17 people died after a fire ripped through a three-storey building in the Indian city of Hyderabad.

A month before that, a fierce blaze broke out in a hotel in Kolkata, killing at least 15 people. Some people clambered out of windows and onto the rooftop to escape.

And last year, at least 24 people died after a fire broke out at a packed amusement park arcade in the western state of Gujarat.

Three days of negotiations between Ukrainian and United States officials have ended without a breakthrough, as Russia launched one of its largest aerial assaults of the war on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.

The talks in Florida concluded on Saturday, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy describing a phone call with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner as “substantive”, though both sides acknowledged that meaningful progress hinged entirely on Moscow’s willingness to pursue genuine peace.

The impasse underscores the gulf between diplomatic efforts and the grinding reality on the ground, where Russian forces continue advancing in eastern Ukraine.

Russia deployed 653 drones and 51 missiles in the overnight barrage that began on Friday, striking energy facilities and critical infrastructure across the country, Ukrainian officials said.

At least eight people were wounded in the attacks, which Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko confirmed hit 29 separate locations.

The assault temporarily severed power to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, raising new concerns about reactor safety.

The facility, which has been under Russian occupation since early in Moscow’s invasion, requires continuous electricity to cool its six shutdown reactors and prevent catastrophic failure, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“Energy facilities were the main targets,” Zelenskyy said of the latest assault, noting that one drone strike destroyed a railway station in Fastiv, near Kyiv. Ukrainian air defences intercepted 585 drones and 30 missiles, the air force reported.

Moscow claimed its strikes targeted “military-industrial complex enterprises and the energy facilities that support them”, asserting that all designated targets were hit.

The diplomatic push comes as battlefield dynamics increasingly favour Russia.

Moscow’s forces are closing in on Pokrovsk, a former logistics hub in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, and have nearly surrounded the neighbouring city of Myrnohrad.

Russian troops captured roughly 505 sq km (195 sq miles) in November alone, nearly double October’s territorial gains.

Russia now controls almost the entirety of the neighbouring Luhansk region and holds the majority of coastal territories stretching to Kherson. The front lines have largely stabilised along these positions, though Moscow continues to make incremental advances.

French President Emmanuel Macron will meet Zelenskyy alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in London on Monday to assess the US-mediated negotiations.

Macron condemned Russia’s “escalatory path” and insisted that “we must continue to put pressure on Russia to force it to make peace”.

The talks in Miami followed a Tuesday meeting between Witkoff, Kushner and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, which failed to produce an agreement.

A joint statement released on Friday acknowledged that “real progress towards any agreement” depends on Russia demonstrating “serious commitment to long-term peace, including steps towards de-escalation”.

Adding another layer of complexity, the International Criminal Court’s deputy prosecutor said on Friday that the arrest warrant for Putin over alleged war crimes in Ukraine cannot be halted by peace negotiations.

The warrant could only be temporarily deferred by United Nations Security Council action, prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan told reporters, emphasising that “there must be the possibility of accountability in order for peace to be enduring”.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has arrived in Israel for his first visit since taking office in May, aiming to reaffirm the traditionally strong ties between the two countries, which have been shaken over the course of Israel’s more than two-year genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza.

After a brief stop in Jordan, Merz landed just before 8pm local time (18:00 GMT) on Saturday at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport, where he was met by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, who called him “a friend of Israel” and said Germany was “an important partner”.

Merz also met Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem later on Saturday.

The German chancellor earlier held talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and told reporters they had mostly discussed Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Merz urged more humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza and for Hamas fighters to lay down their weapons. He said Jordan and Germany both remain committed to a negotiated two-state solution.

In Jerusalem on Sunday, Merz is scheduled to visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial before meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Given the dark legacy of Nazi Germany’s industrial-scale murder of Jews, German leaders have long seen unflinching support for Israel as a bedrock of the country’s foreign policy.

But Israeli-German ties have become increasingly shaky since October 2023.

Merz has repeatedly criticised Israel’s relentless military campaign, which has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians.

In August, he also moved to restrict sales of weapons for use in Gaza.

Since the United States-backed ceasefire came into effect in October – which Israel has violated on a near-daily basis – Germany has lifted those export restrictions.

Despite the ceasefire, more than 350 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to local health authorities, as well as three Israeli soldiers.

The United Nations also warns that Israel is still not allowing enough aid into Gaza.

Before leaving Berlin on Saturday, Merz spoke with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas.

A spokesperson said Merz underscored German support for a two-state solution, but urged Abbas to push through “urgently necessary reforms” of the PA in order to play a “constructive role” in the post-war order.

Gil Shohat, head of the Tel Aviv office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, which is affiliated with Germany’s far-left Die Linke party, sharply criticised Merz for the trip.

“Netanyahu is a wanted war criminal and is under suspicion of corruption,” Shohat was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency. “Going there now and legitimising him is a fatal sign of normalisation in a situation that must not be normalised.”

Despite the close ties between the countries, German officials have said there are currently no plans to invite Netanyahu, who faces an international arrest warrant for war crimes in Gaza from the International Criminal Court (ICC), to Berlin.

Merz this year pledged to invite the Israeli leader and told him he would not be arrested.

Any tensions have also not disrupted key military ties. Germany last week put into operation the first phase of the Israeli-made Arrow missile defence shield.