Category World News

Sunday’s victory moved Barcelona to 66 points from 29 games as 36-year-old Lewandowski – who scored twice after the score was tied at 1-1 – extended his tally at the top of LaLiga’s scoring chart to 25 goals, three clear of Real Madrid’s Kylian Mbappe.

“I know a lot of people talk about my age, but I work as hard as I did when I was 21 and I want to play for more seasons”, Lewandowski said with a smile.

“At the moment I’m feeling great physically, and if you look at the numbers, they’re the same as they’ve always been”.

Barcelona predictably dominated the opening stages as Fermin Lopez and Lewandowski tested Paulo Gazzaniga in Girona’s goal with two early shots.

Moments later, Lopez went down on the edge of the box and the referee awarded a free kick. But when VAR asked him to review his decision for a potential penalty, he gave Girona a free kick instead, much to the shock of the Barcelona players.

Jules Kounde had a goal disallowed when he strayed offside as Girona had no answer to Barca’s forays into the box. But Gazzaniga stood strong to deny the home side time and again, making four crucial saves in the first half alone.

The Argentine keeper could only stand and watch, however, when Yamal’s free kick was deflected off Girona defender Ladislav Krejci for an own goal two minutes before the break.

Girona struck back after the restart against the run of play when they won the ball back in midfield and Dutch forward Arnaut Danjuma curled his shot past Wojciech Szczesny in goal.

Barcelona did not panic and they restored their lead just after the hour-mark when Lopez headed a ball across the box and Lewandowski converted with an acrobatic finish at the far post.

Lewandowski then made it 3-1 in the 77th minute from a counterattack when Frenkie de Jong found him in the box and the Polish striker curled a low shot past Gazzaniga.

Substitute Ferran Torres made it 4-1 when he expertly controlled a pass from the wing with a sublime first touch before finding the bottom corner. Then Yamal nearly made it five, only to see his curling shot cannon off the crossbar.

“It’s very clear to see that when they had the ball this afternoon, it wasn’t easy for us. We knew we were up against a great team”, Danjuma said of Barcelona.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to visit Hungary this week, despite an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant issued over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s trip, announced on Sunday by his office, comes at the invitation of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The visit, scheduled from Wednesday to Sunday, comes as Orban has dismissed the warrant when it was announced in November.

Orban, a right-wing nationalist leader often at odds with the European Union over democratic norms, has made clear that Hungary will not enforce the ICC’s decision.

According to The Times of Israel, Netanyahu will use his visit to Hungary this week to push for Hungarian support for Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

“Netanyahu is trying to build a coalition of as many countries as possible backing Trump’s plan for Gaza”, the source told the paper.

Trump unveiled his vision for Gaza in February, to ethnically cleanse the territory of Palestinians and turn it into a Mediterranean resort.

Hungary has not publicly commented on Trump’s proposal, but Netanyahu’s visit suggests he is seeking to rally international backing for the controversial plan.

While Hungary, as an EU member, is obligated to comply with ICC rulings, there has been no official response from Budapest regarding the upcoming visit.

This will be Netanyahu’s second foreign trip since the ICC issued warrants for him and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

In February, Netanyahu travelled to Washington to meet United States President Donald Trump.

“For the second time in a week, the enemy launched a combined attack, launching seven ‘ Shaheed ‘ at residential areas, hospitals, and the city’s infrastructure”, Terekhov said in a Telegram message on Sunday, referring to Iranian-made Shahed drones.

The swarm of drones also targeted a military hospital, a shopping centre and apartment blocks, he said.

Five of the 35 people wounded in the attack overnight were children. At least 13 have been hospitalised, including a teenage girl who is in serious condition.

“The events of yesterday evening were indeed very, very violent in Kharkiv, seeing really the brunt of this war in many ways throughout the course of the last several months”, said Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi, reporting from Kyiv.

“Ukraine’s military said that servicemen were undergoing treatment in this medical centre at the time of the attack and they’re accusing Russia of carrying out a war crime, of violating norms of international humanitarian law in what they described as a deliberate and targeted shelling of this medical facility”, Basravi said.

One survivor, who identified himself as Anton, described running to an adjacent room in his apartment when a drone struck and showered him with shrapnel.

“I had already bid farewell to life”, the 22-year-old, whose head and left hand were heavily bandaged, told the Reuters news agency.

Kharkiv was not the only city to be targeted overnight. Ukraine’s Air Force said on Sunday that Russia had launched 111 drones and one ballistic missile, causing damage also in the Sumy, Odesa and Donetsk regions. It said air defences shot down 65 drones and jammed another 35.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said in a daily bulletin that its forces had struck 140 districts in Ukraine, including military airfields and ammunition depots. It did not mention the hospital.

The attack came as Ukraine seeks strong backing from Western allies to pressure Russia into ending its full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour. Both sides have accused one another in recent days of violating a US-brokered partial ceasefire, and Russia has continued sending regular swarms of drones over Ukraine.

In a statement on Sunday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine expected a response from the United States and other allies to the near-daily attacks, adding that Moscow had fired more than 1, 000 drones in the past week.

“Russia is dragging out the war, and we are providing our partners with full information on the strikes the Russian army is carrying out and the actions it is preparing for”, the Ukrainian leader said.

Zelenskyy has also warned in recent days that Russia is planning a spring offensive in parts of northeastern Ukraine.

A peace effort led by US President Donald Trump, whose administration has sought closer ties with Russia, has sparked fears in Kyiv and Europe that Ukraine could be pressured into making far more concessions than Moscow.

During a summit in Paris last week, European leaders pledged to strengthen Kyiv’s army, while France and Britain tried to expand support for a planned foreign “reassurance force” in the event of a truce with Russia.

Following the Kharkiv attack, French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Russia was flouting a ceasefire that Ukraine was following.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has ruled out direct negotiations with the administration of US President Donald Trump over the country’s nuclear programme but signalled a willingness for indirect talks, while Trump threatened bombings and secondary tariffs if Tehran does not come to an agreement with Washington.

“We responded to the US president’s letter via Oman and rejected the option of direct talks, but we are open to indirect negotiations”, Pezeshkian said during a cabinet meeting in Tehran on Sunday.

He stressed that while Iran is not against negotiations in principle, Washington must first rectify its past “misconduct” and rebuild trust.

His remarks, reported by the ISNA news agency, come amid escalating tensions between the two nations.

“If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing”, Trump said in a telephone interview with NBC on Sunday.

“But there’s a chance that if they don’t make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them like I did four years ago”.

Earlier in March, Trump had written to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warning that Tehran must either agree to fresh negotiations or face a military confrontation.

Khamenei dismissed the ultimatum, insisting that Iran would only engage in talks through intermediaries.

In his first term as US president in 2017-2021, Trump withdrew the US from a 2015 deal between Iran and world powers that placed strict limits on Tehran’s disputed nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.

After Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018 and reimposed sweeping US sanctions, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that Iran had amassed enough fissile material for multiple bombs but had made no effort to build one.

Iran has said its nuclear programme is wholly for civilian energy purposes.

Iran’s economy has been battered by sanctions, with observers suggesting that only a breakthrough in negotiations with Washington could lead to any relief.

Kamal Kharrazi, an adviser to Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei, said that Tehran had “not closed all doors” to negotiations.