THE GLEANER, SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 2022 | www.jamaica-gleaner.com | NEWS A12 PESHAWAR (AP): A SUICIDE bomber struck inside a Shiite Muslim mosque in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar during Friday prayers, killing at least 56 worshippers and wounding 194 people, hospital officials said. No militant group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Both the Islamic State group and the Pakistani Taliban – a militant group separate from the Taliban in Afghanistan – have carried out similar attacks in the past in the area, located near the border with Afghanistan. According to the spokesman at Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital, Asim Khan, many of the wounded were in critical condition. Scores of victims were peppered with shrapnel, several had limbs amputated and others were injured by flying debris. Peshawar Pol ice Chief Muhammed Ejaz Khan said the violence started when an armed attacker opened fire on police outside the mosque in Peshawar’s old city. One policeman was killed in the gunfight, and another police officer was wounded. The attacker then ran inside the mosque and detonated his suicide vest. The suicide bomber had strapped a powerful explosive device to his body, packed with five kilograms (12 pounds) of explosives, said Moazzam Jah Ansari, the top police official for Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province where Peshawar is the capital. The device was hidden beneath a large black shawl that covered much of the attacker’s body, according to CCTV footage seen by AP. The footage showed the bomber moving quickly up a narrow street toward the mosque entrance. He fired at the police protecting the mosque before entering inside. Within seconds, a powerful explosion occurred and the camera lens was obscured with dust and debris. Ansari said the crudely made device was packed with ball bearings, a deadly method of constructing a bomb to inflict the most carnage spraying a larger area with deadly projectiles. The ball bearings caused the high death toll, Ansari said. Local police official Waheed Khan said the explosion occurred as worshippers had gathered in the Kucha Risaldar Mosque for Friday prayers. There are fears the death toll could still rise further, he added. Ambulances rushed through congested narrow streets carrying the wounded to Lady Reading Hospital, where doctors worked feverishly. Shayan Haider, a witness, had been preparing to enter the mosque when a powerful explosion threwhim to the ground. “I opened my eyes and there was dust and bodies everywhere,” he said. At the Lady Reading Hospital Emergency department, there was chaos as doctors struggled to move the many wounded into operating theatres. Hundreds of relatives gathered outside the emergency department, many of them wailing and beating their chests, pleading for information about their loved ones. Outside the mosque, Shiites pressed through the cordonedoff streets. Kucha Risaldar Mosque is one of the oldest in the area, predating the creation of Pakistan in 1947 as a separate homeland for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. The prayer leader, Allama Irshad Hussein Khalil, a prominent up and coming young Shiite leader, was among the dead. Throughout the city, ambulance sirens could be heard. Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the bombing. His national security adviser, Moeed Yusuf, said the bombing was a “heinous terrorist attack” and promised that those behind the carnage would “be brought to justice. “We will not allow our gains against terrorism & our internal security to be compromised at any cost,”Yusuf tweeted. Suicide bombing kills 56 at Shiite mosque Volunteers transport a victim in a bomb explosion to a hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan yesterday. A powerful bomb exploded inside a Shiite Muslim mosque in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar on Friday, killing scores of worshippers and wounding dozens more, many of them critically, police said. AP PAKISTAN KYIV (AP): RUSSIAN TROOPS Friday seized the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe after a middle-of-the-night attack that set it on fire and briefly raised worldwide fears of a catastrophe in the most chilling turn yet in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Firefighters put out the blaze, and no radiation was released, UN and Ukrainian officials said, as Russian forces pressed on with their week-old offensive on multiple fronts and the number of refugees fleeing the country eclipsed 1.2 million. While the vast Russian armoured column threatening Kyiv remained stalled outside the capital, President Vladimir Putin’s military has launched hundreds of missiles and artillery attacks on cities and other sites around the country, and made significant gains on the ground in the south, in an apparent bid to cut off Ukraine’s access to the sea. In the attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in the southeastern city of Enerhodar, the chief of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said a Russian“projectile”hit a training centre, not any of the six reactors. The attack triggered global alarm and fear of a catastrophe that could dwarf the world’s worst nuclear disaster, at Ukraine’s Chernobyl in 1986. In an emotional night-time speech, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he feared an explosion that would be“the end for everyone. The end for Europe. The evacuation of Europe”. But nuclear officials from Sweden to China said no radiation spikes had been reported, as did Grossi. Authorities said that Russian troops had taken control of the overall site but that the plant staff continued to run it. Only one reactor was operating, running at 60 per cent capacity, Grossi said in the aftermath of the attack. Two people were injured in the fire, Grossi said. Ukraine’s state nuclear plant operator Energoatom said three Ukrainian soldiers were killed and two wounded. ACCIDENTAL DAMAGE TO NUCLEAR REACTORS The crisis at Zaporizhzhia unfolded after Grossi, earlier in the week, expressed grave concern that the fighting could cause accidental damage to Ukraine’s 15 nuclear reactors at four plants around the country. Nuclear safety expert Edwin Lyman, of the Union of Concerned Scientists inWashington, said the presence of reactors in the war zone adds a new and highly dangerous dimension to the crisis in Ukraine. “These plants are now in a situation that few people ever seriously contemplated when they were originally built, and that is the potential that they would be in the middle of a war zone,” he said. “No nuclear plant has been designed to withstand a potential threat of a full-scale military attack, and the plants in Ukraine are no exception.” Russians take Ukraine nuclear plant; no radiation after fire A Ukrainian soldier tries to disperse the crowd as they push to enter a train to Lviv at the Kyiv station in Ukraine on Friday. Ukrainian men have to stay to fight in the war while women and children are leaving the country to seek refuge in a neighbouring country. AP UKRAINE WASHINGTON (CMC): THE ANTIGUA and Barbuda ambassador to the United States, Sir Ronald Sanders, Friday said that his Caribbean island is instituting measures to ensure it implements international sanctions against named Russian persons and entities. Foreign Affairs Minister E Paul Chet Greene has since instructed that the complete existing list of US-sanctioned Russian persons and companies is to be respected and followed and Sir Ronald said that he has made a formal request to the US State Department for the most up-to-date list. The United States and Europe are leading the sanctions campaign against Russia after President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people and more than a million having already fled the East European country. “It is important to appreciate that not all Russian persons and entities have been placed on a sanctions list. These lawful persons and entities continue to be entitled to benefit from services provided by Antigua and Barbuda and other countries,” Sir Ronald said. “In this regard, the relevant agencies in Antigua and Barbuda will be required to follow the international sanctions lists,” the diplomat added. Earlier this week, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) chairman and Belize Prime Minister John Briceno, said that regional leaders at their inter-sessional summit in Belize left the possible imposition of sanctions on Russia to individual member states. “We discussed the issue of Russia at length,” he said, adding “CARICOM felt that that is something we should do as individual countries. “We have to decide what kind of sanctions, if any, we can take as countries and not as CARICOM.” Antigua implements international sanctions against Russia Sir Ronald Sanders UNITED STATES BRIDGETOWN CMC): THE CARIBBEAN Development Bank (CDB) has set aside grant funding totalling US$45 million for Haiti over the period 2022 to 2026, a senior official of the Barbados-based financial institution told the United Nations Economic and Social Council’s Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Haiti. “The bankwill seek to strengthen its capacity for greater adaptability and effectiveness, considering Haiti’s distinct challenges,” CDB Vice-president of Operations Isaac Solomon said, indicating that a new country strategy for Haiti is under development. BUILDING RESILIENCE Solomon said the region’s premier financial institution will remain engaged with its Haiti Country Office to preserve hardwon development gains and continue to build resilience. The off ice, which was established in 2018, is the only CDB operational post apart from its Barbados headquarters, and Solomon said that the bank is also seeking to scale up donor coordination. “Each donor should concentrate on its areas of strength and where it can have maximum impact. Responding quickly and in a coordinated manner with harmonised processes will be very important for optimising our resources and realising greater benefits for all,” Solomon said. In addition, the bank will seek to increase collaboration with humanitarian organisations, nongovernmental and civil society organisations and local actors, as well as to ramp up private sector support to foster resilience in ways not covered by traditional humanitarian and development response, particularly at the micro level and in the informal sector. Solomon told the advisory group that the CDB is exploring innovative instruments to extend financing facilities, growmultilateral finance and build a stronger financial ecosystem for the region, bringing benefits to Haiti. The CDB is also aiming to increase access to concessional finance, given the multiple vulnerabilities faced by Haiti and the rest of the region, he noted. Since Haiti joined the CDB in 2007, the bank has allocated grants totalling US$209 million for interventions in education and training, community-driven development and agriculture, environment and disaster risk management, as well as sustainable energy. CDB providing multi-million dollar grant to Haiti BARBADOS
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