At least 30 dead in India stampede at world’s largest religious festival 

Special At least 30 dead in India stampede at world’s largest religious festival 
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An ambulance arrives at the site of a stampede amid the ongoing Maha Kumbh Mela festival in Prayagraj on January 29, 2025. (AFP)
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Updated 29 January 2025
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At least 30 dead in India stampede at world’s largest religious festival 

At least 30 dead in India stampede at world’s largest religious festival 
  • Stampede occurred as millions of people gathered to take ritual bath
  • Maha Kumbh Mela is expected to be attended by 400 million people

NEW DELHI: At least 30 people were killed in crowd crushes at India’s Maha Kumbh Mela festival on Wednesday morning, local police said, as tens of millions of worshippers gathered to take a holy dip in the Ganges.

Hindu devotees have been arriving in Prayagraj in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh since Jan. 13 for the celebrations that some 400 million people are expected to attend by the end of February.

When worshippers gathered on Tuesday evening to cleanse themselves of sins by bathing in the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati rivers, their numbers swelled.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath told the local media that up to 100 million people were going to attend the ritual.

As people rushed to take the holy dip before dawn, some people were sleeping on the riverbank, as others pushed to reach the river and trampled on them.

“About 90 people were taken to the hospital through ambulances but unfortunately, 30 devotees have died. Out of these 30, 25 have been identified and the rest are yet to be identified,” Uttar Pradesh Deputy Inspector General Vaibhav Krishna said in a press conference.

Local reporters present at the site have counted over a dozen bodies, but the actual toll is believed to be much higher.

“Since 2 a.m. in the morning, ambulances have been moving. That means what has happened is really not small. I have seen people crying and wailing after getting separated from their near and dear ones,” Vivek Kumar, a Prayagraj-based journalist, told Arab News.

Another witness, Vishu Vinod Shukla, said that people at the site still could not find their family members. Many were seen crying outside the mortuary of one of Prayagraj’s hospitals.

“I have returned from the site of the incident. The scene was disturbing. I have seen huge piles of torn clothes, abandoned shoes and slippers, blankets, combs. There are a lot of abandoned things lying there,” he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi acknowledged the deaths in a social media post and conveyed his “deepest condolences to the devotees who have lost their loved ones.” 

While the Uttar Pradesh administration did not respond to requests for comment, Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi decried “mismanagement” by the local authorities as being responsible for the deaths.

The Kumbh Mela pilgrimage takes place every 12 years and is widely seen as the “festival of festivals” in the Hindu religious calendar. This year, the celebration is particularly significant, referred to as “maha” or “grand.”

The world’s biggest religious gathering, Maha Kumbh Mela takes place only every 144 years, marking a special celestial alignment of the sun, moon, Jupiter and Saturn.

Deadly crowd crushes at the festival are not new. In 2013, a stampede broke out at the train station in Prayagraj — then still known as Allahabad — killing 42 people and injuring dozens of others.

In 1986, at least 200 were killed in a stampede during the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar. In 1954, 800 people were trampled to death during the first-ever Kumbh held after India’s independence.


Daesh group claims suicide bombing of Afghan bank

Daesh group claims suicide bombing of Afghan bank
Updated 5 sec ago
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Daesh group claims suicide bombing of Afghan bank

Daesh group claims suicide bombing of Afghan bank
  • Violence has waned in Afghanistan since the Taliban surged back to power and ended their insurgency in 2021
  • But the Daesh group frequently stages gun and bomb attacks challenging their rule

KABUL: The Daesh group claimed Wednesday a suicide bombing of a bank in north Afghanistan which killed five people a day earlier, saying it was targeting Taliban government employees collecting salaries.
Violence has waned in Afghanistan since the Taliban surged back to power and ended their insurgency in 2021, but the Daesh group frequently stages gun and bomb attacks challenging their rule.
On Tuesday police in the northern city of Kunduz said a suicide attack in front of a bank killed five people — including civil servants — and wounded seven others.
The Daesh propaganda wing said Wednesday a “suicide bomber” had “detonated his explosive vest” as “Taliban militia members gathered outside a public bank to collect their salaries.”
The group previously claimed responsibility for a similar bombing in March 2024, outside a bank in the southern city of Kandahar — considered the spiritual heartland of the Taliban movement.
Daesh said it had targeted “Taliban militia” members outside the bank. Taliban authorities said only three people had been killed in last year’s incident, but a hospital source put fatalities far higher at 20.
The Taliban government has declared security its highest priority since returning to power and analysts say they have had some success quashing Daesh with a sweeping crackdown.
But the group remains active — targeting Taliban officials, visitors from abroad, and foreign diplomats.
There are frequently discrepancies between the casualty tolls given by Taliban authorities and those reported by officials on the ground, and attack sites are routinely shut down by security forces.
In December, Daesh claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing which killed the Taliban’s government minister for refugees, Khalil Ur-Rahman Haqqani, in the capital Kabul.


Afghan faces trial over deadly knife attack on German policeman

Afghan faces trial over deadly knife attack on German policeman
Updated 42 min 1 sec ago
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Afghan faces trial over deadly knife attack on German policeman

Afghan faces trial over deadly knife attack on German policeman
BERLIN: An Afghan man with suspected militant motives goes on trial in Germany on Thursday over a knife attack that killed a policeman and wounded five others at an anti-Islam rally last year.
The hearings will start less than two weeks before German elections and at a time of heated debate about immigration and public security following a spate of deadly attacks blamed on asylum seekers.
The defendant, only partially named as Sulaiman A., allegedly used a large hunting knife in a stabbing rampage targeting a rally by Pax Europa, a campaign group against radical Islam, in the western city of Mannheim.
The knifeman initially attacked a speaker and other demonstrators, then stabbed a police officer who rushed in to help, and who died later the same day of his wounds.
Sulaiman A., who was aged 25 at the time of the May 31 attack, was shot and wounded at the site before he was also arrested.
While the suspect is not being tried as a terrorist, prosecutors have charged that he sympathized with the Islamic State (IS) group.
The defendant faces charges of murder, attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm in a trial held in a high-security prison in Stuttgart.
According to German media reports, the Afghan suspect arrived in Germany overland in 2013 aged just 14, together with his brother but without their parents.
They were denied asylum but, as unaccompanied minors, granted stays of deportation and permanent residency, and initially placed in care facilities, reports have said.
Prosecutors charge that Sulaiman A. had decided to mount the attack by early May at the latest.


Many Germans were especially shocked as a video circulating online showed the 29-year-old police officer being repeatedly stabbed in the head.
Several attacks since have further inflamed debate on the influx of several million refugees and migrants over the past decade.
In August, three people died and five were wounded in a knife rampage claimed by IS in the western city of Solingen, in which the Syrian suspect had been slated for deportation but evaded law enforcement.
In December, a car-ramming attack on a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg killed six people and wounded hundreds.
A Saudi man, said by officials to hold far-right beliefs and to be mentally disturbed, was arrested next to the heavily damaged SUV.
The most recent attack, targeting a nursery school group in the southern city of Aschaffenburg, claimed two lives, including that of a two-year-old child.
A 28-year-old Afghan man, whom officials describe as having a history of mental health issues, was arrested close to the scene.
The attacks have driven rising support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is polling around 20 percent ahead of February 23 national elections.
In the wake of the latest attack, the center-right CDU, currently leading in polls on around 30 percent, demanded a crackdown against irregular migration.
But CDU leader Friedrich Merz sparked outrage by bringing a resolution on the issue to parliament which passed with AfD votes, breaching a long-standing taboo against cooperating with the far right.
Human rights groups and other critics charged that the proposed steps would not have prevented the attacks and would penalize innocent refugees and breach EU law.

Trump to meet Putin in Saudi Arabia on Ukraine

Trump to meet Putin in Saudi Arabia on Ukraine
Updated 13 February 2025
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Trump to meet Putin in Saudi Arabia on Ukraine

Trump to meet Putin in Saudi Arabia on Ukraine
  • US President: A date for the meeting “hasn’t been set” but it will happen in the “not too distant future”

RIYADH: US President Donald Trump will see his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Saudi Arabia for their first meeting since taking office in January.

Trump’s announcement came after an almost 90-minute phone conversation with the Russian leader, where they discussed in ending the nearly three-year Moscow offensive in Ukraine.

“We ultimately expect to meet. In fact, we expect that he’ll come here, and I’ll go there, and we’re gonna meet also probably in Saudi Arabia the first time, we’ll meet in Saudi Arabia, see if we can get something something done,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

 

 

A date for the meeting “hasn’t been set” but it will happen in the “not too distant future,” the US president said.

He suggested the meeting would involve Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “We know the crown prince, and I think it’d be a very good place to meet.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov earlier announced that Putin had invited Trump and officials from his administration to visit Moscow to discuss Ukraine.

“The Russian president invited the US president to visit Moscow and expressed his readiness to receive American officials in Russia in those areas of mutual interest, including, of course, the topic of the Ukrainian settlement,” Peskov said.

The invitation followed Trump’s announcement Wednesday that peace talks would start “immediately” and that Ukraine would probably not get its land back, causing uproar on both sides of the Atlantic.


Unions sue Trump, fearing mass firings of federal employees

Unions sue Trump, fearing mass firings of federal employees
Updated 13 February 2025
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Unions sue Trump, fearing mass firings of federal employees

Unions sue Trump, fearing mass firings of federal employees
Reuters

Five unions sued the Trump administration on Wednesday, seeking to block what they called the possible mass firing of hundreds of thousands of federal employees who resist pressure to accept buyouts.
In a complaint filed in Washington, D.C. federal court, the unions accused the White House and others in the Executive Branch of undermining Congress’ role in creating and funding a federal workforce, violating separation of powers principles.
The plaintiffs include the United Auto Workers, the National Treasury Employees Union, the National Federation of Federal Employees, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.
Ten defendants were named, including Trump, the heads of agencies, the Department of Defense, Internal Revenue Service and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
Last week, some unions sued the Trump administration to block the buyouts. On Monday, US District Judge George O’Toole in Boston kept in place a block of the buyout plan for federal employees, as he considers whether to impose it for a longer period of time.
The decision prevents Trump’s administration from implementing the buyout plan for now, giving a temporary victory to labor unions that have sued to stop it entirely.
On Tuesday, meanwhile, Trump ordered US agencies to work closely with billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to identify federal employees who could be laid off.

Russia, Ukraine trade blame for IAEA disruptions at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

Russia, Ukraine trade blame for IAEA disruptions at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
Updated 13 February 2025
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Russia, Ukraine trade blame for IAEA disruptions at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

Russia, Ukraine trade blame for IAEA disruptions at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

KYIV: Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday accused each other of blocking the rotation of staff from the International Atomic Energy Agency at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine.
Moscow’s troops seized the facility — Europe’s largest nuclear power station — in the first days of its invasion of Ukraine, and both sides have repeatedly accused the other of risking a potentially devastating nuclear disaster by attacking the site.
Staff from the UN nuclear watchdog have been based there since September 2022 to monitor nuclear safety.
Fighting meant the IAEA staff could not be swapped out as part of a planned rotation on Wednesday — the second such delay in a week — both Kyiv and Moscow said, trading blame for the incident.
Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Georgiy Tykhy said in a statement: “Russia has once again deliberately disrupted the rotation of IAEA experts at the Zaporizhzhia plant.”
Inspectors spend around five weeks at the plant in stints before being swapped out in a complex procedure that involves traveling across the front line under supervision from the Russian and Ukrainian militaries.
Tykhy accused Russia’s army of opening fire near where the planned rotation was taking place, saying Moscow’s goal was to force the IAEA team to travel through Russian-controlled territory and “violate Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the Ukrainian army blocked the IAEA team from traveling to an agreed meeting point and were attacking the area with drones — at which point the Russian military withdrew its support team and returned to the station.
“On their return, the convoy carrying Russian military personnel and IAEA experts... came under attack by drone and mortar strikes,” Zakharova said in a statement.
The IAEA staff members were supposed to leave the station on February 5 in a rotation that was also delayed.
IAEA head Rafael Grossi was in both Ukraine and Russia last week, where he discussed the issue of rotations with officials from both countries.
In a statement, Grossi expressed his “deep regret” over the cancelation of the “carefully prepared and agreed rotation” due to excessive danger, calling the situation “completely unacceptable.”
“As a result of these extremely concerning events, I am in active consultation with both sides to guarantee the safety of our teams,” he said.