US arms flow to Ukraine again as the Kremlin mulls a ceasefire proposal

Mach: The bodies of at least 25 people, including 21 hostages, killed in a train siege by separatist gunmen in Pakistan were retrieved from the site on Thursday ahead of the first funerals, officials said.
Security forces said they freed more than 340 train passengers in a two-day rescue operation that ended late on Wednesday after a separatist group bombed a remote railway track in mountainous southwest Balochistan and stormed a train with around 450 passengers on board.
The assault was claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), one of a number of separatist groups that accuse outsiders of plundering natural resources in Balochistan near the borders with Afghanistan and Iran.
Death tolls have varied, with the military saying in an official statement that “21 innocent hostages” were killed by the militants as well as four soldiers in the rescue operation.
A railway official in Balochistan said the bodies of 25 people were transported by train away from the hostage site to the nearby town of Mach on Thursday morning.
“Deceased were identified as 19 military passengers, one police and one railway official, while four bodies are yet to be identified,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
A senior local military official overseeing operations confirmed the details.
An army official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, earlier put the military toll at 28, including 27 off-duty soldiers taken hostage.
Passengers who escaped from the siege said after walking for hours through rugged mountains to reach safety that they saw people being shot dead by militants.
The first funerals are expected to take place on Thursday.
Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif was also expected to visit Balochistan, his office said.
“The Prime Minister expressed grief and sorrow over the martyrdom of security personnel and train passengers during the operation,” it said in a statement.
'Our women pleaded'
The BLA released a video of an explosion on the track followed by dozens of militants emerging from hiding places in the mountains to attack the train.
Attacks by separatist groups have soared in the past few years, mostly targeting security forces and ethnic groups from outside the province.
Muhammad Naveed, who managed to escape, told AFP: “They asked us to come out of the train one by one. They separated women and asked them to leave. They also spared elders.”
“They asked us to come outside, saying we will not be harmed. When around 185 people came outside, they chose people and shot them down.”
Babar Masih, a 38-year-old Christian laborer, told AFP on Wednesday he and his family walked for hours through rugged mountains to reach a train that could take them to a makeshift hospital on a railway platform.
“Our women pleaded with them and they spared us,” he said.
“They told us to get out and not look back. As we ran, I noticed many others running alongside us.”
Security forces have been battling a decades-long insurgency in impoverished Balochistan but last year saw a surge in violence in the province compared with 2023, according to the independent Center for Research and Security Studies.

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis marks 12 years as head of the Catholic Church on Thursday, seemingly out of danger after a month in hospital but with his health casting a shadow over his future.
The 88-year-old was for a time critically ill as he battled pneumonia in both lungs at Rome’s Gemelli hospital, where he was admitted on February 14.
The Argentine’s situation has markedly improved since then, with the Vatican confirming his condition as stable on Wednesday evening, and talk is now turning to when he might go home.
But his hospitalization, the longest and most fraught of his papacy, has raised serious doubts about his ability to lead the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Catholics.
Francis had before now refused to make any concessions to his age or increasingly fragile health, which saw him begin using a wheelchair three years ago.
He maintained a packed daily schedule interspersed with frequent overseas trips, notably a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region in September, when he presided over huge open-air masses.
But experts say his recovery could take weeks given his age and recurring health issues, not helped by having part of one lung removed as a young man.
“The rest of his pontificate remains a question mark for the moment, including for Francis himself,” said Father Michel Kubler, a Vatican expert and former editor in chief of the French religious newspaper La Croix.
“He doesn’t know what his life will be like once he returns to the Vatican, and so no doubt reserves the option of resigning if he can no longer cope,” he said.
Francis has always left the door open to resigning were his health to deteriorate, following the example of Benedict XVI, who in 2013 became the first pope since the Middle Ages to voluntarily step down.
But the Jesuit has distanced himself from the idea more recently, insisting the job is for life.
While in hospital, Francis has delegated masses to senior cardinals but has kept working on and off, including signing decrees and receiving close colleagues.
But he has missed a month of events for the 2025 Jubilee, a holy year organized by the pope that is predicted to draw an additional 30 million pilgrims to Rome and the Vatican.
And it is hard to imagine he will be well enough to lead a full program of events for Easter, the holiest period in the Christian calendar that is less than six weeks away.
Many believe that Francis, who has not been seen in public since he was hospitalized, has to change course.
“This is the end of the pontificate as we have known it until now,” Kubler said.
Francis struck a sharp contrast to his cerebral predecessor when he took office, eschewing the trappings of office and reaching out to the most disadvantaged in society with a message that the Church was for everyone.
A former archbishop of Buenos Aires more at home with his flock than the cardinals of the Roman Curia, Francis introduced sweeping reforms across the Vatican and beyond.
Some of the changes, from reorganizing the Vatican’s finances to increasing the role of women and opening the Church to divorced and LGBTQ members, have been laid down in official texts.
But a wide-ranging discussion on the future of the Church, known as a Synod, is not yet finished.
And there are many who would happily see his work undone.
Traditionalists have strongly resisted his approach, and an outcry in Africa caused the Vatican to clarify its authorization of non-liturgical blessings for same-sex couples in 2023.
“Whether we like him or not, he has shifted the dial, but many things are still pending,” a Vatican source said.