Heavy rain triggers a flash flood and a cold lava flow from Mount Marapi, resulting in the disaster in West Sumatra.
At least 14 people, including several children, have been killed and many others are missing after flash floods and cold lava flow from a volcano hit western Indonesia, according to rescue officials.
Basarnas search and rescue agency said in a statement on Sunday the disaster hit Agam and Tanah Datar districts in the West Sumatra province at about 10:30pm (15:30 GMT) on Saturday after hours of heavy rain, triggering a flash flood and a cold lava flow from Mount Marapi.
Cold lava, also known as lahar, is volcanic material like ash, sand and pebbles carried down a volcano’s slopes by rain.
Ilham Wahab, head of the Regional Disaster Mitigation Agency in West Sumatra, was quoted by the Indonesian media company, Sumbar, as saying that as of Sunday morning, at least 14 people had been reported killed.
Abdul Malik, head of the local rescue agency, said nine bodies were identified, including those of a three-year-old and an eight-year-old.
Four other people are still being searched in Agam district, he said. “Today, we will continue the search in the two districts.”
Photos and videos posted on social media showed large rocks and thick mud covering the streets of West Sumatra.
Last week, 15 people were killed in South Sulawesi after landslides and flooding swept away homes and damaged roads.
In March, at least 26 people had been found dead after landslides and floods hit West Sumatra.
Saturday’s floods in Agam and Tanah Datar also carried cold lava down from Mount Marapi, the most active volcano in Sumatra and one of nearly 130 active volcanoes in the Indonesian archipelago.
In December, Marapi erupted and spewed an ash tower 3,000 metres (9,800 feet) into the sky, higher than the volcano itself.
At least 24 climbers, most of them university students, died in the eruption.
In a separate deadly incident on Saturday evening, at least 11 people were killed and dozens of others were injured when a bus carrying more than 60 high school students on a graduation trip and their teachers crashed on Indonesia’s biggest island of Java.
India is bracing itself for the fourth phase of its weeks-long elections on May 13 to elect 96 members of parliament to the Lok Sabha, or the lower house of parliament, as the world’s largest electoral exercise moves into its final month.
Last week, the third phase of the voting saw Modi cast his vote in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar constituency. It also saw the competition between the two main contenders heighten as the Congress Party’s former President Sonia Gandhi said Modi and the BJP were focusing “only on gaining power at any cost”.
The fourth phase also features a bit of glamour in the east of the country, where Bollywood veteran Shatrughan Sinha is seeking re-election in West Bengal’s Asansol, and to the south, where actress Maadhavi Latha from the BJP is standing for the Hyderabad seat in Telangana. Latha is pitted against Asaduddin Owaisi, a four-time MP from the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party.
The first three phases of the election, which were held on April 19, April 26 and May 7, saw a voter turnout of 66.1, 66.7, and 61 percent, respectively. The voting so far has been lower than in the 2019 elections. In total, 969 million people are registered to vote in 543 parliamentary constituencies across 36 states and federally-governed union territories.
Who is voting in the fourth phase?
Registered voters across nine states and a union territory will cast their ballots for the following constituencies:
Andhra Pradesh: All 25 constituencies in the southern coastal state
Telangana: All 17 constituencies in the southern state
Jharkhand: Four of the eastern state’s 14 constituencies
Odisha: Four of the eastern state’s 21 constituencies
Uttar Pradesh: Thirteen of the northern state’s 80 constituencies
Madhya Pradesh: Eight of the central state’s 29 constituencies
Bihar: Five of the eastern state’s 40 constituencies
Maharashtra: Eleven of the western state’s 48 constituencies
West Bengal: Eight of the eastern state’s 42 constituencies
Jammu and Kashmir: One of the union territory’s five constituencies
Which are some of the key constituencies?
Hyderabad (Telangana): Asaduddin Owaisi is being challenged by the BJP’s Maadhavi Latha in his family bastion. Owaisi’s brother, Akbaruddin Owaisi is a member of the state legislative assembly while his father, Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi, represented the parliamentary constituency, with a substantial Muslim population, six times. Owaisi pitches himself as the voice of India’s Muslim minority whose issues he regularly raises in his parliamentary debates. Owaisi was given the “best parliamentarian” award in 2022.
Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir): This constituency in Kashmir registered just 15 percent voting in the 2019 election, which was marred by a boycott. This is the first parliamentary election in Kashmir since the region’s special status was removed in August 2019. The two biggest mainstream pro-India parties in the region – the National Conference and People’s Democratic Party – have fielded Aga Syed and Waheed Parra, respectively, as their candidates.
Krishnanagar, Baharampur and Asansol (West Bengal): These three parliamentary contests in West Bengal state, bordering Bangladesh, offer a mix of star power and political significance. Bollywood actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha is seeking re-election from Asansol, while ex-cricketer Yusuf Pathan is taking on senior Congress Party leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who has been representing Bahrampur since 1999. Chowdhury was also the leader of the opposition Congress Party in the outgoing Lok Sabha. Pathan is the candidate of the Trinamool Congress (TMC), the party that rules the state and is also aligned with the national opposition INDIA alliance – even though the coalition’s members are standing against each other in West Bengal.
Yet, the most high-profile electoral battle in the state on May 13, is in Krishnanagar, where the fiery TMC parliamentarian and fierce critic of Modi, Mahua Moitra, is seeking a second term. A former vice president of JPMorgan Chase based in London, Moitra entered politics in 2009. Her parliamentary speeches asking tough questions of the government often go viral. In December 2023, the firebrand MP was expelled from parliament after being accused of accepting cash to ask questions. She said her expulsion was a way to silence her. She has challenged her expulsion in the Supreme Court. The BJP has fielded Amrita Roy, whose husband is a descendant of the erstwhile king of the region, against Moitra.
Kannauj and Lakhimpur Kheri (Uttar Pradesh): Akhilesh Yadav, the leader of the Samajwadi Party – a regional powerhouse that has seen its influence shrink with the BJP’s rise – has decided to enter the electoral race in Kannauj in northern Uttar Pradesh state, which accounts for 80 seats in the parliament. The BJP currently governs the state. Kannauj, known for its perfume industry, has been a Yadav family bastion. Akhilesh, his father Mulayan Singh Yadav and his wife Dimple Yadav have represented the seat since 1999. But in 2019, Dimple lost to the BJP in a shock defeat. Akhilesh’s entry into the electoral fray is an attempt to wrest back the family pocket borough.
The other seat that has attracted a lot of attention is Lakhimpur Kheri, where controversial federal Minister of Home Affairs Ajay Mishra Teni is seeking re-election. Mishra has been caught in a storm since his son Ashish Mishra allegedly ran his car over farmers protesting against now-repealed farm laws. Ashish is out on bail and farmers’ groups as well as activists have been demanding that Mishra be denied a ticket by the BJP.
Indore (Madhya Pradesh): This constituency, a stronghold of the BJP, has been in the news for unlikely reasons. The Congress candidate Akshay Kanti Bam withdrew from the race at the last minute, after the last date for candidates to file nominations had passed. The Congress could not field a replacement and Bam later joined the BJP. Thirteen other candidates are in the fray, but the Congress Party has urged voters to opt for NOTA (none of the above) in protest.
When does the voting start and end?
Voting will begin at 7am local time (01:30 GMT) and end at 6pm (12:30 GMT). Voters already in the queue by the time polls close will get to vote, even if that means keeping polling stations open longer.
Complete election results for all phases are to be released on June 4.
Which parties rule the states being polled in the fourth phase?
The BJP governs Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh outright.
The BJP governs Maharashtra and Bihar in alliances.
Odisha is governed by the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), which leans towards the NDA but is not a part of the alliance.
Andhra Pradesh is governed by the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu (YSR) Congress Party.
Congressgoverns Telangana.
Jharkhand is governed by the INDIA alliance led by Jharkhand Mukti Morcha.
Jammu and Kashmir is governed directly by New Delhi. Its state legislature remains suspended.
Who won these Lok Sabha seats in 2019?
In the last Lok Sabha elections, Congress, along with parties now affiliated with the INDIA alliance and those affiliated then with the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, won 13 of the 96 seats to be decided on May 13.
The BJP and parties affiliated with the NDA won 50 of the seats in 2019.
The YSR Congress Party in Andhra Pradesh won 22 seats while the Telangana-based Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) won nine seats in 2019.
The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) won two seats in 2019.
How much of India has voted so far?
The first three phases of the Lok Sabha elections have already decided the fate of 284 MPs.
So far, voting has concluded for all seats in the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Meghalaya, Assam, Manipur, Karnataka, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tripura; the Andaman and Nicobar islands; and the Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman, Diu, Lakshadweep and Puducherry union territories.
The fifth phase will kick off on May 20 and the sixth on May 25, before the election heads towards the seventh and final phase on June 1.
Thousands of people have protested in the Swedish city of Malmo against Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest, with Israel’s war on Gaza casting a shadow over the final of the glitzy contest.
On Saturday, a large crowd of protesters gathered on the central square of the Swedish host city before marching towards the contest venue, waving Palestinian flags and shouting “Eurovision united by genocide” – a twist on the contest’s official slogan “united by music”.
A protester told Al Jazeera that it was unfair that a country that is “committing genocide” was allowed to take part in the event, and he said that demonstrators were upset by the confiscation of Palestinian flags and scarves by the authorities.
“Here in Malmo a lot of people are from Palestine and many of their families are getting hurt [in Gaza and Palestine] and they just feel angry about the situation and how the Swedish government and the city has handled this situation,” he said.
“So there is a lot of frustration and a lot of anger.”
Reporting from Malmo, Al Jazeera’s Paul Rhys said that the protests over the past few days have been relatively peaceful, but as the final got under way, several protesters were taken away by the police.
“Quite a few demonstrators kind of got in here [the Malmo arena] in secret and started protesting with Palestinian flags. They were boxed in by the police and taken away one by one,” he said.
Police estimated that between 6,000 and 8,000 people joined the demonstrations in Malmo on Saturday.
Meanwhile, inside the auditorium French singer Slimane halted his rehearsal act earlier on Saturday to say it had been a childhood dream of his to sing for peace.
“We need to be united by music,” Slimane said, referring to the official Eurovision slogan.
The final, the culmination of the festival of catchy songs, gaudy costumes and tongue-in-cheek kitsch, kicks off at 19:00 GMT.
Police remove pro-Palestinian protesters in front of the Malmo Arena in Malmo, Sweden [Tobias Schwarz/AFP]
Pro-Palestinian protesters have complained of double standards as the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organises the contest,
banned Russia from Eurovision in 2022 following its invasion of Ukraine.
Eurovision organisers, who have always billed the annual event as non-political, resisted calls to exclude Israel and in March, the EBU confirmed that Israel’s contestant Eden Golan would take part.
Golan’s song is an adaptation of an earlier version named, October Rain, which she modified after organisers deemed it too political because of its apparent allusions to the Hamas-led October 7 attack.
On Thursday, some booing was heard from the crowd before, during and after his performance in the semifinals, but there was also applause and Israeli flags being waved.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also wished Golan good luck and said she had “already won” by enduring protests that he called a “horrible wave of anti-Semitism”.
Dutch contestant disqualified
Earlier on Saturday, the contest was also rattled earlier by the disqualification of Dutch contestant Joost Klein.
“Swedish police have investigated a complaint made by a female member of the production crew after an incident following his performance in Thursday night’s semi-final,” the European Broadcasting Union, which oversees the event, said in a statement.
“While the legal process takes its course, it would not be appropriate for him to continue in the contest.”
Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS said the incident had involved Klein being filmed directly after coming off stage “against clearly made agreements”.
According to an AVROTROS statement, Klein then repeatedly indicated he did not want to be filmed after which he made a “threatening movement” toward the camera, but did not touch the camerawoman.
“We stand for good manners – let there be no misunderstanding about that – but in our view, an exclusion order is not proportional to this incident,” AVROTROS said.
Klein had already courted controversy at Thursday’s news conference when he repeatedly covered his face with a Dutch flag, seemingly signifying he did not agree with being placed next to Israel’s contestant, Golan.
Moscow’s forces captured five villages in a renewed ground assault in northeastern Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defence has said, as journalists in the city of Vovchansk described multiple buildings destroyed after Russian air raids.
Ukrainian officials on Saturday did not confirm whether Russia had taken the villages, which lie in a contested “grey zone” on the border of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and Russia.
Ukrainian journalists reported that the villages of Borysivka, Ohirtseve, Pylna and Strilecha were taken by Russian troops on Friday.
Russia said the village of Pletenivka was also taken.
In an evening statement Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said fighting was continuing in Strilecha and Pletenivka, as well as Krasne, Morokhovets, Oliinykove, Lukyantsi and Hatyshche.
“Our troops are carrying out counterattacks there for a second day, protecting Ukrainian territory,” he said.
On Friday, the Institute for the Study of War said that geolocated footage confirms at least one of the villages was seized. The Washington-based think tank described recent Russian gains as “tactically significant”.
The renewed assault on the region has forced more than 1,700 civilians residing in settlements near the fighting to flee, according to Ukrainian authorities. It comes after Russia stepped up attacks in March targeting energy infrastructure and settlements, which analysts predicted were a concerted effort by Moscow to shape conditions for an offensive.
On Saturday, Russia continued to pummel Vovchansk with air raids and rockets as police and volunteers raced to evacuate residents. At least 20 people were evacuated to safety in a nearby village. Police said that 900 people had been evacuated the previous day.
Journalists from The Associated Press news agency who accompanied an evacuation team described empty streets with multiple buildings destroyed and others on fire. The road was littered with newly made craters and the city was covered in dust and shrapnel with the smell of gunpowder heavy in the air. Mushroom clouds of smoke rose across the skyline as Russian jets conducted multiple air attacks.
The AP journalists witnessed nine air attacks during the three hours they were there.
“The situation in Vovchansk and the settlements along the border [with Russia] is incredibly difficult. Constant aviation attacks are carried out, multiple rocket missile systems strikes, artillery strikes,” said Tamaz Hambarashvili, the head of the Vovchansk military administration.
“For the second day in a row, we evacuated all the inhabitants of our community who are willing to evacuate,” he said.
“I think that they are destroying the city to make [local] people leave, to make sure there are no militaries, nobody. To create a ‘grey’ zone.’”
Residents from Vovchansk and nearby villages board a bus during an evacuation to Kharkiv [Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/Reuters]
Russia’s recent push in Kharkiv seeks to exploit ammunition shortages before promised Western supplies can reach the front line and pin down Ukrainian forces in the northeast and keep them away from heavy battles under way in the Donetsk region where Moscow’s troops are gaining ground, analysts said.
Russian military bloggers said the assault could mark the start of a Russian attempt to carve out a “buffer zone” that President Vladimir Putin pledged to create earlier this year to halt frequent Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod and other Russian border regions.
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said on Saturday that one woman was killed and 29 people were wounded, including a child, in shelling by Ukraine’s armed forces.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials have downplayed Russian statements about captured territory, with reinforcements being rushed to the Kharkiv region to hold off Russian forces.
On Telegram, Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said that heavy fighting continued in the areas around Borysivka, Ohirtseve, Pylna and Oliinykove, but that the situation was under control and there was no threat of a ground assault on the city of Kharkiv.
In the meantime, artillery, mortar and aerial bombardments hit more than 30 different towns and villages in the region on Saturday, killing at least three people and injuring five others, Syniehubov said.
An unusually strong solar storm hitting Earth produced stunning displays of colour in the skies across the Northern Hemisphere early on Saturday, with no immediate reports of disruptions to power and communications.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a rare severe geomagnetic storm warning when a solar outburst reached Earth on Friday afternoon, hours sooner than anticipated.
The effects of the northern lights, which were on display in the United Kingdom, were due to last through the weekend and possibly into next week.
Many in the UK shared phone snaps of the lights on social media early Saturday, with the phenomenon seen as far south as London and southern England.
There were sightings “from top to tail across the country,” said Chris Snell, a meteorologist at the Met Office, the British weather agency. He added that the office received photos and information from other European locations including Prague and Barcelona.
NOAA alerted operators of power plants and spacecraft in orbit, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to take precautions.
“For most people here on planet Earth, they won’t have to do anything,” said Rob Steenburgh, a scientist with NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.
The storm could produce northern lights as far south in the US as Alabama and northern California, NOAA said. But it was hard to predict and experts stressed it would not be the dramatic curtains of colour normally associated with the northern lights, but more like splashes of greenish hues.
“That’s really the gift from space weather: the aurora,” Steenburgh said. He and his colleagues said the best aurora views may come from phone cameras, which are better at capturing light than the naked eye.
The most intense solar storm in recorded history, in 1859, prompted auroras in Central America and possibly even Hawaii. “We are not anticipating that” but it could come close, NOAA space weather forecaster Shawn Dahl said.
This storm poses a risk for high-voltage transmission lines for power grids, not the electrical lines ordinarily found in people’s homes, Dahl told reporters. Satellites also could be affected, which in turn could disrupt navigation and communication services here on Earth.
British-Israeli Nadav Popplewell was taken captive from Nirim kibbutz by Palestinian group Hamas on October 7.
Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, has said British-Israeli captive Nadav Popplewell died of wounds sustained in an Israeli air strike a month ago.
The group’s announcement on Saturday came just hours after the Palestinian group released an 11-second video showing Popplewell with a bruised eye.
In the video republished on social media and cited by Israeli news outlets, a man is seen wearing a white T-shirt and he introduces himself as 51-year-old Nadav Popplewell from the Nirim kibbutz in southern Israel.
Superimposed text in Arabic and Hebrew reads: “Time is running out. Your government is lying.”
Popplewell was taken captive in Nirim during the Hamas-led attack on October 7, according to Israel’s Ynet news site. His mother was also taken as a captive but later released during the exchange of captives and prisoners by Hamas and Israel last year. Popplewell’s brother was killed in the attack, Ynet reported.
The video posted on Saturday on the Telegram channel of Hamas’s armed wing is the third time in less than a month the group has released footage of captives held in Gaza.
On April 27, Hamas released a video showing two captives alive – Keith Siegel and Omri Miran. Three days earlier it also broadcast another video showing captive Hersh Goldberg-Polin alive.
The videos come amid growing domestic pressure on the Israeli government to secure the release of the remaining captives.
Reporting from Amman, Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, said this tactic of releasing videos of captives on a Saturday, when protests take place in Tel Aviv, is a way of pressurising the Israeli government.
“This is what’s been a drip-feed if you will from Hamas. Where, by releasing videos, at times showing hostages dead, they are trying to put pressure on the Israeli government,” she said.
“But this hasn’t really changed the policies of [the Israeli] government.”
On Saturday, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Israel released a statement calling on the Israeli government to strike a deal with Hamas in order to secure the release of captives.
“Every sign of life received from the hostages held by Hamas is another cry of distress to the Israeli government and its leaders,” the families’ group said in its statement.
“We don’t have a moment to spare! You must strive to implement a deal that will bring them all back today.”
Despite the immense pressure, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have so far failed to strike a deal with Hamas.
Some 1,139 people were killed on October 7 when Hamas and allied fighters attacked southern Israel, and 250 captives were also taken to the Gaza Strip. Israeli officials say 128 of them are still being held in the Palestinian territory, including 36 who are dead.
Israel’s seven-month military campaign in Gaza has so far killed at least 34,971 people and wounded 78,641 others.
Israel issued new evacuation orders in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, forcing tens of thousands more people to move as it prepares to expand its military operation.
With Saturday’s orders, Israeli forces have now evacuated the eastern third of Rafah, pushing into the edges of the heavily populated central area.
The orders come in the face of international opposition and criticism. President Joe Biden has already said the United States will not provide offensive weapons to Israel due to its Rafah offensive.
The United Nations and other agencies have warned for weeks that an Israeli assault on Rafah, which borders Egypt near the main aid entry point, would cripple humanitarian operations and cause a disastrous surge in civilian casualties.
More than 1.4 million Palestinians have been sheltering in Rafah after fleeing the Israeli military’s bombardments in other parts of the enclave. Considered the last refuge in the Gaza Strip, the evacuations are forcing people to return north to areas devastated by previous attacks.
People have already been displaced multiple times and there are few places left in the embattled Strip to move to. Those fleeing fighting earlier this week erected new tent camps in the city of Khan Younis, which was half destroyed in an earlier Israeli offensive, and the central city of Deir el-Balah, straining infrastructure.
The Israeli military has ordered residents in more areas of eastern and central Rafah to evacuate as it expands its offensive in the southernmost corner of the Gaza Strip, again displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians.
An estimated 150,000 Palestinians, many displaced multiple times, have now fled Rafah, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on Saturday. Israel put that figure at about 300,000.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said: “Israeli authorities dropped leaflets and made phone calls for more evacuation orders. They are now ordering people to flee from central areas of Rafah, not only the eastern portions, where battles are now raging.”
Earlier on Saturday evacuation orders were issued for Shaboura and the vicinity of the Kuwait Specialty Hospital, Abu Azzoum said, adding that “people are told to flee because these areas will in the future become a military operation zone for the Israeli army. The situation is completely dire”.
Saheb al-Hams, a hospital director in Rafah, confirmed that the expanded evacuation order included the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah city where countless numbers of patients and injured people are being treated.
“There is no other place for patients and injured people to go to but this hospital,” al-Hams said in a video message obtained by Al Jazeera, as he pleaded for “immediate international protection” for the facility.
Earlier on Saturday, the Israeli army said in a statement that “approximately 300,000 Gazans” had moved from the eastern part of Rafah to al-Mawasi since the order was issued on Monday.
Israel claims al-Mawasi, on Gaza’s western coast, is a “safe humanitarian zone”. But humanitarian groups and displaced Palestinians say tens of thousands of people are crammed into the area, and are facing severe food and water shortages, as well as periodic bombardments.
(Al Jazeera)
“They told us these areas are not threatened and is safe. But it turned out that this area is dangerous,” Ahmad Abu Nahil, a displaced Gaza resident, told Al Jazeera as his family fled Rafah.
Raed al-Fayomi, another displaced resident, also described the situation as very dangerous.
“We couldn’t sleep at night because of the artillery shelling and the rockets. The condition is very difficult and food is scarce.”
Georgios Petropoulos, an official with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Rafah, told The Associated Press news agency that humanitarian workers had no supplies to help them set up in new locations and accommodate the tens of thousands of new people from Rafah.
“We simply have no tents, we have no blankets, no bedding, none of the items that you would expect a population on the move to be able to get from the humanitarian system,” he said.
The Israeli army has claimed what it called a “temporary evacuation” was being communicated to people through leaflets, mobile text messages, phone calls and broadcasts in Arabic. But it is unclear how many people received the order.
The military initially ordered the evacuation of eastern Rafah on Monday as it seized control of the crossing with the Egyptian border before its long-threatened ground assault in the city where about 1.4 million displaced people were sheltering.
Israeli tanks captured the main road dividing Rafah’s eastern and western sections on Friday, effectively encircling the eastern side of the city.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health said on Saturday that at least 34,971 people have been killed and 78,641 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The revised death toll in Israel from Hamas’s October 7 attacks stands at 1,139 with dozens of people still held captive.
Thousands of houses have been destroyed or damaged in the worst-hit northern province of Baghlan.
At least 153 people have been killed in flash floods in northern Afghanistan triggered by torrential rains, the Taliban’s Ministry of Interior Affairs has said.
On Saturday, ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani put the number of injured at 138 people in three provinces, the Reuters news agency reported.
Heavy rains on Friday led to flooding in several areas of the country, with fears of the death toll rising.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the chief spokesman for the Taliban government, said in a social media post on Saturday that “hundreds … have succumbed to these calamitous floods, while a substantial number have sustained injuries”.
Apart from Baghlan in the north, the provinces of Badakhshan in the northeast, central Ghor and western Herat were also heavily affected, he wrote on X, adding that “the extensive devastation” had resulted in “significant financial losses”.
The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) told the AFP news agency on Saturday that more than 200 people were killed and thousands of homes were destroyed or damaged in the worst-hit province of Baghlan alone.
The air force had started evacuating people and moved more than 100 injured people to military hospitals, the Taliban Ministry of Defense said on Saturday, without mentioning from which provinces.
“By announcing the state of emergency in [affected] areas, the Ministry of National Defense has started distributing food, medicine and first aid to the impacted people,” it said in a statement.
Hedayatullah Hamdard, the head of Baghlan’s natural disaster management department, earlier told AFP that the toll “will probably increase”, adding that light rain had continued into the night in multiple districts of the province.
Residents were unprepared for the sudden rush of water set off by the heavy downpour in recent days, he added.
Emergency personnel were “searching for any possible victims under the mud and rubble, with the help of security forces from the national army and police”, Hamdard said.
Since mid-April, floods have killed about 100 people in 10 of Afghanistan’s provinces, with no region entirely spared, according to the authorities.
Farmlands have been submerged in a country where 80 percent of the more than 40 million people depend on agriculture to survive.
Mohammad Akram Akbari, the provincial director of natural disaster management in Badakhshan, said the mountainous province had seen “heavy financial losses in several areas … due to floods”.
He said casualties were feared in Tishkan district, where floodwaters had blocked a road and cut off access to an area where about 20,000 people lived.
Children survey their damaged homes after heavy flooding in Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan [Mehrab Ibrahimi/AP]
As news of Russia’s spring offensive in Kharkiv started to spread through Kharkiv on Friday, Ukraine’s second biggest city did not descend into panic. No caravans of cars with people evacuating have been seen; the conversations in Kharkiv’s cafes are the only sign of concern about the heavy fighting going on north of the city.
Yevgen Shapoval, the head of the military administration of the Vil’khuvatka community in Kharkiv’s Kupiansk district, passed through the city on Friday on the way back to his village, which is next to the border with Russia. The situation there has been more tense.
“Some people are panicking, but not like the occupiers would like them to. Yes, explosions are heard close up and the situation is not easy. It is difficult especially psychologically,” Shapoval says.
The Russian army has reportedly concentrated about 50,000 troops just across the border, likely in an effort to extend the front towards the south and to create a buffer zone that Russian President Vladimir Putin promised earlier this year as a means of halting Ukrainian attacks on Russian border regions.
But Shapoval does not believe that the Russian army will achieve much with its planned offensive. “We must be consistent and believe in Ukraine’s defence forces. So even if they try to do something, to attack, they will get the response they deserve,” he tells Al Jazeera by telephone.
“Yes – some local tactical movements and even some larger-scale offensive operations are possible. But as for Kharkiv, I don’t believe it can be captured.”
Kharkiv, a traditionally Russian-speaking city close to the border, had strong economic and cultural ties with Russia for decades until the start of the war. It has also been a vibrant economic and educational hub as well as the capital of Ukraine’s heavy and defence industries. Its importance for Russia has thus been both symbolic and strategic.
Russia failed to capture Kharkiv in its 2022 offensive, but it did manage to make life for residents hard to bear. In all, since the beginning of the war, Russia has destroyed about 44,000 buildings and pieces of infrastructure in the city.
Tulips bloomed in front of Kharkiv’s city administration building on Freedom Square in April, bringing some normality to the war-torn city [Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska/Al Jazeera]
Towards the end of last year, Russia intensified its attacks against Kharkiv and the surrounding region, targeting in particular its energy infrastructure as well as roads and residential areas, which experienced daily bombings with an array of weapons including long-range glide bombs, drones and ballistic missiles.
“Russia did not advance so it applied a new tactic of particularly fierce shelling, including in the historic centre of the city. The goal is to destroy the territory, put psychological pressure on people, and terminate all work and life,” Yevgen Ivanov, deputy head of the Kharkiv Regional Military Administration, told Al Jazeera in April.
“The tactic is not logical. It focuses on making the territory unliveable.”
With this new Russian offensive has come more intensified fighting northwest of Kharkiv. But it is unclear what the strategy is likely to be.
“A direct attack on Kharkiv is quite unlikely because it is a big city,” says Jakub Palowski, a military expert and deputy editor in chief of Defence24.pl website. “Ukraine currently has a mobilised army and, in the absence of a surprise, the defence of such a city would be quite effective.”
It is hard to tell what Russia wants to achieve in the Kharkiv region, he adds. “It might be the opening of a new full-scale front, similar to the Donbas region; actions that would aim at capturing a limited area and accumulating Ukrainian troops in one place, so that they cannot be used elsewhere; or creating conditions for further offensives.”
‘The dance floor is a safe space’
Meanwhile, Kharkiv keeps calm and carries on. Tulips planted in April in front of the city’s administration building on Freedom Square are in full bloom and the city’s cultural and social life continues uninterrupted.
Local museums host exhibitions. Schools took to operating underground in metro stations and one has recently been constructed underground. Life goes on.
According to official data, Kharkiv has lost some 700,000 residents since the war began, but those who stayed behind say they care about the city and want to keep investing in its development, said Anton Nazarko, a 37-year-old singer, entrepreneur and activist.
Anton Nazarko, a local activist and entrepreneur, wants to promote Kharkiv as a city of culture, not war [Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska/Al Jazeera]
Together with a group of friends, who came together to form the “Some People” collective, Nazarko opened a sneaker store where customers can get their shoes styled and decorated and a small music venue for friends to chill out at. Its first location was destroyed in a Russian strike, but the new one in the city centre has so far remained intact.
As he walks through Kharkiv’s modernist streets, Nazarko says he takes pride in his city. He wants to invest in its culture, develop the arts scene and make Kharkiv famous for its creative industry, not just for war.
Crucially, he wants to promote the arts in the Ukrainian language, a departure from Kharkiv’s Soviet and post-Soviet past, dominated by the Russian language.
His most recent undertaking is the Center of New Culture, a place where Ukrainian art, he hopes, will flourish. Located in a former factory, the vast venue hosts a bar and a large dance floor and will also act as a location for art exhibitions, theatre, a co-working and workshop space, a small cinema, a bookshop and a music studio.
“We want people to stay in and to return to Kharkiv. We also want to reach out to young people who have been resettled here from the occupied areas of Donbas,” Nazarko says. “We organise independent theatre performances, concerts and raves for up to 300 people. But only during the day, because the curfew starts at 11pm.”
Nazarko’s group made sure that partying in their venue would be safe. The dance floor in the Centre of New Culture also functions as a bunker.
“There is a saying in rave culture that ‘the dance floor is a safe space’. With us it takes on a literal meaning,” he says.
Nazarko tries not to think about the upcoming Russian offensive. Just like other residents of Kharkiv, he has adapted to living with war. He has not even considered leaving the city and he will not do so, he says, unless Russia occupies the city.
“Maybe our events’ schedule will slightly change depending on the situation,” Nazarko says. “But we will continue to support our people”.
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