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Ukraine war briefing: Wildberries warehouse struck by Kyiv’s drones more than 2,000km from Russian border

Ukrainian long-range drones hit a warehouse beloning to Russia’s biggest online retailer in the Ural Mountains, more than 2,000km (1,200 miles) from the two countries’ border, local officials and the company said on Friday. Wildberries said its warehouse in Ekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, was set ablaze in the attack. Most merchandise was not damaged, the company said. More than a dozen other Wildberries depots struck by Ukraine in recent weeks have burned down. The regional governor, Denis Pasler, said three drones hit the warehouse’s roof. The Kremlin’s representative in the region, Artyom Zhoga, said 800 people were evacuated from the warehouse and nobody was hurt. Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting of Russia’s security council on Friday and said in televised opening remarks that the meeting would focus on additional measures to “strengthen … protection of infrastructure facilities” but gave no further details. Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked the ⁠US Senate ⁠on Friday for passing ⁠a bill backing sweeping energy sanctions on ⁠Russia, saying it helped increase pressure on Moscow. The European Commission president, Ursula ⁠von der Leyen, also welcomed the vote, saying it came on the back on the EU’s 21st sanctions package against Russia and showed that with complementary ⁠sanctions “Europe and the United States can once again show what historic partners can ‌achieve when we act together”. The US bill, intending to punish Russia and countries that buy its petroleum exports, advances a long-delayed measure backed ⁠by the late senator Lindsey Graham. Russian strikes killed three people – including a child – and wounded three in a district north-east of Ukraine’s capital, a regional military official said on Saturday. “As of now, the consequences of the enemy attack have been recorded at three locations in Brovary district,” Kyiv’s regional military administration chief, Tymur Tkachenko, said on Telegram. On Friday Russian strikes on ⁠Ukraine’s south-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region killed ⁠two people and injured six, regional ⁠governor Oleksandr Hanzha said, amid nearly 50 ‌attacks. Two people were killed ‌near the town of Nikopol on the western bank of the Dnipro River, opposite ⁠the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Russia’s defence ministry said its forces struck two ⁠more cargo vessels in ⁠the Black Sea being ‌used in the Ukrainian military’s interests. In Russian-occupied Crimea, two people ⁠were ⁠killed after a ⁠Ukrainian drone struck ⁠an apartment ‌building ‌in ‌Kerch on Friday, ‌said the peninsula’s Russia-installed governor, ⁠Sergei Aksyonov. Zelenskyy on Friday began his first official visit to Serbia to discuss security with a European country still closely allied with Moscow. Welcomed at Belgrade airport on Friday by the energy minister, the Ukrainian president had dinner with his Serbian counterpart, Aleksandar Vučić. Zelenskyy said on X “We will discuss expanding economic ties between our countries, relations with the European Union, other areas that can benefit our nations, and security issues.” Vučić and Zelenskyy are to hold official talks on Saturday at the presidential palace and make a statement to the press, according to the Serbian presidency. A senior Ukrainian official told AFP ahead of the trip it was an attempt to “pull the Serbs away from Russia’s side”, but Vučić has insisted his decision not to sanction Moscow will not change. Chancellor Friedrich Merz convened Germany’s national security council on Friday to discuss an explosive-laden drone found near a Ukrainian cargo plane and the midair collision of another aircraft with an unidentified object this week. Germany has not blamed anyone for the incident at Leipzig-Halle airport early on Wednesday, but the Russian embassy in Berlin on Friday claimed the discovery of a “fabricated provocation” was set up to blame Moscow. German interior minister Alexander Dobrindt has called the discovery “a hybrid attack” that spelled “a new level of danger”. Russia’s supreme court said on Friday it would consider a lawsuit to bar Yabloko, the only officially registered party that opposes Moscow’s war in Ukraine, from contesting parliamentary elections in September. The ⁠suit was filed by Rodina (⁠or Motherland), a small pro-Kremlin nationalist party whose leader, Alexei Zhuravlev, denounced Yabloko as a western-backed movement bent on discrediting the elections and Russia itself. Yabloko accused Zhuravlev of making defamatory statements against it and said it would launch its own ‌suit to protect its reputation.

Senior managers at St Basil’s aged care, where 50 died from Covid, can’t remember it all. Grieving loved ones can’t forget

Quiet sobs could be heard in Melbourne’s coroner’s court, as several families attended to finally hear from the pair who were the most senior managers when, throughout July and August 2020, almost a quarter of the 188 residents at St Basil’s aged care home died from Covid-19 or neglect. Following multiple failed legal bids to avoid giving evidence after 50 residents died in the Victorian aged care home they managed, Konstantin Kontis and Vicky Kos were compelled to testify at a coronial inquest resuming on the sixth anniversary of the tragedy. During his evidence on Friday, Kontis said that the board of St Basil’s, operating under the auspice of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia, never signed off on the facility’s Covid-19 management policy and that he believed, as chair, he had the delegated authority to approve it without them. Counsel assisting the coroner, Naomi Hodgson, told the court the policy contained no strong guidance on close contacts of Covid cases, and that the main guidance on symptoms was to follow the directives of the state and federal governments. The policy document was not updated as new directives came in from the government, the court heard. Instead this information was printed and put into a yellow folder for staff to keep up-to-date with. Kontis accepted under questioning that there was no delegation of authority that allowed him to approve “such a significant document” without input from the board. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email Kontis was also questioned about why he did not convene board meetings as the outbreak grew, especially once testing of 116 residents and 95 staff on 15 July 2020 – as organised by the federal department of health – revealed 28 positive cases. “My communication then had switched to the archbishop direct,” Kontis said. “I don’t want to put tickets on myself, but he had full confidence that I would handle the matter in the most appropriate way.” Hodgson put it to Kontis that regardless of whether an approved aged care provider was a not-for-profit, for-profit, or religiously run, the leadership had obligations under the aged care and corporate laws to inform the board. She suggested Kontis was wrong in some of his understanding of these obligations, which he accepted. Kontis said a board meeting was held in April 2020 before the outbreak at the home and after Covid was spreading through aged care elsewhere. Discussions would have occurred then, he said, about what to do if a significant portion of the workforce became infected. The court heard that no minutes from that meeting had been found in about 10,000 pages of briefing evidence provided to the coroner. It prompted the inquest – due to close its questioning of witnesses on Friday – to be delayed to allow St Basil’s representatives to conduct a search. Kontis’ evidence is due to resume on 16 November. The yellow folder Earlier in the week, the court heard that no cohort plan for separating Covid positive residents from uninfected ones could be found in documents provided to the court. Kos, who was director of nursing and facility manager at the time, said this plan was placed in the yellow folder. Some documents from that folder had gone missing, she said. She gave evidence that many documents from the state and federal government were being added to this folder, and that staff were expected to keep up-to-date with it when starting shifts. Information was also shared during handovers, she said. Following this evidence, a search on Monday night of electronic and hard-file repositories of documents, including those previously seized by Victoria police, did not reveal such a cohort plan, the court heard on Tuesday from St Basil’s barrister, Conor O’Bryan. O’Bryan said because some files had been lost it could not be proven that a cohort plan never existed. ‘I didn’t attend’ During his evidence, Kontis was pressed on why he did not attend key meetings, organised by senior management of the home and attended by health officials, once it became clear the outbreak was significant and the entire workforce needed to be stood down. Kontis said he disagreed with a directive from the chief health officer at the time, Prof Brett Sutton, to furlough the entire workforce and replace them with agency staff to prevent further spread. Kontis said he did not trust the staff would be competent and Covid-free. “You’ve just received the news that your entire staff is going to be stood down,” Hodgson said. “Why didn’t you attend [meetings] as the only person on the board with vision of what was happening here?” Kontis responded: “I can’t answer that. I didn’t attend.” He said he was informed about what happened at meetings immediately afterwards by attenders. Kontis said there were also some meetings he did not believe he was invited to. Hodgson said that St Basil’s, as an approved aged care provider, had a duty under law to implement policies and procedures to manage risk and ensure care for consumers. Asked why he did not convene a meeting of the risk and audit committee before or throughout the outbreak, Kontis said, “I couldn’t get anybody to attend a meeting because of Covid.” Hodgson responded this was “an improbable answer in circumstances where you’ve already told me you can get people on the phone”. The court previously heard that agency staff brought in to take over struggled to find the information they needed to run the facility, from passwords and logins for computers, to notes about the clinical care of residents. Kontis said this information could be found in folders. “We had folders in the kitchen, folders with the cleaners, folders with the maintenance people,” he said. Hodgson put it to Kontis that, as an approved aged care provider and chairman, he had responsibility for the agency staff and to assist them to fulfil their duties. “Well, that’s your interpretation,” Kontis said. Hodgson replied: “I’d suggest to you … that it’s not my interpretation, it was your responsibility as an approved provider.” “That’s that’s your assertion,” Kontis said. Signs in ‘simple language’ Kos had earlier told the court that English was a second language for 95% of the original St Basil’s staff, and the majority did not have laptops or computers. Asked how critical and sometimes complicated Covid information was then communicated, she said signs in “simple language” were placed around the facility and information was shared during shift handovers. Kos disagreed under cross-examination that the process of adding documents constantly to folders and expecting staff with English as a second language to keep across these during shifts was a complex task for them. She agreed that having a clear Covid plan in place would make it less likely that people would die. The inquest had previously heard from staff and family members in 2021 that infected residents were mingling with those who had not tested positive to the virus, and that infection control procedures throughout the home were poor. Kos told the court that on 9 July 2020, when the first case in a staff member was identified, she began to follow a Covid-19 aged care checklist issued by the federal government about what to do in the first 24 hours. Kos told the court she did not complete the step that said to alert the commonwealth department of health at a dedicated aged care email address within 30 minutes. She said she spoke with the state public health hotline as the document required, and because she was told to wait to hear about next steps, she did not proceed to the next step on the checklist, which was to email the commonwealth. The checklist said the commonwealth could connect aged care homes with resources to manage the outbreak including testing, additional PPE and a surge workforce, the court heard. Delays in the commonwealth learning of the case meant staff and residents were not mass-tested until days later. The inquest previously heard this was a root cause of the outbreak. Kontis said he did not believe it was his role to email the commonwealth as he trusted facility staff to do so and to follow procedures in place. ‘I don’t remember’ Throughout the five days, Kontis had to be reminded several times not to interject during questioning, and to listen before responding. With years having passed since the tragedy, Kos’ response to many questions throughout the week was, “I don’t remember”. Both Kontis and Kos refused to testify, only doing so after a certificate was granted by the coroner, Liberty Sanger – meaning their evidence can not be used against them in criminal or civil litigation. Spiros Vasilakis, whose mother, Maria, died at the home during the outbreak, attended each day. “It still hurts for all of us families here,” Vasilakis said. “It hurts to hear anyone say that because it’s been six years, they can’t remember. I can tell you that families remember, detail by detail, what occurred. I haven’t forgotten anything.” The inquest continues.

Argentina’s government posts ICE-style video of immigration operation

The Argentinian government posted a video on social media showing a 60-year-old woman being led away in handcuffs by two federal police officers during an immigration operation in Buenos Aires. The woman’s face is shown unblurred in the video, which has nearly 1m views and depicts one of hundreds of such operations carried out by the administration of the far-right president, Javier Milei, directly inspired by Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the US. Visibly distressed, appearing to be in pain and with one hand bandaged, the woman is shown against a heavy metal soundtrack as the words “Illegal foreigner or criminal record? Out!” flash across the screen. In another video, she is described as “a Peruvian national subject to an arrest warrant for fraud and robbery”. But there was no arrest warrant for her. The woman, who asked to be identified only by her initials, PLS, said she was released just minutes after being paraded in handcuffs before photographers and television crews covering the operation, which took place last February. “They just drove me around the block and said: ‘Get out. You’re free.’ I asked: ‘Why did you put me through all this?’” she said. “My face was everywhere on social media. I started getting calls from relatives living abroad – back in Peru, in Spain, the US and Germany – asking me: ‘What happened? What did you do?’” she added. According to her lawyer, PLS is a legal permanent resident and was subject only to a “whereabouts inquiry” – requiring her to be notified about a separate case – which, under Argentinian law, does not entail arrest or any other form of coercion. “Her detention was unlawful, and the authorities used it as propaganda for their operations against immigrants,” said Lucía Galoppo, a lawyer at the NGO Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS), which is representing PLS. CELS sees her case as a striking example of how Milei is reshaping the country’s immigration laws to bring them closer to those of Trump – whom the Argentinian president openly admires – including by creating an Argentinian version of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Checks on people’s immigration status existed before, but they have become far more frequent, large-scale operations involving not only immigration agents but federal police. Much like Trump, Milei has turned raids in poorer, traditionally immigrant neighbourhoods into a “public spectacle”, said Galoppo. Since taking office in December 2023, the self-styled libertarian has introduced a series of changes to immigration law by decree, bypassing congress. The latest came in late July, when Milei invoked his claim that there had been an “anti-Argentina” wave since the World Cup to justify a decree allowing the deportation of foreigners who promote “messages of hate” against the country or any Argentinian citizen. Critics pointed to the irony that, had countries Milei recently visited adopted the same rule, the president himself could have been expelled after insulting Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez. Other decrees include ending the automatic right to permanent residency for foreigners who have a child born in the country or marry an Argentinian citizen, and requiring immigrants to prove they have sufficient financial means to support themselves – in a country where more than 40% of workers are informally employed. While making it harder to obtain documentation, Milei has also restricted free access to public hospitals, previously available to everyone but now limited to permanent residents, except in emergencies. “The state is manufacturing a problem to manufacture a security-based response,” said Galoppo. “Argentina doesn’t have an immigration problem,” she added. In the 2022 census, immigrants made up 4.2%, the lowest proportion since records began in 1869. Galoppo believes Milei is targeting immigrants as part of a strategy to create an “internal enemy” that distracts from domestic problems – alongside corruption scandals, his “chainsaw” austerity policies have brought inflation under control, but unemployment and poverty have risen. Milei did not respond to requests for comment. CELS filed freedom of information requests with the government about its immigration operations. There were 851 between 1 January and 26 June. The government provided further details on only 590 of them, in which just 2.2% of the foreigners stopped were found to have irregular immigration status. “These operations are highly theatrical, deploying hundreds of police officers in an attempt to imitate raids in the US, but the tiny number of people found to have irregular status shows they are not justified,” said Galoppo. In the lawsuit filed against the state on behalf of PLS, CELS alleges that she was subjected to unlawful deprivation of liberty, degrading treatment, public humiliation and abuse of authority. PLS has lived in Argentina since 2006. The “whereabouts inquiry” involving her relates to a 2021 case. In it, a person whose phone was stolen alleged that money had been transferred from their account to one in PLS’s name and then to a third account. PLS denies any involvement, saying her own phone had been stolen months earlier and may have been used to create an account in her name. Her lawyer said being sought for notification did not justify her detention. The security ministry also did not respond to requests for comment. PLS said she felt ashamed and afraid to leave home after the operation, costing her her livelihood as a street food vendor. “If I saw a police officer, I was frightened thinking they might arrest me,” she said. But she added that she had no intention of leaving: “I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m not a criminal. I’m someone who works. I liked Argentina, and I want to stay here.”

Businessman was ‘preparing champagne’ to celebrate Caruana Galizia murder, court hears

The businessman accused of paying for hitmen to murder the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was impatient for the killing to take place, and once texted from his boat to say he was “preparing champagne” to celebrate, a jury in Malta has heard. Yorgen Fenech, the 44-year-old heir to a property empire that includes several Hilton hotels, is on trial in Malta for complicity in the murder of Caruana Galizia. She died in a car bombing in October 2017 after publishing a series of revelations about senior politicians that were so damaging they triggered a snap general election. The key witness in the case, a taxi driver who says he acted as middleman between Fenech and three men already convicted of accepting €150,000 (£128,000) to carry out the killing, took the stand on Friday to begin his testimony. Melvin Theuma, who has been living under witness protection since agreeing to testify in return for a pardon, said Fenech had told him to contact a known criminal and set up the killing because he wanted to protect his uncle Raymond Fenech, the head of the family business. “Bring him here, I need him to kill Daphne because she’s going to publish information about Uncle Ray,” Theuma claimed Fenech had told him. Theuma has previously testified that over time the explanation changed, and the hit was designed to stop revelations about Yorgen himself. The conversation took place in April 2017. The two men were friends, having known each other for years, although Theuma told the jury it was not an equal relationship. “He’s a lion and I’m a mosquito,” Theuma said of the accused. The taxi driver, who had cultivated a friendship with Fenech over a shared interest in horseracing and betting, is regarded by the prosecution as key to securing a conviction. He has given police multiple recordings of conversations he had with Fenech after the murder. Before taking the stand, Theuma had to be certified as fit to give evidence, having previously tried to take his own life. In 2020, having already secured a pardon, he swallowed acid and slit his own throat. He will be allowed to give evidence seated, with his back to Fenech and his lawyers, having previously complained of intimidation. He began his testimony by apologising to the victim’s family, saying: “My cross was too much to bear; I can’t imagine what theirs was like.” After receiving the order from Fenech, Theuma said he went to the docks in Marsa, where the hitmen, brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio and their associate Vincent Muscat, used a warehouse known as the potato shed as a base. “Alfred got into my taxi and I told him ‘I have someone who wants to kill Daphne Caruana Galizia’. “He asked if the person could pay, and I said yes, of course.” Theuma said he never told the hitmen who had sent him. He told the court Fenech had agreed to the price, but then asked him to call off the attack after Malta’s then prime minister, Joseph Muscat, called a snap general election. Instead, he asked Theuma to place a €150,000 bet for him on Muscat securing a second term. When Muscat was returned to power with a landslide victory in June 2017, Theuma said Fenech rang him that night. “He sounded tipsy. He told me to go ahead with the Daphne job. I didn’t do anything, he sounded drunk.” A few days later, he gave Fenech his winnings from the bet – €300,000, minus a commission. Nothing more was said about Caruana Galizia. But a few days later, Fenech summoned him and gave him an envelope stuffed with cash. “I asked him, ‘What’s this?’ He said: ‘It’s the €150,000 to have Daphne killed.’” The hitmen were given a €30,000 deposit and began scoping the journalist’s movements. Theuma was given a burner phone to contact them with. The witness said he took the phone with him to Disneyland for a family holiday, and that Fenech wanted reassurance he had not left Malta without it. The businessman became impatient as time passed. “Yorgen would ask me every few days: ‘When will they kill her?’ Once, he was on his boat and texted me to say he was preparing champagne in case it happened.” Theuma said Fenech helped to plot Caruana Galizia’s routine, identifying a cafe and restaurant that she frequented. The witness broke down as he described the moment he learned of the death from the television news. Wiping his eyes, he said: “I was living a normal life, I didn’t want for anything. Then I turned on the TV and saw that Daphne was dead. My life ended. When she was killed, my life was blown up.” He also revealed he had been in regular contact by text message with Caruana Galizia’s sons, Matthew and Paul. He said: “I was involved in their mother’s murder, and they speak to me. They tell me I will feel better after the trial. But I know I won’t. The remorse is too great.” Fenech, who is on trial for complicity in the voluntary homicide of Caruana Galizia, denies the charges. The trial continues.

Thailand school shooting: eight killed including suspected attacker, police say

A Thai teenager killed his grandparents before opening fire at his school, where he shot five people dead and took his own life, police have said, in an attack that has shaken a country struggling to deal with gun violence. The 14-year-old wounded more than 30 people in the ⁠shooting at the prestigious Debsirin Nonthaburi school northwest of Bangkok. Nine people were in a critical condition, the Thai health department said. For Prompong Namwong, an English teacher at the school, it was a normal morning until a panicked student from another class flung open the door, trying to find somewhere to hide. In the corridor, Prompong heard other teachers shouting that there had been a mass shooting downstairs. When Prompong recounted the ordeal to the Guardian, he hesitated between calling the 14-year-old, whom he saw run in front of his classroom, “killer” or “student”. At that moment, “I thought I was going to die, for sure,” he said. The suspected attacker fired at least 26 bullets with a gun belonging to his grandfather, and was found with 34 additional ammunition rounds. The suspected shooter remained inside the school after reports of the attack emerged, Arsit Sampantharat, the permanent secretary of the interior ministry, told PPTV. A lockdown at the school was declared over in about half an hour. Prompong said that when he heard a knock, he thought it was the end of his life, but instead it was the police coming to their rescue. Images from the scene showed students running with only socks on their feet as they were evacuated from the school. The children, as is customary across Asia, had taken their shoes off outside their classrooms, but in the panic to escape the grounds, the shoes were left strewn around lunch tables and the stairs outside classrooms. By the afternoon, the sports area where the students would usually have been playing was filled with officials and the media, as the country’s leader vowed to implement new gun laws. The prime minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, told reporters the new law would allow only government officials on duty to carry guns, but did not provide any ⁠specifics, including whether the legislation would tighten gun ownership requirements. Thailand has the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in south-east Asia, and in 2017 the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey placed the country 13th worldwide for small-gun possession. A number of mass shootings have occurred in recent years in Thailand, including incidents at schools and a large Bangkok mall, and a 2022 attack in the country’s north-east that ‌killed 37 people including 22 children. The country’s licensing regime still lacks mental health screening for people applying to have a ⁠gun and does not require periodic reassessments for licence holders, according to Piyaporn Tunneekul, an associate professor at Nakhon Pathom Rajabhat University in Thailand. Pichanan Thiengtham was in the teachers’ lounge when she heard the shots at about 10am. But she said she could not believe at first that it was a gun: “There were so many shots and they lasted for a long time without stopping.” It was only when the art teacher saw one of the injured students that she realised what was happening. “I took the injured student to get first aid and then transferred them to the hospital [in the school] building.” Kiatikhun Verapongpradith, an emergency worker, described arriving as the shooting was taking place. He said his team had treated students with injuries to the back, chest and arms. They found a male teacher lying dead on an upper floor of the school, and in another room they found a female teacher with wounds to her chest and arm, Kiatikhun said. The school is part of the Debsirin network, founded by the Thai royal family. Its alumni include prime ministers, scholars and writers. Prompong found out in the school’s group chat that some of his friends had not survived. “They’re all good teachers. I don’t know what to say.” He said: “My life has to go on, but right now … it’s a very great shock. I never thought to myself that it would happen – really happen – in my school.” Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report

Colombia on the brink: ELN guerrilla group prepares for return to war

As the boat approached the riverbank, camouflaged figures watched from the tree line. Behind them, in the dim understory of the jungle, a commander of the National Liberation Army (ELN) sat with his rifle on his lap, amid the buzz and whine of insects and the thwacks of machetes on bamboo as his troops set up camp, hidden from enemy drones. Colombia’s 62-year old armed conflict is on the brink of a new chapter, with the country’s new president, Abelardo de la Espriella, who takes office on Friday, vowing an end to peace talks and launch a new military offensive. Colombia’s last guerrilla group says it is ready for whatever might come. “Where we can go on the offensive, we will,” said the commander of the group’s Western War Front, who goes by the moniker Yerson. “And if the ELN leadership says we have to carry out a military offensive at the national level, we will. Attacks in cities, in the countryside, wherever.” Yerson and his troops were deep in the Pacific department of Chocó, in an ELN stronghold accessible only after hours of river travel, where humid heat soaks through the cloud cover. Occasional communities, each a line of wooden shacks on stilts, broke the dense forest on the banks. Giant mining barges were moored on the river, with diggers clawing up the riverbed to extract the particles of gold it contains. The ELN and rival armed groups fight to control the San Juan River, its resources and its population. At one point in the journey, armed men from the Gulf Clan, a violent paramilitary group, stopped the Guardian’s boat to question the passengers, before promising to liberate the area from the ELN. Yerson was unfazed. “All of the ELN territories are being invaded by bands of mercenaries,” he said. “They are very violent, but they are not disputing political power.” Colombia’s conflict began in the 1960s, rooted in extreme land inequality and exclusionary politics. Leftwing guerrillas emerged to challenge the state, battling government forces later allied with rightwing paramilitaries, forerunners of the Gulf Clan. Money from cocaine trafficking fuelled all sides. The conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions. Along with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), the ELN was the most important of the guerrilla groups. Founded in 1964, it fused Marxism-Leninism with Che Guevara’s foco theory – the idea that a small armed band in a remote rural area can eventually topple the state – and Liberation theology, which framed the struggle against poverty and oppression as an expression of Christian faith. In their pursuit of revolution, the two groups have carried out killings and kidnappings, and forced the confinement and displacement of civilian populations. The Farc demobilised in 2016 after striking a peace deal with the Colombian state, but the ELN says its members will only lay down arms after the country’s political and economic system has been transformed. “The Farc surrendered in exchange for nothing,” said Yerson, adding that subsequent presidents have failed to fully implement the peace deal, while former Farc combatants have been killed. Gustavo Petro, a leftist who was a guerrilla with the defunct M-19 in the 1980s, was elected president in 2022 on a promise of “total peace”, vowing to make good on the Farcdeal and negotiate with all of Colombia’s remaining armed groups on the left and right. But after a few years, almost all the talks – including those with the largest groups – the ELN, the Gulf Clan and Farc dissidents who refused to demobilise in 2016 – either stalled or collapsed. Yerson rejected the idea that the election of Colombia’s first leftist president meant that the ELN’s goals could be achieved through the current political system. “They handed out lands [to the poor]. They did a kind of pension reform. They were looking for ways to improve healthcare,” he said. “But in the end these are small things. They don’t help with the popular awakening.” In Yerson’s telling, Petro was allowed to take power by the “Colombian oligarchy”, which needed to pacify the people after an explosion of inequality protests in 2019 and 2021, but knew he “was never going to undertake fundamental reforms, that he could be controlled”. Colombia’s political system “is not the democracy it claims to be”, he said. “That is where the trap is.” Now the ELN faces a very different proposition in the form of De la Espriella, a Trump-admiring millionaire who rose to prominence as a criminal lawyer representing accused leaders of the AUC, a rightwing paramilitary group that fought the guerrillas and killed civilians accused of collaborating with them.. De la Espriella has given Colombia’s armed groups a month to submit to him or face the consequences, while promising to deepen security cooperation with the US and build mega-prisons inspired by the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele. Security analysts, however, say armed groups have gathered strength and resources in recent years. The ELN has about 6,300 members between armed fighters and unarmed support, spread across Colombia and Venezuela. The 60 or so fighters in the camp were evenly split between men and women, indigenous and Afro-Colombian members. “The majority [of the ELN] has always been the poor, the lowest down,” said Yerson. “Here, as Chocó is more Afro-Indigenous, that’s what we are.” Each of them had a modern assault rifle, either an AK-47 or an AR-15, some with “Made in USA” stamped on the body. One also had a .50 calibre sniper rifle, the bullets of which can punch through vehicles, while another flew a drone. The camp was deep in ELN territory, and they were relaxed. When someone took out a portable speaker and began to play vallenatos – popular Colombian folksongs – they left their rifles resting against trees or slung them over their backs and paired up to dance, suddenly looking like the young Colombians they are. Various groups, including the UN and Human Rights Watch, have accused the ELN of recruiting minors – but Yerson said their rules only allow people over 16 to join. It was impossible to verify details of his troops’ backgrounds, as they had been told not to discuss anything sensitive. Yerson presented two women to be interviewed in his presence, who spoke about the hardship of their lives before joining the ELN, but struggled to answer questions, apparently afraid of saying the wrong thing. Yerson himself described the ELN as “a life choice” for Colombia’s poor, who have few options. “Maybe that’s why they join, but once they are here they come to understand why we are fighting,” he said. The ELN functions by taxing “every commercial entity” in the territory it controls, and in Chocó that means illegal gold mining and logging are their key sources of income, said Yerson. It also carries out kidnappings for ransom. “We are an embryonic state, and every state takes taxes,” he said. “If they can strangle us economically, we will cease to exist as a rebel organisation.” Yerson claimed coca cultivation has disappeared in ELN territory in Chocó. He denied the group was involved in the drug trafficking, but acknowledged it taxes the business like any other. The US, which has given its military a new role to take on “narcoterrorism” across the Americas, might not think much of that distinction. “The question of guilt doesn’t matter to the US. What matters to them are interests,” said Yerson. “We are the only guerrilla group with political principles left standing in Colombia and the world. We will always be something they want to destroy.” He says the ELN will not simply be on the defensive, but will strike back where it can. A car bomb attributed to the group exploded outside a police station near the border with Venezuela last week, injuring 12 police officers and three civilians, and drone attacks have become common. “They have to be legitimate objectives. We don’t put car bombs where the civil population will die,” said Yerson, who pointed to the 2019 suicide car bombing of a police academy in Bogotá that killed 22 as a model. “The comrades could go and make kamikaze attacks of that impact.” Despite the election of De la Espriella and other rightwing leaders across the continent, Yerson was adamant that the ELN was not losing the ideological battle. Voters are being deceived, he said, before quoting the South American revolutionary leader Simón Bolívar: “An ignorant people is the blind instrument of its own destruction. “The ideological battle is not being lost,” he repeated, as if irritated by the phrase. “We are on the right side of history.” Asked whether Colombia was any closer to the ELN’s goals after decades of conflict, Yerson was unsure: “I don’t know. But I can tell you that the only way to win things for the people is through the struggle,” he said. “We’ve been in the struggle for 62 years, and there will be many more.”

Thailand school shooting: teen suspect killed at least seven people and injured more than 30, officials say – as it happened

We are closing this blog now. You can read more about the Thailand school shooting in our story here.

Israel indicts settler over death of Palestinian activist who worked on No Other Land

Prosecutors in Israel have indicted an extremist settler for shooting a Palestinian activist last July, the first attempt this decade to hold an Israeli responsible for killing a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank. Yinon Levy, who was under western sanctions, is charged with manslaughter over the death of Awdeh Hathaleen, an English teacher and peace activist. In his last moments, Hathaleen filmed the settler drawing his weapon and opening fire towards him. Hathaleen’s family said Levy should have been charged with first-degree murder over the well-documented attack in the village of Umm al-Khair. Reckless manslaughter carries a maximum prison sentence of 12 years, far less then murder. “This was not an accident,” said his cousin Tarek Hathaleen. “Yinon Levy must be held fully accountable for Awdeh’s killing.” The charges nevertheless represented a “significant development”, Hathaleen added, after years of near-total impunity for Israelis who attack Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Israeli settlers and soldiers have killed more than 1,500 Palestinians this decade, according to rights group B’tselem. Levy is the first person indicted over any of those deaths. Military prosecutors last brought charges over a 2019 shooting of a young man who stopped to help victims of a traffic accidentThe last time civilian prosecutors brought charges was in 2018 over the killing of a mother of eight, hit by a rock as she was driving. Settler violence and ethnic cleansing has surged in the occupied West Bank over the past three years, supported by far-right Israeli cabinet ministers who hold security, defence and finance portfolios. Levy’s indictment over one of the highest-profile killings in that period does not represent a policy shift for Israel, rights groups said. Hathaleen had worked on No Other Land, the Oscar-winning documentary about his community’s decades-long struggle against the Israeli state and settlers, to stay in their homes and lands in the south Hebron hills. “It’s important to see this killing as part of an ongoing and systematic situation in the West Bank,” said Ziv Stahl, executive director of Yesh Din, an Israeli rights and advocacy organisation. “I don’t think these charges are an indication of increased law enforcement or accountability. It is more likely due to the fact that [Awdeh Hathaleen] was a well-known activist and the case got a lot of media exposure and public critique. It’s more about an appearance of law enforcement, rather than actual law enforcement.” Levy, who was under sanctions for violence against Palestinians by the UK, EU, Canada and Australia at the time of the attack, was briefly detained last year but police released him after three days under house arrest. He spent the last year free and continued establishing illegal outposts in the occupied West Bank, said Yair Dvir, spokesperson for B’tselem. “The decision to indict Yinon Levy is the exception that proves the rule,” Dvir said. “The impunity Israel grants to soldiers and settlers who harm Palestinians is not a failure of the system – it is a central component of a policy designed to allow the violence to continue and escalate.” The culture of impunity spurred the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert to call for the International Criminal Court to bring charges against “Jewish terrorists”, saying intervention was needed to halt the violence. Levy is also charged with armed trespassing and malicious property damage in the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair. Before Hathaleen was shot, another settler drove a bulldozer through Palestinian land, destroying trees and property. When a resident approached and asked him to stop, the driver knocked the man down with the bulldozer blade. Even if the case goes to trial, any verdict could be many years away, and Israeli judges have a record of lenient treatment of Israelis who attack Palestinians. The Israeli soldier who shot 23-year-old Ahmad Manasrah dead in 2019 pleaded guilty to the equivalent of negligent homicide and was sentenced to three months community service for the killing. He has not been publicly named. Eight years after a 2018 attack that killed 47 year-old Aisha Rabi, an Israeli court ruled that a settler had thrown the stone that killed her. Judges did not hand down a conviction or sentence, instead ordering a review because the man, who was not named, was 16 at the time of the attack. No further details have been made public. Hathaleen’s family say they will continue to fight for Levy to face full trial. “Justice requires more than simply bringing a charge,” said Tarek Hathaleen. “Awdeh was not only my cousin. He was my childhood friend and someone very dear to me. His absence has left a pain that will never go away.” Sufian Taha contributed reporting