Month: May 2023

Minneapolis police arrested a man suspected of setting two fires that damaged mosques in the city last week as part of what the chief called “an attempt to inflict terror onto our Muslim community.”

Police Chief Brian O’Hara announced the arrest of 36-year-old Jackie Rahm Little early Sunday but didn’t provide details of how he was apprehended. He was charged with second-degree arson after the fires were set on April 23 and 24 and an arrest warrant was issued.

“Houses of worship should be safe places. Setting fire to a sacred facility, where families and children gather, is incredibly inhumane. And this level of blatant hatred will not be tolerated in our great city,” O’Hara said in a statement Sunday.

Leaders with the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations praised the arrest after the fires that had unnerved the Muslim community in the area.

“This arrest brings some relief to our community, which has been on edge for the past week,” said Jaylani Hussein, the group’s executive director. “We hope to learn more about the suspect’s motivations and any potential accomplices who may have incited these attacks on our houses of worship.”

One fire was set last Monday on the third floor of the Mercy Islamic Center. The center houses the Masjid Al Rahma mosque.

The criminal complaint against Little states that surveillance footage showed him entering the center carrying a bag with a gasoline can inside. A short time later, a staff member spotted a fire near offices. It was extinguished before it could spread very far.

The other fire was Sunday night in the bathroom of the mosque in the 24 Somali Mall. Worshippers extinguished the fire.

The two mosques are less than a mile apart. O’Hara had said earlier that the department suspected the same person was responsible for that blaze.

Pakistan’s Chief of the Army, General Asim Munir, is in China on a four-day official visit where he is holding meetings with the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army to discuss military cooperation between the two countries.

Munir met with Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, where the Chinese official described the relationship between the two countries as consistent. “No matter how the international situation changes, China always gives Pakistan priority in its neighborhood diplomacy,” Zhang said, according to China’s state news agency Xinhua.

Pakistani military to further deepen and expand their pragmatic cooperation and jointly safeguard the common interests of the two countries, as well as regional peace and stability,” according to Xinhua.

After arriving in China, Munir visited the headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, and then had a detailed meeting with the PLA commander. Bilateral security and military cooperation issues were discussed in the meeting, said Major General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry of the Pakistan Military’s Inter Service Public Relations.

The military commanders from the two countries reiterated the need to maintain peace and stability in the region and to increase military cooperation, Chaudhry said. The Pakistani army chief will hold several meetings with China’s military leadership to enhance the long-standing relationship between the militaries of both countries.

Military interests

Former Pakistani diplomat Ali Sarwar Naqvi said Munir’s visit is key for the militaries of both countries, and there will be discussions regarding the security of Chinese nationals working in Pakistan on various projects, including the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, a connectivity infrastructure project that is a part of China’s larger Belt and Road Initiative.   

“Although the army chief is the head of the land forces, he also plays an important role in Pakistan’s overall defense affairs, so it is likely he will have discussions on eight submarines for [the] Pakistan Navy, out of which four were to be built in China and four in Pakistan,” Naqvi said.  

“In addition, Pakistan had an agreement to buy 25 J-10 aircrafts, of which only 12 so far have been received by Pakistan. Apart from this, many weapons, including tanks for the Pakistani army, may be discussed,” Farhan Bukhari, Pakistan correspondent of Jane’s Defense Weekly and Financial Times told VOA.

Geopolitical interests

Former Pakistani Lt. Gen. Naeem Khalid Lodhi, speaking to VOA Urdu, said this visit is important in terms of getting economic assistance.

“Many countries are moving away from America and getting closer to China, so Pakistan also needs to look at it from a long-term benefit perspective rather than short term. America is backing India to challenge China, which is against our interests. Similarly, they don’t want [the] Taliban government in Afghanistan. This is also against our interests, so Pakistan needs to make its own decisions, and these issues will be discussed in the visit,” Lodhi said.   

The bilateral meeting comes at a time when relations between China and India are tense, which Bukhari said can benefit Pakistan in its rocky relationship with India.

Saudi Arabia to the negotiation table and restoring diplomatic relationship between the two countries. China is a major player in the region and is trying to resolve major issues, and Pakistan can take advantage of its good relations with China,” he said.

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Sudan’s army and its rival paramilitary said Sunday they will extend a humanitarian cease-fire a further 72 hours. The decision follows international pressure to allow the safe passage of civilians and aid, but the shaky truce has not so far stopped the clashes. 

In statements, both sides accused the other of violations. The agreement has deescalated the fighting in some areas, but violence continues to push civilians to flee. Aid groups have also struggled to get badly needed supplies into the country. 

The conflict erupted on April 15 between the nation’s army and its paramilitary force and threatens to thrust Sudan into a raging civil war. The U.N. warned on Sunday that the humanitarian crisis in Sudan was at “a breaking point.” 

“The scale and speed of what is unfolding in Sudan is unprecedented,” U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said in a statement. 

He said water and food are becoming increasingly hard to find in the country’s cities, especially the capital, Khartoum, and that the lack of basic medical care means many could die of preventable causes. Griffiths said that “massive looting” of aid supplies has hindered efforts to help civilians. 

SEE ALSO: A related video by VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias

Earlier Sunday, an aircraft carrying eight tons of emergency medical aid landed in Sudan to resupply hospitals devastated by the fighting, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which organized the shipment. It arrived as the civilian death toll from the countrywide violence topped 400 and aid groups warned that the humanitarian situation was becoming increasingly dire. 

More than two-thirds of hospitals in areas with active fighting are out of service, a national doctors’ association has said, citing a shortage of medical supplies, health workers, water and electricity. 

The air-lifted supplies, including anesthetics, dressings, sutures and other surgical material, are enough to treat more than 1,000 people wounded in the conflict, the ICRC said. The aircraft took off earlier in the day from Jordan and safely landed in the city of Port Sudan, it said. 

“The hope is to get this material to some of the most critically busy hospitals in the capital” of Khartoum and other hot spots, said Patrick Youssef, ICRC’s regional director for Africa. 

The Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate, which monitors casualties, said Sunday that over the past two weeks, 425 civilians were killed and 2,091 wounded. The Sudanese Health Ministry on Saturday put the overall death toll, including fighters, at 528, with 4,500 wounded. 

Some of the deadliest battles have raged across Khartoum. The fighting pits the army chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, against Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, the head of a paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces. 

The generals, both with powerful foreign backers, were allies in an October 2021 military coup that halted Sudan’s fitful transition to democracy, but they have since turned on each other. 

Ordinary Sudanese have been caught in the crossfire. Tens of thousands have fled to neighboring countries, including Chad and Egypt, while others remain pinned down with dwindling supplies. Thousands of foreigners have been evacuated in airlifts and land convoys. 

On Sunday, fighting continued in different parts of the capital where residents hiding in their homes reported hearing artillery fire. There have been lulls in fighting, but never a fully observed cease-fire, despite repeated attempts by international mediators. 

Over the weekend, residents reported that shops were reopening and normalcy gradually returning in some areas of Khartoum as the scale of fighting dwindled after yet another shaky truce. But in other areas, terrified residents reported explosions thundering around them and fighters ransacking houses. 

Youssef, the ICRC official, said the agency has been in contact with the top command of both sides to ensure that medical assistance could reach hospitals safely. 

“With this news today, we are really hoping that this becomes part of a steady coordination mechanism to allow other flights to come in,” he said. 

Youssef said more medical aid was ready to be flown into Khartoum pending necessary clearances and security guarantees. 

Sudan’s healthcare system is near collapse with dozens of hospitals out of service. Multiple aid agencies have had to suspend operations and evacuated employees. 

On Sunday, a second U.S.-government organized convoy arrived in Port Sudan, said State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller. He said the U.S. is assisting American citizens and “others who are eligible” to leave for Saudi Arabia where U.S. personnel are located. There were no details on how many people were in the convoy or specific assistance the U.S. provided. 

Most of the estimated 16,000 Americans believed to be in Sudan right now are dual U.S.-Sudanese nationals. The Defense Department said in a statement on Saturday it was moving naval assets toward Sudan’s coast to support further evacuations. 

Meanwhile, Britain has announced that an extra evacuation flight will depart from Port Sudan on Monday, extending what it called the largest evacuation effort of any Western country from Sudan. 

The government asked British nationals who wish to leave Sudan to travel to the British Evacuation Handling Centre at Port Sudan International Airport before 12 p.m. Sudan time. The flight comes after an evacuation operation from Wadi Saeedna near Khartoum, involving 2,122 people on 23 flights. 

Russian fashion designer Vyacheslav “Slava” Zaitsev, dubbed the “Soviet Christian Dior,” has died at the age of 85, his fashion house told AFP Sunday.   

Confirming Russian media reports, a spokeswoman added that when Zaitsev had celebrated his birthday in March with friends, “we could already see he was very, very, weak.” 

“The couturier Vyacheslav Zaitsev has died,” Russian state channel Perviy Kanal reported, paying tribute to a man who “dictated Soviet and Russian fashion for decades, an innovator who wasn’t afraid of bold experiments.”  

“It’s a great loss for the world of international fashion,” Ria Novosti news agency quoted Russian stylist Sergei Zverev as saying.    

Russia’s most famous fashion designer, Zaitsev achieved global success with bright dresses adorned with the flower patterns found on traditional Russian shawls.    

From a modest childhood in Ivanovo, a town of 400,000 people to the northeast of the capital, his career took him to the catwalks of Paris, New York and Tokyo.   

The French press in the 1960s dubbed him the “Soviet Christian Dior.”  

Watched closely by the KGB because of his contacts with Western designers and his flamboyant character, Zaitsev was initially refused permission to leave the Soviet Union and his first collections were shown abroad without him.    

In 1962, Zaitsev’s first collection of clothes — a uniform for female workers that featured skirts with the flower patterns of traditional Russian shawls and multicolored boots — was rejected by Soviet authorities.    

“The colors were too bright and contrasted with the greyness of Soviet everyday life, where an individual should not differ from the rest of society,” Zaitsev said in an interview with AFP in 2018.    

But the collection, nonetheless, attracted international attention. In 1963, French magazine Paris Match became the first Western media outlet to describe Zaitsev as a pioneer of Soviet fashion.   

Celebrity clients 

Born into a poor family with a mother who worked as a cleaner, he initially was barred from attending a top-flight university because his father, taken captive by the Nazis during World War II, had, like other former prisoners-of-war, been labeled an “enemy of the people” and sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp.   

“When I was a child, my mother taught me embroidery so I wouldn’t roam the streets without purpose,” he told AFP. “In the evenings I would pick flowers with girls on Lenin Avenue to draw them and recreate them in embroidery. That’s how I began my adventure in art.”   

He studied at a vocational college until the age of 18 and then went on to the unglamorous Moscow Textile Institute.   

“During my studies, I lived with a family whose children I looked after. The apartment was tiny and I slept on the floor under the table,” he recalled.   

Later in life, between 2007 and 2009, he presented a popular television show called “The Verdict of Fashion,” in which stylists dressed participants in the latest street looks.   

He counted several Russian movie stars, singers and the ex-wife of President Vladimir Putin, Lyudmila, among his clients. 

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Warring sides in Sudan are more open to negotiations and have accepted the conflict that erupted two weeks ago cannot continue, a U.N. official told Reuters on Saturday, a possible flicker of hope even as fighting continued.

Volker Perthes, U.N. special representative in Sudan, said the sides had nominated representatives for talks, which had been suggested for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, or Juba in South Sudan, though he said there was a practical question over whether they could get there to “actually sit together.”

He said no timeline had been set for talks.

The prospects of negotiations between the leaders of the two sides have so far seemed bleak. On Friday, army leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said in an interview he would never sit down with the RSF’s “rebel” leader, referring to General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who said he would only talk after the army ceased hostilities.

Hundreds of people have been killed since April 15 when a long-simmering power struggle between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) boiled over into conflict.

Perthes noted that he had told the Security Council both sides thought they could win the conflict, most recently in a briefing a couple of days ago, but he also said attitudes were changing.

“They both think they will win, but they are both sort of more open to negotiations, the word ‘negotiations’ or ‘talks’ was not there in their discourse in the first week or so,” he said.

While the sides had made statements that the other side had to “surrender or die,” Perthes said, they were also saying, “okay, we accept … some form of talks.”

“They have both accepted that this war cannot continue,” he added.

While the army has conducted daily air strikes and says it has maintained control of vital installations, residents say the RSF has a strong presence on the ground in Khartoum.

Fighting between the forces has damaged electricity, water, and telecommunications infrastructure, and looting has destroyed businesses and homes. Tens of thousands of Sudanese have fled fighting either to other towns or to neighboring countries.

The immediate task, Perthes said, was to develop a monitoring mechanism for cease-fires, which have been agreed to several times but have failed to stop the fighting.

Jeddah had been offered as a venue for “military-technical” talks while Juba had been offered as part of a regional proposal by East African states for political talks.

Perthes said that signs of the impending conflict had been visible in early April as international and local mediators scrambled to ease tensions, but they had thought a “temporary de-escalation” had been achieved the night before fighting began.

Eight farmers were killed Sunday in an attack blamed on a militant group targeting three villages in northeast DR Congo, a local official said.

 

Members of CODECO, or Cooperative for the Development of the Congo, attacked the villages of Duvire, Njalo and Bengi at around 5 a.m. (0300 GMT), Adubango Kivia told AFP from the district of Djugu in the Ituri province.

 

“We found eight bodies, including a woman. They’re farmers. They were shot dead and then chopped up by machete,” he added, accusing the militiamen of setting fire to scores of homes and plundering livestock.

 

Adubango Kivia said the militiamen “operated calmy” and called on Congolese soldiers to deploy “to secure the population and bring an end to massacres” in the area around 100 kilometers north of the provincial capital Bunia.

 

CODECO says it is protecting the Lendu community from another ethnic group, the Hema, as well as the DRC army.

 

The Hema are defended by the Zaire militia — while the province is also targeted by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) linked to the Islamic State jihadi group.

 

Eastern Congo is plagued by dozens of armed groups, many of which are a legacy of regional wars that flared in the 1990s and 2000s.

 

Ituri province is one of the violent hot spots, where attacks claiming dozens of lives are routine.

 

The last attack blamed on CODECO killed more than 40 people April 14 in villages around 60 kilometers (40 miles) from the provincial capital of Bunia.

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