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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine said on Sunday that the southern port city of Odessa was attacked by Iranian-made drones overnight, two days after a Russian attack with such a weapon killed two civilians.

"Odessa was attacked again by enemy kamikaze drones," said the Ukrainian army's Operational Command South.

"The enemy hit the administrative building in the city centre three times," it said in a Facebook message.

“One drone was shot down by [Ukrainian] air defence forces. No casualties [were] recorded,” it said.

“These were Iranian drones,” a Ukrainian South Command spokeswoman, Natalya Gumenyuk, later told AFP.

The strikes come two days after two civilians were reportedly killed in Odessa on Friday in a Russian attack with an Iranian-made drone.

Four Iranian-made drones were shot down in the south of the country Friday, according to Ukraine’s armed forces.

Kyiv said later it decided to reduce Iran’s diplomatic presence in Ukraine over its supply of drones to Russia.

“In response to such an unfriendly act, the Ukrainian side decided to deprive the ambassador of Iran in Ukraine of accreditation, as well as to significantly reduce the number of diplomatic personnel of the Iranian embassy in Kyiv,” said Ukraine’s foreign ministry.

A foreign ministry official told AFP that the move amounted to expulsion as the ambassador was not in Ukraine and therefore could not be expelled.

“The use of Iranian-made weapons by Russian troops... are steps taken by Iran against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our state, as well as against the life and health of Ukrainian citizens,” a spokesman for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, Sergii Nykyforov, said on Friday.

KYIV — Kremlin-held regions of eastern and southern Ukraine entered the second day of voting to become part of Russia on Saturday, in referendums dismissed as a "sham" by US President Joe Biden.

The voting on whether Russia should annex four regions of Ukraine started on Friday, dramatically raising the stakes seven months after Moscow's troops invaded.

The same day polling got under way, UN and Ukrainian officials revealed what they said was more evidence of Russian "war crimes", including executions and torture.

"Russia's referenda are a sham, a false pretext to try to annex parts of Ukraine by force in flagrant violation of international law," Biden said.

"We will work with our allies and partners to impose additional swift and severe economic costs on Russia."

It even prompted a reaction from Beijing, Moscow's closest ally since the war began in February.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi — in comments made to his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba at the UN General Assembly Friday, said the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries must be respected”.

Ukrainian forces said they were clawing back territory from Moscow-backed separatists in the very lands Russia wants to assimilate.

Voting is being held in Russian-controlled areas of Donetsk and Lugansk in the east, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south.

Authorities there are going door-to-door for four days to collect votes. Polling stations then open Tuesday for residents to cast ballots on the final day.

It was also possible to vote at the building in Moscow that represents the Donetsk breakaway region.

Leonid, a 59-year-old military official, told AFP he was “feeling happy”.

“Ultimately, things are moving towards the restoration of the Soviet Union. The referendum is one step towards this.”

‘No legitimacy’ 

The vote was announced earlier this week after a Ukrainian counteroffensive seized most of the northeastern Kharkiv region — bringing hundreds of settlements back under Kyiv’s control after months of Russian occupation.

The four regions’ integration into Russia would represent a major escalation of the conflict as Moscow would consider any military move there as an attack on its own territory.

The referendums are reminiscent of the one held after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday denounced the polls.

“The world will react absolutely justly to the sham referenda,” he said, describing them as “crimes against international law and the law of Ukraine”.

Earlier Friday, G-7 nations said the polls will “never” be recognised and have “no legal effect or legitimacy”.

Evidence of ‘war crimes’ 

UN investigators meanwhile on Friday accused Russia of committing war crimes on a “massive scale” in Ukraine — listing bombings, executions, torture and horrific sexual violence.

Erik Mose of the Commission of Inquiry — an investigative team set up by the Security Council in March — said they had seen evidence of a “large number of executions” and the rape and torture of children.

In eastern Kharkiv region, Ukrainian officials said Friday they had finished exhuming 447 bodies from a site near the city of Izyum, which was recaptured from Russian forces.

“Most of them have signs of violent death, and 30 have signs of torture,” said Kharkiv Regional Governor Oleg Synegubov.

“There are bodies with rope around their necks, with their hands tied, with broken limbs and gunshot wounds.”

The Kremlin has accused Kyiv of fabricating evidence of the alleged war crimes.

‘Tomorrow you will go to war’ 

Putin this week warned that Moscow would use “all means” to protect its territory — which former Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev said on social media could include the use of “strategic nuclear weapons”.

Moscow began its mandatory troop call-up on Thursday after Putin called for about 300,000 reservists to bolster the war effort.

But men were leaving Russia in droves before they were made to join, with flights to neighbouring countries booked up for days to come.

Some, however, could not avoid the summons.

Andrei, who turned 18 last week, was called up after being detained during the anti-mobilisation protests in Moscow.

He recently began university and should not have been caught up in the recruitment drive, according to Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu who had said students would not be called up.

“As we say, Russia is a country of endless possibilities,” Andrei joked bitterly.

Mikhail Suetin, 29, also detained at an anti-mobilisation protest, was also summoned.

“To be told ‘tomorrow you will go to war’”, he said, “that was a surprise”.

MONTREAL — Hurricane Fiona made landfall in eastern Canada's Nova Scotia on Saturday, the US National Hurricane Centre said, with maximum sustained winds of 90 miles (144 kilometers) per hour and heavy rainfall.

The NHC said the storm would affect many parts of eastern Canada as a "powerful hurricane-force cyclone". Canada has issued severe weather warnings for much of its eastern coast.

"Significant impacts from high winds, storm surge, and heavy rainfall are expected," the NHC said in an advisory.

The Canadian Hurricane Center (CHC) said high-speed winds had been reported in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Iles-de-la-Madeleine and southwestern Newfoundland.

Rainfall of up to 125 millimetres had been recorded in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, the CHC said, with a "high likelihood" of storm surges affecting Nova Scotia, the Gulf of St. Lawrence and western Newfoundland.

"It is certainly going to be a historic, extreme event for eastern Canada," Bob Robichaud, a meteorologist for the CHC, told reporters before the storm made landfall.

"It's a major hurricane... All that momentum is trapped within the storm, so it's very difficult for something like that to actually wind down."

In its latest bulletin, the CHC said conditions would improve in western Nova Scotia and eastern New Brunswick on Saturday, but would persist elsewhere.

At 09:00 GMT, the hurricane was located in eastern Nova Scotia, about 210km northeast of Halifax, and was moving north-northwest at 65km per hour, the CHC said.

The NHC said hurricane-force winds would extend out to 280 km from the storm’s center, and tropical-storm-force winds would affect areas up to 650km away.

Authorities in Nova Scotia issued an emergency alert on phones, saying power outages were likely and people should stay inside with enough supplies for at least 72 hours.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the storm “a bad one”, adding it “could have significant impacts right across the region”.

In Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia, stores sold out of propane gas cylinders for camping stoves as residents stocked up.

“Hopefully it will slow up when it hits the cooler water, but it doesn’t sound like it’s going to,” Dave Buis of the Northern Yacht Club in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, told Canadian television.

Bermuda, which Fiona skirted by a day earlier, had at the time called on residents to remain inside as strong winds raked over the British territory, but no fatalities or major damage were reported as the storm passed roughly 160 kilometres to the west of the island.

The Belco power company said 15,000 out of 36,000 households were without power on Friday evening, with electricity being rapidly returned to many areas.

The Royal Bermuda Regiment said it was waiting for winds to die down before clearing roads. Residents posted images of downed power lines and some flooding on social media.

“We had some minor damage to the premises but nothing serious,” Jason Rainer, owner of a souvenir shop in the capital Hamilton told AFP, saying some doors and windows had been blown out.

Store owners had covered windows with sheets of metal and wood.

The island of about 64,000 people is no stranger to hurricanes — but it is also tiny, just 54sq.km, and one of the most remote places in the world, 1029 kilometres from its closest neighbour, the United States.

Bermuda, whose economy is fuelled by international finance and tourism, is wealthy compared with most Caribbean countries, and structures must be built to strict planning codes to withstand storms. Some have done so for centuries.

Fiona killed four people in Puerto Rico earlier this week, according to US media, while two deaths were reported in the Dominican Republic and one in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe.

President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico, a US territory that is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria five years ago.

In the Dominican Republic, President Luis Abinader declared three eastern provinces to be disaster zones.

WASHINGTON — President Vladimir Putin’s threat to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine if Russian “territorial integrity” is threatened has sparked deep discussion in the West as to how it would respond.

“Those who are trying to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the wind can also turn in their direction,” Putin said, adding: “This is not a bluff.”

However, analysts aren’t convinced the Russian president is willing to be the first to unleash nuclear weapons since the US bombed Japan in 1945.

AFP spoke with several experts and officials about the possible scenarios that could arise should Russia carry out a nuclear attack.

What would a Russian nuclear attack look like?

Analysts say Moscow would likely deploy one or more “tactical” or battlefield nuclear bombs.

These are small weapons, ranging from 0.3 kilotonnes to 100 kilotonnes of explosive power, compared to the 1.2 megatonnes of the largest US strategic warhead or the 58 megatonne bomb Russia tested in 1961.

Tactical bombs are designed to have a limited impact on the battlefield, compared to strategic nuclear weapons which are designed to fight and win all-out wars.

But “small” and “limited” are relative: The atom bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 to devastating effect was just 15 kilotonnes.

What would Moscow target?

Analysts say Russia’s goal in using a tactical nuclear bomb in Ukraine would be to frighten it into surrender or submission to negotiations, and to divide the country’s Western backers.

Mark Cancian, a military expert with the CSIS International Security Programme in Washington, said Russia would not likely use nuclear weapons on the front lines.

Capturing 32 kilometres of territory could require 20 small nuclear bombs — small gains for the huge risks of introducing nuclear weapons and nuclear fallout.

“Just using one will not be enough,” Cancian said.

Moscow could instead send a strong message and avoid significant casualties by detonating a nuclear bomb over water, or exploding one high over Ukraine to generate an electromagnetic pulse that would knock out electronic equipment.

Or Putin could opt for greater destruction and death: Attacking a Ukraine military base, or hitting an urban centre like Kyiv, generating mass casualties and possibly killing the country’s political leadership.

Such scenarios “would likely be designed to split the NATO alliance and global consensus against Putin”, Jon Wolfsthal, a former white House nuclear policy expert, wrote Friday on Substack.

But “it is unclear if it would succeed, and could just as easily be seen as desperation as resolve”, he said.

Should the West respond with nukes?

The West has remained ambiguous on how it would respond to a tactical nuclear strike, and the choices are complicated.

The United States and NATO do not want to appear weak in front of an implicit nuclear threat.

But they also would want to avoid the possibility that the war in Ukraine — not a NATO member — could escalate into a much broader, devastating global nuclear war.

Experts say the West would have no option but to respond, and that a response should come from NATO as a group, rather than the United States alone.

Any response should “ensure both that Putin’s military situation did not improve from such a strike, and that his political, economic and personal position suffered as a result”, said Wolfsthal.

The United States has positioned about 100 of its own tactical nuclear weapons in NATO countries and could respond in kind against Russian forces.

That would demonstrate resolve and remind Moscow of the danger of its actions, according to Matthew Kroenig of the Atlantic Council.

However, he said, “it might also provoke a Russian nuclear reprisal, raising the risk of a larger nuclear exchange and further humanitarian disaster”.

Another risk is that some NATO members might reject a nuclear response, serving Putin’s aims of weakening the alliance.

Give Ukraine the ability to attack Russia?

Answering a Russian nuclear attack in a more conventional military or diplomatic way, and supplying Ukraine with more lethal arms to attack Russia, could be more effective, experts say.

“Russian nuclear use might provide an opening to convince countries that have so far been reluctant — such as India and possibly even China — to participate in escalating sanctions,” said Kroenig.

In addition, the United States could offer Ukraine NATO aircraft, Patriot and THAAD anti-missile batteries, and ATACMS long-range missiles that could be used by Ukraine forces to strike deep inside Russia.

“Whatever restrictions we have on Ukraine forces — and I think we have some restrictions — I think we take all of those off,” said Cancian.

MOSCOW — Russia said on Thursday that 55 servicemen released in the largest prisoner exchange with Kyiv since the start of Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine are now in Russia.

"All servicemen have been delivered to the territory of the Russian Federation by military transport aircraft and are in medical institutions of Russia's defence ministry," the ministry said in a statement. 

It said that the released prisoners were "in mortal danger" while in captivity. 

"They are receiving the necessary psychological and medical assistance," it added. 

The statement did not mention Viktor Medvedchuk, a former Ukrainian lawmaker accused of high treason and ally of President Vladimir Putin, who was also released in the swap. 

Following the exchange announced on Wednesday, Ukraine received 215 people, including fighters who led the defence of Mariupol's Azovstal steelworks that became an icon of Ukrainian resistance.

Also in the statement, the defence ministry's daily briefing, Moscow accused Kyiv of "provocations" at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine "aimed at creating a threat of a man-made disaster". 

It said that over the past 24 hours, Ukraine repeatedly shelled the nearby city of Energodar and the territory near the plant, Europe's largest nuclear facility, adding that radiation levels were "normal". 

The plant has been a hot spot for concerns of a nuclear incident after tit-for-tat claims of attacks there.

MEXICO CITY — A strong earthquake jolted Mexico on Thursday, leaving two people dead as residents rushed out into the streets of the capital in the middle of the night days after another powerful tremor.

A woman died in Mexico City after falling down some stairs and hitting her head when the quake triggered early warning alarms, while the second victim suffered a heart attack, authorities said.

The epicenter of the 6.9-magnitude earthquake was near the Pacific coast, 84 kilometers south of Coalcoman in the western state of Michoacan, the national seismological agency reported.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) estimated the magnitude at 6.8.

It was the strongest of more than 1,200 aftershocks from a magnitude 7.7 quake that struck the same area on Monday, the national seismological agency said.

That tremor left two people dead in western Mexico, damaged several thousand buildings and sparked panic more than 400 kilometres away in Mexico City.

The latest quake again triggered alarms in the capital shortly after 1:00am (0600 GMT) and caused buildings to shake and sway.

Many people quickly evacuated their homes when the alarms sounded, some still dressed in pajamas and carrying their pet dogs.

“We had a 6.9 magnitude aftershock with an epicenter in Coalcoman,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Twitter.

“It was felt in Michoacan [and the other states of] Colima, Jalisco, Guerrero and Mexico City. So far there are no reports of damage,” he added.

Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said official helicopters had flown over the city and that there were no initial reports of destruction.

“So far there is no damage in the city after the earthquake,” she tweeted.

The quake hit at a depth of 12 kilometres, according to the national seismological agency, while the USGS estimated the depth at 24 kilometres, located about 410 kilometres from Mexico City.

Traumatic anniversary 

Monday’s tremor came less than an hour after millions of people in Mexico City participated in emergency drills on the anniversary of two deadly earthquakes in 1985 and 2017.

The timing was no more than a coincidence, the national seismological agency said.

“There is no scientific reason to explain it,” it added.

On September 19, 1985, an 8.1-magnitude quake killed more than 10,000 people and destroyed hundreds of buildings.

On the anniversary of that earthquake in 2017, a magnitude 7.1 quake left around 370 people dead, mainly in the capital.

During Monday’s earthquake, a man was killed by falling debris in a shopping center in Manzanillo in the western state of Colima.

A woman later died of injuries caused by a falling wall in the same city.

Mexico sits in the world’s most seismically and volcanically active zone, known as the Ring of Fire, where the Pacific plate meets surrounding tectonic plates.

Mexico City, which together with surrounding urban areas is home to more than 20 million people, is built in a natural basin filled with the sediment of a former lake, making it particularly vulnerable to earthquakes.

The capital has an early warning alarm system using seismic monitors that aims to give residents enough time to evacuate buildings when earthquakes hit seismic zones near the Pacific coast.

LONDON, United Kingdom — Britain’s royals put on a united front at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II but the new king now faces the delicate task of healing fractures to hold the family “firm” together.

With the eyes of the world on them, King Charles III and the rest of the royal family put their differences firmly aside to mourn the nation’s longest-serving monarch.

Millions of people worldwide watched Monday’s state funeral.

Getting back to work on Thursday, new heir to the throne Prince William and his wife Catherine met volunteers and staff who worked on the queen’s committal service at Windsor.

The national 10-day mourning saw the king’s brother Prince Andrew as well as his younger son Prince Harry and daughter-in-law Meghan all resume their place among senior royals.

Harry and Meghan, known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have been absent from royal life in the past couple of years, with the pair making a string of damaging claims that have put the prince and his brother William at loggerheads.

The queen’s disgraced second son Andrew, 62, meanwhile, had been sidelined and stripped of his cherished honorary military titles over his friendship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

“I think that they offered a united front. My feeling was that that was for the purposes of paying homage to one of the greatest Britons ever, during a mesmerising spectacle,” royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams told AFP.

The 73-year-old king made a point of mentioning Harry and Meghan in his first speech to the nation and offered olive branches to both Andrew and Harry by waiving the bans on them wearing military uniform for a vigil by the queen’s coffin.

For their part, William and Catherine, the Prince and Princess of Wales, extended their own olive branch when they invited the Sussexes to view floral tributes to the late monarch with them.

For a few brief moments the two couples — once dubbed the “fab four” — were reunited.

Unpredictable future 

The display of unity raised hopes of a reconciliation but Fitzwilliams said it was yet to be established if the funeral had succeeded in healing old wounds.

“Everybody knows of course there is a rift within the royal family and also that there are problems involving Andrew and so forth,” he said.

So far “we do know that Andrew has no future as a senior working royal under King Charles” but there might be the possibility of a job for him “in the firm... something out of the public eye”, he suggested.

As for the fractured relationship between William and Harry, whose shared grief for their mother Princess Diana left them the closest of brothers, Fitzwilliams said there were many unknowns.

“The answer is we don’t know [if the funeral brought them closer],” he said.

“King Charles extended his love in that accession broadcast... [but] so far as the future is concerned... we’ll have to see what happens.”

Harry’s delayed autobiography is due out next year and the contents of the book are likely to dictate future relations with the royal family.

Fitzwilliams said Harry and Meghan had managed to maintain a relationship with the queen throughout recent events.

“They were, in a strange sort of way, close to the queen, because they were able to see her even when there was a rift with the others, whether with Charles or with William.”

How that will play out now that the queen is no longer at the head of what the royal family call “the firm” remains a big unknown.

‘Strong team’ 

Despite the family difficulties of the past few years, Charles was fortunate in having Camilla, the new Queen Consort, by his side, Fitzwilliams said.

“His luck is that he’s got Camilla, he has got someone who is supportive.”

With Andrew off the scene, Charles is expected to rely more on his youngest brother Edward and his wife Sophie, the Duke and Duchess of Wessex, and on his sister Anne, the Princess Royal.

And Charles can also count on the Waleses.

“He knows Catherine is an absolute jewel... the prince, the princess of Wales and their family are the monarchy’s future.”

“He’s got a strong team, even if it’s not a larger team,” he added.

The youngest generation too were already playing their part.

In a surprise move, William and Catherine’s elder two children — future king Prince George, nine, and his sister Charlotte, seven — both attended Monday’s funeral.

Their appearance had been a PR “master trick”, Fitzwilliams said, adding that the public could expect to see more of them in the coming years.

MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial military mobilisation and vowed on Wednesday to use "all available means" to protect Russian territory, after Moscow-held regions of Ukraine suddenly announced annexation referendums.

The votes, already denounced by Kyiv and the West as a "sham", will dramatically up the stakes in the seven-month old conflict in Ukraine by giving Moscow the ability to accuse Ukrainian forces of attacking Russian territory.

Four Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine, Donetsk and Lugansk in the east and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south, said on Tuesday that they would hold the votes over five days beginning Friday.

In a pre-recorded address to the nation early on Wednesday, Putin accused the West of trying to "destroy" his country through its backing of Kyiv, and said Russia needed to support those in Ukraine who wanted to "determine their own future".

The Russian leader announced a partial military mobilisation, with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu telling state television that some 300,000 reservists would be called up.

'Not a bluff' 

"When the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. This is not a bluff," Putin said.

Germany branded the partial call-up as a "wrong step" while jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said it would result in a "massive tragedy, in a massive amount of deaths".

Putin said that through its support for Ukraine the West was trying to “weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our country”, while Shoigu said Moscow was “fighting not so much Ukraine as the collective West” in Ukraine.

The sudden flurry of moves by Moscow this week came with Russian forces in Ukraine facing their biggest challenge since the start of the conflict.

A sweeping Ukrainian counteroffensive in recent weeks has seen Kyiv’s forces retake hundreds of towns and villages that had been controlled by Russia for months.

In a rare admission of military losses from Moscow, Shoigu said Wednesday 5,937 Russian soldiers had died in Ukraine since the launch of the military intervention in February.

‘Wake-up, finally’ 

As Putin made his announcement, residents clearing rubble and broken glass from a nine-storey apartment block hit by an overnight missile strike in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

Svetlana, 63, gathered with friends to look on as neighbours and municipal workers cleared debris, urged the region’s Russian neighbours to ignore the mobilisation and “to wake up, finally”.

Meanwhile her neighbour, 50-year-old Galina, expressed bewilderment at Moscow’s aims against Ukraine.

“They want to liberate us from what? From our homes? From our relatives? From friends? What else? From over life? They want to free us from being alive?” she told AFP.

The referendums follow a pattern first established in 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine after a similar vote.

Like in 2014, Washington, Berlin and Paris denounced the latest referendums and said the international community would never recognise the results.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said they were a “sham”, French President Emmanuel Macron called them a “travesty”, and White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said they were “an affront to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

“Sham referenda and mobilisation are signs of weakness, of Russian failure,” the US ambassador in Ukraine, Bridget Brink, said on Twitter.

“I thank all the friends and partners of Ukraine for their massive and firm condemnation of Russia’s intentions to organise yet more pseudo-referendums,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in response.

 Strike at nuclear plant 

Kyiv said the referendums were meaningless and vowed to “eliminate” threats posed by Russia, saying its forces would keep retaking territory regardless of what Moscow or its proxies announced.

Political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya said the vote announcements were a direct result of the success of Ukraine’s eastern counteroffensive.

“Putin does not want to win this war on the battlefield. Putin wants to force Kyiv to surrender without a fight,” she said.

The Ukrainian nuclear operator Energoatom, meanwhile, on Wednesday accused Russia of again striking the Zaporizhzhia atomic power plant in southern Ukraine.

The strike damaged a power line causing the stoppage of several transformers of the number six reactor of the plant and forcing a brief start of emergency generators, Energoatom said.

“Even the presence of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] does not stop” the Russians, it said, calling on the agency to “more resolute actions” against Moscow.

Europe’s largest nuclear facility, located in Russian-held territory, has become a hot spot for concerns after tit-for-tat claims of attacks there.