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KYIV, Ukraine — Six people were killed and dozens wounded after a wave of Russian missiles targeted Kyiv and other cities across Ukraine, setting residential buildings ablaze and reducing others to rubble.

Rescue workers in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city that is near Russia's border, hauled wounded residents from the scene of an attack where smoke rose from smouldering piles of rubble, AFP journalists on the scene in the aftermath reported.

The regional governor said five residents were killed in the overnight barrage and another 51 had been wounded, as medical workers treated one wounded man with blood smeared across his face.

In Kyiv, AFP reporters heard air raid sirens echo over the capital, followed by a series of loud blasts, thought to be air defence systems responding to the incoming aerial onslaught.

They also saw residents of a housing block, decorated with a mural of a girl with butterflies, remove glass shards from a window blown out during the attack.

Ukrainian army chief Valery Zaluzhny said Russian forces had fired 41 missiles, including cruise, ballistic and surface-to-air missiles, as part of the barrage, adding that his forces had shot down 21.

Kyiv's mayor Vitali Klitschko said 20 people were wounded in the attack that set buildings and cars ablaze in central districts of the city.

Daryna Bodenchuk, a 17-year-old interior design student, said she was in her dormitory at the time of the strikes. They shook the building and blew open the door of the basement where she and others had taken shelter, she said.

“I am very upset. It’s really scary. A window was broken also in our dormitory. It was loud,” she told AFP.

Iryna Zalizna, a 25-year-old resident of Kyiv, had already left home for work when the strikes hit her neighbourhood. She said she rushed back to take stock of the destruction.

“All the windows and a few frames were blown out there,” she told AFP.

“But thank God everything is fine with the dog and everyone is alive”.

Mayor Klitschko said that 13 people had been taken to hospital, including a 13-year-old boy, and that one woman was in an intensive care ward.

He wrote on social media that municipal workers had found an unexploded missile in one building and that residents were being evacuated.

In the region surrounding Kyiv, officials said four people were wounded after residential blocks, private homes and farm buildings were damaged.

Further south, in the city of Pavlograd, the Dnipropetrovsk governor said one person had been killed and another wounded.

“We must make Russia pay for the suffering and pain it has caused to Ukraine,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shymgal said in response to the attack.

The US ambassador in Kyiv, Bridget Brink said the attacks showed that Washington should double down on support.

“Ukraine needs our continued support now, to protect itself against these cruel attacks on civilians,” she said on social media.

Russia’s defence ministry announced it had launched long-range precision strikes on weapons production facilities in Ukraine, without giving details.

“The goals of the strike has been achieved. All designated facilities have been hit,” its statement added.

Kremlin denies civilians targeted 

The Kremlin, responding to questions from reporters about the attacks,  denied Russian forces had targeted civilian infrastructure and vowed to continue Moscow’s nearly two-year invasion.

“We are continuing our special military operation, and our military does not hit social facilities and residential neighbourhoods, and does not hit civilians, unlike the Kyiv regime,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

This was an apparent reference to a recent uptick in fatal drone and missile attacks that Russian forces have blamed on Kyiv, targeting cities and energy facilities near the countries’ shared border.

Russian forces had aimed to wrest control of Kharkiv, the city worst hit in the overnight strikes, early in their invasion, launched in February 2022.

Ukrainian forces pushed back Moscow’s army but it has been routinely shelling the city since.

The toll from the missile barrage adds to the tens of thousands of military personnel and civilians understood to have been killed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.

There are no reliable figures of the overall toll but the United Nations has documented at least 10,200 civilian deaths, including 575 children, and 19,300 wounded.

The real figures are likely to be considerably higher.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said this month that his country’s priority for 2024 is to gain control over its air space, and Kyiv has urged its allies to help bolster its air defence capabilities.

BEIJING — The death toll from a landslide that struck a remote and mountainous part of south-western China reached 20 on Tuesday, state media said, as rescuers raced to find those still trapped under the debris.

The pre-dawn landslide buried 18 homes and sparked the evacuation of more than 200 people when it struck in Zhenxiong County, Yunnan province early Monday.

More than 30 hours since the disaster, twenty people have been confirmed dead, state broadcaster CCTV said.

Twenty-four remain missing, the report added.

State news agency Xinhua said rescue workers are now in a “race against time” to find those still missing, after a night of sub-zero temperatures.

“Search and rescue efforts persisted through the night,” fire-fighter Li Shenglong told Xinhua.

Wu Junyao, director of the natural resources and planning bureau of Zhaotong, told Xinhua that the disaster “resulted from a collapse in the steep cliff area atop the slope”.

Two hundred rescue workers have been dispatched to the scene as well as dozens of fire engines and other equipment.

The site is covered in thick snow and rescuers are “using all kinds of tools to search for survivors”, Xinhua reported.

Wu said the rescuers are digging through collapsed debris of “100 metres in width, 60 metres in height, with an average thickness of around 6 metres “.

CCTV showed footage of rescue workers digging through twisted metal and concrete overnight in a bid to find survivors.

Other CCTV footage showed locals huddling for warmth around a fire in a shelter, eating instant noodles.

People from the surrounding area have chipped in to help with relief efforts, state media said.

“Our main focus is on distributing supplies, cooking, and delivering food to those in need,” Hong Jie, a 38-year-old resident of a nearby village, told Xinhua.

Chinese President Xi Jinping Monday ordered “all-out” rescue efforts.

Landslides are common in Yunnan, a far-flung and largely impoverished region of China where steep mountain ranges butt against the Himalayan plateau.

Monday’s disaster occurred in a rural area surrounded by towering peaks dusted with snow, state media footage showed.

China has experienced a string of natural disasters in recent months, some following extreme weather events such as sudden, heavy downpours.

Rainstorms last September in the southern region of Guangxi triggered a mountain landslide that killed at least seven people, according to media reports.

In August, heavy rains sparked a similar disaster near the northern city of Xi’an, killing more than 20 people.

BERLIN — Germany’s constitutional court on Tuesday approved a request to withdraw public funds from the neo-Nazi Homeland Party, offering what one official called a possible “blueprint” for action against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The verdict comes as Germany debates how to counter the rising popularity of the AfD, which is under close surveillance by domestic intelligence after being classed a “suspected case of far-right extremism”.

Homeland, known until 2023 as the NPD, was “excluded from state funding for a period of six years”, the court said.

In its reasoning, the court said Homeland sought to “eliminate the free democratic order” and had a “racist, in particular anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic and anti-Gypsy, attitude” that clashed with Germany’s constitutional principles.

The neo-Nazi group would therefore lose access to state funding available to parties, as well as any tax breaks.

The ruling was a “confirmation of the pathway to not offering much space to the enemies of freedom”, Chancellor Olaf Scholz told journalists.

“The forces that want to dismantle and destroy our democracy must not receive a cent of government funding,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said.

The AfD currently sits second in national polls, and is leading them in several eastern regions where elections are set to be held later this year.

‘Confirmed’ extremist 

Markus Soeder, the conservative premier of the southern region of Bavaria, said ahead of the ruling that withdrawing funds from Homeland could be a “blueprint” for dealing with the growing threat from AfD.

Three of the party’s regional branches — in the eastern states of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia — are classed as “confirmed” extremist organisations for their efforts to undermine democracy and their anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Over the weekend, hundreds of thousands of people came out to protest against the AfD after its members were revealed to have discussed a mass deportation plan at a meeting with extremists.

The mooted mass deportation plan was “an attack on the foundations of our society”, Faeser said.

“Right-wing extremism is the greatest extremist threat to our democracy — and to people in our country,” added Faeser. 

Withdrawing public funding was “another instrument” to defend democracy, Faeser told journalists at a press conference, while refusing to rule out a similar move against the AfD.

Some government figures have urged caution, however, and warned against giving the AfD material for an anti-establishment campaign.

Failed ban 

The challenge to the AfD needed to be “political”, while any action should be limited to the “constitutionally necessary and possible”, Finance Minister Christian Lindner told broadcaster Welt TV.

The parties of the “democratic centre” should not give the impression that they “want to use party law to fend off unwanted competition”, Lindner said.

The request to exclude Homeland from state financing was made in 2019 by the German government, together with the upper and lower houses of the German parliament. 

A previous attempt to ban the party outright in 2017 failed, when the constitutional court in Karlsruhe said the then NPD was not a real enough threat to be prohibited.

The German constitution was subsequently amended to introduce the possibility of withdrawing state funds.

Public money flows to any party in Germany that scores at least 0.5 per cent in national or European elections, or 1 per cent in regional votes.

Homeland, which was long a small but significant minority party under the NPD brand, has seen its following dwindle and dropped below the support threshold to be eligible for public funds. 

But the party has still benefitted from tax advantages available to political parties, such as exemptions for donations.

MANCHESTER, United States — Donald Trump aims to steamroll his way towards the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday in the New Hampshire primary by making short work of his only surviving opponent, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley.

In his convention-smashing mission to take revenge against President Joe Biden and win a second White House term, Trump has defied the fallout from two impeachments, four criminal trials awaiting him and lawsuits for fraud and sexual assault.

While Haley has questioned his mental fitness and warned that another Trump presidency would bring “chaos”, polls indicate her efforts will provide little more than a bump in the road in New Hampshire

“If you want a losing candidate who puts America last, vote for Nikki Haley,” Trump said in his closing arguments at a small but lively rally in the village of Laconia.

“But if you want a president who puts America first every single time, you’re going to vote for Donald J. Trump.”

New Hampshire, in the northeast United States, is seen as a more Haley-friendly electorate than any she will encounter further down the line, and pressing on into February will be a tough sell without a win or very narrow loss.

Haley — aged 52 to Trump’s 77 — sounded defiant on Tuesday as voting started, telling Fox News that “political elites are saying we all need to coalesce around him. This is not a coronation. This is a democracy.

“We are going to have a strong showing today here in New Hampshire.”

Trump had a crushing victory in the first contest in Iowa last week, with Haley a distant third, and no Republican has ever won both opening contests and not eventually gained the nomination.

‘Smoke and mirrors’ 

What was once a crowded field of 14 candidates narrowed to a one-on-one match-up on Sunday after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis dropped out, following a second place finish in Iowa. 

He and Trump were in a comparatively close race until the ex-president’s multiple court indictments began to drop in March, compelling his supporters to close ranks.

Scott Manninen, a 48-year-old production manager, told AFP at a campaign event in the village of Hollis on Monday that the legal issues would not stop him from voting for Trump.

“I think it’s a lot of smoke and mirrors — just trying to bash him and trying to get it so that people go against him,” he said. 

Trump has spent less time in New Hampshire than Haley, juggling one rally a night with court appearances out of state — and eschewing the “retail politics” of visits to diners, sports halls and high schools altogether.

But his message — a mixture of personal grievance and culture war issues that speak to his base — has delivered seemingly insurmountable polling leads in the primaries.

A Globe/Suffolk/NBC10 poll had Haley 19 points behind in New Hampshire on the eve of the election. 

Appealing to moderates 

One of Trump’s biggest gripes on the campaign has been the false claim — repeated in Laconia — that Democrats are allowed to vote in the Republican contest.

Independents can have their say, however, and Haley is seeking to energize a flagging campaign with support from the state’s moderate bloc, which outnumbers registered members of either party.

She has spent the week hammering home the message — backed by polling — that the majority of Americans do not want to see a Trump-Biden rematch in November.

New Hampshire Democrats are also voting for their standard-bearer on Tuesday, in defiance of a national party order to hold the primary at a later date.

Biden chose not to file candidate paperwork, but supporters have pledged to write his name on the ballot anyways, in the hope he can attain a symbolic victory over Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips and self-help author Marianne Williamson.

BEIJING — Dozens of people were buried and eight confirmed killed when a landslide struck a remote and mountainous part of south-western China on Monday.

The pre-dawn landslide buried 18 homes and sparked the evacuation of more than 200 people when it struck in Zhenxiong County, Yunnan province, state media said.

Eight people are confirmed dead and rescuers have extracted four, according to a report by state broadcaster CCTV at around 5:30 pm (9:30 GMT), though the condition of the four was not immediately clear.

Two hundred rescue workers have been dispatched as well as dozens of fire engines and other equipment, CCTV said.

One local told the state-run Beijing News outlet that she was asleep when the disaster hit and that parts of her ceiling had fallen onto her head.

"At the time I thought it was an earthquake, but later I knew it was the hillslope collapsing," another resident told the outlet.

Both were quoted under pseudonyms.

Footage shared on social media by a local broadcaster showed emergency workers in orange jumpsuits and helmets forming ranks outside a fire station as snowflakes whirled through the air.

Other images showed rescuers picking through towering piles of collapsed masonry in which a few personal belongings could be seen.

Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered “all-out” rescue efforts, CCTV reported.

Xi “demanded that rescue forces are organised quickly... and efforts made to reduce casualties as far as possible,” the broadcaster reported him as saying.

He added that it was “necessary to properly handle the work of comforting the families of the deceased and resettling affected people”.

CCTV broadcast an image it said showed a firefighter working to pull a trapped villager from inside a home affected by the disaster.

Landslides are common in Yunnan, a far-flung and largely impoverished region of China where steep mountain ranges butt against the Himalayan plateau.

Monday’s disaster occurred in a rural area surrounded by towering peaks dusted with snow, state media footage showed.

Temperatures in Zhenxiong hovered just above freezing on Monday afternoon but were forecast to sink below zero in the evening, weather data showed.

There was no immediate official explanation for what may have caused the landslide.

Efforts to establish what happened are under way, Xinhua reported.

China has experienced a string of natural disasters in recent months, some following extreme weather events such as sudden, heavy downpours.

In September, rainstorms in the southern region of Guangxi triggered a mountain landslide that killed at least seven people, according to media reports.

Heavy rains sparked a similar disaster near the northern city of Xi’an in August, causing the deaths of more than 20 people.

And in June, a landslide in south-western Sichuan province, also remote and mountainous, killed 19 people.

MOSCOW — The Kremlin on Monday blamed Ukraine for an attack that started a fire at a gas terminal at the Baltic port of Ust-Luga over the weekend.

A gas facility belonging to Novatek, Russia's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), was set ablaze on Sunday in the western port town, close to Russia's border with Estonia.

"The Kyiv regime continues to show its bestial face. They are striking civil infrastructure, people," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday when asked about the incident.

The gas terminal is more than 850 kilometres from Ukraine.

The fire was the latest in a series of apparent Ukrainian attacks on Russia's energy facilities. Last week Kyiv claimed responsibility for two other attacks, including one in the same Leningrad region where Ust-Luga is located.

Both Russia and Ukraine are using explosive-laden drones to attempt to strike targets deep behind the frontlines, and their armed forces regularly claim to have shot down enemy devices over their territory.

“The defence ministry and air defence resources are taking all necessary measures to protect from such attacks,” Peskov told reporters in a briefing call on Monday.

Local authorities said there were no injuries as a result of the fire, which had raged Sunday morning and that all personnel had been evacuated.

The Kremlin also called a strike on the city of Donetsk on Sunday that it said killed at least 27 people an act of “terrorism”.

Artillery fire struck a suburb of the city, which Russia controls and claims to have annexed, hitting a crowded market, local officials said.

“The special military operation will continue in order to protect our people from this danger,” Peskov said Monday, using Moscow’s preferred language to refer to its full-scale military offensive on Ukraine.

KABUL — More than 500,000 Afghans have fled Pakistan in the four months since Islamabad ordered undocumented migrants to leave or face arrest, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said on Monday.

According to the latest figures reported by the UN migration agency, 500,200 Afghans left Pakistan between September 15, 2023 and January 13, 2024.

Most rushed to the border in the days leading up to a November 1 exit deadline Islamabad set for the 1.7 million Afghans it said were living illegally in Pakistan, and as police opened dozens of holding centres.

“Since the initial peak around November 1, the number of individuals crossing these official border points have consistently decreased but remains higher than pre-September 15th,” an IOM statement said.

Pakistan defended the crackdown by pointing to security concerns in its regions bordering Afghanistan and pressure on its struggling economy.

“Some Afghans forced to return may be at risk of persecution, arbitrary arrest and detention and/or torture or ill-treatment,” the UN’s Afghan mission said in a report on Monday.

Meanwhile, the busiest border crossing between the two countries remained closed for the tenth day running in a dispute over document rules for commercial drivers.

The row centres on demands for drivers from both sides to have visas and passports, documents many Afghans do not have, as Pakistan cracks down on cross-border movements.

More than 400 trucks were stranded on the Pakistan side of the Torkham crossing on Monday, according to a border official who asked not to be named.

Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have grown increasingly fraught in recent months, with Islamabad accusing the Taliban government of failing to root out militants staging attacks in Pakistan from their soil.

Kabul has always rejected the allegations.

Millions of Afghans fleeing conflict have poured into Pakistan over the past four decades, including some 600,000 since the Taliban ousted the US-backed government.

Some of the Afghans crossing into Afghanistan as a result of Islamabad’s eviction scheme were entering the country for the first time, having lived their whole lives in Pakistan.

Upon arrival, migrants have received modest assistance from the government and NGOs in a country contending with one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

ACCRA — Eleven months ahead of Ghana’s presidential election, a new political force is emerging to challenge the long-standing two-party status quo.

With deft social media messaging, posters of his masked face and an appeal to younger voters, businessman Nana Kwame Bediako, popularly known as Cheddar, says his New Force movement will become a third political power.

Few analysts believe Bediako can truly test the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), which have dominated Ghana since 1992.

But already he appears to have shaken the mainstream establishment, as the country tries to emerge from its worst economic crisis in decades.

“I want to liberate the youth and empower them because our leaders have failed us,” Bediako told AFP by telephone.

“We cannot continue to be doing the same thing and getting it wrong all the time.”

In the December vote, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia will represent the NPP, while former president John Mahama will be the NDC’s candidate.

Incumbent President Nana Akufo-Addo is stepping down after two terms.

Political Scientist Jonathan Otchere said he remained sceptical of the New Force’s ability to challenge the entrenched NPP and NDC. 

“It’s invigorating to witness the emergence of fresh voices in today’s political landscape... there seems to be a demand for a new force,” Otchere told AFP. 

“However, the question of whether Cheddar will truly make a significant impact is a separate matter altogether.”

Unmasking a new force

Bediako launched his campaign with scores of giant billboards featuring a man in a mask.

The inscription read: “Leadership for the next generation #thenewforce”. 

He later revealed at a press conference that he was the man behind the enigmatic campaign.

A political convention aimed at gathering broad support was organised for earlier this month.

Bediako has already won backing from prominent foreign political figures, such as Peter Obi, who achieved popularity as a third candidate in last year’s Nigerian election, and Julius Malema, the charismatic leader of South Africa’s far-left Economic Freedom Fighters Party. 

However, the event was halted after the military intervened, preventing attendees from accessing the Black Star Square venue in the capital Accra. 

The Ghanaian president’s office later said the convention’s permit was revoked due to an unforeseen state event at the venue at the same time. 

Still, Bediako remains determined to shake up the establishment.

“I am still going to run as an independent candidate in the December elections,” the property developer and self-styled philanthropist said.

A key question is how his foray into politics will resonate with young people, especially in a country with huge economic challenges.

Last year, Ghana entered into a $3 billion relief agreement with the International Monetary Fund amid its worst economic crisis in decades.

Unemployment stands at 13.7 per cent, while inflation is still in double digits. 

“There is no hope for the youth. I want to be president because I want to help reduce the alarming unemployment situation of our country by teaching people how to raise capital and invest in their own businesses,” Bediako said.

Once a scrap dealer in London, he now runs the Kwarleyz Group whose activities cover real estate, construction and the hotel industry.

His New Force movement emphasises a departure from the old political ways and promises innovative solutions to economic challenges, though he has yet to present detailed plans.

“As a country, we shouldn’t be begging external financial institutions to build our economy. We’ve all the resources and we can be self-reliant,” he said.

Fresh perspective

Experts are divided on Bediako’s chances of victory, especially without the national structure of a political party. 

Ghana’s five smaller parties generally account for less than 5 per cent of the vote in elections. 

“Bediako brings a unique blend of business experience and a fresh perspective that could resonate with a significant portion of the electorate,” political analyst Annabel Asare said.

“The challenge lies in breaking the deeply rooted support for the established parties.”

Succeeding in Ghanaian politics requires not only popularity but also alliances, comprehensive policy proposals and a robust campaign infrastructure, analysts say. 

But for some young people who are disappointed with the government, the New Force already appeals.

“We are tired of the NPP and NDC. There is no difference between them,” said Frank Odoom, 29, an unemployed graduate of the University of Ghana.

“I think Cheddar represents that new force we need.”