Rescue teams on Friday dug through mud searching for victims, a day after the latest deadly flood to crash through a village in India-occupied Kashmir’s Kishtwar district killed at least 60 people.
Dozens more are missing, including Hindu pilgrims who were visiting a shrine, after torrents of water and mud driven by intense rain tore through the village in the Himalayan region.
Officials said a large makeshift kitchen in Chisoti village, where more than 100 pilgrims were completely washed away by what Chief Minister Omar Abdullah reported was a sudden “cloudburst” rain storm.
Heavy earthmovers were brought to the disaster area overnight to dig through deep mud, huge boulders and rubble that the flood brought down the mountainside.
The army’s White Knight Corps said its troops, “braving the harsh weather and rugged terrain, are engaged in evacuation of injured”.
Emergency kit, including ropes and digging tools, were being brought to the disaster site, with the army supporting other rescue teams.
One survivor told the Press Trust of India news agency that he had heard a “big blast” when the wall of water hit the settlement. “We thought it was an earthquake”, the shocked eyewitness said, who did not give his name.
Mohammad Irshad, a top disaster management official, told AFP today that “60 people are recorded dead”, with 80 people unaccounted for. “The search for the missing has intensified,” Irshad told AFP.
Around 50 severely injured people have been taken to hospitals.
Floods and landslides are common during the June-September monsoon season, but experts say climate change, coupled with poorly planned development, is increasing their frequency, severity and impact.
Floods on August 5 overwhelmed the Himalayan town of Dharali in India’s Uttarakhand state and buried it in mud. The likely death toll from that disaster is more than 70 but has yet to be confirmed.
The UN’s World Meteorological Organisation said last year that increasingly intense floods and droughts are a “distress signal” of what is to come as climate change makes the planet’s water cycle ever more unpredictable.
Roads had already been damaged by days of heavy storms. The area lies more than 200 kilometres by road from the region’s main city Srinagar.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the spate of disasters in his Independence Day speech in New Delhi today.
“In the past few days, we have been facing natural disasters, landslides, cloudbursts, and many other calamities”, Modi said in his public address.
“Our sympathies are with the affected people. State governments and the central government are working together with full strength.”
The Authorities in Azad Jammu and Kashmir have shut down all educational institutions as floods triggered by heavy rains caused widespread destruction, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.
A notification in this regard was issued on Friday. According to which the educational institutions will remain closed on Friday and Saturday due to inclement weather.
US President Donald Trump (R) and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin speak during their meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7, 2017
Mikhail Klimentiev | AFP | Getty Images
As Russian President Vladimir Putin holds face-to-face talks with White House leader Donald Trump on Friday, Ukraine — and the world — will be watching with baited breath.
The state leaders are set to begin their summit at 11:30 a.m. local time (3.30 p.m. ET) at the Elmendorf Richardson military base in Anchorage, Alaska.
There will then be a working lunch for both delegations, before the presidents hold a joint press conference to summarize their talks.
The presser will undoubtedly be one of the most closely watched events of this year, revealing just how near — or far — is the end of the war in Ukraine that has spanned more than three and a half years.
“Trump wants to exhaust all options to have a peaceful end to war,” the White House stated on the eve of the Alaska summit.
It remains to be seen whether those “options” will ultimately be good or bad for Ukraine.
Not only is a ceasefire at stake — if Trump can persuade Putin to agree to one — but so are Ukraine’s territorial integrity, Europe’s security, Russia’s economy and geopolitical alliances.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has a checkered relationship with Trump and was not invited to the Friday event, will be nervous as the talks get underway.
Both he and his European allies fear the U.S. leader could capitulate to skilled negotiator Putin’s likely demands for Moscow to retain occupied Ukrainian territory and cut short Ukraine’s NATO membership aspirations, in return for halting its military offensive.
What’s the schedule?
Moscow has released more details about the summit than the White House, which only this week confirmed that the presidents’ talks would be a “one-on-one” meeting.
The Kremlin echoed that view, stating that Trump and Putin will meet “in a tete-a-tete format” behind closed doors with translators in tow, “naturally,” according to Putin’s aide on foreign affairs, Yuri Ushakov.
“Considering that very important topics of a sensitive nature will be discussed, the list of participants in the negotiations is not big,” Ushakov added, in comments translated by NBC News.
Russia’s delegation includes only a few members of Putin’s inner circle, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and Kirill Dmitriev, Russia’s investment and trade envoy, as well as Ushakov.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov looks on, next to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as they wait for the US-Russia summit at the Villa La Grange, in Geneva on June 16, 2021.
Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images
The presidential aide commented that “it is obvious to everyone that the central topic will be the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis,” including the “broader tasks of ensuring peace and security,” as well as pressing international and regional issues.
Signaling that Russia will be looking to extol the economic benefits of a rapprochement with the U.S., Ushakov added that “an exchange of views is expected regarding the further development of bilateral cooperation, including in the trade and economic area,” noting that “this cooperation has enormous and, unfortunately, untapped potential.”
When the Taliban’s men came knocking at her house in January, Nooran* went and hid in her parent’s yard. “I did not want to be arrested along with my mother,” says the Afghan teen. Moments later, her mother Shahbaneh* was taken away.
On 8 January, Taliban officials detained Shahbaneh over a social media post ruing the fate of her family’s young women, who would no longer be able to attend school. Nooran shows The Independent the Facebook post her mother had made, commenting on the local school’s notice that it was shutting down due to a lack of teachers and resources.
She wrote in her post: “Forgive me, my daughter, for what we have done to you. We cannot escape this savage group.” Within a few hours, she received a message telling her: “Remove your message because you have insulted the Taliban. This is the order of the Commander of the Faithful.”
The next day, two Taliban men arrived in Ford Ranger pick-up trucks in their busy neighbourhood in Herat and summoned Shahbaneh. “They then took my mother away,” Nooran says, sitting alongside her in a video call from Afghanistan late in the evening. They fall quiet as a motorbike passes by outside, afraid they might be overheard.
A Taliban prison security guard stands next to a poster ordering women to cover themselves with a Hijab during the distribution of new uniforms’ ceremony by the Taliban authorities at a prison in Jalalabad (AFP via Getty Images)
An Afghan burqa-clad woman carrying a child seeks alms along a road in the Argo district of Badakhshan province (AFP via Getty Images)
Friday marks four years since the Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan, seizing Kabul from a democratically-elected government after the shambolic withdrawal of Nato forces.
Since 2021 the Taliban have announced around 100 edicts restricting the movement of girls and women through society, arresting women for having ill-fitting head scarves, speaking on social media and being out in public. Despite claiming it would not return to its hardline rule of the 1990s, not a single one of these edicts has been overturned, according to the UN assistance mission for Afghanistan (Unama).
More than 78 per cent of Afghan women are no longer in education, employment or training, the UN said this month in its report. The edicts are also a matter of life and death in areas of the health sector, with a shortage of female healthcare workers allowed to treat women patients. “The results are devastating. Women are living shorter, less healthy lives,” the Unama said.
The Taliban does not hesitate in enforcing its rules by arresting and detaining women who break them – placing them in prisons where abuse is commonplace. The Independent heard repeated claims that women are raped by guards in these facilities, allegations which are difficult to verify.
“At night, I saw the Taliban prisons where the basic living conditions are horrible, guards coming in and taking the women away at night. Next day, the women would tell us they were raped,” Shahbaneh says. “They tied my hands to my head, and beat me up till I cried, telling me that they will kill me if I continue to speak about education of girls and women,” she says.
Shahbaneh narrated the basic conditions of prison treatment under the Taliban, consistent with multiple other accounts of arrested men and women. “There will be no food, no water, you are locked away in a dark room for days and nights. There isn’t even a window for feeling any air on your face – that is the punishment you get for crossing the Taliban,” the 37-year-old former teacher says.
“As a punishment, many women who shared the cell with me were asked to clean the prison floor,” she said.
An Afghan woman who was recently deported from Tehran after living in Iran for 3 years, waits at the entrance of the reception center in Islam Qala (Getty Images)
She was released after a month on 8 February this year, still with her only “crime” being a social media post criticising the most basic violation of human rights.
Recounting her pain – and expressing disbelief that the world is turning a blind eye – she says: “We are in danger for even breathing and existing as women. It is like the world cannot hear our voices, like they hate Afghan women.”
The restrictions on all aspects of women’s lives seem only to be tightening, with the number of punishments over hijab regulations growing. In certain parts of Afghanistan including Herat province, women have been ordered to wear a chador, a full body covering, and are banned from going out in public if they fail to do so.
Unama says the Taliban have asked health clinics and private businesses to strictly refuse services to women who are not accompanied by a male chaperone, a mehram.
Asma, a 27-year-old who has been offering discreet legal advice to women in Kabul, says that the options available to women in her field of divorce and domestic violence cases have become bleak.
“Me and my colleagues who are working with women seeking divorce over domestic violence from their husbands face two hellish choices – go back to their abusive husband or face prison time. Surprisingly, the women are choosing to go to prison,” the young legal adviser told The Independent.
“In the prison, many are facing rape and physical assault.”
The Independent has reached out to the Taliban’s ministry of interior for a comment on these allegations about its prison system, but had not received a response at the time of publication.
Sadly, the allegations are hardly new – dire accounts of ill treatment from women who have left Taliban detention have been a constant feature of the past four years.
Julia Parsi, a former Afghan teacher turned prominent human rights defender who burned a photo of the Taliban’s supreme leader Mullah Hibatullah in 2022, lost hearing in one of her ears after being slapped by several Taliban officials in prison.
Afghan woman Julia Parsi (L) who protested against the Taliban in 2022 and was arrested (Family handouts/ The Independent)
“I was subjected to severe psychological and physical pressure. The psychological torture was far worse than the physical abuse. They threatened me with harm to my family, especially my young daughters. The interrogations were filled with threats, insults, and humiliation,” the exiled Afghan activist told The Independent. She had to be hospitalised after her release from e prison in December 2022.
Parsi, now out of Afghanistan after facing death threats but continuing to work for Afghan women rights, says women are being rounded up and put behind the bars for “opposing the Taliban’s policies”.
“In recent arrests, the Taliban have primarily targeted women who have raised their voices on social media or participated in civic and political activities. Even women who have spoken only in small gatherings or taught lessons in their homes have been arrested under the accusation of ‘opposing Taliban policies’,” Parsi said, adding “improper hijab” has been the biggest reason in recent weeks for the arrest of Afghan girls and women.
“‘Improper hijab’ is merely an excuse — the real purpose is to suppress and silence women,” she says.
Such “policies” are having a profound effect on a generation of women – 62 per cent of Afghan women now feel they cannot even influence decisions at home, let alone have their voices or faces be seen outside, according to a UN survey.
Zubaida Akbar, an Afghan human rights expert and programme manager at Femena, an organisation that supports human rights defenders, said that the Taliban have tortured women with physical abuse including rape and sexual assault, alongside mental abuse and ethnic slurs.
“In terms of the ways that the Taliban have degraded women, women activists detailed to us physical abuse, assault, beatings inside the prison, sexual abuse, lack of access to food, sanitation, not being able to sleep, interrogations, especially late at night,” Akbar told The Independent.
“In the cases where women are abducted from their homes, I don’t say arrested because the Taliban are not the government, they don’t have a legal system – none of [what] has happened, happens legally. Women are abducted from their homes or from the streets,” Akbar said, calling on the international community to do more to protect Afghan women.
“The world must pay attention, first and foremost. They need to pressure the Taliban to end their war on the women of Afghanistan and reverse all of the 130 edicts that the Taliban have issued against women.”
An Afghan burqa-clad woman walks along a road on the outskirts of Fayzabad district in Badakhshan (AFP via Getty Images)
Even when they leave prison, women told The Independent that the experience robbed them of their sense of security in their communities, and they feared stepping out of their homes.
“When my mother goes out of the house, her heart is always beating, worried that someone will attack her. With every step, she is always looking behind her while walking. A few days back, my mother’s friend asked her, ‘Why are you looking behind you so much?’. My mother just stood there in silence, afraid of confessing her fears,” Nooran said.
But her ordeal has not broken Shahbaneh’s spirit. She says she plans to demonstrate again on Friday against the Taliban.
“I am going to protest again on 15 August to mark my refusal to accept them as our leaders,” she says. “This does not end, my fight will continue to free my daughter from the Taliban’s grip.”
What Trump and Putin have said they want from the summitpublished at 05:31 British Summer Time
05:31 BST
Image source, EPA/Reuters
Trump has been pushing hard to end the war.
He promised to do so within 24 hours when elected, but so far hasn’t had success brokering a deal.
He’s given a mixed picture of his hopes for today – saying he’d try to get back some territory Russia had occupied for Ukraine, but that there’d also be “some swapping, changes in land”.
The White House has been trying to win over European leaders’ support for a deal that would hand over swathes of Ukrainian territory to Russia, the BBC’s US partner CBS News has reported.
However, Trump has also appeared to try to lower expectations ahead of the talks – he has called today a “feel-out meeting” and his press secretary described it as “listening session”.
Putin also says he wants to end the war, though no details have yet emerged about what he might demand today. At this stage, though, there’s no reason to believe he’s budged on his maximalist preconditions for peace.
Just a few weeks ago, he said his position hadn’t changed since June – when Russia presented Ukraine with a memorandum setting out conditions for a “final settlement” of the conflict. The memorandum said that Ukraine must reduce its military and not join Nato, and that Russia’s territorial gains – including annexation of Crimea and four eastern regions – must be internationally recognised.
Trump comments last week that there could be “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” Russia and Ukraine – sparked concern in Kyiv and across Europe that Moscow could be allowed to redraw Ukraine’s borders by force.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least 17 people were killed Thursday in Israeli strikes as the military intensified its bombardment of Gaza City.
The dead included six civilians who had been waiting for humanitarian aid, said civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal.
“The Israeli occupation forces are intensifying their raids in the Zeitun area” of Gaza City, he said.
“For the fourth consecutive day, the area has been subject to a military operation, resulting in numerous deaths and injuries,” said Bassal. “Since dawn today, we have received 28 calls from families and residents of this neighbourhood, some of whose children have been killed.
“Many people cannot leave these areas due to artillery fire,” the spokesperson added. Maram Kashko, a resident of Zeitun, said the strikes had increased over the past four days.
“My nephew, his wife and their children were killed in a bombardment,” he told AFP.
An AFP videographer said their bodies were taken to Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City and buried shortly afterwards at the Sayyid Hashim cemetery.
US President Donald Trump has once again asserted that he played a pivotal role in easing heightened tensions between Pakistan and India during his time in office, even suggesting the two nations were on the brink of a nuclear confrontation, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Friday.
Speaking to media in Washington ahead of his today’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, Trump recalled a series of negotiations he claimed to have facilitated in recent years. Among them, he highlighted the standoff between India and Pakistan.
Trump said in the Oval Office: “They were ready to go nuclear and we solved that.”
The US president told reporters that six to seven aircraft were shot down during the conflict between the two countries. “If you look at Pakistan and India, planes were being knocked out of the air. Six or seven planes came down. They were ready to go. Maybe nuclear, we solved that,” he said.
“I’ve solved six wars in the last six months, and I’m very proud of it,” Trump added.
His remarks came just nine days after he repeated his previous claim on August 6, saying that the US helped broker a ceasefire between India and Pakistan.
Trump has repeatedly claimed credit for stopping hostilities between India and Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Trump recently announced a 50 percent reciprocal tariff on India and an unspecified penalty for importing oil from Russia. “India is not only buying massive amounts of Russian Oil, they are then, for much of the Oil purchased, selling it on the Open Market for big profits. They don’t care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine. Because of this, I will be substantially raising the Tariff paid by India to the USA. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!” the US President said in the post.
“They’re fuelling the war machine, and if they’re going to do that, then I’m not going to be happy,” Trump told CNBC.
#WATCH | Washington DC | “6-7 planes were knocked out in India-Pakistan war, they were ready to go nuclear, we solved that…” says US President Donald Trump.
