Dozens fleeing Tigray found dead at border
A Sudanese official says authorities in Kassala province have found around 50 bodies, apparently people fleeing the war in neighboring Ethiopia’s Tigray region, floating in the river between the countries over the past week, some with gunshot wounds or their hands bound.
The official told the Associated Press on Monday that a forensic investigation is needed to determine the causes of death.
Two Ethiopian health workers in the Sudan border community of Hamdayet confirmed seeing the bodies found in the Setit River, known in Ethiopia as the Tekeze. The river flows through some of the most troubled areas of the conflict in Tigray, where ethnic Tigrayans have accused Ethiopian and allied forces of atrocities while battling Tigray forces.
Tewodros Tefera, a surgeon who fled the nearby Tigray city of Humera to Sudan, said the bodies were found downstream from Humera, where authorities and allied fighters from Ethiopia’s Amhara region have been accused by refugees of forcing out local Tigrayans during the war while claiming that western Tigray is their land.
Samantha Power, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International
Development, on Monday visited a refugee camp in Sudan hosting thousands of Ethiopians who fled the Tigray war. She next will visit Ethiopia to press the government to allow humanitarian aid to Tigray, a region of some 6 million people where the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade is unfolding.
CHINA Toll soars from flash flooding
More than 300 people died in recent flooding in central China, authorities said Monday, three times the previously announced toll.
The Henan provincial government said 302 people died and 50 remain missing. The majority of the victims were in Zhengzhou, the provincial capital, where 292 died.
Record rainfall inundated the city on July 20, turning streets into rushing rivers and flooding at least part of a subway line. Video posted online showed vehicles being washed away and desperate people trapped in subway cars as the waters rose.
Authorities said that about 625,000 acres of crops were destroyed and have estimated losses at more than 90 billion yuan ($14 billion). About 1.5 million people were evacuated.
The central government has set up an investigation team to evaluate the disaster response, summarize the lessons from it and hold accountable anyone guilty of dereliction of duty, Chinese media said.
PAKISTAN Gunmen attack polio officers
Gunmen on Monday shot and killed a police officer assigned to protect a polio vaccination team in northwestern Pakistan, an official said. It was the third attack in two days on police assigned to protect polio workers.
The deadly attack took place in the town of Kolachi in the Dera Ismail Khan district. Officer Dilawar Khan was on his motorcycle, heading to escort polio workers taking part in a nationwide campaign aimed at making Pakistan a poliofree state. The gunmen fled.
Pakistani militants often target polio teams and police assigned to protect them, claiming the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
Two attacks targeted police working with polio teams on Sunday. In Peshawar, gunmen killed an officer returning home after security duty with polio workers. And a roadside bomb went off near a police van escorting a polio vaccination team in the district of South Waziristan, wounding an officer.
None of the medics on the polio teams were hurt in these attacks. No one immediately claimed responsibility for any of the attacks.
Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two remaining countries in the world where polio is endemic, after Nigeria was last year declared free of the virus.
Last week, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government began another polio vaccination drive in an effort to eradicate the crippling disease by the end of the year.
MALAYSIA Leader facing rising criticism
Police blocked opposition lawmakers from marching Monday to protest a twoweek lockdown of Malaysia’s Parliament, which they consider another ploy of the embattled prime minister to dodge a noconfidence vote.
Lawmakers and activists questioned the timing of the announcement of Parliament’s closure, which came after the king rebuked Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s government on Thursday for misleading Parliament on the status of ordinances it issued during the sevenmonth coronavirus state of emergency. The opposition immediately filed a motion of noconfidence against Muhyiddin that was expected to have been raised Monday.
Dozens of lawmakers gathered near Parliament and called for the resignation of Muhyiddin and his Cabinet. They slammed the government for cowardice and said they must eventually face the people.