An attack on an aid convoy in Sudan's Darfur region kills 5, UN says
CAIRO (AP) — An attack on an aid convoy in Sudan's Darfur region left five people dead, the United Nations said Tuesday, and the warring parties in the northeast African nation traded blame for the attack.
The attack on the 15-truck convoy came Monday night near the Rapid Support Forces-controlled town of Koma in North Darfur province. It was trying to reach el-Fasher city, according to a joint statement from the World Food Program and UNICEF. Both agencies called for an investigation into the attack.
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Winnipeg Free Press
33 minutes ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Ukraine's drone attack on Russian air bases is a lesson for the West on its vulnerabilities
The targets were Russian warplanes, including strategic bombers and command-and-control aircraft, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The weapons were Ukrainian drones, each costing under $1,000 and launched from wooden containers carried on trucks. 'Operation Spiderweb,' which Ukraine said destroyed or damaged over 40 aircraft parked at air bases across Russia on Sunday, wasn't just a blow to the Kremlin's prestige. It was also a wake-up call for the West to bolster its air defense systems against such hybrid drone warfare, military experts said. Ukraine took advantage of inexpensive drone technology that has advanced rapidly in the last decade and combined it with outside-the-box thinking to score a morale-boosting win in the 3-year-old war that lately has turned in Moscow's favor. FILE - This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows damage from a Ukrainian drone attack at the Belaya Air Base in the Irkutsk region of eastern Siberia, Russia, on Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (Maxar Technologies via AP, File) How deeply the attack will impact Russian military operations is unclear. Although officials in Kyiv estimated it caused $7 billion in damage, the Russian Foreign Ministry disputed that, and there have been no independent assessments. Moscow still has more aircraft to launch its bombs and cruise missiles against Ukraine. Still, the operation showed what 'modern war really looks like and why it's so important to stay ahead with technology,' said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Where the West is vulnerable For Western governments, it's a warning that 'the spectrum of threats they're going to have to take into consideration only gets broader,' said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. In the past decade, European countries have accused Russia of carrying out a sabotage campaign against the West, with targets ranging from defense executives and logistics companies to businesses linked to Ukraine. Unidentified drones have been seen in the past year flying near military bases in the U.S., the U.K and Germany, as well as above weapons factories in Norway. High-value weapons and other technology at those sites are 'big, juicy targets for both state and non-state actors,' said Caitlin Lee, a drone warfare expert at RAND in Washington. 'The time is now' to invest in anti-drone defenses, she said. Low-cost options to protect aircraft include using hardened shelters, dispersing the targets to different bases and camouflaging them or even building decoys. U.S. President Donald Trump last month announced a $175 billion 'Golden Dome' program using space-based weapons to protect the country from long-range missiles. Not mentioned were defenses against drones, which Lee said can be challenging because they fly low and slow, and on radar can look like birds. They also can be launched inside national borders, unlike a supersonic missile fired from abroad. Drones 'dramatically increase' the capacity by a hostile state or group for significant sabotage, said Fabian Hinz, a missile expert and research fellow at IISS. 'How many targets are there in a country? How well can you defend every single one of them against a threat like that?' he said. Ukraine's resourceful, outside-the-box thinking In 'Operation Spiderweb,' Ukraine said it smuggled the first-person view, or FPV, drones into Russia, where they were placed in the wooden containers and eventually driven by truck close to the airfields in the Irkutsk region in Siberia, the Murmansk region in the Arctic, and the Amur region in the Far East, as well as to two bases in western Russia. Ukraine's Security Service, or SBU, said the drones had highly automated capabilities and were partly piloted by an operator and partly by using artificial intelligence, which flew them along a pre-planned route in the event the drones lost signal. Such AI technology almost certainly would have been unavailable to Ukraine five years ago. SBU video showed drones swooping over and under Russian aircraft, some of which were covered by tires. Experts suggested the tires could have been used to confuse an automatic targeting system by breaking up the plane's silhouette or to offer primitive protection. 'The way in which the Ukrainians brought this together is creative and obviously caught the Russians completely off guard,' Barrie said. Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press showed seven destroyed bombers on the tarmac at Irkutsk's Belaya Air Base, a major installation for Russia's long-range bomber force. At least three Tu-95 four-engine turboprop bombers and four Tu-22M twin-engine supersonic bombers appear to be destroyed. Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, the outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian military has adopted a creative approach to warfare. Its forces deployed wooden decoys of expensive U.S. HIMARS air defense systems to draw Russia's missile fire, created anti-drone units that operate on pickup trucks, and repurposed captured weapons. Experts compared Sunday's attack to Israel's operation last year in which pagers used by members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria. Israel also has used small, exploding drones to attack targets in Lebanon and Iran. The U.S. used Predator drones more than a decade ago to kill insurgents in Afghanistan from thousands of miles away. Developments in technology have made those capabilities available in smaller drones. Hinz compared the state of drone warfare to that of the development of the tank, which made its debut in 1916 in World War I. Engineers sought to work out how to best integrate tanks into a working battlefield scenario — contemplating everything from a tiny vehicle to a giant one 'with 18 turrets' before settling on the version used in World War II. With drones, 'we are in the phase of figuring that out, and things are changing so rapidly that what works today might not work tomorrow,' he said. How the attack affects Russian operations in Ukraine The Tu-95 bombers hit by Ukraine are 'effectively irreplaceable' because they're no longer in production, said Hinz, the IISS expert. Ukraine said it also hit an A-50 early warning and control aircraft, similar to the West's AWACS planes, that coordinate aerial attacks. Russia has even fewer of these. 'Whichever way you cut the cake for Russia, this requires expense,' said Thomas Withington of the Royal United Services Institute in London. 'You can see the billions of dollars mounting up,' Russia must repair the damaged planes, better protect its remaining aircraft and improve its ability to disrupt such operations, he said. Experts also suggested the strikes could force Moscow to speed up its program to replace the Tu-95. While underscoring Russian vulnerabilities, it's not clear if it will mean reduced airstrikes on Ukraine. Russia has focused on trying to overwhelm Ukraine's air defenses with drones throughout the war, including the use of decoys without payloads. On some nights last month, Moscow launched over 300 drones. 'Even if Ukraine was able to damage a significant portion of the Russian bomber force, it's not entirely clear that the bomber force was playing a linchpin role in the war at this point,' Lee said. Ukrainian air force data analyzed by AP shows that from July 2024 through December 2024, Russia used Tu-22M3s and Tu-95s 14 times against Ukraine but used drones almost every night. Sunday's operation might temporarily reduce Russia's ability to launch strategic missile attacks but it will probably find ways to compensate, Lee said. ——- Associated Press writer Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed.
Toronto Star
an hour ago
- Toronto Star
Taiwan offers Guatemala aid as it guards its diplomatic flanks from China
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan is offering aid to its lone Central American diplomatic ally, Guatemala, as it attempts to stave off efforts by China to win away its last remaining partners. During a meeting Thursday with his visiting Guatemalan counterpart Bernardo Arevalo, President Lai Ching-te said the two countries would 'strengthen exchanges and cooperation as well as scholarship programs for young people, provide training for high-tech and information and communication as to push forward prosperity and development.'
Winnipeg Free Press
an hour ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Taiwan offers Guatemala aid as it guards its diplomatic flanks from China
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan is offering aid to its lone Central American diplomatic ally, Guatemala, as it attempts to stave off efforts by China to win away its last remaining partners. During a meeting Thursday with his visiting Guatemalan counterpart Bernardo Arevalo, President Lai Ching-te said the two countries would 'strengthen exchanges and cooperation as well as scholarship programs for young people, provide training for high-tech and information and communication as to push forward prosperity and development.' Arevalo identified public health, education, agriculture, technology and infrastructure as key areas where Guatemala was seeking to increase its capacity. 'In the future, we shall continue to strengthen bilateral relations based on the solid foundations built in the past,' the president said. Such assistance is key as Taiwan attempts to hold the line against advances by China, which typically offers big-ticket items such as highways, railways and stadiums to lure away Taiwan's allies, often expecting repayment at market rates. Winning over Taiwan's allies brings China closer to its goal of diplomatically isolating Taiwan in order to demoralize the population and aid Beijing in its goal of 'peacefully unifying' with the island it claims as its own territory. Taiwan's offerings tend to be more modest and pragmatic, largely because it is a parliamentary democracy where all such spending must be approved by the legislature. It also offers the model of a functioning democracy in a world increasingly leaning toward hardline authoritarian regimes. Still, China has steadily reduced the number of Taiwan's diplomatic allies to just 12 after launching campaigns in the Caribbean and Central America to win over countries such as Peru.
