التصنيف: estaql

A huge operation is under way to rescue 40 construction workers trapped inside a collapsed Himalayan road tunnel.

The three-mile tunnel was being built in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand when it caved in at around 5.30am on Sunday due to a landslide.

Rescuers have been working around the clock for two days to remove debris and carve out a path to reach those trapped.

A 2ft 6in wide (0.76m) steel pipe will be pushed through an opening of excavated debris with the aid of hydraulic jacks to safely pull out the stranded workers, authorities said.

Falling debris has been hindering the operation but they expect to free the workers by Tuesday night or Wednesday.

“We have been supplying food, water and oxygen to the trapped labourers and the officials are in continuous touch with all of them,” Devendra Singh Patwal, a disaster management official, said.

A team of geologists from the state government and educational institutions had arrived to determine the cause of the accident, he added.

There were around 50 to 60 workers inside the tunnel and around 10 to 20 got out after their shift ended as they were closer to the exit, while the rest were trapped after the collapse, the Indian Express newspaper reported.

“Initially, we thought it might be a minor collapse and began removing the debris however we could,” Rajeev Das, a worker who made it out safely, told the paper.

“But soon, we realised it was a challenging search and rescue (mission).”

Read more from Sky News:
India breaks world record with Diwali oil lamp display
Driving restrictions to come into force in New Delhi

The construction of the tunnel is part of a flagship federal government project connecting various Hindu pilgrimage sites.

The region, which is dotted with Hindu temples and sees a huge flow of pilgrims and tourists every year, is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods.

It has expanded over the years with the massive construction of buildings and roads.

The tunnel collapse follows land subsidence events in the state that geologists, residents and officials have blamed on rapid construction in the mountains.

Offensive launched by anti-coup forces two weeks ago puts military under pressure and is now spreading across the country.

Ethnic armed groups fighting to restore civilian rule in Myanmar have claimed new territory in the country’s northwest near the border with India, amid an escalating offensive against the military regime.

Fighters in Chin state reportedly took control of two military outposts on the border of India’s Mizoram state after hours-long battles on Monday, according to local media outlets.

The advance follows successes in neighbouring Rakhine state and northern Shan state in a coordinated offensive launched two weeks ago by anti-coup forces.

Myanmar was plunged into crisis when Senior General Min Aung Hlaing seized power in a coup in 2021, leading to mass protests that evolved into armed resistance when the military used force to crack down on its civilian opponents.

About 80 fighters mounted attacks on Rihkhawdar and Khawmawi military camps in Chin state in the early hours of Monday, eventually taking control of both outposts after several hours of fighting, Chin National Front (CNF) Vice Chairman Sui Khar told the Reuters news agency.

The CNF will now look to consolidate its control along the India-Myanmar border, where the Myanmar military has two more camps, he said.

“We’ll move forward,” Sui Khar said. “Our tactic is from the village to the town to the capital.”

Martial law

The generals, who have acknowledged the scale of the challenge posed to their regime, have expanded martial law to more parts of the country amid the intensified conflict.

Social media posts said a nighttime curfew had been imposed in Sittwe, Rakhine’s capital, with some reports of tanks on the streets.

“We saw tanks going around the town. Many shops are closed today,” a resident told Reuters, declining to be named for security reasons.

Fighting was taking place across Rakhine, according to two residents and a spokesperson for the Arakan Army (AA), a group fighting for greater autonomy that has seized military posts in Rathedaung and Minbya towns.

A Rathedaung resident told Reuters on Tuesday the area came under artillery fire overnight and that the military had entered the town.

“Artillery fell on a street in Rathedaung town last night. No immediate report of injured or casualties yet,” said the resident, who asked not to be identified.

“People have started fleeing the town. Soldiers are in the town now.”

Despite its brutal history of communal violence and the 2017 military crackdown on the mostly Muslim Rohingya, Rakhine emerged as one of the more peaceful parts of the country after the coup, thanks to an informal ceasefire between the AA and the military agreed just a few months before.

The arrangement began to break down by November 2021, as the AA entrenched its political control over the state.

The AA was established in 2009 to push for self-determination within Myanmar and mostly represents ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, who make up the majority of the state’s population.

Many of the country’s other ethnic armed groups have been fighting the military for decades.

Robert Jenrick has vowed the government will do “whatever it takes” to implement its Rwanda deportation plan – following Suella Braverman’s sacking as home secretary.

The immigration minister – who kept his job in Monday’s dramatic reshuffle – said the government’s plan “must” go through, “no ifs, no buts”.

However, the policy faces a make-or-break decision on Wednesday when the Supreme Court will rule on whether the plans are lawful.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph during a visit to Bulgaria, just hours after Ms Braverman’s sacking, he said: “Be assured that as a prudent government, we have been thinking through what further steps we could take.

“I worked closely with the former home secretary on various options. But at the heart of this is the deep conviction that you have to inject deterrence into the system.

“We must ensure the Rwanda policy succeeds before the next general election. No ifs, no buts, we will do whatever it takes to ensure that happens.”

Politics latest – ‘I have one job now,’ Cameron says after shock return

Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts

Mr Jenrick did, however, concede that the government would struggle to achieve its goal of stopping small boat crossings in the English Channel if their plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda were deemed unlawful.

Asked whether the boats could be stopped without the Rwanda policy, Mr Jenrick replied: “No.”

The deal – signed by Ms Braverman’s predecessor Priti Patel, but later championed by the now former home secretary – would see some asylum seekers sent to Rwanda to claim asylum there.

Read more:
Suella Braverman will be a ‘force to be reckoned with’ after being sacked
Analysis: Tory party’s most divisive politician is out of government

Last month, the Home Office challenged a Court of Appeal ruling from June that the multimillion-pound deal was unlawful.

The Illegal Migration Act brought into law the government’s policy of sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda, but because of the legal wrangling, no deportation flights having taken place.

The first planned flight to Rwanda in June 2022 was grounded minutes before take-off following a ruling by a judge at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

As a result, Mr Jenrick has not removed the possibility of the UK’s exit from the European Convention on Human Rights – a move which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has repeatedly refused to rule out.

Heavy machinery has been brought in to pull out nearly 40 workers trapped inside the highway tunnel in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand.

Excavators have begun drilling with heavy machinery to fix a wide steel pipe that will help pull out almost 40 Indian workers trapped inside a collapsed Himalayan highway tunnel that caved in two days ago in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand.

The 4.5km (2.7-mile) tunnel, which was being built on a national highway as part of a Hindu pilgrimage route, caved in at about 5:30am on Sunday (24:00 GMT on Saturday).

“We have been supplying food, water and oxygen to the trapped labourers and the officials are in continuous touch with all of them,” Devendra Singh Patwal, a disaster management official, said on Tuesday.

More than 100 rescue workers are using heavy machinery to drive a steel pipe with a width of 90cm (nearly three feet), wide enough for the trapped men to squeeze through the rubble, the government’s highway and infrastructure company said.

Patwal said it was not easy to ascertain the time required to pull out the workers. A team of geologists from the state government and educational institutions had arrived to determine the cause of the accident, he added.

“Our biggest breakthrough is that we have established contact and there is a supply of oxygen and food,” Uttarkashi district’s top civil servant Abhishek Ruhela told AFP news agency on Tuesday.

“Whatever is necessary for their survival is being done.”

Oxygen was being pumped into the tunnel and small food items like dry fruit were being provided to the workers, he added.

Photographs released by government rescue teams soon after the collapse showed huge piles of rubble blocking the wide tunnel, with twisted metal bars from its roof poking down in front of slabs of concrete.

The region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods and the incident follows events of land subsidence in the state that geologists, residents and officials have blamed on rapid construction in the mountains.

The work on the tunnel stretch commenced in 2018 and was initially intended to be completed by July 2022, which has now been delayed to May 2024, an Indian government statement said.

The Char Dham pilgrimage route is one of the most ambitious projects of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. It aims to connect four important Hindu pilgrimage sites of north India through 889km (551 miles) of a two-lane road being built for $1.5bn.

But some work has been halted by local authorities after hundreds of houses were damaged by subsidence along the routes, including in ecologically fragile Uttarakhand.

Accidents on large infrastructure projects are common in India.

In 2021, at least 200 people, most of them construction workers, were killed after part of a Himalayan glacier broke away, causing flash floods in Uttarakhand in a disaster that experts partly blamed on excessive development.

نشرت في: 14/11/2023 – 03:34

2 دقائق

طالب الرئيس الإندونيسي جوكو ويدودو نظيره الأمريكي جو بايدن خلال زيارة إلى البيت الأبيض الإثنين بـ”فعل المزيد” من أجل وقف إراقة الدماء في قطاع غزة، والتوصل لوقف لإطلاق النار بين إسرائيل وحركة حماس.

وألقت الحرب الدائرة بين إسرائيل وحماس بظلالها على القمة الأمريكية-الإندونيسية، التي كان من المفترض أن تعزز التعاون بين واشنطن وجاكرتا، في الوقت الذي يحاول فيه البيت الأبيض توطيد تحالفاته في مواجهة الصين.

وخلال لقائهما في المكتب البيضاوي بالبيت الأبيض، قال ويدودو مخاطبا بايدن إن “إندونيسيا تناشد الولايات المتحدة فعل المزيد لوقف الفظائع في غزة”.

وأضاف أن “وقف إطلاق النار ضروري من أجل الإنسانية”.

وكان الرئيس الإندونيسي قال الأحد إنه سينقل لبايدن “الرسالة شديدة اللهجة” التي صدرت عن القمة العربية-الإسلامية التي استضافتها الرياض نهاية الأسبوع الماضي، وأدانت إسرائيل، ودعت إلى وقف الحرب الدائرة منذ السابع من تشرين الأول/أكتوبر.

كما قال ويدودو الأحد: “أنا أحمل أيضا رسالة محددة من الرئيس الفلسطيني محمود عباس، الذي طلب مني أن أنقلها إلى الرئيس جو بايدن” وتتعلق بهذه الحرب.

وكان مسؤولون أمريكيون قالوا إن بايدن سيحض نظيره الإندونيسي خلال قمتهما في البيت الأبيض الإثنين على القيام “بدور أكبر” من أجل وقف الحرب بين إسرائيل وحماس.

والأحد، قال مسؤول أمريكي رفيع المستوى للصحافيين: “سيكون من الضروري الاستماع إلى وجهة نظر إندونيسيا بشأن النزاع الدائر في الشرق الأوسط… أعتقد أن الرئيس سيتطلع إلى أن تلعب إندونيسيا دورا أكبر”.

وأضاف أن ذلك سيشمل “قضية وقف إطلاق النار” والأهداف طويلة الأمد مثل حل الدولتين وإعادة إعمار قطاع غزة.

وأوضح أن بايدن “يريد الإنصات باهتمام إلى ما سمعه الرئيس ويدودو” في القمة المشتركة لجامعة الدول العربية ومنظمة التعاون الإسلامي التي أدانت “الجرائم” التي ترتكبها إسرائيل بحق الشعب الفلسطيني في قطاع غزة

والأسبوع الماضي، نفت إندونيسيا الاتهامات الإسرائيلية بأن مستشفى في غزة بني بتمويل إندونيسي تقع تحته أنفاق لحماس ويجاور منصة لإطلاق صواريخ على الدولة العبرية.

فرانس24/ أ ف ب