International

Cuba declares massive fuel plant fire extinguished

AFP

Cuba’s government declared the “elimination” on Friday of a fire at a major fuel storage plant that left two firefighters dead and 14 people missing.

The presidency said on Twitter that “at 7:00 am (1100 GMT) the elimination of the fire was declared.”

After the fire was extinguished, 60 experts entered the disaster zone to recover the remains of those still missing.

“Forensic Medicine teams have been working since early in the morning to search for the remains of the missing persons,” the president’s office said.

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Remains of the missing have been “located in different places” in the devastated area, one of the experts told President Miguel Diaz-Canel during a tour of the plant, according to state television.

The massive fire started on Friday last week after lightning struck a tank at the depot outside the western city of Matanzas, 100 kilometers from Havana.

Four of the eight tanks at the depot — each with the capacity to hold 50 million liters (13.2 million gallons) of fuel — collapsed during the blaze, which injured 132 people. Four of them are in critical condition, according to the latest Health Ministry report.

Two firefighters died in the incident. The body of one was found on Saturday, while another perished on Thursday after spending several days in hospital.

An army of Cuban firefighters worked around the clock for almost a week to extinguish the flames, with the help of technicians, firefighters, and military personnel who came from Mexico and Venezuela.

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International

Uribe requests freedom amid appeal of historic bribery conviction

Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe on Monday requested that the Supreme Court restore his freedom while he appeals the historic 12-year house arrest sentence he received for bribery and procedural fraud.

Uribe, the most prominent figure of Colombia’s right wing, was convicted last week by a lower court for attempting to bribe paramilitary members into denying his ties to the violent anti-guerrilla squads.

Since Friday, the 73-year-old has been under house arrest at his residence in Rionegro, about 30 km from Medellín. The judge justified the measure by citing a risk of flight.

However, Uribe’s defense team rejected that argument and formally petitioned the court to immediately lift the detention order, claiming it lacks legal basis.

Uribe, a dominant force in Colombian politics for decades, is now the first former president in the country’s history to be convicted and placed under arrest, found guilty of witness tampering and obstruction of justice to prevent links to paramilitary groups.

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He has repeatedly denounced the trial as politically motivated, blaming pressure from the leftist government currently in power.

His political party, Centro Democrático, has called for nationwide protests on August 7 in support of Uribe, who remains popular for his hardline stance against guerrilla groups.

Uribe has until August 13 to submit his written appeal. The case will then move to the Bogotá High Court, which has until October 16 to uphold, overturn, or dismiss the sentence. If the deadline passes without a decision, the case will be archived.

International

U.S. Embassy staff restricted as gunfire erupts near compound in Port-au-Prince

The poorest country in Latin America and the Caribbean is currently engulfed in a deep political crisis and a wave of violence driven by armed groups — a situation that an international security mission led by Kenya is attempting to stabilize.

Due to the worsening security conditions, the U.S. government has suspended all official movements of embassy personnel outside the compound in Port-au-Prince, the U.S. State Department announced Monday in a security alert posted on social media platform X.

“There are intense gunfights in the Tabarre neighborhood, near the U.S. Embassy,” the alert reads, urging the public to avoid the area.

Tabarre is a municipality located near Port-au-Prince International Airport, northeast of the Haitian capital.

According to a July report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, at least 3,141 people were killed in Haitibetween January 1 and June 30 of this year.

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International

Israel says 136 food aid boxes airdropped into Gaza by six nations

The Israeli military announced on Sunday that 136 boxes of food aid were airdropped into Gaza by the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Germany, and Belgium.

“In recent hours, six countries conducted air drops of 136 aid packages containing food for residents in the southern and northern Gaza Strip,” read the statement, which added that the operation was coordinated by COGAT, the Israeli defense body overseeing civil affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Israeli military emphasized that they will “continue working to improve the humanitarian response alongside the international community” and reiterated their stance to “refute false allegations of deliberate famine in Gaza.”

The announcement comes as UN agencies warn Gaza faces an imminent risk of famine. More than one in three residents go days without eating, and other nutrition indicators have dropped to their worst levels since the conflict began.

The agencies also noted the difficulty of “collecting reliable data in current conditions, as Gaza’s health systems —already devastated by nearly three years of conflict— are collapsing.”

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Meanwhile, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry reported on Sunday that hospitals in the enclave recorded six deaths from hunger and malnutrition on Saturday, all of them adults.