A power line and nearly two dozen houses were damaged in Ukraine's latest air attack on the city of Belgorod, with Russia's air forces destroying 25 missiles over the broader Belgorod region, Russian officials said on Tuesday.

"There is one casualty - a woman has received a shrapnel wound to her spine," Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the southern Russian Belgorod region which borders Ukraine, said on the Telegram messaging app.

He said that about 24 houses and a power line were damaged.

Russia's air defense systems destroyed 25 missiles launched by Ukraine from the RM-70 Vampire (MLRS) multiple launch rocket systems, the Russian defense ministry said on Telegram.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports.

Ukraine's attacks on Belgorod have picked up again in recent months and according to Russia these strikes have become more deadly. Fifteen people were killed and scores injured on Sunday when parts of an apartment block collapsed after being struck by falling missile debris, Russian officials said.

Both Ukraine and Russia say they do not target civilians in the war which erupted when Russia invaded its smaller neighbor in February of 2022, which Moscow has called a "special military operation".

The war has killed thousands, displaced millions and turned Ukrainian cities into rubble.

Kyiv says that targeting Russia's military, transport and energy infrastructure undermines Moscow's war effort and is an answer to the countless deadly attacks by Russia.

At least 14 people have died and dozens were injured after a huge billboard fell on them during heavy rain and thunderstorms in India's financial capital Mumbai, according to local authorities.

A rescue operation was ongoing Tuesday morning, and it was unclear how many people may still be trapped.

The rains, accompanied by high winds, caused the 30-meters-tall (100-foot-tall) billboard to fall over a gas station in the suburb of Ghatkopar on Monday evening.

Mumbai's municipal corporation said at least 74 people were taken to hospital with injuries following the accident and 31 have been discharged.

Police are investigating the incident and say the billboard was illegally installed, officials told the Press Trust of India news agency.

A former US military intelligence official released a letter on Monday that explained to his colleagues at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) that his November resignation was in fact due to "moral injury" stemming from US support for Israel's war in Gaza and the harm caused to Palestinians.

Harrison Mann, an Army major, would be the first known DIA official to quit over US support to Israel. A US airman fatally set himself on fire in February outside Israel's embassy in Washington and other military personnel have protested.

Mann said he kept quiet about his motives for resigning for months out of fear.

"I was afraid. Afraid of violating our professional norms. Afraid of disappointing officers I respect. Afraid you would feel betrayed. I'm sure some of you will feel that way reading this," Mann wrote in a letter shared with colleagues last month and published on his LinkedIn profile on Monday.

A DIA official confirmed to Reuters that Mann worked at the agency.

"Employee resignations are a routine occurrence at DIA as they are at other employers, and employees resign their positions for any number of reasons and motivations," the official said, without elaborating.

Mann's case differs from other US government officials, including several State Department officials, who publicly deplored US policy as they resigned rather than waiting months to explain their departure.

Man said he felt shame and guilt for helping advance US policy that he said contributed to the mass killing of Palestinians.

"At some point — whatever the justification — you're either advancing a policy that enables the mass starvation of children, or you're not," Mann wrote.

Israel is retaliating against Hamas over an Oct. 7 attack in which Israel says the militants killed about 1,200 people and took more than 250 people hostage.

More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed and 78,827 injured in Israel's military offensive on Gaza, according to the Gaza health ministry. There has been increasing concern about the lack of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza by Israel, and growing US and international warnings about the risk of famine.

The high death toll has fueled pro-Palestinian protests that have swept college campuses across the United States and pushed Democrats in key battleground states to vote "uncommitted" to signal their unhappiness ahead of this year's presidential election.

President Joe Biden, a staunch supporter of Israel, put a hold on one package of arms, in a major policy shift that became public last week, and his administration said the US was reviewing others.

The Biden administration on Friday said Israel's use of US-supplied weapons may have violated international humanitarian law during its military operation in Gaza, in its strongest criticism to date of Israel.

Rescuers on Tuesday searched in rivers and the rubble of devastated villages for bodies, and whenever possible, survivors of flash floods that hit Indonesia’s Sumatra Island over the weekend.
Monsoon rains and a landslide of mud and cold lava from Mount Marapi caused rivers to breach their banks. The deluge tore through mountainside villages in four districts in West Sumatra province just before midnight Saturday, The Associated Press reported.
The floods swept away people and 79 homes and submerged hundreds of houses and buildings, forcing more than 3,300 residents to flee to temporary government shelters, National Disaster Management Agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari said.
Muhari said 50 bodies had been pulled from mud and rivers by Tuesday, mostly in worst-hit Agam and Tanah Datar districts, while rescuers are searching for 27 people who are reportedly missing.
Television reports showed rescue personnel using jackhammers, circular saws, farm tools and sometimes their bare hands, digging desperately in Agam district where roads were transformed into murky brown rivers and villages covered by thick mud, rocks, and uprooted trees.
Scores of rescue personnel were searching through a river around the Anai Valley Waterfall area in Tanah Datar district where tons of mud, rocks and trees were left from flash floods.
Rescuers were focused on finding four people from a group of seven that were swept away with their cars. Three other bodies were pulled out on Monday, said Abdul Malik, who heads the Search and Rescue Office in Padang, the provincial capital.
“With many missing and some remote areas still unreachable, the death toll was likely to rise,” Malik said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday in an unannounced diplomatic mission to reassure Ukraine that it has American support as it struggles to defend against increasingly intense Russian attacks.

The visit comes less than a month after Congress approved a long-delayed foreign assistance package that sets aside $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, much of which will go toward replenishing badly depleted artillery and air defense systems.

On his fourth trip to Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Blinken will underscore the Biden administration’s commitment to Ukraine’s defense and long-term security, US officials said.

They noted that since President Joe Biden signed the aid package late last month, the administration has already announced $1.4 billion in short-term military assistance and $6 billion in longer-term support.

It is “trying to really accelerate the tempo” of US weapon shipments to Ukraine, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.

“What I am going to suggest is that the level of intensity being exhibited right now in terms of moving stuff is at a 10 out of 10,” Sullivan told reporters at a White House briefing Monday.

Artillery, air defense interceptors and long-range ballistic missiles have already been delivered, some of them already to the front lines, said a senior US official traveling with the secretary on an overnight train from Poland.

Blinken will “send a strong signal of reassurance” to Ukrainian leaders and civil society figures he will meet during his two-day visit, said the official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity ahead of Blinken’s meetings.

In a statement released after Blinken's arrival, the State Department said he would meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other top Ukrainian officials “to discuss battlefield updates, the impact of new US security and economic assistance, long-term security and other commitments, and ongoing work to bolster Ukraine’s economic recovery.”

Delays in US assistance, particularly since Israel’s war with Hamas began to preoccupy top administration officials, triggered deep concerns in Kyiv and Europe. Blinken, for example, has visited the Middle East seven times since the Gaza conflict began in October. His last trip to Kyiv was in September.

The US official added that Blinken also would give a speech later Tuesday extolling Ukraine’s “strategic successes” in the war. It is intended to complement a Blinken address last year in Helsinki, Finland, deriding Russian President Vladimir Putin for Moscow’s strategic failures in launching the war.

Since the Helsinki speech, however, Russia has intensified its attacks, most noticeably as the US House sat on the aid package for months without action, forcing a suspension in the provision of most US assistance. Those attacks have increased in recent weeks as Russia has sought to take advantage of Ukrainian shortages in manpower and weapons while the new assistance is in transit.

Top Biden administration officials and Ukrainian national security officials held a call Monday “about the situation on the front, about the capabilities that they are most in need of, and a real triage effort to say, ‘Get us this stuff this fast so that we can be in a position to effectively defend against the Russian onslaught’,” Sullivan said.

Zelenskyy said over the weekend that “fierce battles” are taking place near the border in eastern and northeastern Ukraine as outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian soldiers try to push back a significant Russian ground offensive.

The Kremlin’s forces are aiming to exploit Ukrainian weaknesses before a big batch of new military aid for Kyiv from the US and European partners arrives on the battlefield in the coming weeks and months, Ukrainian commanders and analysts say. That makes this period a window of opportunity for Moscow and one of the most dangerous for Kyiv in the two-year war, they say.

The new Russian push in the northeastern Kharkiv region and a drive into the eastern Donetsk region come after months when the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line barely budged. In the meantime, both sides have used long-range strikes in what largely became a war of attrition.

The senior US official said despite some recent setbacks, Ukraine could still claim significant victories. Those include reclaiming some 50% of the territory Russian forces took in the early months of the war, boosting its economic standing and improving transportation and trade links, not least through military successes in the Black Sea.

The official acknowledged that Ukraine faces “a tough fight” and is “under tremendous pressure” but argued that Ukrainians “will become increasingly more confident” as the new US and other Western assistance begins to surge.

Blinken said Sunday that there was “no doubt” the monthslong delay in aid caused problems but that “we are doing everything we can to rush this assistance out there.”

“It’s a challenging moment,” he told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “We are not going anywhere, and neither are more than some 50 countries that are supporting Ukraine. That will continue, and if Putin thinks he can outlast Ukraine, outlast its supporters, he’s wrong.”

Survivors of flash floods in Afghanistan were still searching for the missing on Monday, days after torrents of water ripped through villages, killing hundreds.

Heavy rains sparked flash flooding in multiple Afghan provinces on Friday, killing more than 300 people in Baghlan alone, UN agencies and Taliban officials said.

Rescue and aid workers have been struggling to reach some of the worst-affected areas with the World Health Organization echoing Taliban government and nonprofit warnings that the death toll could rise significantly.

Samiullah Omari had found the bodies of seven of his relatives, but his uncle and uncle's grandson were still missing.

"We have been searching but we haven't found them," the 24-year-old day laborer told AFP in his village of Fulool.

For kilometers around, mud covers everything, with cars, uprooted trees and limbs of livestock jutting out from the thick brown sludge where homes once stood.

Neither Omari nor his 70-year-old father have ever seen "such havoc-wreaking floods", he said.

The WHO has warned of rising cases of water-borne diseases in flood-affected regions.

In a country with a health system already on its knees, some health facilities were rendered non-operational by the flooding, which damaged or destroyed thousands of homes and swamped agricultural land.

"The full extent of the damage is not yet known, and the country lacks the necessary resources to manage a disaster of this magnitude," the WHO said in a situation report on Sunday.

'Nothing left'

The United Nations agency said it had delivered seven metric tons of medical aid to northern Afghanistan and deployed mobile health teams.

Omari and dozens of other villagers took refuge in a house on higher ground.

"God protected us along with 60-70 people and we survived it," he said, but his house and all his belongings were washed away.

All that was left were the clothes on his back.

"We hope shelter will be provided for us," Omari said, adding that women and children had been "scattered" to other areas to stay with relatives.

All that Bibi Shirin, 35, found from her family's home and food shop was a carpet caught in a tree.

"There was nothing left," she said, tears in her eyes.

Amanullah, who like many Afghans goes by one name, said families had been sleeping in the open air since the destruction.

"We have an urgent need for tents," the patriarch of a family of 25 people told AFP.

"Where should we go, where should we live, there are no tents, no food... we don't have any life left, or the means to start over," said the 60-year-old, who watched the waters engulf his home and livestock, a precious commodity in a country where 80 percent of the more than 40 million people depend on agriculture to survive.

Ghulam Rasool Qani, a 45-year-old tribal elder in Fulool, said 150 dead had already been found in his and neighboring villages.

"We still can't say the exact number of dead and injured from this area because at every moment, our list of victims rises."

'Start over'

Getting aid to the area has been a challenge for rescuers.

Qani said he saw military helicopters the night of the flood, but they were forced to turn back due to poor weather. Helicopters, medical teams and some NGOs later reached the area, braving washed-out roads for hours to reach the isolated village.

Tents had been set up near the village to provide medical aid, as government officials surveyed the damage.

The Taliban public health ministry said on Monday that where roads had been blocked, helicopters had evacuated injured people to neighboring provinces.

"Our teams are on the ground," said Masood Ahmadi, head of the Baghlan health department, adding some non-governmental organizations were also at the scene but lamenting that more had so far "only called and promised to help".

Mohibullah Mohaqiq, 66, held onto hope, even as tears streamed down his face over the loss of all he'd built in Fulool.

"I will rebuild these ruins and make this area green again," he said.

"I trust in this, and I trust that my compatriots will stand with me shoulder by shoulder."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis during talks in Ankara on Monday that there were "no unsolvable problems" between their countries.

Türkiye and Greece, NATO allies and historic foes, have long been at odds over issues including maritime boundaries, energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean, flights over the Aegean Sea, and ethnically split Cyprus.

After years of tensions that brought the two to the brink of conflict, they have started taking high-profile steps to improve ties, especially since both leaders were re-elected last year.

"Despite disagreements, we focus on a positive agenda by keeping our dialogue channels open," Erdogan told a joint press conference with Mitsotakis.

Mitsotakis said the leaders' frequent meetings in recent months had "proved that we neighbors can establish an approach of mutual understanding, not as an exception but as a productive normality".

"We showed today that alongside our proven disagreements, we can chart a parallel page of agreements," he added.

Erdogan visited Athens last December and the two countries signed the "Declaration of Athens" aimed at setting the base for a roadmap to rebooting relations.

They agreed to boost trade, keep communication channels open, carry out military confidence-building measures to reduce tensions, and work on problems that have kept them apart.

The two leaders disagreed over how to classify the Palestinian armed group Hamas. Erdogan reiterated his view that it is a "resistance movement" and said he was saddened by the Greek view - shared by many other Western countries - that it is a terrorist organization.

"Let's agree to disagree," Mitsotakis replied.

On Sunday, Mitsotakis told Turkish daily Milliyet that his visit to Ankara - the first in five years - was an opportunity to evaluate progress and to reiterate Athens' commitment to improving ties.

Erdogan, speaking to Greek daily Kathimerini on Sunday, said the main goal was to "raise the level of our bilateral relations to unprecedented heights", adding the neighbors had many issues they could agree on while seeking solutions to their problems.

However, the allies remain at loggerheads over several issues including maritime jurisdiction.

Greece's plan to build a marine park in the Aegean, which it says is for environmental purposes, has upset Türkiye, while Athens was annoyed by Türkiye’s decision to turn the ancient Chora church, previously a museum for decades, into a mosque.

Police moved in to end a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Amsterdam on Monday after protesters occupied university buildings in various Dutch cities to condemn Israel's war in Gaza, ANP news agency reported.

In local media footage, the students can be heard chanting at the police: "We are peaceful, what are you?" and "Shame on you".

Earlier on Monday, a Dutch protest group said it had occupied university buildings in the Dutch cities of Amsterdam, Groningen and Eindhoven.

The group told Reuters via email that the occupations would continue until the police broke them up and that the protesters would keep returning until the university meets their demands "for transparency (as well as) boycotting and divesting from Israeli institutions".

In a post on social media site X, Amsterdam police said the university had filed a police report against the protesters for acts of vandalism.

Police are making sure no one can enter the university buildings and will ask protesters to leave the premises voluntarily.

A spokesperson for the University of Amsterdam (UvA) confirmed the occupation and said it had advised people not affiliated with the protest to leave the building.

The Eindhoven University of Technology confirmed that there were "dozens of students peacefully protesting outside next to ten to 15 tents". The University of Groningen did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Footage from local media showed a few tents in front of one of the university buildings.

Students in the Netherlands have been protesting against Israel's war in Gaza since last Monday and Dutch riot police had previously clashed with protesters at the University of Amsterdam.

Students in the United States and Europe have been holding mostly peaceful demonstrations calling for an immediate permanent ceasefire and for schools to cut financial ties with companies they say are profiting from the oppression of Palestinians.

If the West wants to fight for Ukraine on the battlefield, Russia is prepared for it, acting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying on Monday.

"It's their right - if they want it to be on the battlefield, it will be on the battlefield," state-run news agency RIA cited Lavrov as saying.

Russia has stepped up warnings about the dangers of a direct confrontation with NATO since French President Emmanuel Macron refused to rule out the possibility that Western troops could at some point be sent there.

The Kremlin said last week that sending NATO troops into Ukraine would potentially be extremely dangerous. President Vladimir Putin has said it could lead to World War Three.

Lavrov, who has served two decades as foreign minister, was speaking at a parliamentary hearing on his renomination to the post in a new government being formed after Putin started a fresh six-year term this month.

RIA also cited him as saying that peace talks on Ukraine due to take place in Switzerland next month without Russia's participation amounted to an ultimatum to Moscow.

He compared the situation to "a reprimand for a schoolchild" whose fate was being decided by teachers while he was out of the room, the agency said.

"You can't talk to anyone like that, especially to us," Lavrov said. "The conference... boils down to restating an ultimatum to Russia."

Ukrainian troops are locked in intense battles with the advancing Russian army in two border areas, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, while the death toll from a Russian apartment building collapse blamed on Ukrainian shelling rose to 15.

Zelenskyy said “fierce battles” are taking place near the border in eastern and northeastern Ukraine as outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian soldiers try to push back a significant Russian ground offensive.

“Defensive battles are ongoing, fierce battles, on a large part of our border area,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address Sunday.

The Kremlin’s forces are aiming to exploit Ukrainian weaknesses before a big batch of new military aid for Kyiv from the US and European partners arrives on the battlefield in the coming weeks and months, analysts say. That makes this period a window of opportunity for Moscow and one of the most dangerous for Kyiv in the two-year war, they say.

The new Russian push in the northeastern Kharkiv region, along with the ongoing drive into the eastern Donetsk region, come after months when the about 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line barely budged. In the meantime, both sides have used long-range strikes in what largely became a war of attrition.

The Kharkiv incursion may be an attempt to create a “buffer zone” to protect Belgorod, an adjacent Russian border region battered by Ukrainian attacks.

Russian emergency services on Monday finished clearing the rubble in the region’s capital city of Belgorod, where a section of a residential building collapsed following what authorities said was Ukrainian shelling.

Fifteen bodies were pulled from the rubble, Belgorod regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said, and 27 other people were wounded.

Another three people in the city of Belgorod were killed by shelling late Sunday, he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday replaced Sergei Shoigu as defense minister in a Cabinet shakeup. Shoigu was widely seen as a key figure in Putin’s decision to send Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022. Russia had expected the operation to quickly overwhelm Ukraine’s army and for Ukrainians to broadly welcome Russian troops.

Zelenskyy said fighting in the Donetsk area is “no less intense” than in Kharkiv. He said the Kremlin aimed to “spread our forces thin” by opening a second active front in Kharkiv.

He described the area around Pokrovsk region, just inside the Ukrainian border in Donetsk, as “the most difficult.”

Pokrovsk was a town of around 60,000 people before the war and was until recently a two-hour drive from the front line. Now it is less than half that.

The capture of the Donetsk city of Avdiivka in February opened a door for the Kremlin’s troops to push westward, deeper into Donetsk. Russia illegally annexed Donetsk and three other regions in 2022 shortly after it invaded Ukraine, and taking control of all of Donetsk is one of the Kremlin’s main war goals.