By Phil Stewart
WIESBADEN, Germany (Reuters) - The United States is hosting war planning exercises in Germany for Ukrainian military officers to help them think through upcoming battlefield decisions, officials said on Thursday, ahead of the next phase of the year-old conflict with Russia.
The multi-day, table top exercises have been carried out at a war-gaming facility at a U.S. Army base in Wiesbaden, Germany, where the top U.S. military officer, Army General Mark Milley, visited on Thursday.
U.S. officials declined to talk through the potential battlefield scenarios that Ukrainian military staff were examining during the drills, which involve thought exercises to evaluate potential military courses of action.
"No one is sitting there telling the Ukrainians, go left or go right or do this or do that. That is not the job of the international community," Milley told reporters traveling with him to Germany. "All we're doing is setting up the framework and the mechanics to allow the Ukrainians to self-learn, to learn against a situation, or various scenarios."
General Darryl Williams, the U.S. Army commander in Europe, praised the dozens of Ukrainian military staff who attended the drills, saying they were "really, really good".
The drills come on the heels of the one-year anniversary of Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, as speculation mounts about what potential offensives Kyiv and Moscow might attempt in the war's second year.
Ukrainian forces repelled Russia's advance on Kyiv early in 2022, and the conflict, which Moscow calls a "special military operation," has become one of grinding trench warfare in the east and south.
In recent months, Russia has also targeted Ukraine's power grid, causing blackouts and loss of water and heat for millions of people across the country.
With both countries showing no sign of backing down, the prospects of an end to the fighting any time soon look bleak.
Russia and the United States' top diplomats spoke face-to-face on Thursday for the first time since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine on the sidelines of a G20 meeting, where ministers traded blame over the conflict.
U.S. Army General Christopher Cavoli, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, told reporters that the United States would stand with Ukraine for "as long as it takes."
The United States and its allies have committed billions of dollars of military aid to Ukraine, including Bradley fighting vehicles, tanks and advanced air defenses.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said last month he hoped the contributions would "make a pretty significant difference in their counteroffensive in the spring."
The United States and its allies are also training Ukrainian forces outside of Ukraine, including combined arms training in Germany.
Milley expressed optimism in Ukraine's military even as he acknowledged a difficult fight ahead.
"I have tremendous confidence in the Ukrainian will to resist. And at the end of the day, the outcome, I believe, will be a free, independent, sovereign Ukraine," Milley said.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Stephen Coates)
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top security adviser and close ally, Nikolai Patrushev, traveled to Havana this week and met the country’s former leader, Raúl Castro, in what Cuban media described as a “working visit.” On Wednesday night, Cuban state television showed images of the aged Cuban leader, 91, who is officially retired, hugging Patrushev, who then greeted Miguel Díaz-Canel, the country’s appointed president. Patrushev, 71, a hardliner who served with Putin in the KGB, the Soviet Union’s intelligence agency, later directed its successor, the Federal Security Service. He later beca...
Wearing flamboyant costumes and masks imitating blue-eyed, bearded Europeans, carnival-goers in Mexico have turned mocking colonizers into an art form.
The colorful celebration stands out from hundreds of other carnivals in Latin America by rekindling the spirit of revenge against erstwhile invaders.
Each year, men in wooden masks playing the role of light-skinned Europeans dance through the streets of Tlaxcala, one of Mexico's smallest states, located 120 kilometers (75 miles) east of the capital Mexico City.
Many sport carefully-trimmed beards resembling those of Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes, while others have mustaches.
Participants in the photogenic festivities recreate the dandy style of the people who crossed the Atlantic to the New World.
Women wear the flowing dresses and elaborate hats of European ladies centuries ago.
The aim is to "mock the invaders... especially their customs and habits, which for the people of Tlaxcala were very effeminate," tourist guide Eduardo Cuautle Xochitemotl said beneath a mural depicting local history.
The feather-topped masks, hand-embroidered clothes and European-style costumes are a celebration of the cultural collisions that have shaped the region.
The Tlaxcalans allied with Cortes to capture the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan -- today Mexico City -- in 1521.
While their collaboration assured them certain privileges, the Tlaxcalans still faced exclusion by powerful Spanish landowners.
"At the time when we were conquered, the big haciendas held huge parties with music and dance, which we, the indigenous people, could not enter," said dancer Carlos Gomez Vazquez.
Another target of the mockery is the French influence that took root in the late 19th century under general-turned-president Porfirio Diaz, whose legacy can be seen today in Mexico City's Parisian-style architecture.
And in modern-day Mexico, centuries-old foes are not the only subjects of ridicule.
"Nowadays the tradition is to mock today's politicians," Xochitemotl said.
© 2023 AFP
SAN DIEGO — Sewage pollution spilling over the border from Tijuana into the San Diego region not only threatens the health of surfers and swimmers but potentially those simply breathing the air. That's according to a study from UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography published Thursday in the journal Environmental Sciences & Technology, which found sewage-linked bacteria in sea-spray aerosols at Imperial Beach. "Once pollutants become airborne that just means so many more people can be exposed to those pollutants," said Kim Prather, principal investigator on the study and director o...
A Belgian woman who murdered her five children in a case that shocked the country has been euthanised at her own request, 16 years to the day after their killing, her lawyer said Thursday.
Genevieve Lhermitte slit the throats of her son and four daughters aged three to 14 with a kitchen knife at the family home in the town of Nivelles on February 28, 2007 while their father was away.
She then tried to commit suicide by stabbing herself, but the attempt failed and she ended up calling the emergency services.
Lhermitte was sentenced to life in prison in 2008, before being moved to a psychiatric hospital in 2019.
The 56-year-old's lawyer Nicolas Cohen confirmed to AFP reports in local media that his client had died through euthanasia on the sixteenth anniversary of the killings on Tuesday.
Belgian law allows for people to chose to be euthanised if they are deemed to be suffering from "unbearable" psychological, and not just physical, suffering that cannot be healed.
The person must be conscious of their decision and be able to express their wish in a reasoned and consistent manner.
"It is this specific procedure that Mrs Lhermitte followed, with the various medical opinions having been collected," her lawyer said.
Psychologist Emilie Maroit told the RTL-TVI channel that Lhermitte likely chose to die on February 28 in a "symbolic gesture in respect for her children".
"It may also have been for her to finish what she started because basically she wanted to end her life when she killed them," Maroit said.
The quintuple murder in 2007 and the subsequent trial rocked Belgium.
Lhermitte's lawyers argued that their client, who had regularly seen a psychiatrist, was mentally disturbed and should not be sent to prison.
But the jury found her guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced her to life in jail after hearing conflicting medical expertise.
In 2010 Lhermitte filed a civil lawsuit demanding up to three million euros ($3.18 million) from a former psychiatrist alleging his "inaction" had failed to prevent the murders, but she ended up abandoning the legal battle after ten years without success.
Last year 2,966 people died via euthanasia in Belgium, an increase of 10 percent compared to 2021, according to the authorities.
Cancer remains the number one reason cited, but officials said for nearly three out of four requests the patient presented "several types of suffering, both physical and psychological".
© 2023 AFP
South African Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius, who killed his girlfriend 10 years ago, will know in about a month whether he will be released on parole, his lawyer said Thursday.
"We have been advised by the parole board that (the) hearing will take place on the 31st of March, 2023," his lawyer Julian Knight told AFP. "It's an internal process".
Pistorius, 36, shot dead Reeva Steenkamp in the early hours of Valentine's Day in 2013 when he fired four times through the bathroom door of his ultra-secure Pretoria house.
He pleaded not guilty and denied that he killed Steenkamp in a rage, saying he mistook her for a burglar.
Pistorius, known worldwide as the "Blade Runner" because of his carbon-fibre prosthetics, was sentenced to 13 years behind bars.
Offenders in South Africa are automatically eligible for parole consideration after serving half of their sentence. Pistorius has served more than half.
A decision is usually known the same day of the parole hearing or a day later, and "if the decision is negative, the offender has the right to approach the courts for review," said Knight.
A year before killing Steenkamp, Pistorius became the first double-amputee to race at the Olympics at the London 2012 games.
He was initially sentenced to six years in jail but the sentence was later lengthened to 13 after the state appealed that it was unduly lenient.
© 2023 AFP
President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday said the era of French interference in Africa was "well over" as he began a four-nation tour of the continent to renew frayed ties.
Anti-French sentiment runs high in some former African colonies as the continent becomes a renewed diplomatic battleground, with Russian and Chinese influence growing in the region.
Macron said France harboured no desire to return to past policies of interfering in Africa ahead of an environment summit in Gabon, the first leg of his trip.
"The age of Francafrique is well over," Macron said in remarks to the French community in the capital Libreville, referring to France's post-colonization strategy of supporting authoritarian leaders to defend its interests.
"Sometimes I get the feeling that mindsets haven't moved along as much as we have, when I read, hear and see people ascribing intentions to France that it doesn't have."
"Francafrique" is a favorite target of pan-Africanists, who say that after the wave of decolonization in 1960 France propped up dictators in its former colonies in exchange for access to resources and military bases.
Macron and his predecessors, notably Francois Hollande, have previously declared that the policy is dead and that France has no intention of meddling in sovereign affairs.
Ahead of his visit, Macron on Monday said there would be a "noticeable reduction" in France's troop presence in Africa "in the coming months" and a greater focus on training and equipping allied countries' forces.
France has in the past year withdrawn troops from former colonies Mali, Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic.
The pullout from Mali and Burkina Faso, where its soldiers were supporting the Sahel nations battle a long-running jihadist insurgency, came on the back of a wave of local hostility.
In his remarks on Thursday, Macron insisted the planned reorganization was "neither a withdrawal nor disengagement", defining it as adapting to the needs of partners.
More than 3,000 French soldiers are deployed in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gabon and Djibouti, according to official figures.
Another 3,000 are in the Sahel region of West Africa, including in Niger and Chad.
Macron landed in Libreville on Wednesday and will later head to Angola, Congo-Brazzaville and the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.
His comments came before several heads of state were due to attend the One Forest Summit in Libreville, which will focus on preserving rainforests that play a vital role in the global climate system.
The forests of the vast Congo River basin represent the planet's second-largest carbon sink after the Amazon.
They are also home to huge biodiversity including forest elephants and gorillas, and bear traces of the settlement of early humanity.
But they face threats such as poaching, deforestation for the oil, palm and rubber industries, and illegal logging and mineral exploitation.
Macron spoke of the challenges of mobilising international finance as he and Gabonese Environment Minister Lee White toured the Raponda Walker Arboretum, a protected coastal area north of Libreville.
"We always speak of billions in our summits, but people see little of it on the ground because the systems are imperfect," he said.
His schedule included meeting scientists, NGOs and private sector actors at the presidential palace.
Other presidents expected to attend the summit are host Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon; Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville; Faustin Archange Touadera of the Central African Republic; Chad's Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno; and Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea.
The gathering kicked off on Wednesday with exchanges between ministers, civil society representatives and experts.
He then stops in the Republic of Congo, another former French colony, where Sassou Nguesso has ruled for a total of almost four decades, and neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.
© 2023 AFP
Without firing a gun or shedding any blood, Odile de Vasselot, Odette Niles and Michele Agniel were among the thousands of women who took part in the resistance against the Nazi German occupation of France during World War II.
Their acts -- which included ferrying messages across enemy lines, smuggling packages and helping Resistance fighters and Allied airmen escape -- carried the risk of imprisonment, torture and even death.
And yet for decades after the war, the roles played by unsung war heroes like these were greatly underestimated and rarely documented.
Aged 101, 100 and 96 respectively, de Vasselot, Niles and Agniel spoke to AFP on the eve of International Women's Day about their part in combatting tyranny.
For 18-year-old de Vasselot, doing nothing was not an option in 1940 when Nazi banners and propaganda posters -- either in German or from the collaborationist regime led by Marshal Philippe Petain -- started appearing on the streets of occupied France.
"I want to fight back!" she said to herself, without knowing how she, a young woman from a well-to-do Catholic family, could help defend her country.
Born in 1922 into a military family, she moved to Paris with her mother and sisters after her father, a soldier, was imprisoned by the Germans.
On November 11, 1940, she took a homemade pompom in blue, white and red to join a student demonstration on the Champs-Elysees avenue, defying a curfew in one of the first public acts of resistance in France.
Two years later, she joined the Resistance as a courier, ferrying packages every week by train between the occupied northern half of the country and the southeastern Free Zone, without daring to peek at the contents.
In 1943, the young woman who went by "Jeanne" on her missions began helping Allied airmen cross France -- picking them up from the Belgian border, providing them with papers and buying their tickets to Spain on their circuitous route back to Britain.
Several times she barely escaped arrest.
On January 4, 1944, she was accompanying two British soldiers on a train when the Gestapo raided the carriage.
They arrested the two men, who were sitting a few rows away from Odile to avoid drawing attention to her.
"I still had their ticket stubs in my pocket," she told AFP. "I ate them".
A young Communist militant before the war broke out, Niles sprang into action as soon as the war started, handing out fliers on the streets of Paris while still at school.
On August 13, 1941, she was arrested along with 16 boys on her way to a demonstration.
Three of the boys were executed and the others imprisoned.
Niles was sent to the Choisel internment camp in western France, where she was kept in barracks swarming with vermin that had wooden crates for beds.
At the camp, the 18-year-old found fleeting romance with Guy Moquet, one of the young heroes of the Resistance, who was executed by firing squad in October 1941.
She was moved from camp to camp for three years before escaping in 1944 and joining the Resistance in Bordeaux. There she met her future husband, Resistance fighter and fellow Communist Maurice Niles.
The pair remained active in left-wing politics for the rest of their lives.
Agniel was the 14-year-old daughter of a World War I veteran when the armistice was signed in the summer of 1940, beginning Germany's occupation of France.
"Right away my father said, 'We have to do something'," said Agniel, who grew up in the Paris suburb of Saint-Mande in a family she described as "profoundly patriotic".
She started smuggling fliers in her schoolbag "between her music copy and her history book".
At checkpoints she would open her bag, but never got searched. Who, after all, would suspect a schoolgirl?
In 1942, the family joined an underground cell that hid escaped prisoners of war, mostly US and British pilots.
Agniel's job was to meet them in the countryside and have them follow her back to Paris by train. She then took them to a photo booth in central Paris to get pictures for false documents.
If anyone asked what she is up to, she had her answer ready: "They're deaf mutes on their way to a special facility in Toulouse", a city in southwest France.
In 1944, two weeks before her final school exams, she was arrested with her parents after an informer alerted the police, and put on the last deportation train out of Paris, just before the city was liberated.
Her father was sent to the Buchenwald camp, where he died.
Agniel and her mother were interned first at Ravensbruck and then at Koenigsberg, where they were liberated by Russia's Red Army on February 5, 1945, and repatriated to Paris.
After the war Agniel became a teacher and for a long time kept silent about her past activism. But the rise of a revisionist far right prompted her to begin telling her story in schools.
Today, she said her testimony had taken on new urgency.
"With what is happening in Ukraine, I am reliving June 1940... We did it, why can't the Ukrainians do it too? We have to help them!"
© 2023 AFP
"Listen to this! One. Two. Three!" Down the crackling phone line from the women's wing of Tehran's Evin prison, a chorus of prisoners then launch into raucous song. It's a Persian rendition of the Italian protest song "Bella Ciao".
"All for one and one for all!" they sing, laughing in shared defiance in support of the "Woman, life, freedom" protests that have shaken Iran's clerical authorities for five months.
The audio clip of the January telephone call, released on social media by a daughter of one of those held, has become a symbol of the courage of the women held in Evin prison and their refusal to stop campaigning even behind bars.
Many such as environmental activist Niloufar Bayani, arrested in 2018, have been held for several years. Others including the activist Narges Mohammadi, tipped by supporters as a Nobel Peace Prize contender, have spent much of the past decade in and out of jail.
Some were arrested well before the women-led protests sparked by the September 16 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurd who had been detained for allegedly violating the strict dress code for women. But their numbers swelled in the ensuing crackdown.
Several women have been released in recent weeks, including Alieh Motalebzadeh, a journalist and women's rights campaigner whose daughter posted the viral clip of the "Bella Ciao" protest song, and French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah.
But campaigners have rejected the amnesty as a PR stunt and key figures remain detained. They include Bayani and Mohammadi and also environmental campaigner Sepideh Kashani, arrested in the same case as Bayani, the labour activist Sepideh Gholian, journalist Golrokh Iraee, arrested in the protest crackdown, and German-Iranian Nahid Taghavi.
Also held in Evin are Fariba Kamalabadi and Mahvash Sabet, two members of the Bahai faith not recognised by the Islamic republic who were detained in July and are now serving a 10-year prison sentence apiece for the second time in their lives.
These women remain deprived of their freedom because Iran's clerical authorities under supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "tremble at their words", said Jasmin Ramsey, deputy director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).
"The hijab headscarf is a pillar of the Islamic revolution and so is the subjugation of women. They hate it when women speak out and say 'I can do anything!'" she told AFP.
Ramsey dismissed the recent amnesty, saying: "The doors of Iranian prisons are revolving when it comes to political prisoners... The prisons will swell when there are more protests."
Of those who remain jailed, she said: "Many need medical help and their basic human rights have been violated for so many years."
The CHRI is now leading a petition signed by almost 40 other rights groups and directed at the current European Union presidency holder Sweden urging EU nations to summon Iranian ambassadors in unison for International Women's Day on March 8.
The ambassadors should be told to "stop detaining and committing violence against women who are calling for basic rights and freedoms in Iran" and to "end the physical and sexual violence against women detainees and protesters", it said.
Mohammadi, a member of the chorus in the "Bella Ciao" song, has in the last months emerged as among the most outspoken of those held, denouncing the conditions in Evin and vocally supporting the protests.
"Narges does not stay silent. This is not acceptable for the Iranian government," her Paris-based husband Taghi Rahmani told AFP in October.
In December, she released an open letter from prison denouncing the sexual assault of detainees and detailing shocking cases of women being raped by their interrogators.
"I believe that we, the brave, resilient, lively and hopeful women of Iran, will come to the streets and will continue to fight despite the government's repressive and violent measures and despite the danger of assault and even rape."
Sepideh Gholian, who is serving a five-year sentence on national security charges after supporting a strike by workers, in a lacerating letter published by BBC Persian in January described the methods used by interrogators to force confessions and the screams heard within the prison.
"Today the sounds we hear... across Iran are louder than the sounds in interrogation rooms; this is the sound of a revolution, the true sound of 'Woman, life, freedom'," she said.
The women have also launched appeals published on the Instagram account of Mohammadi for the Islamic republic to halt executions, after four men were hanged in cases related to the protests.
"The women have shown they are voices of change, freedom and equality. One reason Narges is still there is they (the authorities) are scared of her. She makes them quiver," said Ramsey.
(AFP)
Controversial legal reforms being debated in Israel's parliament have sparked fears in the high-tech and financial sectors that foreign investors will be scared off in a blow to growth prospects.
The new legislation has been spearheaded by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which took office in December and is regarded as the most right-wing in Israeli history.
It aims to curtail the powers of the Supreme Court and give politicians greater powers over the selection of judges.
The proposals could deal a "severe blow to the economy", former Bank of Israel governors have warned in the country that dubs itself the "start-up nation".
Writing recently in the top-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper, former governors Karnit Flug and Jacob Frenkel acknowledged the situation "is still far from that of countries like Hungary and Poland, and its situation is immeasurably better than that of Turkey".
"But it is important to understand that there is a connection between seemingly unrelated processes, such as the ability of the judiciary to criticise the government, and confidence in the economy, which affects economic performance."
Key figures in Israel's high-tech sector -- which accounts for some 15 percent of GDP and more than half of exports -- have played a key role in the protest movement, which has seen mass rallies in Tel Aviv and other cities.
The judicial reform program includes a clause which permits parliament to annul decisions by the Supreme Court, which Netanyahu and his far-right allies view as politicized.
Some analysts say uncertainties related to the reforms have already triggered a decline in the economy, with the value of the Israeli shekel falling seven percent against the US dollar since the end of January.
The shekel slumped further after parliament voted in favor of two clauses at first reading on February 21.
This week it was trading at 3.67 shekels to the dollar, a four-year low.
The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) was down 5.7 percent over the past month.
High-tech workers have taken part in the protests, saying the industry will suffer if foreign firms lose confidence in the legal system and democratic principles.
Dror Salee, a leading high-tech entrepreneur for the past 25 years, says the impact is already being felt.
"There are no figures yet on the decline in foreign investment, which represents 85 percent to 90 percent of investment in high-tech -- but I don't know of a start-up that is managing to raise funds in this moment," Salee said.
"Everything we have built over the past 20 to 30 years is collapsing," added Salee, who has taken part in the protests as one of the leaders of the high-tech sector.
"There is a close link... between economic growth and investment on the one hand and the democratic system on the other", said Omar Moav, economics professor at Britain's University of Warwick and Reichman University near Tel Aviv.
"When the judiciary is weakened and the executive can set the rules of the game at its discretion, it opens the door to corruption and uncertainty, two things that will put off investors and markets."
Salee warned of a "snowball effect", should lawmakers adopt the reforms -- currently being debated in parliament with several legislative stages still to go.
"Israelis, who often go to work abroad in high-tech for a few years, will be more likely to leave and fewer to return," he said.
"The sector will lose its comparative advantage in terms of human capital, which will feed the loss of investments."
Israel's tech sector expanded substantially during Netanyahu's previous 12-year stint in office until 2021. That year the sector accounted for 54 percent of Israeli exports, or $67 billion, according to the most recent figures from the Israel Innovation Authority.
Some critics tie the reform proposals to Netanyahu's trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He denies the allegations and any link between the reforms and his own court case.
But Moav notes that before the corruption cases in 2019, Netanyahu opposed the judicial reforms.
"Netanyahu, who knows full well the economic cost of judicial reform, is ready to pay the price to escape his run-ins with the law," he charged.
© 2023 AFP
The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen, one of Denmark's most iconic landmarks, was vandalised overnight Thursday with a Russian flag painted across the statue's base.
The colors of Russia's flag had been painted on the stone where the statue rests of the heroine from Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen's famous novel, an AFP journalist saw.
Copenhagen police told AFP they had been at the scene in the morning and recorded "a case of vandalism."
"Investigations have been carried out in the area in order to find traces," police added.
An investigation had been opened into act, an apparent sign of support for Moscow in the midst of its war in Ukraine.
A few puzzled tourists photographed the vandalized statue on Thursday morning.
The Little Mermaid -- inspired by a character in Danish poet and author Andersen's 1837 fairytale of the same name -- is a 175-kilogram (385-pound) statue by sculptor Edvard Eriksen.
The statue, which sits on a relatively secluded waterfront promenade, has been vandalized numerous times over the years -- including when the mermaid's head was stolen in 1964 and 1998, as well as when an arm was cut off in 1984.
In 1998, vandals cut off its head again, but it was later returned, before the statue was blown up in 2003.
It has been tagged and painted many times, most recently in 2020 with the mysterious inscription "Racist fish".
© 2023 AFP
Following the announcement of his indefinite touring hiatus, Justin Bieber's tour dates appear ultimately to be scrapped, with fan sites and ticketing outlets reporting cancellations.
All of his concerts, including in the United States, Ireland and France, are marked as cancelled on Ticketmaster's website.
Neither Bieber, 29, nor his representatives have provided reasons for or official confirmation of the cancellations.
The superstar announced he was taking a break from performing last year, saying he'd been diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, a rare complication of shingles that for him caused partial facial paralysis.
"I need to make my health the priority right now," he said at the time.
"I'm going to be OK, but I need time to rest and get better. I've been so proud to bring this show and our message of justice to the world."
Bieber had dozens of performances across the globe scheduled through March 2023.
Ramsay Hunt Syndrome is a rare neurological disorder that can inflame and paralyze the facial nerve and cause a painful rash around the ear or mouth. In addition to facial paralysis, it can cause hearing loss.
© Agence France-Presse
By Lefteris Papadimas
Larissa, GREECE (Reuters) - Rescuers resumed a search on Thursday for survivors of Greece's deadliest train crash, combing through the buckled and crushed remains of carriages that derailed and then caught fire in a disaster that killed at least 38 people.
The high-speed passenger train with more than 350 people on board crashed head-on with a freight train near the city of Larissa late on Tuesday, and hopes of finding anyone still alive in the wreckage more than 34 hours later appeared slim.
"It will be very difficult to find survivors, due to the temperatures that developed in the carriages," 40-year old rescuer Constantinos Imamidis told Reuters.
"This is the hardest thing, instead of saving lives we have to dig out bodies."
Many of the victims were thought to be university students returning home after a long holiday weekend, and officials said the death toll was expected to rise further. Scores were injured.
As Greece sought to process a tragedy that its prime minister blamed on human error, railway workers nationwide walked off the job on Thursday, saying successive governments had ignored repeated demands to improve safety standards.
The station master of Larissa train station was arrested on Wednesday as authorities probed the circumstances that led to the passenger train, en route to the northern city of Thessaloniki, colliding with another train carrying shipping containers coming in the opposite direction on the same track.
He was expected to appear before a local magistrate on Thursday.
Many of the passengers had to kick through windows to escape the flames. Temperatures in one carriage rose to 1,300 Celsius after it caught fire, authorities said.
To identify some of the victims, relatives had to give DNA samples at a hospital in Larissa.
In a televised address on Wednesday night, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis who had earlier visited the site of the crash, said that evidence pointed to a human error.
Government spokesman Giannis Oikonomou was expected to update the media at around midday on Thursday.
Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis had earlier resigned saying he was taking responsibility for the state's long standing failures to fix a railway system he said "was not fit for the 21st century."
Nikos Tsouridis, a retired train driver trainer, said drivers involved in the crash had died "because there were no safety measures.
"And why were there no safety measures? The station master made a mistake, he acknowledged it, but surely there should be a safety mechanism to fall back on," he said.
Greece sold railway operator TRAINOSE under its international bailout programme in 2017 to Italy's Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane, expecting hundreds of millions of euros to be invested in rail infrastructure in the coming years.
The Italian operation has responsibility for passenger and freight, and the Greek state-controlled OSE for infrastructure.
(Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas, Alexandros Avramidis, Renee Maltezou and Michele Kambas; Editing by Michele Kambas and John Stonestreet)
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