Erst ein Vulkanausbruch, nun die Corona-Pandemie: Die Bewohner des Inselstaats sollen nun weitgehend in ihren Häusern bleiben – dabei sind die Schäden nach der Eruption noch nicht komplett behoben.
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Zweieinhalb Wochen nach dem gewaltigen Ausbruch des Untersee-Vulkans Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai bei Tonga muss der Südsee-Staat nun auch noch einen Corona-Ausbruch bekämpfen. Zwei Arbeiter seien bei routinemäßigen Tests in einer Werft in der Hauptstadt Nuku’alofa positiv auf das Virus getestet worden, sagte Premierminister Siaosi Sovaleni am Mittwoch. Der Inselstaat gehe ab 18 Uhr (Ortszeit) in einen Lockdown, ordnete die Regierung an.
Tonga hatte im März 2020 seine Grenzen geschlossen und sich seither von der Außenwelt weitgehend abgeschottet. Bislang wurde seit Beginn der Pandemie nur eine einzige Corona-Infektion bestätigt, nachdem im vergangenen Jahr ein Flugzeug aus Neuseeland gelandet war.
Schulen zu, Verkehr fast eingestellt
Deshalb war nach dem Vulkanausbruch die Sorge groß, dass ausländische Helfer das Virus einschleppen könnten. Um die Bevölkerung nicht zu gefährden, erfolgte die Lieferung der Hilfsgüter aus Neuseeland und Australian kontaktlos – es gab somit keinen direkten Kontakt zwischen den Hilfscrews und den Menschen in Tonga. Wo sich die Werftarbeiter infiziert haben, war zunächst unklar.
Unter anderem wird nun der Schiffs- und Bootsverkehr sowie auch der Flugverkehr zwischen den verschiedenen Inseln des Archipels eingestellt. Schulen sollen geschlossen werden, die Menschen wurden aufgefordert, weitgehend in ihren Häusern zu bleiben. Die Regierung will die Lage alle 48 Stunden neu bewerten.
Schäden des Vulkanausbruchs noch nicht behoben
Die durch die Eruption zusammengebrochenen Kommunikationsverbindungen sind allerdings immer noch gestört. „Tonga steht nun vor seinem ersten Covid-19-Lockdown, bevor die Telekommunikation vollständig wiederhergestellt wurde und bevor Unternehmen und Haushalte wieder funktionierendes Internet haben”, schrieb das Portalga „Matangi”.
Der unterseeische Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai, der nur 65 Kilometer nördlich von Tongas Hauptstadt Nuku’alofa liegt, war am 15. Januar ausgebrochen und hatte eine gigantische Wolke aus Asche und Gas kilometer.weert inschle Hughle Die Eruption löste einen Tsunami aus, dessen Flutwellen sogar weit entfernte Regionen wie Alaska und Südamerika erreichten. Tongas Regierung bestätigte drei Tote und mehrere Verletzte.
Defense Radar Hit – The strike against Iran may have been more successful than expected
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“Europe needs to wake up urgently” – Israeli President on WELT TV
Israeli President Isaac Herzog warned that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. “It is clear that the greatest threat to stability in the world is Iran's desire to obtain the nuclear bomb,” Herzog said on WELT TV. Watch the full interview with Paul Runzheimer here.
You can listen to our WELT podcasts here
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The Iranian leadership has been complaining since the end of last week that Israel only shoots with toys. But now satellite images have emerged. They show: Whatever Israel used, the system was extremely accurate.
DrAccording to satellite images, the Israeli retaliatory attack against Iran last weekend caused more damage than the government in Tehran admitted. Planet Labs PBC released satellite images taken Monday morning near Isfahan airport and air base, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) south of Tehran.
Accordingly, it appears that the radar system of the S-300 anti-aircraft battery was hit. Therefore, the Israeli attack was more effective than the Iranian attack on Israel on April 13.
“This strike demonstrates Israel’s ability to penetrate Iran’s air defense system,” said Nicole Grajewski, a nuclear security expert at the Carnegie Endowment and author of a forthcoming book on Russia and Iran. “The accuracy of the shot was amazing.”
This photo shows burn marks surrounding what analysts believe to be a radar system from a Russian S-300 missile battery
Source: German News Agency/-
This is what the Russian S-300 air defense system looks like – photo from Tehran
Source: German News Agency/Wahid Salmi
Iran and Israel have been waging a kind of shadow war against each other for years, which escalated in April when two Iranian generals, among others, were killed in an attack on the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital, Damascus, that was attributed to Israel. Iran responded with a major attack with missiles, cruise missiles and drones, almost all of which were intercepted by Israel.
Then Iranian air defenses opened fire on Friday, and Iran imposed a ban on commercial flights in large parts of the country. Officials tried to downplay the importance of the Israeli attack, saying only that it included a series of small drones.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said in an interview with NBC, “What happened (…) was not an attack.” “They were more like the toys our kids play with — not drones.”
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But satellite images showed a different picture. Initial satellite images showed signs of fire around the facilities in Isfahan, although it was not clear what was at the site. In images taken Monday, image analyst Chris Biggers sees burn marks around the so-called foldable radar system used for the Russian S-300 system.
Other components of the missile system appear to have been removed from the facility before the attack, even though it provides protection for Iran's underground nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz. “Given the system, the location, and the way it was posted, this is a strong message,” Biggers wrote.
On the other hand, Iran stuck to its narrative. Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said: “The concerned authorities reported that this attack did not cause any damage and that the Iranian defense system carried out its tasks.” “Therefore, we believe that this matter does not deserve to be raised.”
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The European Union is now moving forward with its plans to impose new sanctions on Iran. At a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday, foreign ministers from the 27 member states instructed EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell to make concrete proposals. These sanctions are intended to enable further trade restrictions to make it difficult for the country to build and develop drones and missiles.
It is also planned to impose punitive measures against individuals, organizations and companies involved in the production of drones and missiles and their delivery to Iran’s allies in the Middle East.
Russian propaganda describes US military aid to Kiev as meaningless. The delivery of weapons appears imminent.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov needed 47 seconds on Monday to downplay the new US aid package for Ukraine: “Basically, the situation on the battlefield does not change anything. The Russian Armed Forces are improving their position.” This dynamic is completely understandable to everyone. American money will not This will only increase losses on the Ukrainian side.
Moscow remains more confident than ever of victory, even though the US House of Representatives agreed to provide $61 billion to Ukraine after a five-month conflict. Senate confirmation is a formality; The first containers loaded with missiles and missiles should be ready for transport in Germany. But the Kremlin and its media are chanting as if they are going to Russia.
Russia announced that it had captured the Leopard 2.
Russia wins and wins, Russian media reported. „Leopard 2” was captured and the village of Bogdanovka was finally occupied. People are celebrating the downing of a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter-bomber, according to state TV station Piatej Kanal, the 591st enemy aircraft destroyed since the start of the „special warfare operation” – even though Ukraine actually had fewer than 130 fighters. Airplanes at that time.
Moscow military expert Viktor Litovkin confirms that the ATACMS missiles that the United States is now delivering to Ukraine “are like rifle bullets to an elephant for us.” ATACMS missiles with a range of up to 300 kilometers would certainly have been suitable to hit the Crimean bridge, at a cost of three billion euros.
But according to aif.ru, the United States will spend at least 80 percent of the aid to Ukraine to restore its weapons reserves. “Even the money that reaches Kiev has to be repaid,” says State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin. The United States is forcing Ukraine to wage war to the last Ukrainian and ultimately bury its economy.
American film fits the narrative
No one in Russia is discussing the consequences of delivering new precision projectiles to Ukrainian front-line forces in conjunction with the combat drones they already use extensively, in their spring offensive in Donbass. “Western experts agree that neither long-range missiles, nor aircraft, nor anything else can help the Ukrainian army,” the “life.ru” portal reported. It does not provide any quotes.
Russia's public political sector operates like a propaganda brigade, striving at all costs to maintain its narrative that the invincible Russian war machine is slowly crushing all forms of resistance. “It seems as if they are ready to turn all logic upside down,” says a liberal political scientist in Moscow, anonymously. Former President Dmitry Medvedev is already calling for a devastating civil war in the United States. Medvedev clearly saw the American film “Civil War,” which is now showing in almost every cinema in Moscow, as “the end of the empire.”
Russian media repeatedly quoted the newspaper „Global Times”. She wrote that Russia had the resources to deliver the „final blow.” But he did not mention that the Global Times is an English-language newspaper affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, and that the author of this sentence is actually an Italian expert.
On the other hand, the loyal press hears nothing about the article published by the Chinese-Russian political scientist Feng Yujun in the Economist newspaper. And that Yugun believed that the defeat of Moscow was inevitable. He cites the “cocoon of information” into which Vladimir Putin has fallen due to his long dictatorship as one of the reasons. The Kremlin lacks reliable intelligence, and the state's leadership operates under a system that lacks an effective correction mechanism.
Given the lack of open and controversial discussions, the entire political public in Russia is likely to suffer from this problem.
The Russian army is approaching the town of Chasiv Yar, located on the front line in Donbas, in several sectors of the front. Moscow's losses are not only enormous here.
Chasev Yar – What these photos of the Ukrainian war in Russia suggest is pure speculation. Ultimately, the Kremlin regime promotes murder and death as if the population were behind the “special military operation,” as the attack on Moscow’s western neighbor is called, which violates international law.
Ukraine War: Russian soldiers complain of heavy losses
Anton Herashchenko, Advisor to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry and former Deputy Interior Minister of Ukraine (2019 to 2021), shared a video of three Russian soldiers from the front on X (formerly Twitter) which was a blast for the regime of Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin.
In this video, the three men, recognizable by their Moscow Army uniforms, complain vociferously about the heavy losses Russia has suffered against the Ukrainian armed forces and about the allegedly devastating conditions in which they have to fight against the defenders. In the pictures, they appear completely surrendered and terrified.
Casualties in the Ukraine War: Russian soldiers reported many corpses
“We can't do anything, we're just cannon fodder. We've been bombed with all kinds of weapons,” one Russian soldier says in the video from a makeshift hole that was supposed to serve as a fire shelter. Another soldier talks about potential casualties in her unit: “There were 19 people out today. Zero left. They're all gone.” The other soldier continues, cataloging the nature of the Ukrainian bombing: „Cluster munitions are a nightmare. „It's the second day they've been shooting at us with cluster munitions.” He explains that the Ukrainians, using cluster munitions, prevented them from returning to their company.
„There's no contact with anyone, we don't have anything. Why were we thrown here?” One soldier explains, and the other replies: “There are bodies everywhere.” They both look very disappointed while the third soldier depicts the sad scenario. They say that when they were „dumped” into the area, their armored personnel carrier was set on fire with all their supplies and equipment. The tank was „shot down immediately.” They have no shovels to dig trenches. “No water, nothing,” one soldier explains. “If we hadn’t been bombed, we could have gone out and filmed how many boys were lying and lying and lying,” says the other. „Here in this forest.” And also: „Everything is covered with corpses.”
If we had not been bombed, we could have gone out and photographed how many men lie and lie in this forest.
Russia's heavy losses: Putin's army nevertheless advances towards Chasev Yar
At the end of April 2024, their report from the front lines is in line with Western observers' assessments of the military situation in the Ukrainian war, as the United States launches $61 billion in new military aid to Kiev. In several parts of the Donbass frontline, Putin's forces are nonetheless approaching the „fortified city of Chasiv Yar” (formerly population 13,000), according to the US news magazine. Newsweek The small town is five kilometers west of Bakhmut.
An indication of the current course of the war: the Ukrainians actually wanted to retake Bakhmut from there, which was evacuated in May 2023, but the Russian army has long since begun to attack here – as in many places. According to the report, the Ukrainian military recently warned that Russia wants to advance from Chasev Yar to Kramatorsk and Slovyansk. The large city of Kramatorsk, with a population of about 150,000, is the Ukrainians' central logistical point for the Donbass front due to its large train station and well-developed rail network to Kharkiv in the northeast of the country.
The town of Chasiv Yar is on the front line in Ukraine: Russia suffers heavy losses in Donbass
However, Chasev Yar is “strongly defended” and located on a hill, the British Ministry of Defense explained in an assessment of the situation on Sunday (April 22): “Russian ground forces are making slow progress in the area.” Institute for the Study of War (ISW) However, he wrote in an analysis that the invasion of Chasiv Yar “would enable Russia to penetrate the belt of operationally important fortified cities in Ukraine.”
Chasiv Yar and Kramatorsk are of great military importance not only to the Ukrainian army in the east of the country, but also to the neighboring city of Kostyantinivka, which once had a population of 70,000. high Newsweek Kostiantynivka is the „backbone of Ukrainian defence” in the Donetsk region. The city is located approximately six kilometers southwest of the besieged district of Chasiv Yar. It remains to be seen how the expected deliveries of several US 155-meter artillery shells will affect the front line in this Ukrainian region. (evening)
