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The leaders of 22 Indigenous peoples from five continents held prayers for nature in Chile on Sunday at the end of a 46-day pilgrimage around the world.The “Indigenous sages” carried out an ancestral ceremony of the Anasazi people, who lived in the Chaco Canyon before European settlement in what was to become the US state of New Mexico.It was a ritual that, for the first time, brought together peoples from all over the planet — travelling together on a journey that began in Italy and passed through India, Australia, and Zimbabwe before concluding in Chile. During their closing ceremony, representatives of peoples such as the Khalkha of Mongolia, the Noke Koi of Brazil, and the Kallawaya of Bolivia sang, danced, and prayed to the rhythm of drums, around an altar where they lit a sacred fire. “The feathers represent the continents, and today, for the first time, we have the five continents,” said Heriberto Villasenor, director of Raices de la Tierra, an NGO dedicated to the preservation of Indigenous cultures. At the end of the event, the leaders embraced and shared a message, urging greater care for the environment. “We are part of nature. We are not separate from it. We are at a critical moment when so much destruction has taken place, much of it at human hands,” Rutendo Ngara, 49, a representative of the South African group Oba Umbuntu, told AFP. The leaders also shared their concerns about what is happening in their own home regions.”Unfortunately, they are trying to extract uranium in Mongolia. It is an important element that is supposed to remain underground,” Tsegi Batmunkh said. In January 2025, the French nuclear group Orano signed an agreement with Mongolia to exploit a large uranium deposit in the southwest of the country. The leader of Brazil’s Noke Koi people, Yama Nomanawa, called for an end to the “destruction of the Earth” — particularly in the Amazon basin. According to a 2024 study published in the journal Nature, scientists estimated that between 10 and 47 percent of the Amazon region will be exposed to forest loss by 2050, which could lead to widespread ecosystem change. “The Earth is crying out very loudly, but no one is listening. The jungle is screaming; it is not being respected by humans. Let’s protect life, save life here on the planet,” the 37-year-old Brazilian Indigenous leader said.

US and Russian officials meet in Saudi Arabia on Monday for talks on a partial ceasefire in the Ukraine war, a day after delegates from Washington and Kyiv had their own discussions.US President Donald Trump is pushing for a rapid end to the three-year war and hopes talks in Riyadh could pave the way for a breakthrough.Both sides have proposed different plans for temporary ceasefires, but cross-border attacks have meanwhile continued unabated.Originally planned to take place simultaneously to enable shuttle diplomacy — with the United States going back and forth between the delegations — the talks are now taking place one after the other.The meeting between the Ukrainian team, led by defence minister Rustem Umerov, and the Americans finished up late Sunday night.”The discussion was productive and focused — we addressed key points including energy,” Umerov said on social media, adding Ukraine was working to make its goal of a “just and lasting peace” a reality.Trump envoy Steve Witkoff voiced optimism that any agreement struck would pave the way for a “full-on” ceasefire.”I think you’re going to see in Saudi Arabia on Monday some real progress, particularly as it affects a Black Sea ceasefire on ships between both countries. And from that you’ll naturally gravitate to a full-on shooting ceasefire,” he told Fox News.- Outstanding questions -But the Kremlin on Sunday downplayed expectations of a rapid resolution.”We are only at the beginning of this path,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state TV.He said there were many outstanding questions over how a potential ceasefire might be implemented.Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected a joint US-Ukrainian call for a full and immediate 30-day pause, proposing instead a halt in attacks only on energy facilities.”There are difficult negotiations ahead,” Peskov said in the interview, published on social media.Peskov said the “main” focus in its talks with the United States would be a possible resumption of a 2022 Black Sea grain deal that ensured safe navigation for Ukrainian farm exports via the Black Sea.”On Monday, we mainly intend to discuss President Putin’s agreement to resume the so-called Black Sea initiative, and our negotiators will be ready to discuss the nuances around this problem,” Peskov said.Moscow pulled out of the deal — brokered by Turkey and the United Nations — in 2023, accusing the West of failing to uphold its commitments to ease sanctions on Russia’s own exports of farm produce and fertilisers.A senior Ukrainian official previously told AFP that Kyiv would propose a broader ceasefire, covering attacks on energy facilities, infrastructure and naval strikes.Both sides launched fresh drone attacks on the eve of the negotiations.- Fresh pressure -Ukrainian officials said a Russian drone attack overnight Saturday killed three civilians in Kyiv, including a five-year-old girl and her father.AFP reporters in the capital saw emergency workers treating the wounded early Sunday in front of damaged residential buildings hit in the strike.Deadly strikes on the well-protected city are rarer than elsewhere in the country.Zelensky urged his country’s allies to put fresh pressure on Russia.”New decisions and new pressure on Moscow are needed to bring an end to these strikes and this war,” he posted on social media on Sunday.Moscow heads into the Saudi talks after a rapprochement with Washington under Trump that has boosted confidence in the Kremlin.Peskov said Sunday that the “potential for mutually beneficial cooperation in a wide variety of spheres between our countries cannot be overstated”.”We may disagree on some things but that does not mean we should deprive ourselves of mutual benefit,” he added.

Israel’s military pressed ground operations across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, encircling part of Rafah city near Egypt almost a week into a renewed assault on the Palestinian territory.Deployment of Israeli troops in parts of Gaza, despite calls to revive a January truce with Hamas militants, comes alongside a deadly flare-up in Lebanon and missiles fired from Yemen.The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Sunday that the war triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel had killed at least 50,021 people in the territory.AFP was unable to independently verify the figure. Gaza’s civil defence agency said separately, citing its own records, that the death toll had topped 50,000 people.Hamas’s attack on Israel resulted in 1,218 deaths, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.Israeli troops on Sunday encircled Tal al-Sultan in Rafah, the military said in a statement, adding its objective was to “dismantle terrorist infrastructure and eliminate” militants there.Earlier on Sunday, Israel had warned residents of the area to evacuate.Rafah, in southern Gaza, had already been the target of a major Israeli offensive about a year ago.At a charity kitchen in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city just north of Rafah, 19-year-old Iman al-Bardawil said many displaced Palestinians are struggling to “afford food and drink” during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.”I’m here to get rice for the children, but it’s gone,” said Saed Abu al-Jidyan, who like Bardawil had fled his home in northern Gaza.”The crossings are closed, and my salary has been suspended since the beginning of the war,” he said. “There is no food in Gaza.”With fuel unable to enter the territory, AFP images showed Gazans collecting books from the bombed-out Islamic University in Gaza City to use for cooking fires.- Top Hamas officials killed -Three weeks ago Israel blocked the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and cut electricity in a bid to force Hamas to accept the Israeli terms for an extension of the ceasefire and release the 58 hostages still held by Palestinian militants.On Tuesday, Israel also restarted intense air strikes across the territory.On Friday, Defence Minister Israel Katz said he had ordered the army to “seize more territory in Gaza”, warning Israel could annex it if Hamas failed to heed Israel’s demands for the next steps in the truce process.The comments prompted France to say it opposed “any form of annexation”, while France, Britain and Germany jointly said the resumption of Israeli strikes was “a dramatic step backward”. The European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas will be in Israel and the occupied West Bank on Monday to press for “an immediate return to the full implementation of the ceasefire-hostage release agreement”, her diplomatic service said.Hamas has accused Israel of sacrificing the hostages with its resumption of bombardments. Many families of the captives have called for a renewed ceasefire, noting that most of those returned alive were freed during truce periods.The Israeli military on Sunday said it was conducting operations in Beit Hanun, northern Gaza, where “fighter jets struck several Hamas targets”.An Israeli strike on a tent encampment in Al-Mawasi, in the Khan Yunis area, killed senior Hamas official Salah al-Bardawil and his wife, the Islamist movement said in a statement on Sunday.Air force jets also struck the emergency department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, killing another Hamas political bureau official, Ismail Barhoum, as he underwent treatment, the group and Israel said.Israel has now killed four members of Hamas’s political bureau since the resumption of its air strikes.Bardawil, Israel’s military said, had “directed the strategic and military planning” of Hamas in Gaza and his “elimination further degrades Hamas’s military and government capabilities”, it added.The targeting of Barhoum with “precise munitions” came after extensive intelligence-gathering, it added.- Lebanon strikes -Pope Francis called for an immediate end to the Israeli strikes and for the resumption of dialogue for the release of hostages and to secure a “definitive ceasefire”.According to the Gaza health ministry, at least 637 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Israeli assault since Tuesday.The escalation in Gaza has coincided with waves of Israeli air strikes on Lebanon.Israel’s military on Sunday said it had “attacked and eliminated” a Hezbollah member “in the area of Aita al-Shaab”, southern Lebanon.The strike came a day after the most intense escalation since a November ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war. Lebanon’s health ministry said seven people were killed on Saturday.Israel said it attacked in response to rocket fire, which Iran-backed Hezbollah — an ally of Hamas — denied responsibility for.Since Tuesday, Hamas has fired rockets and Yemen’s Huthi rebels have launched missiles at Israel.Early Sunday, Israel said it had intercepted another missile from Yemen, where the Iran-backed Huthis say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians.Resumption of the fighting in Gaza has coincided with a reignited protest movement in Israel, against Netanyahu’s policies generally as well as against the war.Demonstrators on Sunday scuffled with police outside the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem, AFP images showed.

An Israeli air strike on Sunday killed a member of Hamas’s political bureau as he underwent treatment in hospital, a source in the Islamist movement said, after Israel confirmed it targeted “a key terrorist”.”The Israeli army assassinated Hamas political bureau member Ismail Barhoum,” the Hamas source said, requesting anonymity to speak more freely.”Warplanes bombed the operating room at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, where Barhoum was receiving treatment after sustaining critical injuries in an air strike targeting his home in Khan Yunis at dawn last Tuesday.”AFP photos showed the building of about four-storeys largely undamaged except for fire blazing in one section off a stairwell.Barhoum is the fourth member of Hamas’s political bureau killed since last Tuesday when Israel resumed air strikes in the territory after an impasse over continuing a ceasefire.Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz confirmed in a statement that Barhoum had been targeted in the strike. The Israeli military said it hit the hospital with “precise munitions” following extensive intelligence-gathering. It said the target was a key member of “the Hamas terrorist organisation who was operating inside the Nasser Hospital compound.”The Ministry of Health in Hamas-run Gaza said Israeli forces “have just targeted the surgery building inside the Nasser Medical Complex, which houses many patients and wounded individuals, and a large fire has erupted at the site.”The ministry later confirmed that one person had been killed and said many others were injured, including some medical staff. The entire department was evacuated, the ministry said in a statement. Gaza’s civil defence rescue agency said the hospital’s emergency department had been targeted. Earlier Sunday, Hamas said an Israeli air strike the previous day near Khan Yunis killed Salah al-Bardawil, a senior member of its political bureau.Bardawil, 65, was killed along with his wife in a camp in al-Mawasi, the group said.The Israeli military confirmed that it had targeted Bardawil, saying that “as part of his role, (he) directed the strategic and military planning” of Hamas in Gaza.His “elimination further degrades Hamas’ military and government capabilities”, it added.

Three civilians were killed Sunday in an artillery attack by paramilitaries on Omdurman, part of Greater Khartoum, a medical source told AFP, two days after the army recaptured the capital’s presidential palace in a major symbolic victory.Eyewitnesses in the area said the bombardments by the Rapid Support Forces were some of the heaviest in recent months.Since April 2023, the RSF has been fighting Sudan’s regular army in a war that has killed tens of thousands, uprooted over 12 million and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.Analysts have warned that the army’s gains, while significant, are unlikely to end the fighting, as the paramilitary claimed territory in remote areas of the country and attacked a famine-hit displacement camp in the western Darfur region.Since it began, the war has been marked by mass atrocities against civilians, including bombs and artillery routinely hitting homes, markets and displacement camps.”Before, there used to be four or five rounds of shelling, and there was time between one strike and the next,” one resident of Omdurman told AFP, requesting anonymity for fear of retaliation.”This morning there were seven, one right after the other,” he said.The medical source at Al-Nao hospital, one of the city’s last functioning health facilities, said “two children and a woman were killed and eight others injured in the shelling”.- Clearing operation -In recent days, the army and allied armed groups have regained most of Khartoum proper’s government district, just across the Nile from Omdurman.RSF fighters remain stationed in parts of the city centre including the airport, as well as the capital’s south and west.From their positions in western Omdurman, they have regularly launched strikes on civilian areas.In February, over 50 people were killed in a single RSF artillery attack on a busy Omdurman market.After a year and a half of humiliating army defeats, the tide seemed to turn late last year, when a military counteroffensive through central Sudan dislodged the RSF from key bases.Since January, the army has retaken much of the capital Khartoum, with the army and allied armed groups on Friday seizing the country’s presidential palace.The paramilitary force responded with what it called a “lightning operation” including a drone strike that killed three journalists and a number of army personnel.The military has since launched a clearing operation to push the RSF out of the city centre, on Saturday retaking several strategic state institutions including the central bank, state intelligence headquarters and the national museum.An RSF source on Saturday told AFP the paramilitary had “withdrawn from some locations” but that forces were waging “a fierce battle” near the airport.The army has also seized key infrastructure, pushing on Saturday through Tuti Bridge to reclaim Tuti Island, which sits at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles in the centre of Greater Khartoum and has been under paramilitary control for nearly two years.- Attacks nationwide -Despite the army’s advances in the capital, Sudan remains effectively split in two, with the army holding the east and north while the RSF controls nearly all of the western region of Darfur and parts of the south.It has been unable to seize the North Darfur state capital El-Fasher — crucial to consolidating its hold on the vast western region — despite a 10-month siege.RSF shelling on the famine-hit displacement camp of Abu Shouk killed two civilians and injured three others, the local activists’ committee in El-Fasher said on Sunday.The day before, the El-Fasher resistance committee said at least 45 civilians were killed when the paramilitary seized the small town of Al-Malha, around 200 kilometres northeast of El-Fasher.Al-Malha is one of the northernmost towns in the vast desert region between Sudan and Libya, where the RSF’s critical resupply lines have come under increasing attack in recent months by army-allied armed groups.On Sunday, the paramilitary also claimed control of Lagawa, a town in Sudan’s southern West Kordofan state, some 600 kilometres (370 miles) southwest of Khartoum.Eyewitnesses in the town told AFP that RSF fighters had set up checkpoints on the streets.

Israel’s cabinet passed a vote of no confidence on Sunday in the attorney general, the justice minister said, moving against a vocal critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and deepening a political rift in the country.The vote against Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara is the first step in a process to dismiss her, and came two days after the government fired the head of the country’s internal security agency.Israel’s Supreme Court subsequently froze the firing of Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, and Baharav-Miara has cautioned the prime minister against trying to replace him.The unprecedented moves to dismiss the Shin Bet chief and now the attorney general have widened divisions in the country as Israel resumes its military operations in the Gaza Strip.A reignited protest movement has seen demonstrators accuse the prime minister of threatening democracy.Netanyahu’s office, citing a cabinet meeting agenda, had said the government would hold the vote on Baharav-Miara “due to her inappropriate behaviour and due to significant and prolonged differences between the government and the government’s legal adviser”.On Friday, Israel’s top court froze the government’s bid to fire Bar, shortly after the filing of five separate appeals, including from opposition leader Yair Lapid’s centre-right Yesh Atid party.A detailed hearing on the appeals will take place on April 8, presided over by three judges including Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit, the spokeswoman for the Israeli courts told AFP.Yesh Atid has denounced the decision to fire Bar as being “based on flagrant conflict of interest”.Netanyahu has cited an “ongoing lack of trust” in Bar, who is expected to testify on April 8.The prime minister has insisted it is up to the government who will head Shin Bet.- Security failure -The opposition appeal highlighted what critics see as the two main reasons Netanyahu moved against Bar.The first was his criticism of the government over the security failure that allowed Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the deadliest day in the country’s history.The second was what the opposition appeal said is a Shin Bet investigation of Netanyahu’s close associates on suspicion of receiving money linked to Qatar.Netanyahu’s office has dismissed such accusations as “fake news”.Following the Supreme Court’s initial ruling, Baharav-Miara said Netanyahu cannot name a new internal security chief.”According to the decision of the Supreme Court, it is prohibited to take any action that harms the position of the head of the Shin Bet, Ronen Bar,” she said. “It is prohibited to appoint a new head of Shin Bet, and interviews for the position should not be held.” Ahead of the vote on Baharav-Miara, hundreds of protesters demonstrated outside parliament and the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem, leading to scuffles with police.Justice Minister Yariv Levin has criticised Baharav-Miara, a defender of judicial independence, for questioning the legality of certain governmental decisions.The attorney general should not “take advantage of her position for political aims that completely paralyse the work of the government,” he said.