Russians mourn victims of school attack
MOSCOW — Relatives wept and hugged as the nine people killed in a school shooting in the Russian city of Kazan were buried Wednesday, which was declared a day of mourning in the predominantly Muslim Republic of Tatarstan.
A huge pile of flowers grew at a makeshift memorial outside School No. 175 in the city 430 miles east of Moscow where a gunman opened fire on Tuesday, sending students diving under their desks, running from the building or even jumping from windows on upper floors. He also detonated a homemade bomb.
In addition to the seven students and two employees who died, another 23 people remained hospitalized from the attack at the school, which enrolls children from the first to 11th grades.
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At the funeral of Elvira Ignatyeva, a 26-year-old English teacher, relatives and friends hugged and cried as she was laid to rest.
“She loved children,” said her uncle, Talgat Gumerov, speaking to reporters after the burial.
Investigators gave no motive as to why Ilnaz Galyaviyev, 19, who was arrested in the shooting, would have carried out the attack at his former school. He appeared in court Wednesday, charged with murder, and was ordered to pretrial detention for two months. Officials said he legally owned a firearm.
Bosnian war criminal to serve life in U.K.
LONDON — Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, sentenced to life for war crimes and genocide, will serve his sentence in a U.K. prison, the British government said Wednesday.
Karadzic, 75, is one of the chief architects of the slaughter and devastation of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war. He was convicted by a U.N. court in 2016 of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes — for atrocities including the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb troops at Srebrenica. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison, later increased to life by appeals judges at the court in The Hague.
He is currently in the court’s detention unit, but will be moved to an unspecified U.K. prison.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Karadzic “was responsible for the massacre of men, women and children at the Srebrenica genocide and helped prosecute the siege of Sarajevo with its remorseless attacks on civilians.” “We should take pride in the fact that, from U.K. support to secure his arrest, to the prison cell he now faces, Britain has supported the 30-year pursuit of justice for these heinous crimes,” Raab said.
The conflict in Bosnia was Europe’s bloodiest since World War II, leaving 100,000 dead and millions homeless.
U.N. forces to stay in Sudan border area
The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Tuesday to extend the mandate of the nearly 3,700-strong peacekeeping force in the disputed Abyei region on the Sudan-South Sudan border until Nov. 15.
It also asked Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to provide recommendations for reconfiguring and ending the mission, although Guterres informed the council last month that he couldn’t provide such options because of differences between the two countries.
Both Sudan and South Sudan claim ownership of the oil-rich Abyei area. The 2005 peace deal that led to South Sudan’s independence from its northern neighbor in 2011 required both sides to work out the final status of region, but it is still unresolved.
The resolution asks Guterres to conduct a strategic review of the force assessing recent political developments between Sudan and South Sudan and provide detailed recommendations by Sept. 30 on reconfiguring the mission “and establishing a viable exit strategy.”
Ex-Iran president signs up to run again
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad registered Wednesday to run again for the Islamic Republic’s presidency, raising the possibility that the populist leader who rapidly advanced Tehran’s nuclear program to challenge the West could return to the country’s top civilian post.
Ahmadinejad’s attempt to run again in 2017 disregarded a warning from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who warned the politician his standing for office would be a “polarized situation” that would be “harmful for the county.” This time, however, Khamenei seemingly isn’t directly challenging the candidacy of the 64-year-old former Tehran mayor, who joins an election to replace the relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani. A council Khamenei oversees ultimately will determine if Ahmadinejad and other hopefuls can run in the June 18 election.
Thronged by shouting supporters, Ahmadinejad marched to the Interior Ministry, where he filled out registration forms.
