Death toll from Maui fire reaches 106, as county begins identifying victims

where to get water and supplies.

grid and nearly 120 residential buildings were damaged.

The Swedish bearings maker SKF confirmed three employees were killed overnight after its factory in Lutsk, north of Lviv, was hit by a missile strike. One person was killed in the east of Ukraine in Kramatorsk after Russian forces hit a food warehouse. In central Ukraine, a strike left parts of the city of Smila without access to water and also damaged a medical facility.

The barrage came a day after Russian forces unleashed a wave of missile and drone strikes on Odesa in the country’s southwest.

Russian forces have pummeled Odesa, hitting facilities that transport Ukraine’s crucial grain exports and also wrecking cherished Ukrainian historical sites. The repeated attacks on Odesa follow Moscow’s decision to break off a landmark agreement that had allowed grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia and help reduce the threat of hunger.

In Russia on Tuesday, Vladimir Putin addressed a security conference outside Moscow in a pre-recorded video statement, accusing the West of fueling the conflict “by pumping billions of dollars” into Kyiv and “supplying it with equipment, weapons, ammunition, sending their military advisers and mercenaries.”

“Everything is being done to ignite the conflict even more, to draw other states into it,” Putin said.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu sought to downplay the significance of the West’s support for Ukraine, saying that despite that, Kyiv’s forces “fail to achieve results on the battlefield.”

On Thursday, Sweden announced a 3.4 billion-kronor ($314 million) aid package consisting of ammunition for equipment from previous Swedish military assistance.

Litvinova reported from Tallinn, Estonia. Associated Press writer Emma Burrows in London contributed to this report.

Deadly clashes between rival militias in Libya leave 27 dead, authorities say

By Jack Jeffery The Associated Press

CAIRO—Deadly clashes between rival militias in Libya’s capital killed at least 27 people and left residents trapped in their homes on Tuesday, unable to escape the violence, medical authorities said.

The fighting appears to be the most intense to shake Tripoli this year. There were at least four people dead but it was not immediately clear if they were militiamen or civilians, an official said.

By Claire Rush, Jennifer Sinco Kelleher & Christopher Weber

The Associated Press

LAHAINA, Hawaii—A mobile morgue unit arrived Tuesday to help Hawaii officials working painstakingly to identify remains, as Maui County released the first names of people killed in the wildfire that all but incinerated the historic town of Lahaina a week ago and raised the death toll to 106.

The county named two victims, Lahaina residents Robert Dyckman, 74, and Buddy Jantoc, 79, adding in a statement that a further three victims have been identified. Those names will be released once the county has identified their next of kin.

The US Department of Health and Human Services deployed a team of coroners, pathologists and technicians along with exam tables, X-ray units and other equipment to identify victims and process remains, said Jonathan Greene, the agency’s deputy assistant secretary for response.

“It’s going to be a very, very difficult mission,” Greene said. “And patience will be incredibly important because of the number of victims.”

The county said in a statement that the first people so named were among the dead. A week after a blaze tore through historic Lahaina, many survivors started moving into hundreds of hotel rooms set aside for displaced locals, while donations of food, ice, water and other essentials poured in.

Crews using cadaver dogs have scoured about 32 percent of the area, the County of Maui said in a statement Tuesday. The governor asked for patience as authorities became overwhelmed with requests to visit the burn area.

Maui Police Chief John Pelletier renewed an appeal for families with missing relatives to provide DNA samples. So far 41 samples have been submitted, the county statement said, and 13 DNA profiles have been obtained from remains.

The governor warned that scores more bodies could be found. The wildfires, some of which have not yet been fully contained, are already the deadliest in the US in more than a century. Their cause was under investigation.

When asked by Hawaii News Now if children are among the missing, Green said Tuesday: “Tragically, yes.... When the bodies are smaller, we know it’s a child.”

He described some of the sites being searched as “too much to share or see from just a human perspective.”

Another complicating factor, Green said, is that storms with rain and high winds were forecast for the weekend. Officials are mulling whether to “preemptively power down or not for a short period of time, because right now all of the infrastructure is weaker.”

A week after the fires started, some residents remained with intermittent power, unreliable cellphone service and uncertainty over where to get assistance.

Some people walked periodically to a seawall, where phone connections were strongest, to make calls. Flying low off the coast, a single-prop airplane used a loudspeaker to blare information about

Victoria Martocci, who lost her scuba business and a boat, planned to travel to her storage unit in Kahalui from her Kahana home Wednesday to stash documents and keepsakes given to her by a friend whose house burned. “These are things she grabbed, the only things she could grab, and I want to keep them safe for her,” Martocci said. The local power utility has already faced criticism for not shutting off power as strong winds buffeted a parched area under high risk for fire. It’s not clear whether the utility’s equipment played any role in igniting the flames.

Kelleher reported from Honolulu and Weber from Los Angeles. Associated Press journalists Bobby Caina Calvan in Kihei, Hawaii; Haven Daley in Kalapua, Hawaii; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Missouri; and Darlene Superville and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed.

The clashes erupted late on Monday between militiamen from the 444 brigade and the Special Deterrence Force, according to local media reports. Tensions flared after Mahmoud Hamza, a senior commander of the 444 brigade, was allegedly detained by the rival group at an airport in Tripoli earlier in the day, the reports said.

Over 100 people were injured in the fighting, Libya’s Emergency Medicine and Support Center, a medical body that is deployed during humanitarian disasters and wars, said early Wednesday.

It is unclear how many of the dead were militiamen or civilians. The Red Crescent did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Throughout the fighting Tuesday, the Health Ministry urged the warring sides to allow ambulance and emergency teams to enter the affected areas, primarily in the south of the city, and for blood to be sent to nearby hospitals.

OPSGroup, an organization for the aviation industry, said late Monday that a large number of aircraft departed from Tripoli due to the clashes. Inbound flights were being diverted to the nearby city of Misrata, it said.

The escalation follows months of relative peace after nearly a decade of civil war in Libya, where two rival sets of authorities are locked in a political stalemate. Longstanding divisions have sparked several incidents of violence in Tripoli in recent years, although most have been over in a matter of hours.

In a statement Tuesday, the U.N. mission in Libya said it was following with concern “the security incidents and developments” and called for an immediate end to the ongoing clashes.

Both of Libya’s rival administrations also condemned the fighting in separate statements Tuesday. The House of Representatives, which is based in the eastern city of Benghazi, blamed its rival, the Tripolibased government, for the violence.

The US and British embassies in Libya issued statements expressing concerns over the violence. The United States called for an “immediate de-escalation in order to sustain recent Libyan gains toward stability and elections,” the American Embassy said.

The oil-rich country has been divided since 2014 between rival administrations in the east and the west, each supported by an array of well-armed militias and different foreign governments. The North African nation has been in a state of upheaval since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising toppled and later killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.