China to expel Canada’s consul in Shanghai IN BRIEF

India bus crash kills 15, injures dozens

AT LEAST 15 people were killed and dozens injured when a bus crashed off a bridge in central India, officials said Tuesday, after the driver reportedly fell asleep at the wheel.

MYANMAR’S military used a “vacuum bomb” in an air strike on an opposition village that killed dozens of people in a likely war crime last month, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday. Fighting has ravaged large tracts of Myanmar since a military coup in 2021 that sparked renewed clashes with ethnic rebel groups, as well as the formation of dozens of “People’s Defense Forces” now battling the junta.

The military bombed a gathering in an opposition stronghold last month that media and locals said killed about 170 people, sparking renewed global condemnation.

The military had used a thermobaric bomb in the attack on Pazi Gyi village in Sagaing region, HRW said. Their assessment was based on analysis of 59 photos of the victims’ bodies and a video of the site following the strike.

Thermobaric bombs, also known as “vacuum bombs” are more powerful than conventional high-explosive munitions and use two separate charges.

The first scatters a fuel mixture as a cloud around the target and the second detonates the cloud, sucking the oxygen out of the atmosphere and forming a huge fireball.

The thermobaric bomb used in Pazi Gyi had caused “indiscriminate and disproportionate civilian casualties... and was an apparent war crime,” HRW said.