IN BRIEF

2 children killed in strike on Kyiv

RUSSIA launched an air attack on Kyiv early Thursday, killing at least three people including two children and bringing fresh terror to the city after a week of strikes.

Moscow’s forces have recently launched a series of aerial assaults on the Ukrainian capital, including an unusual daytime attack on Monday that sent residents running for shelter.

Thursday’s attack began around 3:00 am local time (0000 GMT) when cruise and ballistic missiles were fired on the city, killing three people and injuring 10 others, officials said.

“Among the three dead in the Desnyansky district, there were two children (aged 5-6 and 12-13),” the Kyiv City Military Administration wrote on Telegram.

In Russia’s western Belgorod region, at least two people were wounded Thursday morning in an attack blamed on Ukrainian troops, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.

“This night is tense for Shebekino again. Ukrainian troops were shelling the city for an hour,” he said.

Russia said Wednesday it was evacuating hundreds of children from villages due to intensifying shelling in the border region of Belgorod, where the situation was deemed “alarming” by the Kremlin. AFP

Ex-Liberia warlord faces appeal ruling

A SWISS appeals court will on Thursday hand down its verdict in the case of a former Liberian warlord accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Alieu Kosiah was found guilty in June 2021 of multiple atrocities committed during the first of Liberia’s back-to-back civil wars, in which around 250,000 people died between 1989 and 2003.

Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court in the southern city of Bellinzona found him “guilty of violating the laws of war.”

The verdict marked the first time a Liberian was convicted – either within the west African nation or anywhere else – of war crimes committed during the conflict.

Kosiah, who settled in Switzerland in 1998 and was arrested in the country in 2014, appealed the verdict.

The 48-year-old maintains he is innocent and has requested a full acquittal.

“He has always contested the facts,” his lawyer Dimitri Gianoli told AFP. “He is confident he will be acquitted.” AFP