分类： world

A massive 7.8-magnitude offshore earthquake that struck the southern Philippines on Monday has killed at least 35 people, injured 134 more, and left a dozen others missing, local and national disaster officials confirmed. The quake, which hit south of General Santos – a coastal city home to roughly 720,000 residents – triggered immediate tsunami warnings across the wider Southeast Asia-Pacific region and reduced multiple buildings to rubble.

Within just two hours of the initial shock, the United States Geological Survey recorded a string of powerful aftershocks across the affected area, with the strongest registering a magnitude of 6.5, prolonging danger for local communities. In General Santos, the local command center has recorded 12 fatalities so far, with rescue efforts stretched thin across the disaster zone.

As darkness fell on the city, Agence France-Presse reporters on the ground witnessed rescue workers digging through the collapsed concrete of a well-known local grocery chain with their bare hands, locked in a desperate race to reach two employees trapped under the debris. For 35-year-old security guard Morphy Angcad, the waiting has been agonizing: his sister is one of the two missing workers. Refusing an offered hotel room to stay at the site, he told reporters, “I don’t want to leave this site until I see the body of my sister… (but) I’m hoping against hope that she is still alive.”

Dioslinda Deluvio, mother of the second missing employee Joey, shared her grief with AFP. Weeks before the disaster, her son had visited her and asked, “Ma, what is your plan for your life? Are you OK?” Now, she said, “All I can do is cry now, imagining the good things he did in the world.”

A few kilometers from the collapsed grocery store, hundreds of residents who fled their damaged structures prepared to spend the night out in the open, terrified of further aftershocks that could topple unstable buildings. “I’ll be sleeping here outside even if it’s uncomfortable, because I’m scared there will be an aftershock,” 34-year-old sales clerk Johnson Alerta told AFP. “I feel safer here.”

In Sarangani province, one of the hardest-hit local government areas, disaster chief Rene Punzalan reported that 14 people alone died in the coastal municipality of Glan, where a landslide triggered by the quake buried homes at the base of a mountain. “The landslide happened immediately after the earthquake, so many lives were lost,” Punzalan explained, adding that many remote communities have not yet been able to report casualty numbers. Outages have disrupted communication across large parts of the affected region, slowing the flow of information and complicating rescue coordination. “The greatest challenge is communication. The power was cut, so it’s hard to get updates,” he said.

Social media videos verified by AFP have captured the full scale of the destruction: a busy General Santos shopping center housing a popular Jollibee fast food outlet completely flattened, an empty school building crumpled into a heap of concrete, and young schoolchildren screaming as they clung to their teachers while the ground violently swayed during the quake.

After the quake struck, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued an advisory warning that hazardous tsunami waves could reach coastlines across the Philippines, Indonesia, Palau, Taiwan, and Papua New Guinea. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. immediately ordered an evacuation of all at-risk coastal communities, suspended classes across Mindanao – which was supposed to mark the first day of the school year Monday – and urged residents to prioritize safety over property. “Move to higher ground now. Do not wait,” he said. “Your life is more important than anything left behind.”

By mid-afternoon Monday, all tsunami warnings had been canceled across the region. More than 2,000 people who evacuated their coastal homes following the advisory remain in evacuation centers, awaiting official clearance to return to their properties as authorities continue to assess structural and geological safety risks.

The Philippines experiences near-daily seismic activity due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, a seismically active arc that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia across the entire Pacific basin. This latest major quake follows a string of deadly seismic events in recent years: in October 2023, two back-to-back quakes of 7.4 and 6.7 magnitude hit eastern Mindanao, killing at least eight people, just days after a 6.9-magnitude quake in central Philippines’ Cebu province claimed 76 lives.

UNITED NATIONS – In an official announcement made Monday by United Nations Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will embark on a high-stakes solidarity visit to Haiti starting next Tuesday, a trip designed to bring global attention to the Caribbean nation’s spiraling security and humanitarian emergency.

During his time on the ground, Guterres will engage directly with Haitian men, women, and children whose daily lives have been upended by rampant gang violence. The visit will give the UN chief a first-hand look at the overlapping humanitarian and security challenges that have brought the country to its knees, as well as an opportunity to evaluate ongoing work by Haiti’s national government and the broader international community to reestablish stability and deliver critical aid to vulnerable populations.

A core part of Guterres’ itinerary will be a comprehensive assessment of UN support to Haiti as it confronts its deepening multidimensional crisis. This includes the organization’s logistical and operational backing for the new Gang Suppression Force (GSF), deployed under the parameters of UN Security Council Resolution 2793.

Haiti’s security situation has deteriorated dramatically in recent months, with well-armed criminal gangs now exercising control over as much as 85% of the capital Port-au-Prince. The gang occupation has crippled access to food, clean water, medicine and other basic necessities for the capital’s population, while fighters have carried out a wave of brutal violence that includes a sharp recent rise in gender-based violence and sexual assault.

To address the crisis, the UN Security Council recently approved a restructured international security mission, transforming the previous Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission into the expanded Gang Suppression Force. The new force, which can deploy up to 5,500 uniformed personnel, is mandated to disarm and neutralize gang factions, and secure critical public infrastructure including schools, hospitals, and seaports that are essential to the country’s survival.

The scale of human suffering in Haiti already reaches historic levels: more than 1.45 million people have been internally displaced by violence across the country, and an estimated 6.4 million Haitians – nearly half the total population – require life-saving urgent humanitarian assistance, according to UN data.

Guterres is also scheduled to hold formal talks with Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, as the country prepares to hold general elections that are widely anticipated to take place before the end of 2025. The visit comes as Haitian authorities work to transition back to stable democratic rule after years of political and institutional collapse.

According to Haq, Guterres will travel to Haiti from the neighboring Dominican Republic, and will hold pre-visit meetings with Dominican authorities in the capital Santo Domingo before wrapping up his trip and returning to UN Headquarters in New York on June 17.

MADRID, Spain – On the third day of his seven-day official visit to Spain, Pope Leo XIV held a pivotal hour-long meeting Monday with six survivors of clergy-perpetrated sexual violence, pledging sweeping new institutional changes to address the long-running abuse crisis that has shaken the Catholic Church in the country.

According to an official statement released by the Vatican, each survivor shared harrowing, deeply personal accounts of their abuse and put forward actionable recommendations to strengthen the Church’s response to these devastating cases. Pope Leo affirmed his unwavering commitment to turning these proposals into concrete action, with the goal of transforming the Church into a truly safe and spiritually healthy space for all.

Earlier the same day, speaking to a gathering of Spanish bishops, the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics framed clergy sexual abuse as a persistent “scourge” that demands a response rooted in active listening, radical transparency, accountability, meaningful reparations, and a strengthened culture of prevention and care.

The meeting, held at the Vatican’s embassy in Madrid, was not without controversy: representatives from major victim advocacy groups spoke out ahead of the gathering to decry their exclusion from the talks. “We are disappointed that the pope, instead of listening to a sufficiently large and solid representation of victims, prefers to leave us out,” Juan Cuatrecasas, spokesperson for leading survivor association Infancia Robada (Stolen Childhood), told AFP outside the embassy.

The scope of the abuse crisis in Spain is staggering: a 2023 report from Spain’s national ombudsman estimated that roughly 200,000 minors have been sexually abused by Catholic clergy in the country since 1940. After decades of institutional silence and opacity from the Spanish Catholic hierarchy, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government reached a landmark compensation agreement with the national Church in March of this year. Pope Leo has already acknowledged the ongoing damage of the scandal, calling it a “still an open wound” for the global Church during remarks Saturday at the start of his visit.

Monday’s schedule opened with a historic, unprecedented address to the Spanish parliament that earned the pope a lengthy standing ovation from lawmakers. In his remarks, he called for coordinated global action to address what he termed the “tragic drama” of global migration, arguing that migrants deserve “a respectful welcome and real opportunities for integration.”

The pope’s stance aligns with the relatively liberal immigration policy pursued by Sanchez’s left-wing government, which has faced fierce political pressure on the issue from the main opposition conservative Popular Party and far-right Vox, now the third-largest political force in Spain.

Later in the trip, Pope Leo will travel to the Canary Islands, a major Atlantic entry point for irregular migrants crossing from Africa to Europe, where he will honor the thousands of migrants who have died during dangerous sea crossings. The closing leg of the visit will include a public appearance alongside Sanchez.

The U.S.-born pontiff, who has joined Sanchez in facing harsh criticism from former U.S. President Donald Trump over his anti-war positions, also used his parliamentary address to push for diplomatic dialogue over armed conflict and rearmament. Just hours after a cross-border exchange of fire between Israel and Iran threatened to collapse a fragile regional ceasefire, Pope Leo noted: “Weapons may impose a temporary silence but they can never build a genuine and lasting peace.”

He also closed his parliamentary remarks with a call for lawmakers to defend life “from conception to its natural end” – a rebuke of the Sanchez government’s progressive social policies, which include legalized euthanasia under regulated conditions and a push to enshrine abortion rights in the Spanish constitution.

To wrap up his full day of engagements Monday, Pope Leo met with Madrid’s diocesan community at Real Madrid’s iconic Santiago Bernabéu Stadium. The 80,000-person crowd packed into the world-famous venue, breaking into football chants and waving flags of Spain, the Vatican, and multiple Latin American nations.

The pontiff was treated to performances by singing priests and a comedic dance skit mimicking a football match, smiling as the crowd roared after each staged goal. He leaned into the lighthearted moment, joking that the Madrid diocese had “scored a truly spectacular goal” in organizing the mass gathering, drawing raucous applause from the crowd. Many attendees chanted “We are lions! We are lions!” – a playful nod to “Leo,” the Spanish word for lion, matching the pope’s first name.

On Tuesday, Pope Leo will travel to Barcelona, where he will bless the completed new tower of Antoni Gaudí’s world-famous Sagrada Familia Basilica on Wednesday. The visit will conclude Friday in the Canary Islands.

HAVANA, CUBA — A fresh convoy of life-saving humanitarian assistance from Mexico has reached Cuban shores Sunday, landing at the capital’s port as the island nation grapples with a rapidly worsening emergency triggered by a US blockade of critical oil imports. AFP correspondents on the ground confirmed the arrival of the shipment, marking the sixth delivery of aid that Mexico has sent to Cuba since the start of this year.

In a developing security crisis unfolding in the Middle East, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has issued an updated statement confirming that every Iranian missile fired toward Israeli territory on Sunday has been successfully intercepted by the country’s aerial defense systems. Even as the military confirmed the success of initial defensive operations, it simultaneously warned that the Islamic Republic has initiated a second wave of missile launches against the Jewish state.

The official IDF announcement provided clear, real-time details of the unfolding confrontation. “The IDF intercepted all missiles from Iran thus far. The IDF has currently identified additional launches fired toward the State of Israel,” the military shared in the public statement. It further added that Israel’s integrated Aerial Defence Array is now actively tracking the new incoming threats, with interception operations already underway to neutralize the incoming projectiles.

The exchange of fire marks a significant escalation of cross-border tensions between Israel and Iran, a development that has drawn urgent international attention to the spiraling instability in the region. Military analysts note that the successful interception of the first wave of missiles demonstrates the operational readiness of Israel’s multi-layered air defense network, while the arrival of a second volley underscores the rapidly evolving and high-risk nature of the current confrontation.