The Bhutto-Zardari family’s 33-year-old scion who is the front-runner for the coveted post of the foreign minister did not take the oath on Tuesday, giving rise to speculation about his reluctance to join the new government.

Qamar Zaman Kaira, PPP leader and Adviser to the Prime Minister on Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan, in a conversation with journalists on London confirmed that Bilawal will take oath as the foreign minister in a day or two, the Geo News reported.

A day after he excused himself from taking the oath as the foreign minister, Bilawal headed to London where he met Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo Nawaz Sharif during which they discussed the “overall political situation” in Pakistan and vowed to work together on issues pertaining to politics and national interest.

PPP and PML-N — the two main political parties — have been alternatively in power when the military was not ruling the country. The powerful Army has ruled the coup-prone country for more than half of its 75 plus years of existence.

Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb had earlier assured that the PPP Chairman would take the oath after he returns to Pakistan. Kaira told reporters that Bilawal had left for Pakistan after he held two meetings with the PML-N supremo to exchange views on political matters, the Geo report said.

PPP is the second largest party in the current coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif who was appointed on April 11.

In their last meeting, Nawaz Sharif and Bilawal – the two key allies in the ruling coalition — discussed ways forward after a “constitutional victory for democracy, the rule of law and supremacy of parliament” and agreed to work closely to “repair the rot across the board,” read a joint statement.

The joint statement said that during the meeting both leaders agreed that they have accomplished a great deal whenever they work together. Matters relating to the broad roadmap for the future with the consensus of all democratic forces and the unfinished business left on the “Charter of Democracy” were also discussed in the meeting. “It was also agreed that high-level summitry is needed to brainstorm the path ahead for a new charter,” read the statement.

Although there was speculation that PPP wanted more stake in the government, sources privy to the meeting confirmed that Bilawal and Nawaz Sharif did not discuss anything related to the posts of Senate, Punjab governor or presidency during their meetings, the Geo report said.

Nawaz Sharif — against whom several corruption cases were launched by the government of former prime minister Imran Khan — had left for London in November 2019 after the Lahore High Court granted him a four-week permission allowing him to go abroad for his treatment.

The 72-year-old former prime minister had given an undertaking to the Lahore High Court to return to Pakistan, citing his record to face the process of law and justice within four weeks or as soon as he is declared healthy and fit to travel by doctors.

Nawaz Sharif was also given bail in the Al-Azizia Mills corruption case in which he was serving seven-year imprisonment in Lahore’s high-security Kot Lakhpat jail.

New satellite images show what appear to be mass graves near Mariupol, and local officials accused Russia of burying up to 9,000 Ukrainian civilians there in an effort to conceal the slaughter taking place in the siege of the port city.

The images emerged Thursday, just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed victory in the battle for Mariupol, despite the presence of an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters who were still holed up at a giant steel mill. Putin ordered his troops to seal off the stronghold “so that not even a fly comes through” instead of storming it.

Satellite image provider Maxar Technologies released the photos, which it said showed more than 200 mass graves in a town where Ukrainian officials say the Russians have been burying Mariupol residents killed in the fighting. The imagery showed long rows of graves stretching away from an existing cemetery in the town of Manhush, outside Mariupol.

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko accused the Russians of “hiding their military crimes” by taking the bodies of civilians from the city and burying them in Manhush.

The graves could hold as many as 9,000 dead, the Mariupol City Council said Thursday in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Boychenko labeled Russian actions in the city as “the new Babi Yar,” a reference to the site of multiple Nazi massacres in which nearly 34,000 Ukrainian Jews were killed in 1941.

“The bodies of the dead were being brought by the truckload and actually simply being dumped in mounds,” an aide to Boychenko, Piotr Andryushchenko, said on Telegram.

There was no immediate reaction from the Kremlin. When mass graves and hundreds of dead civilians were discovered in Bucha and other towns around Kyiv after Russian troops retreated three weeks ago, Russian officials denied that their soldiers killed any civilians there and accused Ukraine of staging the atrocities.

In a statement, Maxar said a review of previous images indicates that the graves in Manhush were dug in late March and expanded in recent weeks.

After nearly two lethal months of bombardment that largely reduced Mariupol to a smoking ruin, Russian forces appear to control the rest of the strategic southern city, including its vital but now badly damaged port.

But a few thousand Ukrainian troops, by Moscow’s estimate, have stubbornly held out for weeks at the steel plant, despite a pummeling from Russian forces and repeated demands for their surrender. About 1,000 civilians were also trapped there, according to Ukrainian officials.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly accused Russia of launching attacks to block civilian evacuations from Mariupol.

At least two Russian attacks on Thursday hit the city of Zaporizhzhia, a way station for people fleeing Mariupol. No one was wounded, the regional governor said.

Among those who arrived in Zaporizhzhia after fleeing the city were Yuriy and Polina Lulac, who spent nearly two months living in a basement with at least a dozen other people. There was no running water and little food, Yuriy Lulac said.

“What was happening there was so horrible that you can’t describe it,” said the native Russian speaker who used a derogatory word for the Russian troops, saying they were “killing people for nothing.”

“Mariupol is gone. In the courtyards there are just graves and crosses,” Lulac said.

The Red Cross said it had expected to to evacuate 1,500 people by bus, but that the Russians allowed only a few dozen to leave and pulled some people off of the buses.

Dmitriy Antipenko said he lived mostly in a basement with his wife and father-in-law amid death and destruction.

“In the courtyard, there was a little cemetery, and we buried seven people there,” Antipenko said, wiping away tears.

Instead of sending troops to finish off the Mariupol defenders inside the steel factory in a potentially bloody frontal assault, Russia apparently intends to maintain the siege and wait for the fighters to surrender when they run out of food or ammunition.

All told, more than 100,000 people were believed trapped with little or no food, water, heat or medicine in Mariupol, which had a prewar population of about 430,000. Over 20,000 people have been killed in the siege, according to Ukrainian authorities.

The city has seized worldwide attention as the scene of some of the worst suffering of the war, including deadly airstrikes on a maternity hospital and a theater.

Boychenko rejected any notion that Mariupol had fallen into Russian hands.

“The city was, is and remains Ukrainian,” he declared. “Today our brave warriors, our heroes, are defending our city.”

The capture of Mariupol would represent the Kremlin’s biggest victory yet of the war in Ukraine. It would help Moscow secure more of the coastline, complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014, and free up more forces to join the larger and potentially more consequential battle now underway for Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, the Donbas.

At a joint appearance with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Putin declared, “The completion of combat work to liberate Mariupol is a success,” and he offered congratulations to Shoigu.

Shoigu predicted the Azovstal steel mill could be taken in three to four days. But Putin said that would be “pointless” and expressed concern for the lives of Russian troops in deciding against sending them in to clear out the sprawling plant, where the die-hard defenders were hiding in a maze of underground passageways.

Instead, the Russian leader said, the military should “block off this industrial area so that not even a fly comes through.”

The plant covers 11 square kilometers (4 square miles) and is threaded with some 24 kilometers (15 miles) of tunnels and bunkers.

“The Russian agenda now is not to capture these really difficult places where the Ukrainians can hold out in the urban centers, but to try and capture territory and also to encircle the Ukrainian forces and declare a huge victory,” retired British Rear Adm. Chris Parry said.

Russian officials for weeks have said capturing the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas is the war’s main objective. Moscow’s forces opened the new phase of the fighting this week along a 300-mile (480-kilometer) front from the northeastern city of Kharkiv to the Azov Sea.

While Russia continued heavy air and artillery attacks in those areas, it did not appear to gain any significant ground over the past few days, according to military analysts, who said Moscow’s forces were still ramping up the offensive.

A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagon’s assessment, said the Ukrainians were hindering the Russian effort to push south from Izyum.

Rockets struck a neighborhood of Kharkiv on Thursday, and at least two civilians were burned to death in their car. A school and a residential building were also hit, and firefighters tried to put out a blaze and search for anyone trapped.

Elsewhere, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Russian troops kidnapped a local official heading up a humanitarian convoy in the southern Kherson region. She said the Russians offered to free him in exchange for Russian prisoners of war, but she characterized that as unacceptable.

Vereshchuk also said efforts to establish three humanitarian corridors in the Kherson region failed Thursday because Russian troops did not hold their fire.

In the U.S., President Joe Biden pledged an additional $1.3 billion for new weapons and economic assistance to help Ukraine, and he promised to seek much more from Congress to keep the guns, ammunition and cash flowing.

Antony Blinken

Washington: The US is monitoring some recent “concerning developments” on human rights violations in India by some government, police, and prison officials, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said.

Blinken made these remarks at a joint news conference with Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and their Indian counterparts — External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh — after the conclusion of the 2+2 Ministerial on Monday.

We are monitoring some recent concerning developments in India, including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police, and prison officials, Blinken said in his opening remarks.

However, he did not provide any other details.

We share a commitment to our democratic values, such as protecting human rights. We regularly engage with our Indian partners on these shared values, Blinken said.

India has previously rejected criticism by foreign governments and human rights groups on allegations that civil liberties have eroded in the country.

The Indian government has asserted that India has well-established democratic practices and robust institutions to safeguard the rights of all.

The government has emphasised that the Indian Constitution provides for adequate safeguards under various statutes for ensuring the protection of human rights.

Islamabad: Shehbaz Sharif, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president, was elected unopposed as the new Prime Minister of Pakistan by Parliament on Monday after rival candidate Shah Mahmood Qureshi announced that his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party will boycott the voting and staged a walkout.

Shehbaz, 70, was the only candidate left in the race after Qureshi’s boycott of the election in the National Assembly.

In the House of 342, the winning candidate should get support of at least 172 lawmakers.

Shehbaz, the younger brother of former three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif, received 174 votes – two more than the simple majority of 172.

He is the 23rd prime minister of Pakistan.

He has served as chief minister of the country’s most populous and politically crucial Punjab province thrice.

Former president and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) co-chair Asif Ali Zardari had proposed Shehbaz’s name for prime minister’s position in a joint opposition’s meeting to replace Imran Khan through a no-confidence motion.

The process of electing the new leader of the House began on Sunday after prime minister Imran Khan was removed from office through the no-confidence vote, becoming the first premier in the country’s history to be sent home after losing the trust of the House.

Pakistan has struggled with political instability since its formation in 1947 with multiple regime changes and military coups. No prime minister has ever completed a full five-year term.

Colombo (AP): Sri Lanka’s national medical association warned Thursday that hospitals will be unable to provide even emergency services in coming weeks because of critical shortages of drugs and medical equipment caused by the country’s economic crisis, leading to a catastrophic number of deaths if supplies aren’t replenished.

Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crisis in decades and has endured months of shortages of fuel and other essentials. Protests over the economic troubles have spread nationwide and expanded to criticism of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his politically powerful family.

The Sri Lanka Medical Association sent a letter to Rajapaksa on Thursday saying that hospitals have already decided to curtail services such as routine surgeries and limit the use of available medical materials to treatment of life-threatening illnesses.

Unless supplies are urgently replenished, within a matter of weeks, if not days, emergency treatment will also not be possible. This will result in a catastrophic number of deaths,” the letter said.

Thousands of people, including health workers, have been demonstrating this week demanding a solution to the crisis and Rajapaksa’s resignation for economic mismanagement.

Rajapaksa has resisted the demands to step down, even after members of his own coalition joined them this week, with governing party lawmakers calling for the appointment of an interim government to avoid possible violence.

Rajapaksa earlier proposed the creation of a unity government, but the main opposition party rejected the idea.

His Cabinet resigned Sunday night, and on Tuesday, nearly 40 governing coalition lawmakers said they would no longer vote according to coalition instructions, significantly weakening the government.

This has turned the economic crisis into a political one, with no functioning Cabinet including crucial finance and health ministers. Parliament has failed to reach a consensus in three days of debate on how to deal with the crisis.

The president and his older brother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, continue to hold power, despite their politically powerful family being the focus of public ire.

Five other family members are lawmakers, including Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa, Irrigation Minister Chamal Rajapaksa and a nephew, Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa.

The government estimates the COVID-19 pandemic has cost Sri Lanka’s tourism-dependent economy USD14 billion in the last two years. Protesters also allege fiscal mismanagement.

The country has immense foreign debts after borrowing heavily for infrastructure and other projects. Its foreign debt repayment obligations are around USD7 billion this year alone.

The debts and dwindling foreign reserves leave it unable to pay for imported goods.

Rajapaksa last month said his government was in talks with the International Monetary Fund and had turned to China and India for loans, and appealed to people to limit the use of fuel and electricity. 

Pakistan PM Imran Khan with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Moscow/Islamabad: Russia has criticised the US for making another attempt of shameless interference into the internal affairs of Pakistan and asserted that Prime Minister Imran Khan was paying the price for being disobedient to Washington and being punished for visiting Russia in February this year.

Khan met Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on February 24, the day the Russian leader had ordered a special military operation against Ukraine.

In doing so, he had also become the first Pakistani premier to visit Russia in 23 years after former premier Nawaz Sharif travelled to Moscow in 1999.

On Monday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said despite pressure from the US to cancel his visit to Moscow, Khan went ahead with his trip.

Immediately after the announcement of the working visit of Imran Khan to Moscow on February 23-24 this year, the Americans and their Western associates began to exert rude pressure on the Prime Minister, demanding an ultimatum to cancel the trip,” Zakharova said in a commentary on the controversy over Khan’s allegation that the US was trying to effect a regime change in Islamabad.

This is another attempt of shameless interference by the US in the internal affairs of an independent state for its own selfish purposes. The above facts eloquently testify to this, Zakharova said.

The US-led West has imposed a series of crippling sanctions on Russia since it invaded Ukraine and has been pressing other nations to reduce their dependence on Russian oil and other products.

The senior Russian diplomat said that the sequence of events left no doubt that Washington had decided to punish a disobedient Imran Khan, which also explained why a number of members from Khan’s ruling coalition decided to switch sides and shift their allegiances ahead of the April 3 no-trust vote.

Khan, 69, stunned the Opposition on Sunday by recommending snap elections within three months, minutes after a no-confidence motion against him was dismissed by the deputy speaker of the National Assembly.

Khan then got Pakistan President Arif Alvi to dissolve the 342-member National Assembly.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Monday adjourned the hearing on the deputy speaker’s decision to reject the no-confidence motion against the premier, who had lost majority in the lower house of Parliament.

Khan had named senior US diplomat Donald Lu as the person who was allegedly involved in the foreign conspiracy to oust his government through a no-confidence vote tabled by the Opposition.

Pakistan’s Opposition leaders have ridiculed Khan’s allegation, and the US has dismissed these claims.

Zakharova said Moscow was keenly watching the events unfolding in Islamabad over the last three days as well as the events preceding it.

In her commentary, she exuded hope that the Pakistani voters would be well-informed about these circumstances when they come to vote in the elections that are scheduled to be held 90 days after the dissolution of the National Assembly.