Seven police officers died and at least 10 inmates were injured in a weekend riot at a prison in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz, local authorities reported on Sunday.

The riot broke out about 10 pm on Saturday in the La Toma state prison, located in the mountain city of Amatlan de Los Reyes, where 1,300 prisoners demanded that the warden and the police chief at the facility be fired, Xinhua reported.

Officers with the anti-riot force under the authority of Veracruz’s Public Safety Secretariat entered the prison to try and bring the rioting inmates under control.

The state government in a press release announced that upon entering the facility, the police were repelled by the inmates who had gained access to certain carpentry tools and had set fire to mattresses.

Seven police officers died during the operation, which concluded about 6 am on Sunday, when security forces were finally able to retake full control of the prison.

The burning of the mattresses, the bulletin said, “could have caused the asphyxiation of the police,” but experts with the State Attorney General’s Office are investigating the cause of death of the officers.

At least 10 prisoners were injured during the operation. Outside the prison, Federal Police, Mexican marines, the state police and the Military Police were on guard to prevent inmates’ relatives from gaining entry to the facility.

Prisoners’ relatives confronted the officers and demanded that Gov. Miguel Angel Yunes come to the site to report to them on the situation.

The state of Veracruz has been beset by a rising spiral of violence over the past decade due to the presence of drug trafficking gangs and cartels.

Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner, on Monday, returned to London after her first visit to Pakistan since she was shot in the head by Taliban militants for advocating girls’ education more than five years ago.

Malala, 20, arrived in Islamabad on March 29, six years after she was shot by a gunman for campaigning for female education in 2012 in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. Local media footage showed a smiling Malala along with her parents at the airport in Islamabad to take a flight back to London after the four-day visit.

The visit was kept highly secret and hardly anyone knew until she landed in Islamabad and was driven in security to a hotel. On her visit, she met Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi at the PM House where a ceremony was also organised in her honour.

“I have been dreaming of returning to Pakistan for the past five years,” teary-eyed Malala had said. She also made an emotional visit to her hometown in Mingora area of Swat district where she lived, went to school and was attacked in 2012.

“So much joy seeing my family home, visiting friends and putting my feet on this soil again,” she had tweeted about the visit, terming Swat as: “The most beautiful place on earth to me.” Malala, who is currently studying at Oxford University, also said that she plans to return to Pakistan after completing her studies in Britain.

The famed human rights activist was shot at by the Taliban gunman in December 2012 for her female education campaigning in the Swat Valley in northeastern Pakistan. Severely wounded, she was airlifted from one military hospital in Pakistan to another and later flown to Great Britain for treatment.

Post the attack, the Taliban released a statement saying that they would target Malala again if she survived. At age 17, Malala became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her education advocacy in 2014 when she shared the coveted honour with India’s social activist Kailash Satyarthi.

Unable to return to Pakistan after her recovery, Malala moved to Britain, setting up the Malala Fund and supporting local education advocacy groups with a focus on Pakistan, Nigeria, Jordan, Syria and Kenya. Malala began her campaign aged just 11 when she started writing a blog for the BBC’s Urdu service in 2009 about life under the Taliban in Swat, where they were banning girls’ education.

In 2007, the Islamist militants had taken over the area and imposed a brutal rule. Opponents were murdered, people were publicly flogged for supposed breaches of the sharia law, women were banned from going to market, and girls were stopped from going to school. The Taliban, who are opposed to the education of girls, have destroyed hundreds of schools in Pakistan.

Read more at https://www.udayavani.com/english/news/international/282746/malala-concludes-first-visit-pak-shooting#Kc6gOXETD7KJY3Kr.99

Palestinians mourn 17 killed by Israeli forces in Gaza during Land Day march calling for return of Palestinian refugees.

Funerals have begun for the 17 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces as thousands marched near Gaza’s border with Israel to mark the 42nd anniversary of Land Day.

Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip held the funeral for 30-year-old Sari Abu Odeh late on Friday.

He was shot dead earlier in the day after Israeli forces fired live ammunition at protesters and used tear gas to push them back from a heavily fortified fence as they began a planned six-week demonstration demanding the right of return for refugees.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, more than 1,400 others were wounded at the demonstration which commemorated Land Day, which stems from March 30, 1976, when six unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed by Israeli forces during protests against the Israeli government’s decision to expropriate massive tracts of Palestinian-owned land.

Mohammed Najjar, 25, was shot in the stomach during a clash east of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, while Mahmoud Muammar, 38, and Mohammed Abu Omar, 22, were both shot dead in Rafah.

Among the other victims were Ahmed Odeh, 19, Jihad Freneh, 33, Mahmoud Saadi Rahmi, 33, Abdelfattah Abdelnabi, 22, Ibrahim Abu Shaar, 20, Abdelqader al-Hawajiri, Sari Abu Odeh, Hamdan Abu Amsheh, Jihad Abu Jamous, Bader al-Sabbagh and Naji Abu Hjair, whose ages remain unknown.

Earlier on Friday, Omar Waheed Abu Samour, a farmer from Gaza, was also killed by Israeli artillery fire while standing in his land near Khan Younis, just hours before the demonstrations.

Funerals for the rest of those killed are set to take place throughout the day on Saturday.

In honour of those killed, the Palestinian Authority declared Saturday a day of “national mourning”.

“Schools, universities, as well as all government institutions, across the country will be off on Saturday, as per President Mahmoud Abbas’ decision to declare a day of national mourning for the souls of the martyrs,” a statement issued on Friday said.

Adalah, a legal centre for Palestinian rights in Israel, condemned the Israeli army’s use of force, calling it a “brutal violation” of international law.

“Live gunfire on unarmed civilians constitutes a brutal violation of the international legal obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants,” the group said in a statement.

It also said that it would launch an investigation to “demand that those found responsible for the killings be brought to justice”.

WATCH: Land Day – Palestinians protesting the expropriation of their land (2:40)
Yara Mahamid, a student from Gaza told Al Jazeera, that Israeli aggression wouldn’t deter Palestinians from protesting.

“We came to commemorate Land Day because we have to confront the [Israeli] state.

“We came out to remember our martyrs and to reclaim ownership of our land. We will resist until our last breath. We shouldn’t negotiate anymore. We shouldn’t give up our rights,” she said.

This year’s Land Day comes on the heels of months of anger over US President Donald Trump’s decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem.

It is widely expected the US will be transferring its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in the run-up to the Nakba, “day of catastrophe”, on May 15, when Israel was officially declared a state and more than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes.

Aljazeera

Former Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi has said that the perception in Pakistan that Iran’s Chabahar Port project, that connects India to Afghanistan, Central Asia and Eastern Europe, is a “rival project of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)”, is not correct.

“The Chabahar Port project is aimed at connecting Iran with Central Asia, and the ultimate goal is to uplift the Iranian economy,” Kharazi said at an event here. The project was under deliberation for a long time, therefore, it was not correct to link its launch with that of the CPEC, he was cited as saying by Dawn online on Saturday.

India, Iran and Afghanistan signed a trilateral agreement in 2016 to jointly develop the Chabahar Port, opening a new strategic transit route between the three nations and other Central Asian nations, bypassing Pakistan.

On the other hand, the CPEC connects China’s Kashgar in Xinjiang province with Pakistan’s Gwadar port in Balochistan through a network of roads, railways and highways.

India strongly objects to the route of the CPEC corridor, which goes through Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Kharazi, Iran’s Foreign Minister from 1997 to 2005, said that though it was true that India had massively invested in the Chabahar project, it was an open platform for all regional countries to participate in.

“While we are engaging with India on the economic front and India is investing in Chabahar, we have not given exclusive rights on the project to them,” he said.

Talking about the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, Kharazi said that Iran had “urged India a number of times to resolve the dispute in a peaceful and justly manner” and that Tehran was even willing to mediate between the two sides.

“But if we talk about economic partnerships, then Pakistan also has relations with the US which has put a number of sanctions on us, but (Iran) doesn’t mind it,” he said.

He pointed out that bilateral trade between Iran and Pakistan suffered over reluctance of Pakistani banks to do business with Iranian entities due to a fear of US sanctions.

Kharazi said that another issue that had negatively impacted the bilateral trade was the “lack of political will from Pakistani side due to intense pressure from Washington and middle-eastern countries”.