Poland Thwarts Planned Attacks on Muslims

Police officers investigate the site of a stabbing in Warsaw, Poland, April 11, 2019. Agencja Gazeta/Adam Stepien via REUTERS
Police officers investigate the site of a stabbing in Warsaw, Poland, April 11, 2019. Agencja Gazeta/Adam Stepien via REUTERS
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Poland Thwarts Planned Attacks on Muslims

Police officers investigate the site of a stabbing in Warsaw, Poland, April 11, 2019. Agencja Gazeta/Adam Stepien via REUTERS
Police officers investigate the site of a stabbing in Warsaw, Poland, April 11, 2019. Agencja Gazeta/Adam Stepien via REUTERS

Two members of an "extremist group" suspected of planning bomb and gun attacks on Muslims have been arrested in Poland, the security services announced Wednesday.

Officers arrested the two suspects in Warsaw and in the northwest city of Szczecin, Stanislaw Zaryn, of the country's internal security service (ABW), told Agence France Presse.

They seized chemicals that could have been used to make large quantities of explosives after searching locations in the center, south and northwest of the country.

"The arrests are the result of an intelligence-gathering exercise by the ABW about an extremist group whose aim was to terrorize people" of the Muslim faith in Poland, said a statement from the agency.

"These are the first two arrests of members of this group, which was preparing acts of violence in Poland," Zaryn said.

While he did not name the group involved in this new plot or go into details of what they were planning, he said they had been inspired by attacks carried out by right-wing extremists Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant.

Breivik used a truck bomb and then guns to kill 77 people, many of them young people, in Norway in July 2011.

Australian Tarrant killed or wounded dozens of Muslims in an attack on two mosques in New Zealand in March this year.

There are around 20,000 Muslims in Poland, a country of 38 million people, most of them Catholic.



Russia Launches New Year Drone Strike on Kyiv

A handout photo made available by the State Emergency Service shows Ukrainian rescuers working at the site of a drone attack on a residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine, 01 January 2025, amid the ongoing Russian invasion. EPA/STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE HANDOUT
A handout photo made available by the State Emergency Service shows Ukrainian rescuers working at the site of a drone attack on a residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine, 01 January 2025, amid the ongoing Russian invasion. EPA/STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE HANDOUT
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Russia Launches New Year Drone Strike on Kyiv

A handout photo made available by the State Emergency Service shows Ukrainian rescuers working at the site of a drone attack on a residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine, 01 January 2025, amid the ongoing Russian invasion. EPA/STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE HANDOUT
A handout photo made available by the State Emergency Service shows Ukrainian rescuers working at the site of a drone attack on a residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine, 01 January 2025, amid the ongoing Russian invasion. EPA/STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE HANDOUT

Russia launched a drone strike on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv early on Wednesday, wounding at least three people and damaging buildings in two districts, city officials said.

Explosions boomed across the morning sky shortly after Ukraine's air force warned of drones approaching the city.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said air-defenses were repelling an enemy attack, and that two floors of a residential building had been partially destroyed in the strike.

Debris had also damaged a non-residential premise in another neighborhood, he said.

Russia has carried out regular airstrikes on Ukrainian towns and cities far behind the front line of its nearly three-year-old invasion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said late on Tuesday that no one would give peace to his country as a gift, but he believed the United States would stand alongside Kyiv.

Zelenskiy, in a slick 21-minute New Year video greeting to his compatriots, also said only a strong Ukraine could secure peace and earn worldwide respect.

"We know that peace will not be given to us as a gift, but we will do everything to stop Russia and end the war, something each of us desires," Zelenskiy said against a backdrop of the blue-and-yellow national flag, battlefield scenes and pictures of children.
He recalled conversations with outgoing US President Joe Biden, President-elect Donald Trump and "everyone who supports us in the United States.”

"I have no doubt that the new American president wants and will be able to bring peace and end (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's aggression," Zelenskiy said.
"He understands that the former is impossible without the latter. Because this is not a street brawl where the two sides need to be pacified. This is a full-scale aggression by a deranged state against a civilized one. And I believe that, together with the United States, we are capable of the strength to force Russia into a just peace."
Russia, Zelenskiy said, was not to be trusted either in battle or in talks.
"If today Russia shakes your hand, it doesn't mean that tomorrow the same hand will not start killing you," he said. "Russians fear those who are free. What they don't understand. They fear freedom."