Azerbaijan Dismisses Claims on Its Airspace Used to Attack Iran

Azerbaijan Dismisses Claims on Its Airspace Used to Attack Iran
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Azerbaijan Dismisses Claims on Its Airspace Used to Attack Iran

Azerbaijan Dismisses Claims on Its Airspace Used to Attack Iran

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry on Monday denied allowing another country to use its airspace to carry out attacks on Iran.

"Information about Russia's 'Container' radar system detecting unknown planes using Azerbaijan's airspace to carry out attacks on Iran is an absolute lie," Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said according to Azerbaijan's International News.

“The dissemination of such information is aimed at undermining the Azerbaijani-Iranian relations," the Ministry told International News and declared that the allegations of Azerbaijan's involvement were propagated by "pro-Armenian forces" with the aim of damaging the relations between Iran and Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry also stressed that Azerbaijan has never taken any steps against Iran and will not do so in the future.

The source of the news about the detection of foreign planes in Azerbaijan's airspace is the lesser-known Avia-Pro news website of Russia. The news website on Monday claimed that the drones that attacked Iran's military and nuclear sites had been detected by the Russian Radar system.

In recent days there have been explosions at two of Iran's top security nuclear and military facilities – Khojir in the east of Tehran and Natanz in Isfahan province.

Iranian authorities said the incident at the first site was caused by the explosion of a gas storage tank but have delayed the announcement of the cause of the incident at Natanz "for security reasons".

When video footage of the blast surfaced online, the Iranian Defense Ministry quickly rolled out a spokesman to downplay the incident. Davoud Abdi, speaking on state television, dismissed it as a minor blast at a gas-storage facility in a “public area” of the Parchin military complex, outside the Iranian capital.

A well-known former site of nuclear activity, an explosion at the Parchin military complex would undoubtedly have been a serious incident.

Satellite imagery later suggested that the explosion took place at the Hemmat Industrial Complex, east of Tehran and away some 24 km from Parchin.



Evacuations and Call for Aid as Typhoon Usagi Approaches Philippines

A villager on a wooden boat paddles on a flooded village caused by Typhoon Toraji in Tuguegarao city, Cagayan city, Philippines, 13 November 2024. (EPA)
A villager on a wooden boat paddles on a flooded village caused by Typhoon Toraji in Tuguegarao city, Cagayan city, Philippines, 13 November 2024. (EPA)
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Evacuations and Call for Aid as Typhoon Usagi Approaches Philippines

A villager on a wooden boat paddles on a flooded village caused by Typhoon Toraji in Tuguegarao city, Cagayan city, Philippines, 13 November 2024. (EPA)
A villager on a wooden boat paddles on a flooded village caused by Typhoon Toraji in Tuguegarao city, Cagayan city, Philippines, 13 November 2024. (EPA)

The Philippines ordered evacuations Wednesday ahead of Typhoon Usagi's arrival, as the UN's disaster office sought $32.9 million in aid for the country after recent storms killed more than 150 people.

The national weather service said Usagi -- the archipelago's fifth major storm in three weeks -- would likely make landfall Thursday in Cagayan province on the northeast tip of main island Luzon.

Provincial civil defense chief Rueli Rapsing said mayors had been ordered to evacuate residents in vulnerable areas, by force if necessary, as the 120 kilometers (75 miles) an hour typhoon bears down on the country.

"Under (emergency protocols), all the mayors must implement the forced evacuation, especially for susceptible areas," he told AFP, adding as many as 40,000 people in the province lived in hazard-prone areas.

The area is set to be soaked in "intense to torrential" rain on Thursday and Friday, which can trigger floods and landslides with the ground still sodden from recent downpours, state weather forecaster Christopher Perez told reporters.

He urged residents of coastal areas to move inland due to the threat of storm surges and giant coastal waves up to three meters (nine feet) high, with shipping also facing the peril of 8–10-meter waves.

A sixth tropical storm, Man-yi, is expected to strengthen into a typhoon before hitting the center of the country as early as Friday, Perez said.

With more than 700,000 people forced out of their homes, the successive storms have taken a toll on the resources of both the government and local households, the UN said late Tuesday.

About 210,000 of those most affected by recent flooding need support for "critical lifesaving and protection efforts over the next three months", the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement.

"Typhoons are overlapping. As soon as communities attempt to recover from the shock, the next tropical storm is already hitting them again," UN Philippines Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Gustavo Gonzalez said.

"In this context, the response capacity gets exhausted and budgets depleted."

The initiative "will help us mobilize the capacities and resources of the humanitarian community to better support government institutions at national, regional and local levels," Gonzalez added.

More than 28,000 people displaced by recent storms are still living in evacuation centers operated by local governments, the country's civil defense office said in its latest tally.

Government crews were still working to restore downed power and communication lines and clearing debris from roads.

About 20 big storms and typhoons hit the archipelago nation or its surrounding waters each year, killing scores of people and keeping millions in enduring poverty.

A recent study showed that storms in the Asia-Pacific region are increasingly forming closer to coastlines, intensifying more rapidly and lasting longer over land due to climate change.