Beijing Seals off More Residential Areas, Reports 12 Cases

A resident wearing a mask to help protect from the coronavirus walks past barricades and tents prepared for mass testing at a neighborhood in Beijing, China, Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A resident wearing a mask to help protect from the coronavirus walks past barricades and tents prepared for mass testing at a neighborhood in Beijing, China, Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
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Beijing Seals off More Residential Areas, Reports 12 Cases

A resident wearing a mask to help protect from the coronavirus walks past barricades and tents prepared for mass testing at a neighborhood in Beijing, China, Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A resident wearing a mask to help protect from the coronavirus walks past barricades and tents prepared for mass testing at a neighborhood in Beijing, China, Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Beijing officials said Sunday they sealed off several residential communities in the city's northern district after two cases of COVID-19 were found.

Residents in the Anzhenli neighborhood in Chaoyang district were sealed off on Saturday, and will not be allowed to leave their compound.

Beijing is on high alert as it prepares to host the Olympic Games opening on Friday, The Associated Press said.

While the cases are low compared to other countries in the region, China has double down on its “zero-tolerance” policy, which includes breaking the chain of transmission as soon as it is found.

The city is also setting up 19 points in the area to test residents every day until Friday, officials said at a briefing on the pandemic, according to state-backed Beijing News.

The Chinese capital reported a total of 12 cases of COVID-19 between 4 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday, said Pang Xinghuo, the vice head of the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control. All those cases came from people who were already under some kind of pandemic control measures.

The city conducted multiple rounds of testing for millions of residents this past week in Fengtai district, where some residential compounds were locked down.



One Killed, 11 Wounded by Russian Missile Strike on Ukraine’s Kryvyi Rih

 A Ukrainian AS-90 self-propelled artillery vehicle fires towards Russian positions at the frontline on Pokrovsk direction, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2024. (AP)
A Ukrainian AS-90 self-propelled artillery vehicle fires towards Russian positions at the frontline on Pokrovsk direction, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2024. (AP)
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One Killed, 11 Wounded by Russian Missile Strike on Ukraine’s Kryvyi Rih

 A Ukrainian AS-90 self-propelled artillery vehicle fires towards Russian positions at the frontline on Pokrovsk direction, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2024. (AP)
A Ukrainian AS-90 self-propelled artillery vehicle fires towards Russian positions at the frontline on Pokrovsk direction, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2024. (AP)

One person was killed and 11 were wounded by a ballistic missile strike on an apartment block in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, local officials said on Tuesday, and Kyiv condemned the Christmas eve attack.

"The monsters landed a direct hit on a four-storey residential block with 32 apartments," the head of the city's military administration, Oleksandr Vilkul, wrote on Telegram.

One man whose body had been pulled from under the rubble could not be revived by medics, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said.

"While other countries of the world are celebrating Christmas, Ukrainians are continuing to suffer from endless Russian attacks," Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets wrote on Telegram.

Governor Lysak posted photographs of rescuers trawling through a large pile of rubble, recovering a person covered in dust and loading them into an ambulance.

"There may still be people under the rubble," he wrote shortly before 18:00 local time (1600 GMT), more than two hours after the strike.

Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is a steelmaking city with a pre-war population of more than 600,000.

Its southern outskirts lie about 40 miles (65 km) from the nearest Russian-occupied territory, and it has regularly been the target of Russian missile attacks throughout the war.

Russia says it does not deliberately target civilians, although thousands have been killed since Moscow launched its invasion in 2022.