By Tom Balmforth and Marko Djurica

KYIV/POKROVSK, Ukraine -Russian forces fully occupied the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk on Saturday, both sides said, confirming Kyiv’s biggest battlefield setback for more than a month following weeks of some of the war’s bloodiest fighting.

Ukraine called its retreat from the city a “tactical withdrawal” to fight from higher ground in Lysychansk on the opposite bank of the Siverskyi Donets river. Pro-Russian separatists said Moscow’s forces were now attacking Lysychansk.

The fall of Sievierodonetsk – once home to more than 100,000 people but now a wasteland – was Russia’s biggest victory since capturing the port of Mariupol last month. It transforms the battlefield in the east after weeks in which Moscow’s huge advantage in firepower had yielded only slow gains.

Russia will now seek to press on and seize more ground on the opposite bank, while Ukraine will hope that the price Moscow paid to capture the ruins of the small city will leave Russia’s forces vulnerable to counterattack.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy vowed in a video address that Ukraine would win back the cities it lost. But acknowledging the war’s emotional toll, he said: “We don’t have a sense of how long it will last, how many more blows, losses and efforts will be needed before we see victory is on the horizon.”

“The city is now under the full occupation of Russia,” Sievierodonetsk Mayor Oleksandr Stryuk said on national television. “They are trying to establish their own order.”

Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, told Reuters that Ukraine was carrying out “a tactical regrouping” by pulling its forces out of Sievierodonetsk.

“Russia is using the tactic … it used in Mariupol: wiping the city from the face of the earth,” he said. “Given the conditions, holding the defence in the ruins and open fields is no longer possible. So the Ukrainian forces are leaving for higher ground to continue the defence operations.”

Russia’s defence ministry said Russian forces had established full control over Sievierodonetsk and the nearby town of Borivske.

Not long after that, however, Ukrainian shelling from outside Sievierodonetsk forced Russian troops to suspend evacuation of people from a chemical plant there, Russia’s Tass news agency quoted local police working with Russian separatist authorities as saying.

Oleksiy Arestovych, senior advisor to Zelenskiy, said some Ukrainian special forces were still in Sievierodonetsk directing artillery fire. But he made no mention of those forces putting up any direct resistance.

Russia’s Interfax news agency cited a representative of pro-Russian separatist fighters saying Russian and pro-Russian forces had entered Lysychansk and were fighting in urban areas there.

Russia also launched missile strikes across Ukraine. At least three people were killed in the town of Sarny, some 185 miles (300 km) west of Kyiv, after rockets hit a carwash and a car repair facility, said the local regional military administration.

Russia denies targeting civilians. Kyiv and the West say Russian forces have committed war crimes.

Seeking to tighten the screws on Russia, U.S. President Joe Biden and other Group of Seven leaders attending a summit in Germany starting on Sunday will agree on an import ban on new gold from Russia, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

A German government source said G7 governments also were having “very constructive” conversations on a possible price cap on Russian oil imports.

‘IT WAS HORROR’

In the Ukrainian-held Donbas town of Pokrovsk, Elena, an elderly woman in a wheelchair from Lysychansk, was among dozens of evacuees arriving from frontline areas.

“Lysychansk, it was a horror, the last week. Yesterday we could not take it any more,” she said. “I already told my husband if I die, please bury me behind the house.”

As Europe’s biggest land conflict since World War Two entered its fifth month, Russian missiles also rained down on western, northern and southern parts of the country.

“48 cruise missiles. At night. Throughout whole Ukraine,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter. “Russia is still trying to intimidate Ukraine, cause panic.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent tens of thousands of troops over the border on Feb. 24, unleashing a conflict that has killed thousands and uprooted millions. It has also stoked an energy and food crisis which is shaking the global economy.

Since Russia’s forces were defeated in an assault on the capital Kyiv in March, it has shifted focus to the Donbas, an eastern territory made up of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk were the last major Ukrainian bastions in Luhansk.

The Russians crossed the river in force in recent days and have been advancing towards Lysychansk, threatening to encircle Ukrainians in the area.

The capture of Sievierodonetsk is likely to seen by Russia as vindication for its switch from its early, failed attempt at “lightning warfare” to a relentless, grinding offensive in the east.

Moscow says Luhansk and Donetsk, where it has backed uprisings since 2014, are independent countries. It demands Ukraine cede the entire two provinces to separatists.

Ukrainian officials had never held out much hope of holding Sievierodonetsk but have sought to exact a high enough price to exhaust the Russian army.

Ukraine’s top general Valeriy Zaluzhnyi wrote on the Telegram app that newly arrived, U.S.-supplied advanced HIMARS rocket systems were now hitting targets in Russian-occupied areas.

The war has had a huge impact on the global economy andEuropean security, driving up gas, oil and food prices, pushing the European Union to reduce reliance on Russian energy and prompting Finland and Sweden to seek NATO membership.

(Additional Reporting by Max Hunder, Alessandra Prentice and Reuters bureaux; Writing by Madeline Chambers, Peter Graff and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Peter Graff and Alistair Bell)

LONDON -Monkeypox is not yet a global health emergency, the World Health Organization (WHO) ruled on Saturday, although WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was deeply concerned about the outbreak.

“I am deeply concerned about the monkeypox outbreak, this is clearly an evolving health threat that my colleagues and I in the WHO Secretariat are following extremely closely,” Tedros said in a statement.

WHO said in a separate statement that although there were some differing views within the committee, they ultimately agreed by consensus that at this stage the outbreak is not a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

The “global emergency” label currently only applies to the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing efforts to eradicate polio, and the U.N. agency has stepped back from applying it to the monkeypox outbreak after advice from a meeting of international experts.

There have been more than 3,200 confirmed cases of monkeypox and one death reported in the last six weeks from 48 countries where it does not usually spread, according to WHO.

So far this year almost 1,500 cases and 70 deaths in central Africa, where the disease is more common, have also been reported, chiefly in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Monkeypox, a viral illness causing flu-like symptoms and skin lesions, has been spreading largely in men who have sex with men outside the countries where it is endemic.

There are vaccines and treatments available for monkeypox, although they are in limited supply.

Some global health experts said WHO may be have been hesitant to make a declaration because its January 2020 declaration that the new coronavirus represented a public health emergency was largely met with skepticism around the world.

But others said the outbreak met the criteria to be called an emergency.

Gregg Gonsalves, an associate professor of epidemiology at Yale University who advised the committee but who is not a member of WHO, told Reuters by email on Saturday that he thought the decision was “misguided”.

“It met all the criteria but they decided to punt on this momentous decision,” he said.

(Reporting by Jennifer Rigby; additional reporting by Mrinmay Dey; Editing by Sandra Maler)

By Terje Solsvik and Gwladys Fouche

OSLO -Terrified revellers at a gay bar in Oslo hid in a basement and desperately called loved ones as a gunman went on the rampage, killing two people and injuring 21 on the day the city was due to celebrate its annual Pride parade.

Authorities said the suspect, a 42-year-old Norwegian citizen of Iranian origin, was believed to be a radicalised Islamist with a history of mental illness who had been known to intelligence services since 2015.

The suspect will be subjected to a psychiatric evaluation in the coming days as part of the investigation, police said.

The attack took place in the early hours of Saturday, with victims shot inside and outside the London Pub, a longstanding hub of Oslo’s LGBTQ scene, as well as in the surrounding streets and at one other bar in the centre of the Norwegian capital.

The deceased were two men in their 50s and 60s, police said.

“Everything indicates that this has been an attack by an Islamist extremist,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told a news conference.

“We don’t (yet) know if the queer community was the intended target, but we know it is a victim.”

Bili Blum-Jansen, who was in the London Pub, said he fled to the basement to escape the hail of bullets and hid there along with 80 to 100 other people.

“Many called their partners and family, it felt almost as if they were saying goodbye. Others helped calm down those who were extremely terrified,” he told TV2.

“I had a bit of panic and thought that if the shooter or shooters were to arrive, we’d all be dead. There was no way out.”

Rainbow flags symbolising the Pride community were on prominent display across Oslo this week, but Saturday’s planned parade was cancelled at the advice of police.

“Last night the rainbow was coloured black,” said Anette Trettebergstuen, Norway’s minister of culture and equality and herself a prominent campaigner for LGBTQ rights.

‘CRYING AND SCREAMING’

While the official parade was called off, several thousand people held a spontaneous march in central Oslo, waving rainbow flags and chanting in English: “We’re here, we’re queer, we won’t disappear.”

Norway’s Crown Prince Haakon, his wife Crown Princess Mette-Marit and their youngest child, 16-year-old Prince Sverre Magnus, later joined the prime minister and other officials to lay red and white roses near the London Pub.

“We must protect the right in Norway to love whomever we want,” Haakon told reporters.

The suspect was detained minutes after embarking on the shooting spree, according to police, who said they believed he acted alone. Two weapons, including a fully automatic gun, were retrieved from the crime scene, they added.

The man has declined to be interrogated by police, his lawyer John Christian Elden told public broadcaster NRK.

Witnesses described the chaos that erupted inside and outside the London Pub, which has been open since 1979.

“Many people were crying and screaming, the injured were screaming, people were distressed and scared – very, very scared,” said Marcus Nybakken, 46, who had left the bar shortly before the shooting and returned later to help.

“My first thought was that Pride was the target, so that’s frightening.”

Journalist Olav Roenneberg of broadcaster NRK said he was in the area at the time and saw a man arrive with a bag, take out a gun and start to shoot: “Then I saw windows breaking and understood that I had to take cover.”

WIDESPREAD CONDEMNATION

European leaders condemned the shooting, as did the White House.

“I am shocked by the heinous attack on innocent people in Oslo,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted.

“No-one should have to fear for their life or well-being simply for who they are.”

French President Emmanuel Macron, writing in both French and Norwegian on his official Twitter account, expressed his sympathies. “We stand stronger against hate if we stand together,” he said.

John Kirby, a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council, told reporters on board Air Force One the Biden administration had been in touch with Norway to offer condolences and support.

“We’re all horrified by the mass shooting in Oslo today targeting the LGBTQI+ community there and our hearts obviously go out to the all the families of the victims, the people of Norway, which is a tremendous ally, and of course the LGBTQI+ community there and around the world,” he said.

Norwegian security authorities raised the country’s terrorism threat assessment to its highest level following the attack, in which 21 people were also wounded, 10 of them severely.

The police, who are not normally armed, will carry guns until further notice, it said.

Other major events in the capital went ahead as planned on Saturday, police and organisers said, including a large outdoor music festival and a soccer match between the women’s teams of Norway and New Zealand.

The shooting took place just months after Norway marked 50 years since the abolition of a law that criminalised gay sex.

The Nordic nation of 5.4 million has lower crime rates than many Western countries, though it has experienced hate-motivated shootings, including when far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in 2011.

(Reporting by Terje Solsvik and Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, additional reporting by Andrea Shalal aboard Air Force One, Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen and Foo Yun Chee in Brussels; Editing by Pravin Char, Frank Jack Daniel, Peter Graff)

By Ahmed Eljechtimi and Graham Keeley

RABAT/MADRID -Dozens of migrants were pictured lying by a Moroccan border fence, some bleeding and many apparently lifeless, in video showing the aftermath of an attempted mass crossing into a Spanish enclave on Friday in which at least 23 died.

Moroccan authorities said the disaster occurred after migrants attempted to breach a fence into the Melilla enclave, with some dying in a crush after what authorities called a stampede, and others falling as they climbed.

The Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) local head Omar Naji said its members and sympathisers had shot the footage, which showed large numbers of badly injured people piled together with Moroccan security forces standing over them.

He said migrants had lain injured for hours without medical treatment, leading to a higher death toll.

Some 2,000 migrants had tried to reach Spanish territory by storming the enclave fence before battling border guards for two hours, with about 100 making it across the frontier.

Morocco said 23 migrants had died and scores were injured, but AMDH said the death toll was 29, citing unnamed local medical officials. Reuters has not managed to speak to any of the migrants who tried to cross.

The mass crossing was the first attempted from Morocco into one of Spain’s two North African enclaves since Rabat and Madrid agreed this year to bolster cooperation on border control.

That deal, which ended months of frosty relations, came after Spain backed Morocco’s stance over Western Sahara, a disputed territory that Rabat says is its own, but where an independence movement is fighting for a separate state.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the raid “an attack on the territorial integrity of our country” and blamed it on people traffickers. Scores of Moroccan and Spanish security personnel were also injured.

However, Melilla regional president Eduardo de Castro said the images were difficult to explain and accused Moroccan security forces of a disproportionate response.

A Moroccan official said security personnel had not used undue force.

STICKS, KNIVES AND ACID

One AMDH video showed dozens of African migrants piled together, many motionless and a few making feeble movements as Moroccan officers in riot gear looked on.

The same clip showed security forces pulling two bleeding and dazed-looking migrants past those lying on the ground. Another showed a Moroccan security officer striking a person who lay prone.

Friday’s incident followed days of rising tension in the area around Melilla, according to Ousmane Ba, a Senegalese migrant in nearby Nador who runs a community group to help other migrants.

Ba, who neither took part in Friday’s incident nor witnessed it, said migrants living nearby had clashed several times with Moroccan security forces while trying to cross the fence earlier this week.

Many of them are living rough in countryside nearby and were desperate, he said. “I have never seen migrants attacking this violently. We deplore the deaths near the fence,” he said.

A Spanish police source said the migrants who stormed the fence had used sticks, knives and acid against security forces and had changed tactics to try crossing at one perceived weak spot en masse, rather than in separate attempts along the fence.

Images posted on Twitter by Spain’s Civil Guard union – whose veracity Reuters was unable to verify – showed a large column of mostly young male migrants streaming through streets near the border.

Some appeared to be carrying sticks and throwing projectiles as puffs of smoke marked the air around them.

Footage posted on the Facebook page of Segnan Live, a local TV station, showed migrants grappling at a small section of border fence in a large group as sirens sounded nearby and tear gas canisters released plumes of smoke.

An image of the aftermath published by AMDH showed a large concentration of people lying at what appeared to be a frontier gate, in an enclosed corner where two high metal fences met, with ambulances standing nearby.

The AMDH and Spanish rights groups issued a statement calling for formal investigations into the disaster and for authorities to not bury those killed until afterwards.

“This is the most serious incident (on the border between Spain and Morocco) since 2014 when 15 people died,” said Esteban Beltran, director of Amnesty International in Spain.

(Reporting by Ahmed Eljechtimi, Graham Keeley, Aislinn Laing and Belen Carreno; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by John Stonestreet and David Clarke)

By Ayenat Mersie

KIGALI -The newly-expanded Commonwealth made broad commitments on Saturday to address climate change and boost trade, concluding a summit aimed at shoring up the relevance of a group that evolved from the British empire.

The club, whose 56 members range from India to the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru, covers some 2.5 billion people or about one-third of the world’s population. It presents itself as a network for cooperation, but critics say it needs to carve out a more concrete role and be less of a talking shop.

The week-long summit in Rwanda’s capital Kigali included comments from Britain’s Prince Charles expressing sorrow for his country’s role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the first time the Commonwealth has publicly addressed the subject.

Some members urged the organisation to go further by discussing reparations to countries hurt by the slave trade.

There was no mention of the topic in the final communique or news conference, which instead focused on broad policy pronouncements about sustainable development, health care and gender equality.

A “Living Lands Charter” stated that Commonwealth countries would work to implement previously-signed international deals like the Paris climate agreement.

“We know that we are at code red when it comes to climate change and that the small member states are facing a crisis that could be existential,” Patricia Scotland, re-elected during the summit as Commonwealth secretary-general, told reporters.

Scotland also touted rising trade between Commonwealth members, which she said she expected to hit $2 trillion per year by 2030 after collapsing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gabon and Togo were newly accepted into the Commonwealth, part of a trend of French-speaking African states seeking new alliances beyond Paris’ old networks of influence.

“If the Commonwealth wasn’t alive and vibrant and constructive, why would countries such as Gabon … and Togo join?” Michael Moussa Adamo, Gabon’s foreign minister, told Reuters.

HUMAN RIGHTS

Mostly absent from the summit’s public discussions were awkward issues concerning the host country.

Many human rights groups consider Rwanda among Africa’s most repressive countries. The U.S. State Department has cited credible reports of arbitrary killings by the government, including politically motivated reprisal killings abroad.

Neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo accuses Rwanda of supporting rebels waging a major offensive in eastern Congo.

Rwanda denies all of these charges. At the news conference, Rwandan President Paul Kagame defended Rwanda’s human rights record and accused Western governments of hypocrisy.

“There is nobody that is in prison in Rwanda that should not be there,” he said. “Actually there are people who are not in prison who should be there.”

Also in the spotlight has been Britain’s controversial policy to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, described as “appalling” by Prince Charles, according to British media.

Kagame defended his country’s role and denied it was motivated by the 120 million pounds ($147 million) Britain is initially paying Rwanda to house the asylum seekers. The arrangement was put on hold last week after the European Court of Human Rights blocked the first flight to Rwanda.

“We try to do our best to give them a sense of security and normalcy,” he said. “If they don’t come, we won’t complain. It’s not like we are dying to have people come to us in this manner.”

($1 = 0.8155 pounds)

(Reporting by Ayenat Mersie; Writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Peter Graff)

By Parisa Hafezi

DUBAI – Iran’s indirect talks with the United States on reviving the 2015 nuclear pact will resume soon, the Iranian foreign minister said on Saturday amid a push by the European Union’s top diplomat to break a months-long impasse in the negotiations.

“We are prepared to resume talks in the coming days. What is important for Iran is to fully receive the economic benefits of the 2015 accord,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said, adding that he had held a “long but positive meeting” with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said he could not speak on the status of the negotiations.

“But there’s nothing changed about our position that a nuclear deal is the best way to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons status,” Kirby told reporters traveling aboard Air Force One. “We want to get them back into compliance.”

The pact appeared close to being revived in March when the EU – which is coordinating negotiations – invited foreign ministers representing the accord’s parties to Vienna to finalise an agreement after 11 months of indirect talks between Tehran and President Joe Biden’s administration.

But the talks have since been bogged down, chiefly over Tehran’s insistence that Washington remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), its elite security force, from the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization list.

“We are expected to resume talks in the coming days and break the impasse. It has been three months and we need to accelerate the work. I am very happy about the decision that has been made in Tehran and Washington,” Borrell told a televised news conference in Tehran.

Two officials, one Iranian and one European, told Reuters ahead of Borrell’s trip that “two issues including one on sanctions remained to be resolved”, comments that Iran’s Foreign Ministry has neither confirmed nor denied.

“We agreed on resumption of negotiations between Iran and U.S. in the coming days, facilitated by my team, to solve the last outstanding issues,” Borrell said.

“And the coming days mean coming days. I mean, quickly, immediately.”

In 2018, then-U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the deal, under which Iran agreed to curbs on its nuclear programme in return for relief from economic sanctions.

The U.S. withdrawal and its reimposition of crippling sanctions prompted Iran to begin violating its core nuclear limits about a year later.

Western powers fear Iran is getting closer to being able to produce a nuclear bomb if it decided to, though Iran says its intentions are entirely peaceful.

Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, which makes the decisions in the nuclear talks, told Borrell that Iran will further develop its nuclear programme until the West changes its “illegal behaviour”.

“Iran’s retaliatory actions in the nuclear sector are merely legal and rational responses to U.S. unilateralism and European inaction and will continue as long as the West’s illegal practices are not changed,” Shamkhani said, without elaborating.

And despite the imminent resumption of talks, Borrell appeared to play down the possibility of a quick deal.

“I cannot predict … We are pushing for it. I appreciate the goodwill from the Iranian side. There is also goodwill from the American side,” Borrell said in a news conference on an EU website.

“Talks between Iran, the U.S. and the EU will not take place in Vienna because they will not be in the 4+1 format… they will probably take place somewhere closer to the Persian Gulf and more specifically in a Persian Gulf state,” Iranian media quoted Borrell as saying.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal aboard Air Force One; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Daniel Wallis)

BERLIN -Some 4,000 people marched in Munich on Saturday calling on leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized countries to take action to fight poverty, climate change and world hunger and end dependence on Russian fossil fuels.

Leaders of the United States, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Japan will meet on Sunday at the start of a three-day summit at Schloss Elmau in the Bavarian mountains, aiming to increase pressure on Russia whose actions in Ukraine have created food and energy shortages across the globe.

Protesters carried banners reading “Stop The War Russia And USA/NATO Hands Off Ukraine” and “Imperialism Starts Here”, and demanded the G7 allocate more funds for crisis prevention, civil conflict management and economic development.

“Today, we are at the G7 again because we realised that nothing has improved … it’s been going on for so long, that we are destroying ourselves,” said Lisa Munz, a protestor wearing a hat topped with a stuffed chicken.

Saturday’s protests in sunny Munich, where the leaders’ flights landed before they headed to Elmau, were sponsored by more than 15 organizations including WWF Germany, Oxfam Deutschland, Greenpeace and Bread for the World.

Officers in riot gear shoved protesters in a brief physical confrontation and police said several officers were physically attacked and nine people detained during the day, but the demonstration remained largely peaceful overall, a Reuters witness said.

Some 3,000 officers were on duty across the city, Munich police said.

The G7 typically attracts protests by dozens of campaign groups that want to court publicity for their causes and send a message to the Western political elite.

This year, however, protesters may struggle to make their presence visible to the leaders given the especially secluded summit venue, though that could change if protesters attempt to traverse the terrain to get closer to the summit itself, as some have said they plan to do.

“The colourful demonstration is a clear sign of how strong the desire of many people is for a fundamentally different policy in the G7 countries,” Oxfam Deutschland said in a statement.

G7 leaders are set to discuss setting up a climate club to better coordinate carbon pricing and other schemes for reducing emissions. Nearly 20,000 police officers have been deployed to ensure security at the summit.

(Reporting by Sarah Marsh, Riham Alkousaa and Reuters TV; Editing by David Holmes)

By Andrea Shalal and Trevor Hunnicutt

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE -President Joe Biden, who is weighing unilateral actions to counter an “extreme” ruling ending the U.S. right to abortion, nonetheless “respects” the Supreme Court and sees no need to expand its membership, a spokesperson said.

Biden is looking for more “solutions” in the aftermath of the abortion decision, including possible unilateral executive orders, according to spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre.

But, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, she offered no timeline for the release of such orders and downplayed their significance: “Nothing could fill the hole that this decision has made,” she said. “The only way to make that whole again is for Congress to act.”

Still, Biden continues to respect the authority of the Supreme Court, Jean-Pierre said.

“When the president commented about the court’s ruling, it was about the decision,” which was “extreme,” she said as the president traveled to Germany for the Group of Seven summit of rich nations.

“He sees the court obviously as legitimate and he respects the court… it is a court that he highly respects.”

On Saturday, Biden again condemned the court’s decisions earlier in the week restricting abortion rights and expanding gun owners’ rights. “The Supreme Court has made some terrible decisions,” he told reporters.

The legally binding rulings outraged liberals disenchanted by the 6-3 conservative majority on the nation’s top judicial body.

An expert commission launched by Biden deadlocked in December over whether to recommend reforms to the court’s structure, including expanding its membership beyond nine justices.

“About expanding the court, that is something that the president does not agree with,” said Jean-Pierre. “That is not something that he wants to do.”

She declined to address other reform proposals discussed by the commission, such as imposing term limits on justices.

Jean-Pierre said she expects there will be further legal challenges to new state-level restrictions on women traveling to seek abortions.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal aboard Air Force One and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Additional reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Alistair Bell)

By Kuba Stezycki and Joanna Plucinska

WARSAW -Thousands of Poles and Ukrainians are walking for peace and demanding an end to discrimination against the LGBT+ community on Saturday, in a joint Pride march in Warsaw that organisers say aims to defend freedom and equality as war casts a shadow over eastern Europe.

The annual Pride march in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv was cancelled due to Russia’s invasion, leading the LGBT+ community in Warsaw to team up with their counterparts in Ukraine to organise the event in the Polish capital.

“Russia denied us the right that we were fighting for for years, Russia denied us the Pride, our march of equality that we are holding every year since 2012 in Kyiv. … That is why we are marching in Warsaw,” said Lenny Emson, executive director of KyivPride, who came to Poland for the march.

Conservative attitudes towards sexual orientation are widespread in both countries. Poland’s ruling nationalists have made battling what they call “LGBT ideology” a key plank of election campaigns, while in Ukraine far-right groups regularly targeted LGBT+ campaigners and events before the war.

But with many LGBT+ people in Ukraine signing up to fight for their country, activists have said they hope the war can help to erode prejudice.

“People who are ready to die to defend this country, I think they have the right to be equal, to have for example civil unions,” said Temur Levchuk, an LGBT+ activist in Kyiv. He was unable to attend the Warsaw march due to a law preventing Ukrainian men aged 18-60 from leaving the country.

Moscow began what it calls its “special military operation” on Feb. 24, saying it wanted to ensure security at its borders. Kyiv and the West say President Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked invasion.

For some LGBT+ Ukrainians, the fact that Putin has curtailed the rights of their community in Russia gave them more reason to fight.

Olena Mykal, a 29-year old marketing manager at an IT company from Kiev, who fled Ukraine in March, said marching in Warsaw was an act of solidarity with the LGBT+ community in their home country.”I’m here because I can’t go to the parade in Ukraine. We’re all people regardless of who we love.” Mykal told Reuters minutes before the march started.

(Reporting by Kuba Stezycki and Marek Strzelecki in Warsaw, Joanna Plucinska in Kyiv; Writing by Alan Charlish and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; Editing by Richard Chang)

By Mohammad Yunus Yawar and Charlotte Greenfield

KABUL -Vital medical supplies reached hospitals on Saturday in the remote area of Afghanistan hit by an earthquake that killed more than 1,000 people this week, as the country’s Taliban government appealed for more international aid.

Authorities have called off the search for survivors in the mountainous southeastern region near the Pakistani border following’s Wednesday’s 6.1-magnitude quake, which also injured about 2,000 people and damaged or destroyed 10,000 homes.

Aftershocks on Friday killed at least five more people in the area some 160 km (100 miles) southeast of the capital Kabul, and medical staff said rudimentary healthcare facilities were hampering their efforts to help the injured.

“Those injured that were in a bad condition and needed operations, (which) we can’t do here, have been sent to Kabul,” said Abrar, who goes by one name, the manager of a hospital in Paktika, the worst-affected province.

In Kabul, hospitals more used to treating victims of war have opened their wards to earthquake victims.

“Usually we admit only war related patients or patients in life threatening conditions, but in this case we decided to make an exception in order to support the Afghan people,” said Stefano Sozza, the country director for Emergency Hospital, an Italian-funded surgical centre for war victims.

One of the patients, a woman from Gayan district of Paktika, whose name Reuters is withholding for security reasons, said nine members of her family had died in the earthquake.

“Just I remain,” she said. “My legs are broken, we have nothing; we eat what the Taliban give us.”

The disaster is a major test for Afghanistan’s hardline Taliban rulers, who have been shunned by many foreign governments due to concerns about human rights since they seized control of the country last year.

Afghanistan has been cut off from much direct international assistance because of Western sanctions, deepening a humanitarian crisis in swaths of the country even before this week’s earthquake.

The United Nations and several other countries have rushed aid to the affected areas, with more due to arrive over the coming days, and the Taliban appealed on Saturday for further aid shipments to help quake victims.

“We call on all humanitarian organizations to help the people,” said Mohammad Amen Hozifa, a spokesperson for the Paktika provincial government.

China’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday the nation would provide humanitarian aid worth 50 million yuan ($7.5 million) to Afghanistan including tents, towels, beds and other materials to help those affected by the earthquake. [B9N2TY01H]

The UN’s migration agency said on Saturday it had begun distributing thousands of emergency shelters and hygiene kits in affected areas.

(Reporting by Mohammad Yunus Yawar and Charlotte Greenfield in Kabul Additional reporting by Emma Farge in GenevaWriting by Alasdair PalEditing by Helen Popper)