Global News Podcast: Russian airstrike kills at least 50 at a funeral in Ukraine

Live's Less Ordinary is the podcast from the BBC World Service, bringing you extraordinary

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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Janet Jalil and in the early hours of Friday, the 6th of October, these are our

main stories. Ukraine says more than 50 civilians have been killed in a Russian airstrike on

a village in the east of the country. A drone attack on a Syrian military academy is reported

to have left 80 dead and hundreds injured. Climate scientists say September was the world's

hottest on record by an extraordinary margin.

Also in this podcast, from the catwalk to the spacewalk, Prada may actually be able

to make some real technical contributions to the outer layer of the new space suit.

Now the fashion brand is helping to address the astronauts going on NASA's mission to

the moon in 2025.

A small village in eastern Ukraine of about 300 residents has become the site of the latest

Russian airstrike. Officials say more than 50 people were killed when a grocery shop

and a cafe where villagers were taking part in a wake were hit. Footage shows rescue workers

clambering over large piles of rubble as they search for bodies in the village of Roza in

the Kharkiv region. A six-year-old boy is reported to be among the dead. Ukraine's interior minister

is Ihor Klimenko.

I would like to note that there were 330 residents in the village of Roza. One person from every

family attended this memorial dinner. That is why it is such a terrible tragedy for the

village and Ukraine.

The UN has condemned the targeting of civilians. The US has described a strike as horrifying

and Britain said it illustrated Moscow's barbarity. The Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky,

who is attending an EU summit in Spain to press for more military aid, such as air defense

systems, accused Russia of targeting the area deliberately.

Russian terrorists launched an attack that one can't even call beastly because it would

be an insult to beasts. A deliberate missile attack on a village in the Kharkiv region,

targeting a regular grocery store and a cafe. Russian military personnel couldn't have been

unaware of where they were striking. It was not a blind attack.

Our correspondent in Kiev, James Waterhouse, told us more about this latest Russian attack

on Ukrainian civilians.

This is the deadliest attack Ukraine has seen for more than a year in a small village really

called Groza in the northeastern Kharkiv region. Some quite distressing footage has been put

online by officials showing several bodies close together next to piles of rubble which

are thought to be, we're told, used to be a grocery shop. But what authorities are saying

is that the majority of victims were gathered outside for the funeral wake of a Ukrainian

soldier. And Russia has been squarely blamed in using a short-range ballistic missile,

an Iskandar missile, which are notoriously difficult to defend against because of the

height and speed at which they fly. The military significance of attacks like these seem to

be questionable, I think, at this stage on face value because where this village sits,

it's in a region that was liberated last year. It is 30 kilometres from one of the most

volatile parts of the front line. It is not uncommon for locations like this to be shelled.

But in terms of a single strike at this deadliness, we haven't really seen that for a long time.

Yes, because we've had an adviser to the Ukrainian president saying this attack defies military

logic. We've had the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Katerus, strongly condemning this,

saying attacks against civilians are prohibited under international humanitarian law.

Yes, and this is a conflict, this is an invasion which is synonymous with civilian areas and

civilians themselves being targeted. The evidence is overwhelming. You had the initial occupation,

the attack on Kiev, where there were mass graves uncovered with liberation, where there

were evidence people have been executed. I have lost count the number of times a missile

has hit a residential block. Yes, there may well be occasions when the Russians were

aiming for a military site. But this is a war where millions of people, whether they live

in a village in central Ukraine or even in western cities like the Viv, they all live

with the daily risk of having a missile land on their doorstep.

And this comes as President Zelensky is attending an EU summit to call for more air defences.

This attack shows how important this call is, especially as winter approaches.

Absolutely, this will be central to his case. Now, he is in Spain and the mood I've got

to say feels especially bleak. If you look at the political and military goings on for

Ukraine, because you have the political turmoil in the US, the consensus from Spain is that

among all these European leaders who are gathering is that Europe could not plug the

gap left by the US should it pull support for Ukraine. Nevertheless, President Zelensky

is asking for more. He has condemned the attack. He's described, accused Russia of trying

to normalise what he calls its genocidal attacks on Ukraine.

James Waterhouse. Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia did not start the

war in Ukraine. He told a meeting in the Black Sea resort of Sochi that the West was

to blame. He said the US and its allies wanted to impose what he called America's crumbling

hegemony on the world and that they had lost a sense of reality.

There is this ever-increasing military and political pressure. We have to respond. I've

said many times that we did not start the so-called war in Ukraine. On the contrary, we're trying

to end it. It was not us who carried out a bloody and unconstitutional state coup in

Kiev in 2014.

Western analysts say last year's invasion of Ukraine has been Moscow's greatest strategic

blunder in decades. In a separate development, satellite pictures confirm that Russia has

moved virtually its entire Black Sea fleet from Sevastopol in Crimea to alternative ports

further east in the wake of repeated strikes by Ukraine. Last month, Kiev used long-range

missiles supplied by its Western allies to hit the fleet's headquarters. Here's Alex

Murray from BBC Verify, the BBC's open-source investigations unit.

BBC Verify has been analysing commercial satellite imagery which shows that a number of Russian

naval vessels recently relocated from their Sevastopol base in occupied Crimea to the port

of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea coast in southern Russia. Among the vessels identified

in images from 1st and 2nd October are several landing ships, frigates and submarines. We've

also observed six vessels at the port of Feodosia. As of 5th October, just two vessels are visible

in the naval port area of Sevastopol.

Alex Murray. Well, we mentioned that EU summit in Spain that President Zelensky is attending

and there were hope of talks on the Nagano-Karabakh conflict of that summit, but Azerbaijan had

boycotted them complaining of pro-Armenian bias. Azerbaijan's lightning military attack

last month ended the decades-old Armenian separatist rule of the disputed Nagano-Karabakh

region. Since then, nearly all the Armenian population of 120,000 has fled across the

border to Armenia. Our diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams, has spent the last few days in

Nagano-Karabakh on a press tour organised by the Osseri authorities.

So this is stop number one on this press tour. It's all very, very controlled. There are

certain things they want us to see and probably certain things they don't want us to see.

Apparently this is an Armenian position, just a trench line and a little bunker here, but

it looks down over the city of Kankendi, what the Armenians called the Stepanikert. This

whole ridge that we're on became the front line and clearly judging by the fortifications

here, it was a place which the Armenians thought was very important to defend, but which when

the end came, they abandoned very, very quickly. We're now on the road that leads from Stepanikert

down to the Armenian border to the Lachin crossing point. And this is the road that

people use as they tried to flee a couple of weeks ago. There are three cars here that

have all broken down for one reason or another. The place is scattered with belongings. There's

a plastic bag here full of clothes. I'm looking the window. I can see a jar of pickles on

the front seat. You got a real sense of the panic that must have existed as people tried

to flee for the border. And all this, as Abayjan says, was the choice of the Armenians themselves.

Its lightning military operation was not aimed at civilians, it says, only at what it calls

illegal armed groups. Hikmet Hajiyev is an advisor to the president, Ilham Aliyev.

Indeed, we do regret that the civilian population has decided many of them to leave. And of course,

in this case, and we respect freedom of choice and freedom of movement. And also,

majority of the population on the ground, they also have an ethnic hatred against

an Azerbaijanis. They say that again, I cannot leave under the flag of Azerbaijan.

Is this the kind of end of this whole 30-year story in your view?

A bit of hope that really finally we are coming to the final conclusion of this 200-years-old

conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Really, Azerbaijan wants a peace.

Russia's peacekeepers are still here. As we drive around, we pass several Russian checkpoints.

But with Azerbaijan finally controlling all its territory, there's nothing much for them to do.

But Azerbaijan is busy. Our journey passes through areas taken back in previous rounds

of fighting. Here, the state is investing heavily – power, roads, whole communities.

In Lachin, torrential rain lashes the Najafov family home.

Thirty-one years ago, they were driven from this very spot by Armenian forces.

Now they're back, and the house has been rebuilt at government expense. Iskander was born here.

For 27 years, every day, I would wake up and say, we're going back.

Coming back was like a dream.

Azerbaijan feels that history is on its side. There's a real sense of pride here.

But acute sensitivity too. We were never allowed to get close to the abandoned Armenian city

at the centre of this whole story – Stepanikert. Accused by some of ethnic cleansing,

our hosts weren't ready to show us its deserted streets.

Paul Adams reporting from Nagorno-Karabakh. A drone attack on a military academy in Syria

during a graduation ceremony has killed at least 80 people and wounded more than 200 others.

Women and children were among those killed in the attack in the province of Homs.

Syria's Defence Minister, who'd been at the ceremony, left moments before the drones hit.

Officials have blamed what they call terrorist groups.

Our Middle East regional editor, Mike Thompson, has more details.

A very big occasion, a big graduation ceremony for Syrian officers going through the academy.

The Defence Minister was there. The families were there.

And also, there were a lot of high-ranking army officials.

So obviously, it was quite a target for opponents to aim at.

And several explosive-laden drones hit the building just after the ceremony had finished,

just after rather the Defence Minister had left and caused amazing, terrible carnage.

And it's believed that the drones that were fired at the academy came from the northwest of Homs.

That's an area controlled by rebel forces. And it's suspected Idlib,

which is controlled by a group called HTS, Hayat-3R Al-Sham, were behind.

At least that's what the Syrian military believed.

But in 2020, there was a ceasefire agreement signed between Russia,

who's been supporting through much of the war, the Syrian regime,

and Turkey, which had sided for a large part of the conflict with the rebels.

And since then, it's been much, much calmer with just the occasional flare-up.

But this is a one very, of course, very mighty flare-up.

Mike Thompson. The death of Masa Amini, the young woman detained by Iran's morality police

for not fully covering her hair, triggered some of the biggest anti-government protests in Iran for

years. Since then, some girls and women have stopped wearing their headscarves or hijabs

altogether. But another incident involving a 16-year-old girl at a metro station in Tehran

has prompted fears that history is about to repeat itself. Activists say Amita Garawand

is in a coma after being beaten by police for not wearing her hijab. Iran denies this.

Barana Basi of BBC Persian told my colleague James Menendez more.

The 16-year-old teenager was at a train station in Tehran on Sunday, where she was reportedly

assaulted by the hijab enforcers when she got on the train. This is from human rights organizations.

CCTV footage that was released a few days ago shows that two other teenagers, presumably her

friends, are dragging her out of the train while she is unconscious onto the platform.

Human rights groups say that she was assaulted, but the government denies this and says that

she suffered a sudden drop in her blood pressure. To support that, they have released

CCTV footage that they claim that shows that from the second Amita entered the underground

station until she was dragged out of the train. But the problem is that the footage was edited,

so we don't have the whole picture. Also, human rights organizations have called for

footage from inside the carriage to be released because presumably she was assaulted inside the

carriage, but we haven't had that so far. The problem is restricting access by independent

media to the family to independent sources. A reporter from a modern newspaper heard that

a few days ago, went to the hospital to report on her condition, was arrested for a few hours.

We have reports that the family and her friends are under pressure. There are reports that the

school where she studies, the teachers and students have been threatened not to release any pictures

of her or any information about her. The government is trying to hold a monopoly over the information

about her. And is that because of the clear sensitivity of a case like this? I mean,

anyone listening to what you've just said will remember what happened to that other young

woman, Masa Amini? Absolutely. There are fears that one year after Masa Amini was killed in

police custody, this might be happening again. Amita is reportedly in a coma in a hospital, but

no matter how much information they state media release, for example, they've talked to their

parents and some people who say that they are friends of Amita and were with her when she

collapsed. They have released interviews with the train driver, but we don't know under what

condition those interviews were conducted. And there is this lack of trust in the government

version of events. And since the government does not allow any independent media to have access

to the hospital, to the family, there is this fear that she was actually assaulted and the

history might repeat itself. Last year, Masa Amini was reportedly assaulted in a morality

police custody, although the government always denied that. She passed away and it sparked

protests across the country that continued for months and it posed the biggest threat today,

authority of the Islamic Republic since establishment 45 years ago.

Barana Basi from BBC Persian. Scientists in South Africa studying animal behaviour have

discovered that the sound of human voices causes considerably more fear in wild mammals

than the sound of predators such as lions. The research was conducted in the Kruger National

Park as Richard Howes reports. Using loudspeakers hidden at waterholes, scientists played recordings

of humans talking normally and the sort of lion cause that local animals would usually hear in

the wild. They recorded the creature's reactions using video cameras. 95% of the animals, including

predators like leopards, became extremely frightened and ran away when they heard human voices.

The sound of lions, apex predators, caused alarm but much less so and elephants often

aggressively looked for the source of the big cat calls. It's thought that the animals have learned

that contact with humans is extremely dangerous after generations of hunting using guns and dogs.

Richard Howes

Still to come, a video game with a difference.

They got everything right about Baghdad, the culture that we people look.

And you hear the dryer call, the azan.

Why Arabic is at the heart of the latest instalment of the hugely popular Assassin's Creed.

Kalki presents My Indian Life is the BBC World Service podcast exploring the lives of

extraordinary people from all over India. People like Savita Kanswal, the mountain climber,

who climbed Mount Everest and Mount Makalu in just 15 days. Her life was tragically cut short

last year. Listen to her inspiring story now by searching for Kalki presents My Indian Life

wherever you get your BBC podcast. Welcome back to the Global News podcast.

Six months after civil war erupted in Sudan, the charity Islamic Relief has painted a harrowing

picture of the desperate measures families in the Western Darfur region have been forced to take

in order to survive, often at the expense of their children. Our Africa editor Will Ross explains.

This report by Islamic Relief is based on interviews they did with almost 400 households

in 20 villages in the Jabalmara area, a mountainous region of Darfur. And it talks about really the

impact on the families with immense suffering because of lack of food access to healthcare.

But some of the sort of perhaps more unlikely things or things we haven't heard of,

more children being forced into work or begging on the streets, a huge uptick in sexual and gender

based violence against women and girls, and a massive problem getting any help with that because

so many health facilities have been shut down. And then it also talks about rising mental health

needs. One of the other things that struck me was the vulnerability of young boys to be lured

into armed groups. They're saying that that has gone up dramatically and from the interviews they've

done, many of the young boys fear being forced to join these armed groups. And also families just

torn apart. Yes, that's very striking, isn't it, that this report seems to basically talk about

children having their futures stolen from them. What is the outside world doing to help? What

can it do to help? Well, yes, Islamic Relief is saying there's been some progress in the past

in the Darfur region, which of course has been through sort of 20 years or so of conflict. But

they're saying some of the changes were positive in terms of trying to improve on healthcare.

But the problem that's there now is that it's just not safe enough for humanitarian agencies to access

the areas where these people are fleeing to. So there's a real limit as to how much help can be

given to people. I mean, a lot of the international community's focus has been on trying to get the

two sides to talk peace and to come to some kind of an agreement. But yes, the UN has a presence and

different organisations have a presence, but it's definitely severely impacted the humanitarian

assistance because of the war, because there's so much fighting going on. And we're talking about

Darfur right now, but there's also, of course, the capital cartoon where civilians are caught

between the warring sides, a huge number of civilians being killed. A lot of the UN agencies

have pulled out to port Sudan and they're trying to coordinate their operations from there.

Will Ross. Here in Britain, a man who took a crossbow to Windsor Castle and said he wanted

to kill Queen Elizabeth II has become the first person to be jailed for treason for four decades.

Just once in Chail, a former supermarket worker was given a nine-year prison sentence.

21-year-old Chail had pleaded guilty earlier this year. He'll remain in a high-security

psychiatric hospital before being transferred to prison. Our home affairs correspondent,

Daniel Sanford, was in court and sent this report.

Just once in Chail was stopped by armed officers just outside the George IV gate,

which leads to the private apartments at Windsor Castle. He was wearing a metal mask and a loaded

crossbow with the safety catch off and had climbed into the castle grounds using a rope ladder.

It was just after eight o'clock in the morning on Christmas Day 2021 because of the pandemic,

the Queen was in residence and not at Sandringham. Commander Dominic Murphy of Scotland Yard's

counter-terrorism command said that when confronted by armed officers with a taser,

Chail gave himself up. He was a dangerous individual armed with a crossbow that was loaded

and it's only as a result of the royalty and specialist protection officers on duty on the

day who dealt with this so calmly and professionally that he was stopped and nobody was hurt.

Motivated by revenge for a massacre in 1919 in which British troops killed hundreds of

Indian protesters, he told the arresting officers he was there to kill the Queen.

He'd been planning it for months, even starting an application to the Grenadier guards to get

close to the monarch. At some point, Mr Justice Hilliard concluded he had lost touch with reality

and by the time he entered Windsor Castle he was in a state of psychosis. But the judge said

Chail should still go to prison. In my judgment the defendant's responsibility for the offences

is still significant. He had conceived of killing the Queen earlier in 2021 when he was not psychotic.

He took steps to try and get closer to his target and to learn useful skills when again

he was not psychotic. The judge passed sentences which will be served one after the other,

totaling nine years for treason, possessing an offensive weapon and making threats to kill.

But he said Chail should finish his psychiatric treatment at the High Security Broadmoor Hospital

before entering the prison system. In the last month before his arrest,

Chail had been talking to an artificial intelligence girlfriend he'd created on an

AI chatbot app called Replica. He told her about his plan to kill the Queen and at times she seemed

to encourage him, saying he was wise and very well trained.

Daniel Sanford. Scientists say last month was the hottest September on record by a huge margin.

The EU's climate service says the rise in global temperatures is being driven by greenhouse gas

emissions and the El Nino weather event. With more details, here's our climate editor Justin Morillat.

This September was 0.93 degrees Celsius warmer than the average global temperature for the month,

almost a whole degree. That is a very big margin when you consider this is an average across the

entire world. Normally meteorologists expect temperatures to vary by small fractions of a

degree between years and it explains why one leading scientist called the jump absolutely

gobsmackingly bananas. This comes after the hottest summer on record in the northern hemisphere.

Scientists are now saying this year is on track to be the warmest ever recorded, yet more evidence

of the effects human activities are having on the planet. Samantha Burgess is a director at

Copernicus, the EU climate service which produced the new figures. The data are pretty shocking.

What's really surprising by September though is the scale of that jump. So it's the largest

anomaly of any month of any year in our dataset going back to 1940. So we've not expected that at

all. One reason this year is especially hot is because of the recurrence of a regular weather

fluctuation in the Pacific Ocean called El Nino. El Nino drives up global temperatures but the

cycle is only beginning and will deliver more heat next year, leading climate scientists to

predict that 2024 will be even hotter than this year. Meanwhile a new survey has found Europe's

mightiest peak Mont Blanc has shrunk by 2.2 meters. The data puts the official height at 4805.59 meters

down from 4807.81 meters two years ago. We'll need more evidence before we can say for certain this

is the result of our warming climate but Alpine regions are experiencing some of the most dramatic

temperature rises in the world. Just in Rolat. The latest version of the video game Assassin's Creed

is being released this week with a striking change. The characters in Assassin's Creed Mirage set in

a faithful recreation of 9th century Baghdad have been recorded by fluent Arabic speakers. Players

can still choose English dialogue but the developers hope they'll go for the more

authentic classical Arabic as they explore a historically significant era. This was when

Baghdad was the capital of an empire and a center of learning and culture. The developers hope this

will counter negative Arab stereotypes and help to develop gaming in the Middle East. As Andrew

Rogers reports the early response from gamers has been positive. It's called Mirage and as well as

being set in Iraq more than a thousand years ago it can be played entirely in Arabic. That's been

getting some of you talking about the way Arabic culture and language is used in your favorite

games. When you hear Arabic it's usually in call of duty with the terrorist that's what people

recognize as Arabic but Arabic is a beautiful language. We caught up with Amir he's 20 and

grew up in Baghdad. They got everything right about Baghdad the culture that we people look

and you hear the dryer call the Azzan and what I heard that it reminded me of just being at home

because my house is across the street from a mosque so just hearing it in a game felt like

they got it right that's home. A lot of people won't necessarily know a lot of the history.

You know that's the thing in the past 20 years you know Baghdad from the wars that's all that

people talk about but Baghdad in specific and the whole of Iraq so where Babylon was this is the

Abbas Yad Caliphate. It's a hugely important moment in history this was the golden age all

knowledge books and the biggest writers mathematicians they all originate from Iraq and Baghdad. Is there

anything that you think maybe they haven't quite got right? They got it mostly right but they don't

have my neighborhood because it wasn't built yet. I looked at them and I was like oh why is it a desert

where's my house? So Amir's house aside what's it like getting all those little details right?

Mohammed was part of the team that made the game. It kind of became like a personal passion project

seeing one's culture depicted accurately in this way is not something that we see often. The different

expressions that we localized to one point in the beginning one characters as to the other we

would make more money selling water to a camel. While that makes sense in English that is not

something we say in Arabic so we used an expression that was common back in the day. We would make

more money exporting dates to Hajj. People are more open to entertainment and media from other

cultures. A couple of decades ago a Korean drama would not be as popular as it is now and I think

that's something positive. That was video game developer Mohammed ending their report by Andrew

Rogers. Now for fashion that will be truly out of this world. The luxury brand Prada is to help

design the spacesuits for NASA's Return to the Moon in 2025. The Italian fashion house will be

working alongside another private company called Axiom Space. It appears to be a case of not just

style but substance as Jonathan Joseph reports. Three, two, one, zero all-engine running lift off

we have a lift off. It's more than 50 years since humanity first set foot on the moon something last

achieved in 1972. NASA hopes the planned return in 2025 will be top to toe a decidedly more

fashionable affair. The luxury fashion brand Prada will help design the spacesuits for the

Artemis 3 mission as it works with the commercial space company Axiom. But it's about more than

looking good according to Professor Jeffrey Hoffman who flew five NASA missions and carried out four

spacewalks. A spacesuit is really like a miniature spacecraft. Oh your life depends on it. Prada has

considerable experience with various types of composite fabrics and may actually be able to

make some real technical contributions to the outer layer of the new spacesuit. That experience has

been built on both the catwalks of Milan and through Prada's involvement in Sailing America's

Cup. The design is likely to stick to white as its main colour. That's best for coping with the

heat of the sun. It also has to be resistant to sharp fragments of moon dust whilst being

flexible enough for astronauts to move freely. NASA is increasingly involving private companies

in its next generation of space exploration. It says it values their creativity and that creativity

now extends to one very well-dressed leap for astronaut kind. Jonathan Joseph reporting

on a new type of high fashion. And that's all from us for now but there will be a new edition

of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered

you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcastatbbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X

at Global NewsPod. This edition was mixed by Rob Thanner, the producer was Liam McCheffrey,

the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janette Jaleel. Until next time, goodbye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.