Europe
Rifts in Europe over irregular migration remain even after 'success' of new EU deal
Despite a breakthrough in negotiations earlier this week, the leaders of the European Union clashed again Friday on how to handle the human drama of migration that has tested their sense of common purpose over the past decade.
The world’s largest club of wealthy countries remains split between those that support Brussels’ initiatives focused on distributing migrants between members in an act of solidarity and those countries, like Hungary or Poland, whose far-right governments flatly refuse any shared responsibility for migrants arriving to other member states.
Italy is even going outside the EU to establish links with the United Kingdom to crack down on unwanted arrivals.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was blunt about how far Europe's leaders still are from reaching a consensus before they met in Granada, Spain. Orbán, who has pushed back against EU policy repeatedly and taken a hard-line approach against migration, said that he won't sign off on any deal at any point in the foreseeable future.
He went as far as to compare the situation to being “legally raped” by Hungary's fellow EU members.
Read: Russian strike on cafe kills 51, Ukrainian officials say, as Zelenskyy seeks more Western support
“The agreement on migration, politically, it’s impossible — not today (or) generally speaking for the next years," Orbán said. “Because legally we are, how to say it — we are raped. So if you are raped legally, forced to accept something what you don’t like, how would you like to have a compromise?”
The dispute is over an agreement struck on Wednesday by a majority of the EU's interior ministers unlocked a draft of a new overarching migration pact that would involve setting up processing centers on the EU’s outside borders to screen people as they arrive. That agreement will now go to the European Parliament, where further negotiations will take place before it can become binding.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who is facing re-election this month, also bashed the deal, maintaining his government’s position that it keeps migrants out for security reasons. He called it a “dictate coming from Brussels and Berlin” that Warsaw would resist.
Neither Hungary nor Poland could veto a final pact, but their refusal to comply with European policy in the past has bordered on provoking institutional crises, and the bloc is eager to avoid similar tensions with its eastern members.
The summit's concluding declaration was intended to include a paragraph on migration but it was removed from the original draft after the leaders met. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the summit's host, said they had known “the risk” of that happening while downplaying the failure to reach consensus.
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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen remained positive about the chances that the new pact could become a reality, hailing this week's deal to establish extraordinary measures that a country could take in the event of a massive, unforeseen movement of migrants toward its borders, as “a big success.”
“This was an important piece of the puzzle of the whole puzzle of the Migration and Asylum pact,” she said at the post-summit news conference, skirting over the opposition by Hungary and Poland.
Balancing demands from progressive politicians and rights groups supporting the rights of migrants with the political realities of a continent where the far-right is using migration to grow, Von der Leyen said it was key to dissuade migrants from using smuggling routes by opting for legal paths to entering the union.
She said that some 3.7 million regular migrants entered the EU last year, while 330,000 irregular crossings attempts were registered.
“We cannot accept that smugglers and traffickers define who and decide who is coming through the European Union," she said.
The EU has been trying to forge a new common policy on migration ever since it was overwhelmed in 2015 by well over 1 million arrivals, mostly refugees fleeing war in Syria.
Read: Erdogan says Turkey may part ways with the EU. He implied the country could ends its membership bid
Since then it has focused on paying countries like Turkey, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco to do the dirty work of stopping migrants before they embark on the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean Sea, where nearly 30,000 people have died since 2014, according to the U.N. migration agency.
A draft of a New Pact on Migration and Asylum, which has been criticized by human right groups as conceding ground to more hard-line approaches, was touted as the answer to the EU’s migration woes when it was made public in September 2020.
For the scheme to enter into force, officials and lawmakers say, an agreement must be reached between a majority of member countries and parliament by February before EU elections in June.
Migration flows into the EU have been on the rise this year, even if they are down from the 2015-16 peak. From January to October, some 194,000 migrants and refugees reached Spain, Italy, Malta, Greece and Cyprus by boat, compared to 112,000 in the same period last year, according to the International Organization for Migration.
The issue of migration was not going to be a priority of this informal meeting, where leaders already had the prickly question of how to continue with expansion to include the Balkan countries and a Ukraine that is immersed in battling Russia’s invasion.
But migration was put on the agenda by Italy's far-right Premier Giorgia Meloni. Italy has seen an influx of people arriving in recent months, including the arrival of 7,000 people to the tiny fishing island of Lampedusa on a single day last month.
Meloni and Britain’s conservative prime minister, Rishi Sunak, announced Friday in an op-ed article published in Corriere della Sera and The Times of London newspapers that they were forming an alliance against illegal migration in a bilateral move beyond Brussels’ sphere of influence.
“We must fight criminal organizations and carry out the work we are doing in Africa to stop the departures,” Meloni, who also held a private meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on migration, told reporters in Granada. “We are now looking for concrete tools to solve the issues.”
The one-day summit in the picturesque city of Granada is just an hour’s drive from Spain’s southern coast, where boatloads of people fleeing violence or poverty in Africa wash up regularly.
Spain’s marine rescue service reported Friday it had intercepted another 500 migrants in six boats approaching the Canary Islands, located off the northwestern coast of Africa. Previously this week, the archipelago’s tiny El Hierro island — with a population of 10,000 — took in 1,200 migrants arriving in open wooden boats that are believed to have departed from Senegal on the hazardous journey northward.
Russian strike on cafe kills 51, Ukrainian officials say, as Zelenskyy seeks more Western support
A Russian rocket blast turned a village cafe and store in eastern Ukraine into rubble Thursday, killing at least 51 civilians in one of the deadliest attacks in the war in months, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other top officials in Kyiv.
Rescuers searched for survivors in the remains of the only cafe in the village of Hroza. Body parts were strewn across a nearby children's playground that was severely damaged by the strike. Cellphones were collected and put in a courtyard nearby, waiting to be claimed. Occasionally, one of them rang, lighting up a shattered screen.
Around 60 people, including children, were attending a wake at the cafe when the missile hit, Ukrainian officials said.
Zelenskyy, attending a summit of about 50 European leaders in Spain to drum up support from Ukraine's allies, denounced the strike as a “demonstrably brutal Russian crime” and “a completely deliberate act of terrorism.”
According to preliminary information from Kyiv, the village was hit by an Iskander missile.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the strike “horrifying” and said it demonstrated why the United States is doing everything it can "to help the brave people of Ukraine to fight for their freedom, to fight for their democracy.”
Hroza, which had a population of about 500 before the war, is in the northeastern Kharkiv region and was seized by Russia early in the war before being recaptured by Ukraine in September 2022. It's only 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of Kupiansk, a key focus of the Russian military effort. Zelenskyy visited the area Tuesday to meet with troops and inspect equipment supplied by the West.
Dmytro Nechvolot told The Associated Press he was looking for his 60-year-old father, who attended the wake for a soldier from Hroza who died last year but who was reburied after being identified by DNA. Nechvolot kept walking up to his father's red car, which was still parked nearby, while waiting for confirmation that he had been killed.
“I have lost a man I looked up to, a beloved father, and an unforgettable grandfather,” he said.
On Thursday, Zelenskyy was at a summit of the European Political Community in Granada, Spain, where he asked for more Western support, saying that “Russian terror must be stopped.”
“Russia needs this and similar terrorist attacks for only one thing: to make its genocidal aggression the new norm for the whole world,” he said in a statement posted on his Telegram channel. “Now we are talking with European leaders, in particular, about strengthening our air defense, strengthening our soldiers, giving our country protection from terror. And we will respond to the terrorists.”
“The key for us, especially before winter, is to strengthen air defense, and there is already a basis for new agreements with partners,” he told the group, which was formed in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Heeding Zelenskyy's cry, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany will supply Ukraine with another Patriot missile air defense system. He expects Russia will again target crucial infrastructure and cities across Ukraine in the winter months.
“This is what is now needed the most,“ Scholz said after meeting Zelenskyy, according to the German news agency dpa.
Read: Russian airstrikes reported in several Ukrainian cities including Kyiv
Last winter, Russia targeted Ukraine's energy system and other vital infrastructure in a steady barrage of missile and drone attacks, triggering continuous power outages across the country. Ukraine's power system has shown a high degree of resilience and flexibility, but there have been concerns that Russia will again ramp up its strikes on power facilities as winter draws near.
Zelenskyy noted that the Granada summit will also focus on “joint work for global food security and protection of freedom of navigation” in the Black Sea, where the Russian military has targeted Ukrainian ports after Moscow's withdrawal from a U.N.-sponsored grain deal designed to ensure safe grain exports from the invaded country’s ports.
The U.K. Foreign Office cited intelligence suggesting that Russia may lay sea mines in the approaches to Ukrainian ports to target civilian shipping and blame it on Ukraine.
“Russia almost certainly wants to avoid openly sinking civilian ships, instead falsely laying blame on Ukraine for any attacks against civilian vessels in the Black Sea,” it said, adding that the U.K. was working with Ukraine to help improve the safety of shipping.
Speaking in Granada, Zelenskyy emphasized the need to preserve European unity in the face of Russian disinformation and to remain strong amid what he described as a “political storm” in the United States.
Read: Further Russian airstrikes on Mariupol
Asked if he was worried that support for Ukraine could falter in the U.S. Congress, the Ukrainian president stressed that his visit to Washington last month made him confident of strong backing by both the Biden administration and Congress.
Zelenskyy called for more air defense systems, more artillery weapons and shells, and more long-range missiles and drones for Ukrainian soldiers, as well as other forms of support and security guarantees to help protect Europe from potential aggression by Moscow.
Earlier Thursday, Russia targeted Ukraine's southern regions with drones. Ukraine’s air force said the country’s air defenses intercepted 24 out of 29 Iranian-made drones that Russia launched at the Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kirovohrad regions.
Andriy Raykovych, head of the Kirovohrad regional administration, said an infrastructure facility in the region was struck and emergency services were deployed to extinguish a fire, but there were no casualties.
In other Russian attacks in the past day, two civilians were killed by shelling in the southern city of Kherson and one died after a strike on the city of Krasnohorivka in the eastern Donetsk region. At least eight people were wounded, according to Ukraine's presidential office.
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A Russian strike on a hospital in the city of Beryslav in the Kherson region ravaged the building and wounded two medical workers, according to the regional administration chief, Oleksandr Prokudin.
Ukraine, in turn, has struck back at Russia with regular drone attacks across the border.
In Russia's Kursk region that borders Ukraine, Gov. Roman Starovoit said Ukrainian drone attacks resulted in power cuts in several areas. He also said Ukrainian forces fired artillery at the border town of Rylsk, wounding a resident and damaging several houses.
Nobel Prize in literature to be announced in Stockholm
The Nobel Prize in literature will be announced Thursday, with the new laureate, or laureates, joining an illustrious list of past winners that ranges from Toni Morrison to Ernest Hemingway and Jean-Paul Sartre — who turned down the prize in 1964.
This year’s winner or winners will be known at 1 p.m. (1100 GMT), assuming there is no slip-up similar to Wednesday, when a press release divulging the names of the three chemistry laureates was sent to Swedish media hours before the official press event to unveil the winners.
Read: 3 scientists win Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on tiny quantum dots
Last year, French author Annie Ernaux won the prize for what the prize-giving Swedish Academy called “the courage and clinical acuity” of books rooted in her small-town background in the Normandy region of northwest France.
Ernaux was just the 17th woman among the 119 Nobel literature laureates. The literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers, as well as too male-dominated.
On Wednesday, the chemistry prize was awarded to Moungi Bawendi of MIT, Louis Brus of Columbia University, and Alexei Ekimov of Nanocrystals Technology Inc. They were honored for their work with tiny particles called quantum dots — tiny particles that can release very bright colored light and whose applications in everyday life include electronics and medical imaging.
Read: 3 scientists win Nobel Prize in physics for looking at electrons in atoms during split seconds
Earlier this week, Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.
On Tuesday, the physics prize went to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz for producing the first split-second glimpse into the super-fast world of spinning electrons.
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded Friday and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences ends the awards season on Monday.
The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. Winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma when they collect their Nobel Prizes at the award ceremonies in December.
UK university to offer degree in magic
The University of Exeter has announced that a degree in magic will be offered in 2024, making it one of the first in the UK.
The “recent surge in interest in magic” prompted the creation of the “innovative” MA in Magic and Occult Science, according to the course leader, reports BBC.
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According to the management, it will provide an opportunity to explore the history and influence of witchcraft and magic on society and science across the world, it said
The one-year curriculum will begin in September 2024.
Academics from history, literature, philosophy, archaeology, sociology, psychology, theatre, and religion will demonstrate the importance of magic in both the West and the East.
It is one of the few postgraduate programmes in the UK that combines the study of the history of magic with such a diverse range of other areas, according to the university, the release also said.
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“A recent surge in interest in magic and the occult inside and outside of academia lies at the heart of the most urgent questions of our society,” said Prof Emily Selove, course leader.
“Decolonisation, the exploration of alternative epistemologies, feminism and anti-racism are at the core of this programme,” she said.
The Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies will provide the course, the report also said.
“This MA will allow people to re-examine the assumption that the West is the place of rationalism and science, while the rest of the world is a place of magic and superstition,” said Selove.
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The degree might prepare students for jobs in teaching, counselling, mentoring, historic and museum work, library work, tourism, arts groups, or the publishing sector, among other fields, the university said.
Dragons in western literature and art, the King Arthur tale, palaeography, Islamic philosophy, archaeological theory and practise, and the representation of women in the Middle Ages are among the modules available.
Bus crash near Venice, Italy, kills at least 21 people, including Ukrainian tourists
At least 21 people were killed and 18 injured in a fiery bus crash in Mestre, Italy, just across the Venetian Lagoon from old Venice, where firefighters and other emergency responders worked into the night trying to extract bodies and squelch the flames.
The bus was carrying foreign tourists, including Ukrainians, according to a Venice official, when it fell from an elevated street Tuesday en route to a camping site near the community of Marghera.
“The people in the bus found themselves surrounded by flames, ” said Mauro Luongo, commander of the Venice firefighters team. “The scene we found was terrible. It took about one hour to extract some of the bodies.”
Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that the crash scene was “apocalyptic” and declared the city in a state of mourning.
Four of the injured were in serious condition following the accident, which happened on the mainland just 9 km (3.7 miles) northwest of the old city of Venice, said Renato Boraso, a Venice city official. Two of the dead were children, Venice prefect Michele Di Bari said.
Read: A bus crashes off the road in central Turkey, leaving 12 passengers dead
The injured were transferred to five different hospitals in the region.
According to local media, the bus fell a few meters before crashing close to Mestre's railway tracks, where it caught fire.
The Veneto region governor, Luca Zaia, told RAI state television that the cause of the accident was still unclear.
“This is an important tragedy, but it's difficult to understand how it happened," he said. "The bus was new and electric, and that street wasn't particularly problematic.”
Read: 25 dead after bus crashes and catches fire in western India
In 2017, 16 people on a bus carrying Hungarian students died in an accident near the northern city of Verona. And in 2013, 40 people were killed in one of Italy's worst vehicle accidents when a bus plunged off a viaduct close to the southern city of Avellino.
Read more: At least 15 people killed and dozens injured in bus crash in Mali
3 scientists win Nobel Prize in physics for looking at electrons in atoms during split seconds
The Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to three scientists who look at electrons in atoms during the tiniest of split seconds.
Pierre Agostini of The Ohio State University in the U.S.; Ferenc Krausz of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany; and Anne L’Huillier of Lund University in Sweden won the award.
Things to know about the Nobel Prizes
Hans Ellegren, the secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, announced the prize Tuesday in Stockholm.
The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million). The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896.
UN expert welcomes verdict on Nobel laureate Maria Ressa's tax evasion case
Bangladeshi student in UK says ‘had to share a 2-bed flat with 20 men’
Nazmush Shahadat had nowhere to stay in London when he arrived from Bangladesh.He had been accepted to study law, but university housing was costly, and he could not find a place to live, he told BBC.
Also read: High Commission in London awards Bangladeshi-British studentsHe said things "turned dark really soon" and he found himself sharing a two-bedroom home with 20 other men."I never expected to live in a place like that — I still have my scars," he said.He stated it was hard to sleep with many bunk beds crowded into a room with shift workers coming and leaving, and he got bitten by bed bugs.
Also read: UK accepting applications for GREAT Scholarships"The first couple of months, I couldn't video call my family because I didn't want them to see how I am living," Shahadat said.Shahadat currently lives in a shared house and has his own room, but he says finding a reasonably priced property in London is exceedingly difficult since international students lack the necessary references and pay stubs.Many have also used their family's money to finance tuition, with his totaling £39,000 for a three-year program."I've spent my family's savings to come here to fulfill my and my parents' dreams," he said.The UK government has sought in recent years to boost the number of overseas students at higher education institutions.
Also read: High Commission in London awards Bangladeshi-British studentsThere were 113,015 international students in London during the 2015/16 academic year. According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), this figure has risen by 59 percent to 179,425 for 2020/21, said the BBC report.Some London institutions now have more international students than UK students."Universities are trying to recruit more and more international students partly because they pay a lot higher fees, but it means that some universities are expanding at a rate much higher than the local housing stock can deal with,” said Nehaal Bajwa, from the National Union of Students (NUS).The NUS has advocated for rent limits for students, claiming that international students are especially vulnerable to financial hardship."You're kind of open to exploitation because you don't know your rights," Bajwa said.
She went on to say that international students in were more likely to accept a house without a contract, pay huge sums of money upfront, or be compelled to accept inappropriate circumstances. "You might be more tempted, because otherwise where are you going to live? So homelessness is a real threat," she said.
At least 13 people were killed at a nightclub fire in Spain’s southeastern city of Murcia
A fire broke out in a nightclub in the southeastern Spanish city of Murcia on Sunday, killing 13 people and injuring several others, authorities said.
The fire started around 6 a.m. in the popular Teatre nightclub and quickly tore through the venue, according to Spain's state news agency EFE.
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It was not immediately clear what caused the fire.
A video shared by Murcia’s fire service showed firefighters trying to control flames inside the nightclub. Police and emergency services worked to secure the interior of the club to avoid a possible collapse and were trying to locate and identify the bodies.
Read: A fire at a wedding hall in northern Iraq kills at least 114 people and injures 150, authorities say
Officials said the death toll could increase.
The city council declared three days of mourning with flags flown at half-staff on public buildings throughout the region of Murcia.
A populist, pro-Russia ex-premier looks headed for victory in Slovakia's parliamentary elections
A populist former prime minister who campaigned on a pro-Russian and anti-American message looked to be heading for victory in early parliamentary elections in Slovakia, according to preliminary results early Sunday.
With results from almost 88% of about 6,000 polling stations counted by the Slovak Statistics Office, former Prime Minister Robert Fico and his leftist Smer, or Direction, party led with 23.7 % of the vote.
A liberal, pro-West newcomer, the Progressive Slovakia party, was a distant second with 15.6% of the votes cast Saturday.
With no party likely to win a majority of seats, a coalition government would need to be formed.
The left-wing Hlas (Voice) party, led by Fico’s former deputy in Smer, Peter Pellegrini, was in third with 15.4%. Pellegrini parted ways with Fico after Smer lost the previous election in 2020, but their possible reunion would boost Fico’s chances to form a government.
“It’s important for me that the new coalition would be formed by such parties that can agree on the priorities for Slovakia and ensure stability and calm,” Pellegrini said after voting in Bratislava.
The populist Ordinary People group was in fourth and the conservative Christian Democrats in fifth.
Two parties close to the 5% threshold needed for representation in the 150-seat National Council could be potential coalition partners for Fico — the ultranationalist Slovak National Party, an openly pro-Russian group, and the Republic movement, a far-right group led by former members of the openly neo-Nazi People’s Party Our Slovakia.
Read: Pakistan's prime minister says manipulation of coming elections by military is 'absolutely absurd'
The pro-business Freedom and Solidarity party also could get seats.
Final results were expected to be announced later Sunday.
The election was a test for the small eastern European country's support for neighboring Ukraine in its war with Russia, and a win by Fico could strain a fragile unity in the European Union and NATO.
Fico, 59, vowed to withdraw Slovakia’s military support for Ukraine in Russia’s war if his attempt to return to power succeeded.
Michal Simecka, a 39-year-old member of the European Parliament who leads the liberal Progressive Slovakia, campaigned promising to continue Slovakia’s support for Ukraine.
Fico, who served as prime minister from 2006 to 2010 and again from 2012 to 2018, opposes EU sanctions on Russia, questions whether Ukraine can force out the invading Russian troops and wants to block Ukraine from joining NATO.
He proposes that instead of sending arms to Kyiv, the EU and the U.S. should use their influence to force Russia and Ukraine to strike a compromise peace deal. He has repeated Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unsupported claim that the Ukrainian government runs a Nazi state.
Fico also campaigned against immigration and LGBTQ+ rights and threatened to dismiss investigators from the National Criminal Agency and the special prosecutor who deal with corruption and other serious crimes.
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Progressive Slovakia, which was formed in 2017, sees the country’s future as firmly tied to its existing membership in the EU and NATO.
The party also favors LGBTQ+ rights, a rarity among the major parties in a country that is a stronghold of conservative Roman Catholicism.
“Every single vote matters,” Simecka had said Saturday.
Popular among young people, the party won the 2019 European Parliament election in Slovakia in coalition with the Together party, gaining more than 20% of the vote. But it narrowly failed to win seats in the national parliament in 2020.
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Gunman kills 3 people in twin Rotterdam shootings
lone gunman wearing a bulletproof vest opened fire in an apartment and a hospital in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam on Thursday, killing three people, including a 14-year-old girl, police said.
The shooting sent patients and medics fleeing the Erasmus Medical Center in downtown Rotterdam, including some who were wheeled out of the building in beds. Others barricaded themselves into rooms and stuck hand-written signs to windows to show their location.
Police Chief Fred Westerbeke told reporters that the shooter was a 32-year-old student from Rotterdam. He was arrested at the hospital carrying a firearm. His identity was not released, and the motive for the shootings was still under investigation.
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He first shot and killed a 39-year-old woman and seriously injured her 14-year-old daughter at an apartment close to where the suspect lived, Police Chief Fred Westerbeke said. Police said the girl later died of her injuries.
The shooter then went to the nearby Erasmus Medical Center where he shot and killed a 43-year-old man, a teacher at the academic hospital, police said. He also started fires at the scenes of both shootings.
The identities of the victims were not released.
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The suspect was cooperating with police, Westerbeke said.
"It was a black day," said Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb.
Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima expressed their sympathy on social media. "Our hearts go out to the family and friends of the victims of the violence this afternoon in Rotterdam," the royal pair wrote. "We also think of everybody who lived in fear during these terrible actions," they added.
The Erasmus Medical Center appealed on social media for people not to go to the hospital, but later said it was reopening. It said that all appointments scheduled for Friday would go ahead as planned.
There have been scores of small explosions and at homes and businesses across Rotterdam this year, blamed on rival drug gangs. There was no immediate suggestion that Thursday's shooting was linked to the feuding drug gangs.
Also read: U.S. records over 400 mass shootings so far in 2023