MOSCOW (AP) — European military observers who were held more than a week by insurgents in eastern Ukraine walked free Saturday, with Kiev insisting the release proves Russia is fomenting unrest in Ukraine — as Moscow touted the insurgents as courageous humanists.

The latest battling narratives came a day after dozens of protesters died while trapped in a horrifying fire in Odessa, hundreds of miles away. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the deaths show Ukraine's acting leaders are "are up to their elbows in blood," while authorities in Kiev blamed pro-Russia provocateurs.

The incidents highlight the intractability of Ukraine's crisis, in which pro-Russia insurgents have seized government buildings in about a dozen cities and towns in the east and Ukrainian forces have tried to regain control in a limited military offensive. Looming on the other side of the border are tens of thousands of Russian troops, whom Kiev fears are waiting for a pretext to invade.

A pact struck between Russia, Ukraine, the European Union and the United States in mid-April aimed to resolve the crisis emphasized the importance of an observer mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. But the mission's prospects became clouded a week later, when eight of its military observers and five accompanying Ukrainians were detained by insurgents in the city of Slovyansk, the crucible of unrest in the east. The insurgents alleged the observers were spying for NATO and carrying suspicious material; one from non-NATO member Sweden was released two days later, but the rest remained in custody until Saturday.

The insurgents' leader in Slovyansk, Vyacheslav Ponomarev, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying he ordered the release because of increasing insecurity in the city. In recent days, at least four Ukrainian soldiers were killed on the city's outskirts — two of them when helicopters were shot down — and at least 10 civilians have been killed, according to Ponomarev.

Ponomarev later told The Associated Press that the OSCE observers "are not being released — they are leaving us, as we promised them."

One of the released observers, German Col. Axel Schneider, told The Associated Press that the 12 detainees held up well. Those held included three other Germans and a soldier each from the Czech Republic, Denmark and Poland.

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The head of foreign military observers, German Col. Axel Schneider, speaks to the media after he has …

"They had a very good attitude and that gave them the strength to stand the situation," Schneider said of the observers. "According to the word of (Ponomarev), we have been treated as good as possible. This is a miserable situation, but we were under his protection."

The non-Ukrainians were flown late Saturday to Berlin, where they were reunited with their families.

"We are all very happy," Schneider said at Tegel Airport. "We saw our families again -- that's not something we would have imagined last night."

"Imagine that last night we were still under fire," he said.

The release negotiations included Vladimir Lukin, a representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Lukin was brought in as part of an initiative led by Thorbjorn Jagland, the head of the Council of Europe, a European human-rights body, according to COE spokesman Daniel Hoeltgen.

Lukin was quoted by the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti as saying the release was "a voluntary humanitarian act."

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A pro-Russian activist aims a pistol at supporters of the Kiev government during clashes in the stre …

Although Russia denies it is encouraging or directing the insurgents, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the release "was made after unambiguous instructions had been received from the Russian authorities, which yet again shows the extremists are subordinated to Moscow."

The Russian Foreign Ministry, however, emphasized that the release was a decision of the insurgents who have taken control of Slovyansk and called it "testimony of the courage and humanism of the defenders."

Despite the release, tensions in Ukraine heightened sharply after at least 42 people died in clashes between government supporters and opponents in the Black Sea port of Odessa on Friday. On Saturday, news reports claimed fighting broke out in the city of Kramatorsk, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) south of Slovyansk.

The Odessa clash began with street fighting between two sides in which at least three people were reported killed by gunfire, then turned into a grisly conflagration when government opponents took refuge in a building that caught fire after protesters threw firebombs inside.

At least 36 people died in the fire, according to the emergencies ministry. An Interior Ministry statement gave the overall death toll for the day at 42, but did not give a breakdown.

The city's police chief, Petr Lutsyuk, on Saturday issued a statement calling for calm in the city of about 1 million, but hours later he was fired by Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.

Peskov, the spokesman for Putin, said the bloodshed demonstrated the acting government's tolerance of or collusion with nationalist extremists and had driven efforts to resolve the crisis into a dead end.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry blamed pro-Russia adherents for setting off the clash, didn't mention the fire, and claimed the "events in Odessa show that separatists' subversive activities in Ukraine are doomed to failure."

Odessa, some 550 kilometers (330 miles) southwest of Slovyansk, had not previously seen significant confrontations in Ukraine's crisis, and the deaths there suggested that violent unrest could spread far from the relatively compact area in the east where it has been concentrated so far.

Odessa is the major city between the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in March, and the Moldovan separatist region of Trans-Dniester where Russia has a military peacekeeping contingent. Some analysts speculate that Russia ultimately aims to take control of a huge swath of Ukraine from Trans-Dniester to the east.

A three-day mourning period was declared in Odessa on Saturday; mourners came to the fire site to lay flowers. There were no signs of new unrest, but Valery Kaurov, a leader of the anti-government contingent in the city, told Russian state television that protests could resume once the mourning period ends.

There were also signs of a desire for revenge. A page appeared on Vkontakte, a Russian analogue of Facebook, showing photos and stating home addresses of people allegedly responsible for the fire deaths. In Donetsk, the largest city in the insurgent east, demonstrators who stormed the local office of the Ukrainian Security Service on Saturday evening shouted, "We will not forgive Odessa." No police were deployed to block the building takeover.

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Leonard reported from Slovyansk, Ukraine. Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed.

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Ukraine insurgents release military observers

Pro-Russian activists freed seven members of a team of European observers and five Ukrainian assistants.
Tensions still rise

BEIRUT (AP) — The planned evacuation of fighters from rebel-held parts of the Syrian city of Homs was delayed Saturday, activists said, though a cease-fire still was holding in the country's third-largest city.

Rebels in the city agreed Friday surrender territory in exchange for safe passage to other opposition-held areas. The agreement came after a blockade by Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces caused widespread hunger in rebel-held parts of the city, which have been hit relentlessly by government artillery and airstrikes.

Local activist Samer al-Homsi and other three activists said it wasn't clear why Syrian forces weren't allowing the first phase of several hundred rebel fighters to leave.

One Homs-based activist said rebels were gathering wounded fighters, so they could be taken out as a first priority, beginning Sunday. Other Homs-based activists said they believed the delays were over a plan to allow food and aid into two blockaded areas — one blockaded by rebels in the northern province of Aleppo, and another blockaded by pro-government forces near Homs.

Activists also said a prisoner exchange deal between rebels and Assad's forces in central and northern Syria also could be delaying the move.

Homs was once known as the capital of the Syrian revolution for its fierce opposition to Assad's rule.

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Graphic shows which sides, rebel or regime, hold key cities within Syria as of May 2, 2014; 3c x 4 i …

Assad's forces have been taking back rebel-held areas throughout Syria with a mix of blockades, deals with rebels and relentlessly pounding of opposition-held areas.

On Saturday, Assad's forces entered in the rural town of Mleeha near the capital, Damascus, state-run television and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. The town was one of the last near the capital held by rebels. State television also said government fighters advanced into rebel-held parts of Aleppo.

As pro-government forces have advanced, rebels have responded by firing mortar shells and detonating car bombs in residential areas, often killing civilians.

On Saturday, as Assad forces advanced into Mleeha, a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb at a checkpoint, causing casualties, state-run television said, without elaborating.

Rebels also fired mortars into a government-held neighborhood in Aleppo, killing at least 12 people.

Activists also said that the death toll from two car bombs that struck two small villages in the central Syrian province of Hama has risen to 23 people, including 14 children.

Rami Abdurrahman of The Observatory said Saturday that the figure was likely to rise further. The bombs exploded Friday in the villages of Jadreen and Humayri, some 19 kilometers (11 miles) apart. It wasn't clear if the two attacks were coordinated. The Observatory obtains its information from a network of activists on the ground.

State-run Syrian television also reported the bombings Friday.

Syria's 3-year-old conflict has killed more than 150,000 people, activists say. More than 2.5 million people have fled the violence to find shelter in neighboring countries, while millions more are displaced within the country.

Activists say the removal of fighters from rebel-held parts of Homs have been held up, but the ceasefire continues.
Reason unclear

North Korea: ‘The U.S. Is a Living Hell’

The country that boasts arguably the world’s worst human-rights record is attempting to bequeath its title upon someone else.

“The U.S. is a living hell as elementary rights to existence are ruthlessly violated,” reads an article titled “News Analysis on Poor Human Rights Records in US” that was published Wednesday by North Korea’s state news agency. Putting aside an inexhaustible list of ironies, some of the accusations from supreme leader Kim Jong-un’s propaganda arm provide an unnervingly accurate overview of some of America’s most pressing social and economic issues.

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The KCNA news agency report backs up its assertion that “the U.S. is the world’s worst human-rights abuser,” with a dozen fiery accusations and a handful of statistics that cite racial disparity, misuse of political funds, gun violence, and widespread unemployment and poverty. These are bold statements for a country with a record so bloody that an official United Nations inquiry recently compared its practices to Nazi war crimes.

Perhaps feeling cornered by the UN report, North Korea launched a blame game of its own. A day before its U.S. report published, Pyongyang had another target: its southern neighbor. A KCNA headline cited South Korea as holding the “world’s poorest human rights record,” topping an article that deduced the poor situation was “a product of the U.S. colonial rule,” in which “its people languish in unemployment and poverty.”

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Of course, some of North Korea’s allegations call to mind certain outspoken American conservatives. “Its chief executive, Obama, indulges himself in luxury almost every day, squandering hundred millions of dollars on his foreign trip in disregard of his people’s wretched life,” KCNA states.

Glenn Beck has been saying identical things for years. On Thursday, his website published an article headlined, “Seriously?! Obama-Biden vacation tab reaches a whopping $40 million,” about the amount spent on Air Force One trips in the past five years. In 2010, Beck fueled conservative fervor via a sketchy (and false) Indian news report that President Obama’s visit was costing $200 million a day and utilizing a fleet of 34 warships.

READ MORE Today in 45 Seconds

Beck’s not the only one making regrettable comparisons with the Hermit Kingdom. “I’m beginning to think that there’s more freedom in North Korea sometimes than there is in the United States,” former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told a summit in mid-April—a viewpoint that he quickly regretted but KCNA would surely agree with.

Beck, too, has occasionally compared the U.S. under Obama to North Korea. In February, after a solemn promise to be less divisive, Beck suggested that “those who disagree with [Obama] on issues such as global warming, Obamacare, or abortion rights are bound to be thrown into internment camps.”

READ MORE Obama, Merkel: Russia Must Pull Back

On Wednesday’s list of accusations against the United States, North Korea does manage to hit on the country’s most vehemently discussed hot-button topics, and not just those with fringe backing. And the criticism leveled at America wouldn’t be entirely ridiculous if it wasn’t coming from the mouth of an accuser with much worse charges on its rap sheet.

“The U.S. government has monitored every movement of its citizens and foreigners, with many cameras and tapping devices and even drones involved, under the pretext of ‘national security,’” KCNA writes in reference to the NSA surveillance scandal.

READ MORE Syria Terrorist Attack Kills 11 Children

It doesn’t mention, of course—nor would ever report—that North Korea has apparently purchased more than 100,000 closed-circuit surveillance cameras to monitor its citizens with over the past few years. As the recent UN assessment notes, access to information technology in the notoriously insular country is severely restricted and censored.

Some of the statistics are surprisingly accurate. “The number of impoverished people increased to 46.5 million last year, and one-sixth of the citizens and 20-odd percent of the children are in the grip of famine in New York City,” KCNA correctly charges. The figure aligns with 2012 U.S. Census findings, and an estimate that one in five New York City children struggle to afford food.

READ MORE Ukraine Army Hits Rebels

And who knew North Korea was watching the Trayvon Martin trial as closely as Americans were? The article bizarrely uses Martin’s case as an example of how “racialism is getting more severe in the U.S.” Getting the details slightly muddled, it writes, that America—described as the “kingdom of racial discrimination”—showed its true colors during “last year’s case that the Florida court gave a verdict of not guilty to a white policeman who shot to death an innocent black boy.”

The irony of this all is obviously great: In February, the United Nations released 400 pages in findings denouncing that “systematic, widespread, and gross human-rights violations have been and are being committed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” and noting that the country is committing these abuses “without any parallel in the contemporary world.” Just Thursday, the UN launched a working group with representatives of 80 countries to review North Korea’s treatment of its citizens.

READ MORE Eastern Ukraine Explodes

The North Korean report goes on to cite other miseries, spanning from gun control to unemployment to world-high incarceration rates. It cites 300,000 Americans registering as unemployed per week, which is on par with the Labor Department estimates for April. And so is the line about 2.2 million kept as prisoners in the U.S., “the highest number in the world,” KCNA accurately cites.

“Meanwhile, bills on easing arms control were adopted in various states of the country, boosting murderous crimes,” KCNA writes, reflecting recent changes in legislation—so far this year, 21 states have proposed bills to allow guns in or around schools. While violence crime has gone down, The Washington Post notes, mass shootings have risen. But, KCNA also reports that the U.S. boasts the world’s top homicide rate, a slot that, in fact, belongs to Honduras.

READ MORE U.S. Sanctions on Russia Barely Working

In North Korea, where accurate depictions of human rights never make it into the state-crafted news, the press doesn’t exist to focus investigations inward. But it’s also disturbing that Pyongyang felt little need to load up a report on the U.S. with hyperbole or farce. The words may be overwrought (“Such poor human rights records in the U.S. are an inevitable product of the ruling quarters’ policy against humanity,” one line reads), but the facts are plainly, and uncomfortably, laid out. Something’s off when the most notoriously abusive country in the world has the material to level criticism, even if it has no credibility to do so.

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ABI BARIK, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan rescuers and hundreds of volunteers armed with shovels and little more than their bare hands dug through earth and mud Saturday looking for survivors or bodies of loved ones killed by a massive landslide in the remote northeast.

Figures on the number of people killed and missing in the disaster Friday varied from 255 to 2,700 as officials tried to gather precise information. Fears of a new landslide complicated rescue efforts, and with homes and residents buried under meters (yards) of mud, officials said the earth from the landslide likely would be their final resting place.

"That will be their cemetery," said Mohammad Karim Khalili, one of the country's two vice presidents, who visited the scene Saturday. "It is not possible to bring out any bodies."

Though figures on the death toll varied, residents knew the toll the tragedy had taken on their own families.

From atop a muddy hill, Begam Nesar pointed to the torrent of earth below that had wiped out much of her village. "Thirteen of my family members are under the mud," she said, including her mother, father, brothers, sisters and children. She said she had been visiting relatives at a nearby village when the disaster struck.

The United Nations said Friday at least 350 people died, and the provincial governor said as many as 2,000 people were feared missing. On Saturday, the International Organization of Migration said information they gathered from provincial figures and local community leaders indicated that 2,700 people were dead or missing.

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CORRECTS PHOTO CREDIT TO HOMAYOON RAHMANI - In this photo provided by Homayoon Rahmani, the chief of …

Part of the confusion lay in the fact that no one knew how many people were home when the landslide struck. At least 255 people were confirmed dead, Khalili said. Most of those were people who had rushed to the scene to help after a previous, smaller landslide. When a bigger landslide then struck the area, those people along with roughly 300 homes were wiped out. But since no one knows how many people were in those 300 homes, it remains difficult to account for the dead, Khalili said.

Mohammad Aslam Seyas, deputy director of the Natural Disaster Management Authority, said fears of new landslides had slowed the operation.

"Search and rescue operations are going on very slowly," Seyas said.

The ground on a hill overlooking the village was soaked from recent heavy rainfalls that officials believe triggered the slide. About 1 kilometer (more than half a mile) away, government and aid groups had set up tents to care for people displaced by the disaster.

Sunatullah, a local farmer, was working outside when he felt the earth start to move. He said he ran toward his house, grabbed his wife and children and then ran to the top of a nearby hill. Minutes later, he said, part of the hill collapsed.

"The houses were just covered in mud," he said, adding that he had lost 10 members of his extended family, his house and his livestock.

Authorities distributed food and water to people displaced by the landslides, said Abdullah Homayun Dehqan, the head of Badakhshan province's National Disaster Department.

A memorial ceremony is planned for later Saturday, United Nations spokesman Ari Gaitanis said.

Rescuers have struggled to reach the remote area, where there is little development or infrastructure. The province borders Tajikistan to the north and China and Pakistan to the east.

"Badakhshan is a remote, mountainous region of Afghanistan, which has seen many natural disasters," said the head of the IOM's Afghanistan office, Richard Danziger. "But the scale of this landslide is absolutely devastating, with an entire village practically wiped away. Hundreds of families have lost everything."

In addition to the wars and fighting that have plagued Afghanistan for roughly three decades, the country has been subject to repeated natural disasters including landslides and avalanches. A landslide in 2012 killed 71 people. Authorities were not able to recover the vast majority of bodies and ended up declaring the site a massive grave.

___

Faiez reported from Kabul. Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana in Kabul contributed to this report.

Rescuers and volunteers attempt to dig through mud after a devastating landslide claims hundreds of lives.