Europe

MOSCOW, February 9. /TASS/: A plane of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry landed in China early on Sunday to deliver humanitarian cargo of personal protective items and medicines.

"An Il-76 plane of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry arrived in China. It delivered 183 cubic meters of humanitarian cargo - medicines and personal protective equipment," the ministry’s press service said.

MOSCOW, February 9. /TASS/: Russian and Belarusian Presidents, Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko, are doing much to develop bilateral relations although they are committed to their countries’ interests, Russian president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.

KEMEROVO, February 9. /TASS/: One woman died and more than 20 others were injured when a bus and a truck crashed in West Siberia’s Kemerovo Region, the local emergencies medicine center told TASS on Sunday.

"A woman born in 1948 died on the operating table, she received fatal injuries," a spokesperson said.

Twenty-two others have been injured and two of them are in severe condition. 10 people are in the hospital’s admission unit and are being examined by doctors. 10 others received medical assistance at a first-aid station, the spokesperson said.

KHANTY-MANSIYSK, February 9. /TASS/: Russia’s Utair airline has blamed a wind shift for the emergency landing of its plane at the airport of Usinsk, in northwestern Russia’s Komi Republic.

"During the landing of Boeing 737 a sharp unpredictable wind shift occurred at the airport of Usinsk," the press service said.

MOSCOW, February 9. /TASS/: The United States has been setting up new military bases in northeastern Syria to gain foothold in oil-rich regions of the country, Turkey’s Anadolu news agency has reported.

According to the agency’s sources, US servicemen started creating a base near Tal Brak, a village in northern Al-Hasakah Governorate, in a bid to block Russian servicemen the way to the Rmelan district that houses Syria’s main oil fields. Equipment and materials for the construction have been redeployed from Iraq.

MINSK, February 9. /TASS/: Moscow and Minsk will continue gas talks in the coming weeks, with minor adjustments in the agreed solutions being possible, Belarusian First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Krutoi said on Sunday commenting on the Sochi talks between the two countries’ leaders on February 7.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis called on Sunday for respect of humanitarian law in Syria’s Idlib province, amid an escalation of a Syrian government offensive that has displaced more than half a million in two months.

He told tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s square that the reports from Idlib were “painful ... particularly regarding the conditions of women and children, of people forced to flee from a military escalation.”

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Boeing 737 airliner with 96 people onboard made a hard landing in northwestern Russia on Sunday due to a problem with the chassis, emergency officials and aviation authorities said.

Nobody was injured when a UTair aircraft, en route from Moscow, landed at the airport of Usinsk, a town in the Komi Republic some 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) from Moscow.

Russia’s civil aviation authority said the hard landing was due to a problem with the chassis. It said all passengers and crew had safely left the aircraft.

Berlin, Feb 8 (AP/PTI) German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday fired a government official whose congratulating of a state governor elected with a far-right party's help angered Merkel's coalition partners.

Christian Hirte, a member of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union who was the government's commissioner for the formerly communist east and a deputy economy minister, tweeted that he resigned after Merkel told him he could no longer do the job. Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, confirmed his dismissal.

New Delhi, Feb 8 (PTI) A Brazilian air force plane has evacuated an Indian from the novel coronavirus-hit Wuhan in China along with a group of Brazilian citizens, diplomatic sources said on Saturday.

The Indian has disembarked from the plane in Poland, they said.