more than £8 billion the second largest result in its history. and australia s national football team criticises qatar s human rights record less than a month before the emirate hosts the world cup. hello and welcome if you re watching in the uk or around the world. ukrainian president volodymyr zelensky has accused russian commanders of craziness in their efforts to capture a town in the east of the country. bakhmut which sits in the donetsk region has been the centre of russian attacks for months. meanwhile, in the south, ukrainian forces advancing on the city of kherson have been hampered by heavy rain. russian forces are building fortifications and bringing in extra reinforcements. the area has been at the centre of the fiercest clashes in recent weeks. our correspondent hugo bachega is in kyiv and hejoins me now. let s start off with the comments from president zelensky about the tactics of russian commanders. what does he mean by craziness? he said the most sev
now on bbc news it s time for our world. for the past year, i ve been reporting on the most important story of my life. my name is omid montazeri, and i m a reporterfor bbc persian. this story is about a massacre that took place in my home country, iran. in 1988, the iranian government, led by ayatollah khomeini, ordered thousands of political prisoners to be killed. my father was amongst those killed. i was just two years old. now, for the first time in over 30 years, one of the perpetrators of the killings is on trial. a government official called hamid nouri. this is hamid nouri. he s the first member of the islamic republic ever to stand trial outside iran for atrocities committed in iran. less than 15 hours till the verdict. and everyone is so anxious. he was a political prisoner at the time of the 1988 prison massacre. an estimated 5000 prisoners were killed. iraq survived. iraj survived. ever since, he s vowed to bring those responsible to justice. and he just fou
about the significance of the bridge being hit. it depends how quickly they repair the bridge. it is a huge symbolic setback because this bridge was mr putin s personal commitment to crimea. it opened in 2018, cost $3 billion, massively overpriced. one of his friends was in charge of the construction and he identified with this because this was a way of uniting the mainland of russia with what he took to be the mainland of crimea which was now going to be russian forever so the bridge is symbolically hugely important. in terms of logistics, the fact is, one carriageway seems to have survived this blast although it may only take light traffic and we don t know how bad the damage is to the railway grid above it. my guess is that although the russians will have a big motive to say that the bridge is reopen soon and all is fine, it will not reopen to military traffic which is very heavy so we will see how long it is before they can start to use the road and particularly the rail
have been killed in county donegal in the republic of ireland. hello and welcome. president putin has suffered an embarrassing setback in the war with ukraine, after a huge explosion on the only bridge linking russia with the crimean peninsula. the bridge partially collapsed but has now reopened to light traffic. russia annexed crimea in 2014, and after occupying these regions of ukraine in red it s managed to establish a corridor up through southern and eastern ukraine. the kerch bridge, connecting russia to the crimean peninsula in the black sea, was an important supply route for sending russian troops and artillery into ukraine. in the last few hours president putin has ordered his fsb secret service to tighten security on the peninsula. our russia editor, steve rosenberg, reports. it is the bridge the kremlin built, and it was under attack. an explosion at dawn. this was the result. russian officials claim a lorry had been blown up here and that the fire then spread t
have been killed in an explosion at a petrol station in the republic of ireland. president putin has suffered an embarrassing setback in the war with ukraine, after a huge explosion on the only bridge linking russia with the crimean peninsula. the bridge partially collapsed but has now reopened to light traffic. russia annexed crimea in 2014, and after occupying these regions of ukraine in red it s managed to establish a corridor up through southern and eastern ukraine. the kerch bridge, connecting russia to the crimean peninsula in the black sea, was an important supply route for sending russian troops and artillery into ukraine. 0ur russia editor, steve rosenberg, reports. it is the bridge the kremlin built. and it was under attack. an explosion at dawn. this was the result. russian officials claim a lorry had been blown up here and that the fire then spread to a fuel train. whatever the cause, you could see the damage. this is the bridge that links russia to annexed cr