PALEMBAYAN, Indonesia — Rescue teams in western Indonesia were battling on Monday to clear roads cut off by cyclone-induced landslides and floods, as improved weather revealed more of the scale of a disaster that has killed close to 700 people in Southeast Asia.

Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have seen large-scale devastation after a rare tropical storm formed in the Malacca Strait fuelling torrential rains and wind gusts for a week that hampered efforts to reach people stranded by mudslides and high floodwaters.

At least 176 have been killed in Thailand and three in Malaysia, while the death toll climbed to 502 in Indonesia on Monday with 508 missing, according to official figures.

Under sunshine and clear blue skies in the town of Palembayan in Indonesia’s West Sumatra, hundreds of people were clearing mud, trees and wreckage from roads as some residents tried to salvage valuable items like documents and motorcycles from their damaged homes.

Men in camouflage outfits sifted through piles of mangled poles, concrete and sheet metal roofing as pickup trucks packed with people drove around looking for missing family members and handing out water to people, some trudging through knee-deep mud.

‘RESILIENCE AND SOLIDARITY’
The government’s recovery efforts include restoring roads, bridges and telecommunication services. More than 28,000 homes have been damaged in Indonesia and 1.4 million people affected, according to the disaster agency.

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto visited the three affected provinces on Monday and praised residents for their spirit in the face of what he called a catastrophe.

“There are roads that are still cut off, but we’re doing everything we can to overcome difficulties,” he said in North Sumatra.

“We face this disaster with resilience and solidarity. Our nation is strong right now, able to overcome this.”

The devastation in the three countries follows months of adverse and deadly weather in Southeast Asia, including typhoons that have lashed the Philippines and Vietnam and caused frequent and prolonged flooding elsewhere.

Scientists have warned that extreme weather events will become more frequent as a result of global warming.

RESTORATION EFFORTS UNDERWAY IN THAILAND
In Thailand, the death toll rose slightly to 176 on Monday from flooding in eight southern provinces that affected about 3 million people and led to a major mobilisation of its military to evacuate critical patients from hospitals and reach people marooned for days by floodwaters.

In the hardest-hit province of Songkhla, where 138 people were killed, the government said 85% of water services had been restored and would be fully operational by Wednesday.

Much of Thailand’s recovery effort is focused on the worst-affected city Hat Yai, a southern trading hub which on November 21 received 335 mm (13 inches) of rain, its highest single-day tally in 300 years, followed by days of unrelenting downpours.

Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has set a timeline of seven days for residents to return to their homes, a government spokesperson said on Monday.

In neighbouring Malaysia, 11,600 people were still in evacuation centres, according to the country’s disaster agency, which said it was still on alert for a second and third wave of flooding. — Reuters

WASHINGTON — US authorities believe the Afghan immigrant accused of ambushing National Guard members in Washington, DC, was not radicalized until after he came to the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Sunday.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and ABC’s “This Week,” Ms. Noem said authorities think alleged shooter Rahmanullah Lakanwal was already living in Washington state when he became radicalized. Investigators are seeking more information from family members and others, Ms. Noem said.

Authorities identified Mr. Lakanwal, 29, as the suspect in a Wednesday shooting that took place just blocks away from the White House and which killed one National Guard member and critically wounded another. After the shooting, US President Donald Trump’s administration pointed to a lack of vetting of Afghans and other foreign nationals during the term of former President Joe Biden, although Mr. Lakanwal was granted asylum under Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump told reporters on Sunday his administration could pause asylum admissions into the United States for an extended period. “No time limit, but it could be a long time,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “We have enough problems. We don’t want those people.”

Lakanwal entered the US in 2021 as part of the Biden administration’s mass evacuation of Afghans who aided US forces during the two-decade war in Afghanistan as the Taliban took power. He was granted asylum in April by Mr. Trump’s administration, a government file reviewed by Reuters showed.

Ms. Noem’s comments suggest Mr. Lakanwal, who was part of a CIA-backed unit in Afghanistan, may have embraced extremism after arriving in the United States.

“We believe he was radicalized since he’s been here in this country,” Ms. Noem told NBC News. “We do believe it was through connections in his home community and state, and we’re going to continue to talk to those who interacted with him, who were his family members.”

Ms. Noem said US officials have received “some participation” so far from people who knew Mr. Lakanwal and warned the US would pursue anyone connected to the shooting.

“Anyone who has the information on this needs to know that we will be coming after you, and we will bring you to justice,” Ms. Noem said.

After Wednesday’s attack, the Mr. Trump administration took steps to clamp down on some legal immigration, including a freeze on processing of all asylum applications.

Ms. Noem said on Sunday immigration officials would consider deporting people with active asylum cases if it was warranted.

“We are going to go through every single person that has a pending asylum claim,” she said. — Reuters

LONDON — A former senior British officer has told a public inquiry that British special forces in Afghanistan appeared to commit war crimes by executing suspects and despite widespread knowledge in the chain of command nothing was done.

Britain’s defense ministry (MoD) ordered the inquiry after a BBC TV documentary reported that soldiers from the elite Special Air Service (SAS) had killed 54 people during the war in Afghanistan more than a decade ago in suspicious circumstances.

The investigation is examining a number of night-time raids by British forces from mid-2010 to mid-2013 when they were part of a US-led coalition fighting the Taliban and other militants.

CONCERNS FROM SOLDIERS
British military police have previously conducted several inquiries into allegations of misconduct by forces in Afghanistan, including those made against the SAS, but the MoD has said none had found enough evidence for prosecutions.

The inquiry’s aim is to ascertain whether there was credible information of extra-judicial killings, whether investigations by the military police years later into concerns were properly conducted, and if unlawful killings were covered up.

Its chair, senior judge Charles Haddon-Cave, said it was important anyone who broke the law was referred to relevant authorities while the cloud of suspicion was lifted from those who had done nothing wrong.

His inquiry has heard previously concerns from British soldiers who were in Afghanistan about a sub-unit referred to as UKSF1, with one saying they were killing fighting-age males during operations regardless of the threat they posed.

In new evidence, given in private but released on Monday, an officer known as N1466, who at the time was the Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations in the UK Special Forces Headquarters, revealed how in 2011 he had grown suspicious of the number of detainees killed during UKSF1 activities.

Based on an examination of official reports following raids, he said the number of enemies killed in action (EKIA) exceeded the number of weapons recovered, and that reports of detainees repeatedly attempting to pick up weapons or use grenades after capture did not appear credible.

‘WE ARE TALKING ABOUT WAR CRIMES’
“I will be clear we are talking about war crimes … we are talking about taking detainees back on target and executing them with a pretense, the pretense being that they conducted violence against the forces,” N1466 told Oliver Glasgow, the lead lawyer for the inquiry.

He said he had raised the issue with the Director of Special Forces, referred to as 1802, but rather than consider criminal action, he had instead only ordered a review of the operational tactic.

The former officer said he regretted that he did not approach the military police himself at the time, although he did later report his concerns in 2015.

“I was deeply troubled by what I strongly suspected was the unlawful killing of innocent people, including children,” he said in his witness statement.

“I had come to the view that the issue of extra-judicial killings was not confined to a small number of soldiers of a single sub unit of UKSF1 but was potentially more widespread, and was apparently known to many in UKSF.”

Other evidence provided to the inquiry by former officers and a defense ministry official said there had been frustrations among soldiers that those captured during intelligence-led operations were being released days later as the Afghan judicial system could not cope.

It also heard there was great rivalry between the two special forces units UKSFI and UKSF3, to which N1466 belonged.

“I am also conscious that some people out there will want to portray me as … me against the UKSF as if I have got some sort of axe to grind … I would just like to put across now that nothing, nothing is further from the truth,” N1466 told the inquiry.

“… we didn’t join the UKSF for this sort of behavior, you know, toddlers to get shot in their beds or random killing. It’s not special, it’s not elite, it’s not what we stand for and most of us I don’t believe would either wish to condone it or to cover it up.”.

The inquiry continues. — Reuters

PARIS — Airbus fleets were returning towards normal operations on Monday after the European planemaker pushed through abrupt software changes faster than originally expected, as it wrestled with safety headlines long focused on rival Boeing.

Dozens of airlines from Asia to the United States said they had carried out a snap software retrofit ordered by Airbus, and mandated by global regulators, after a vulnerability to solar flares emerged in a recent mid-air incident on a JetBlue A320.

But some require a longer process and Colombia’s Avianca continued to halt bookings for dates until December 8.

Sources familiar with the matter said the unprecedented decision to recall about half the A320-family fleet, or 6,000 jets, was taken shortly after the possible but unproven link to a drop in altitude on the JetBlue jet emerged late last week.

Following talks with regulators, Airbus issued its 8-page alert to hundreds of operators on Friday, effectively ordering a temporary grounding by ordering the repair before next flight.

“The thing hit us about 9 p.m. (Jeddah time) and I was back in here about 9:30. I was actually quite surprised how quickly we got through it: there are always complexities,” said Steven Greenway, CEO of Saudi budget carrier Flyadeal.

The instruction was seen as the broadest emergency recall in the company’s history and raised immediate concerns of travel disruption particularly during the busy US Thanksgiving weekend.

The sweeping warning exposed the fact that Airbus does not have full real-time awareness of which software version is used given reporting lags, industry sources said.

IMPACT REVISED DOWN
At first airlines struggled to gauge the impact since the blanket alert lacked affected jets’ serial numbers. A Finnair passenger said a flight was delayed on the tarmac for checks.

Over 24 hours, engineers zeroed in on individual jets.

Several airlines revised down estimates of the number of jets impacted and time needed for the work, which Airbus initially pegged at three hours per plane.

“It has come down a lot,” an industry source said on Sunday, referring to the overall number of aircraft affected.

Airbus had no comment beyond Friday’s statement.

The fix involved reverting to an earlier version of software that handles the nose angle. It involves uploading the previous version via a cable from a device called a data loader, which is carried into the cockpit to prevent cyberattacks.

At least one major airline faced delays because it lacked enough data loaders to handle dozens of jets in such a short time, according to an executive speaking privately.

Question marks remain over a subset of generally older A320-family jets that will need a new computer rather than a mere software reset. The number of those involved has been reduced below initial estimates of 1,000, industry sources said.

Industry executives said the weekend furore highlighted changes in the industry’s playbook since the Boeing 737 MAX crisis, in which the US planemaker was heavily criticized over its handling of fatal crashes blamed on a software design error.

It is the first time Airbus has had to deal with global safety attention on such a scale since that crisis. CEO Guillaume Faury publicly apologized in a deliberate shift of tone for an industry beset by lawsuits and conservative public relations. Boeing has also declared itself more open.

“Is Airbus acting with the Boeing MAX crisis in mind? Absolutely — every company in the aviation sector is,” said Ronn Torossian, chairman of New York-based 5W Public Relations.

“Boeing paid the reputational price for hesitation and opacity. Airbus clearly wants to show…a willingness to say, ‘We could have done better.’ That resonates with regulators, customers, and the flying public.”— Reuters