Ukraine's allies pledge more military aid as conflicts continue

Ukraine's European allies on Friday pledged more than 21 billion euros in new military aid for Ukraine during a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG) in Brussels, Belgium.

British Defense Secretary John Healey said that the allies reached the agreement to step up weapon deliveries to Ukraine, and German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius announced at the meeting that Germany would send four IRIS-T air defense systems, and multiple kinds of weapons to Ukraine.

However, Pistorius declined the call from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for more Patriot systems, saying that Germany is currently unable to continue supplying Patriot systems to Ukraine, as Germany itself is awaiting the delivery of the system.

Russia said that its forces shot down dozens of Ukrainian drones in Kursk and Belgorod. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that Ukraine launched strikes on Russia's energy facilities, attacking five times in the past 24 hours on energy facilities in Bryansk, Kursk, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia.

Also on Friday, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said that 148 battles took place on the frontline in the previous day.

It also said that Ukrainian forces repelled attacks from Russian forces in multiple directions, and its air forces, missile units, and artillerymen struck 13 concentration areas of Russian personnel, weapons and military equipment, one air defense system and two artillery systems.

In the direction of Kursk, 24 fights of different intensity were fought, said the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Ukraine's allies pledge more military aid as conflicts continue

The death toll from a landfill collapse in the central Philippine city of Cebu has risen to eight by Monday morning as search and rescue operations continued for another 28 missing people.

The landfill collapse occurred on Thursday as dozens of sanitation workers were working at the site. The disaster has already caused injuries of 18 people.

Family members of the missing people said the rescue progress is slow, and the hope for the survival of their loved ones is fading.

"For me, maybe I’ve accepted the worst result already because the garbage is poisonous and yesterday, it was raining very hard the whole day. Maybe they’ve been poisoned. For us, alive or dead, I hope we can get their bodies out of the garbage rubble," said Maria Kareen Rubin, a family member of a victim.

Families have set up camps on high ground near the landfill, awaiting news of their relatives. Some people at the site said cries for help could still be heard hours after the landfill collapsed, but these voices gradually faded away.

Bienvenido Ranido, who lost his wife in the disaster, said he can't believe all that happened.

"After they gave my wife oxygen, my kids and I were expecting that she would be saved that night because she was still alive. But the night came and till the next morning, they didn't manage to save her," he said.

Death toll in central Philippine landfill collapse rises to eight