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Russian troops retreating from this northern Ukrainian city left behind crushed buildings, streets littered with destroyed cars and residents in dire need of food and other aid — images that added fuel to Kyiv’s calls Thursday for more Western help to halt Moscow’s next offensive, Associated Press reported.

Dozens of people lined up to receive bread, diapers and medicine from vans parked outside a shattered school now serving as an aid-distribution point in Chernihiv, which Russian forces besieged for weeks as part of their attempt to sweep south towards the capital before retreating.

The city’s streets are lined with shelled homes and apartment buildings with missing roofs or walls. A chalk message on the blackboard in one classroom still reads: “Wednesday the 23rd of February — class work.”

Russia invaded the next day, launching a war that has forced more than 4 million Ukrainians to flee the country, displaced millions more within it and sent shock waves through Europe and beyond.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned Thursday that despite a recent Russian pullback, the country remains vulnerable, and he pleaded for weapons from NATO to face down the coming offensive in the east. Nations from the alliance agreed to increase their supply of arms, spurred on by reports that Russian forces committed atrocities in areas surrounding the capital, according to the Associated Press.

Western allies also ramped up financial penalties aimed at Moscow, including a ban by the European Union on Russian coal importsand a US move to suspend normal trade relations with Russia.

Kuleba encouraged Western countries to continue bearing down on Russia, suggesting that any letup will result in more suffering for Ukrainians.

“How many Buchas have to take place for you to impose sanctions?” Kuleba asked reporters, referring to a town near Kyiv where Associated Press journalists counted dozens of bodies, some burned, others apparently shot at close range or with their hands bound. “How many children, women, men, have to die — innocent lives have to be lost — for you to understand that you cannot allow sanctions fatigue, as we cannot allow fighting fatigue?”

Ukrainian officials said earlier this week that the bodies of 410 civilians were found in towns around the capital city. Volunteers have spent days collecting the corpses, and more were picked up Thursday in Bucha.

Bucha Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said investigators have found at least three sites of mass shootings of civilians during the Russian occupation. Most victims died from gunshots, not from shelling, he said, and corpses with their hands tied were “dumped like firewood” into recently discovered mass graves, including one at a children’s camp, Associated Press reported.

The mayor said the count of dead civilians stood at 320 as of Wednesday, but he expected the number to rise as more bodies are found in his city, which once had a population of 50,000. Only 3,700 now remain, he said.

In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested that the horrors of Bucha could just be the beginning. In the northern city of Borodianka, just 30 kilometers northwest of Bucha, Zelenskyy warned of even more casualties, saying “there it is much scarier.”

The world should brace itself, he said, for what might soon be found in the seaport city of Mariupol, saying that on “on every street is what the world saw in Bucha and other towns in the Kyiv region after the departure of the Russian troops. The same cruelty. The same terrible crimes.”

He pledged that an international war crimes investigation already underway will identify “each of the executioners” and “all those who committed rape or looting.”

Ukrainian and several Western leaders have blamed the massacres on Moscow’s troops, and the weekly Der Spiegel reported Thursday that Germany’s foreign intelligence agency had intercepted radio messages between Russian soldiers discussing the killings of civilians. Russia has falsely claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged, according to the Associated Press.

Kuleba became emotional while referring to the horrors in the town, telling reporters that they couldn’t understand “how it feels after seeing pictures from Bucha, talking to people who escaped, knowing that the person you know was raped four days in a row.”

Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against Prime Minister Imran Khan, saying his move to dissolve Parliament and call early elections was illegal and ordering that the house be restored, Associated Press reported.

The decision came after four days of hearings by the top court over the major political crisis. Khan will now face a no-confidence vote by lawmakers — the vote that he had tried to sidestep. The assembly will likely convene to vote on Saturday. 

The opposition has said it has 172 votes in the 340-seat house to oust Khan, after several members of his own party and a key coalition partner defected. 

On Sunday, the embattled Khan dissolved Parliament and set the stage for early elections after accusing the opposition of working with the United States to remove him from power. His opponents had garnered the 172 votes needed to oust him in the 342-seat house,

During the week, the five-member bench of Pakistan’s Supreme Court heard arguments from Khan’s lawyers, the opposition and the country’s president before handing down the decision late on Thursday evening, after iftar, the meal that breaks the daylong fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Khan said Washington wants him gone because of what he describes as his independent foreign policy, which often favors China and Russia. Khan has also been a strident critic of Washington’s war on terror and was criticized for a visit to Moscow on Feb. 24, hours after Russian tanks crossed into Ukraine, according to the Associated Press.

The US State Department has denied any involvement in Pakistan’s internal politics. After dissolving Parliament, Khan went on national TV to announce early elections.

“This is the unfortunate fact about Pakistani politics — the political issues, which should be settled in the parliament are instead brought to the Supreme Court to settle,” said analyst Zahid Hussain, who has authored several books on militancy in the region and Islamabad’s complicated relationship with Washington. 

“It is just a weakness of the system,” Hussain added.

Pakistan’s top court or its powerful military have consistently stepped in whenever turmoil engulfs a democratically elected government in Pakistan. The army has seized power and ruled for more than half of Pakistan’s 75-year history, Associated Press reported.

The military has remained quiet over the latest crisis although army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa told a security summit in Islamabad over the weekend that Pakistan wants good relations with China, a major investor, and also with the United States, the country’s largest export market.

The latest political chaos has spilled over into the country’s largest province of Punjab, where 60% of Pakistan’s 220 million people live and where Khan’s ally for chief provincial minister was denied the post on Wednesday, after his political opposition voted in their own candidate, according to the Associated Press.

The CPN-UML has expressed its dissatisfaction on six issues of the local level election code of conduct issued by the Election Commission.

The main opposition party, however, has expressed its commitment to abide by the other rules that do not contradict with the Constitution.

A team including UML General Secretary Shankar Pokharel and Deputy General Secretary Bishnu Rimal reached the Election Commission this afternoon and drew the attention of Chief Election Commissioner Dinesh Thapaliya towards the election code.

The UML has expressed its dissatisfaction over the election code of conduct's requirement for incumbent local representatives to resign from their post before filing nomination papers and the provision to ban campaigning through social media among others.

Nepali Congress (NC) leader Dilendra Prasad Badu has been appointed as the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Supplies.

President Bidya Devi Bhandari appointed Badu as the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Supplies on the recommendation of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba.

According to the President's office, Badu was appointed the minister as per Article 78 (1) of the Constitution.