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United Kingdom

ENTRY to a queue of mourners wanting to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II was paused for at least six hours, the UK government said on Friday.

A holding area in a park at the end of the line along the Thames river had reached 8km, it said, with tens of thousands of people having already paid their respects before the state funeral tomorrow.

The monarch’s death last week at the age of 96 has triggered an outpouring of emotion, with mourners queueing for hours, many through the night, to pay their respects in Westminster Hall.

Meanwhile, King Charles III headed to Wales for the last of his visits to the UK’S four nations, which included a meeting with Sinn Fein leader Michelle O’neill in Northern Ireland. | AFP

Lebanon

A LEBANESE man carrying a gun and a jerrican of fuel withdrew his frozen savings at gunpoint yesterday, the third such incident in the crisis-hit country this week.

When a branch of the Byblos bank opened in the southern town of Ghaziyeh, a bank client, reported to be in his fifties, stormed the premises with his adult son.

He threatened bank employees with a gun, which a Lebanese TV channel said may have been a toy, and demanded his savings. He also emptied a jerrican of fuel on the floor, a security guard said.

The man walked away with about

$19 000 (R335 809) and turned himself in to the police moments later as a crowd formed in front of the bank to support him. | AFP

China

A MASSIVE fire broke out in a skyscraper in the Chinese city of Changsha on Friday, adding that the number of casualties was “currently unknown”.

The 42-floor building houses an office of state-owned telecommunications company China Telecom, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

The China Telecom said in a statement later on social media, “by around 4:30 pm today (Friday), the fire at our No. 2 Communications Tower in Changsha has been extinguished. No casualties have yet been discovered and communications have not been cut off”. | AFP

Ukraine

UKRAINE said it had discovered at least 10 locations in territory recaptured from Russian forces in the east of the country that had been used for torture.

As Ukrainian troops have retaken swathes of territory in the north east, officials have said they feared discovering incidents of Russian war crimes in newly-liberated areas.

“I can talk about the presence of at least 10 torture centres in settlements” in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine’s police chief Igor Klymenko said during a briefing, the Interfax news agency reported.

Meanwhile, AFP journalists saw hundreds of graves in a forest near the recaptured city of Izyum, after Kyiv announced the discovery of mass burial sites. | AFP

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