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MOSCOW: Russia will shoot down Tomahawk cruise missiles and bomb their launch sites if the United States decides to supply them to Ukraine and find a way to retaliate against Washington that hurts, a senior Russian lawmaker said on Wednesday.
US President Donald Trump said on Monday he would want to know what Ukraine planned to do with Tomahawks before agreeing to provide them because he did not want to escalate the war between Russia and Ukraine. He said, however, that he had “sort of made a decision” on the matter.
“Our response will be tough, ambiguous, measured, and asymmetrical. We will find ways to hurt those who cause us trouble,” Andrei Kartapolov, head of the Russian parliament’s defense committee, told the state RIA news agency.
Kartapolov, a former deputy defense minister, said he did not think Tomahawks would change anything on the battlefield even if they were supplied to Ukraine as he said they could only be given in small numbers — in tens rather than hundreds.
“We know these missiles very well, how they fly, how to shoot them down; we worked with them in Syria, so there is nothing new. The only problems will be for those who supply them and those who use them; that’s where the problems will be,” he said.
Kartapolov was also cited as saying that Moscow had so far seen no signs that Ukraine was preparing launch sites for Tomahawks, something he said Kyiv would not be able to hide if it got such missiles. If and when that happened, he said Russia would use drones and missiles to destroy any launchers.
Separately, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov
urged Washington
to assess the situation around the potential supply of Tomahawks “soberly.” He said any such decision would be a serious escalatory step that would bring about a “qualitative” change in the situation.

MANILA: More than 9,000 aftershocks have rattled Cebu since a deadly earthquake last week, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said on Wednesday.

At least 72 people were killed and 500 injured on Sept. 30, when the central Philippine province was jolted by the magnitude 6.9 quake — the most powerful to strike the region in more than a decade.

The quake’s epicenter was in Bogo City and most of the casualties were in its neighborhood, but strong tremors and damage were also recorded in the provincial capital, Cebu City, some 100 km away.

“As of 6 a.m., we have recorded 9,037. The strongest so far is the October 3 aftershock, which was magnitude 5.1,” PHIVOLCS director Dr. Teresito Bacolcol told the local Dobol B TV.

In an afternoon update, PHIVOLCS said that the number of aftershocks had increased to 9,308.

“The strong aftershocks can further damage the structures previously affected by the main shock, can trigger landslides, especially in mountainous areas where tension cracks are already visible,” Charmaine V. Villamil, geologist and senior researcher at PHIVOLCS, told Arab News.

“They can cause more sinkholes, can further cause coastal subsidence and lateral spreading — liquefaction.”

Liquefaction is a process after earthquakes that makes solid soil behave like a liquid — often leading to severe damage — buildings or roads may sink or collapse even if they were not directly damaged by shaking.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council estimated that, as of Wednesday, more than 62,500 houses had been damaged by the quake and subsequent tremors.

The earthquake was the most powerful to strike the central region of the Philippines in more than a decade.

The whole Cebu province, home to 3.5 million people, was placed under a state of calamity following the earthquake, which came just weeks after the region was hit by two typhoons in a row.

Even though Cebu is outside the usual typhoon path in the country, it still faces strong storms and is prone to earthquakes because it is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire.

In 2013, at least 215 people were killed when a magnitude 7.2 earthquake hit Cebu and the neighboring island province of Bohol.