AFP :
Christians across the world celebrated Christmas Wednesday, with the mood darkened by wars and a massive “inhumane” Christmas morning attack on Ukraine by Russia as well as a plane crash in Kazakhstan.
With the war in Gaza also showing no signs of ending, Pope Francis was also expected to call for peace in the Middle East during his traditional “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) speech at midday in Rome.
Francis used his Christmas Eve mass at the Vatican to urge Christians to think of “the wars, of the machine-gunned children, of the bombs on schools or hospitals” after another year of raging conflicts.
But even before dawn broke Moscow was pummelling Ukraine with 170 missiles and drones in an attempt to take out Ukraine’s ravaged energy grid, killing at least one person.
“Putin deliberately chose Christmas to attack,” President Zelensky said. “What could be more inhumane? More than 70 missiles, including ballistic missiles, and more than 100 attack drones. The target is our energy system.”
Ukraine has been marking Christmas on December 25 for the past two years rather than on January 7 when most Orthodox believer celebrate as a snub to Russia.
There was tragedy also in Russia when an Azerbaijan Airlines jet carrying 67 people from Baku to the Chechen capital Grozny crashed in western Kazakhstan, officials said, though 25 survivors have been reported so far.
In the biblical birthplace of Jesus, the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, celebrations among its Palestinian population were muted.
Since the war in Gaza began, Bethlehem has done away with its iant Christmas tree and the elaborate decorations that normally draw throngs of tourists, settling for just a few festive lights.
“This year we limited our joy,” Bethlehem mayor Anton Salman told AFP.
Prayers, including at the Church of the Nativity’s famed midnight mass, were strictly of a religious nature.
The Latin patriarch, Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, told a small crowd on Tuesday that he had just returned from Gaza, where he “saw everything destroyed, poverty, disaster.”
“But I also saw life — they don’t give up. So you should not give up either. Never.”
