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Two persons died and seven others sustained injuries when a jeep they were traveling in met with an accident at Bandrebhir near Hilepani in Okhaldhunga on Wednesday.

Among the injured, four are said to be in critical condition.

It has been learnt that all the victims were policemen heading towards Biratnagar in Province-1 from Solukhumbu.

DSP Sukdev Khanal of the District Police Office, Okhaldhunga said that details of the incident are yet to come.

Preparations are being made to send critically injured to Kathmandu via helicopter.

With Real Madrid looking beaten and on the verge of elimination after a fierce comeback by defending champion Chelsea, Karim Benzema came up big once again in the Champions League, Associated Press reported.

Having scored a hat trick in the first leg to give Madrid a 3-1 lead, Benzema spoiled the English team’s comeback by netting the decisive goal in extra time on Tuesday to put the Spanish club back into the semifinals. After trailing 3-0 at home, Madrid pulled two goals back to secure a 5-4 aggregate victory despite a 3-2 loss at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium.

“It was another incredible night at the Bernabéu,” said Madrid midfielder Luka Modric, who set up the hosts first goal. “We suffered but we never gave up. We kept fighting until the end and managed to advance. We gave everything we had and showed great character.”

Benzema also saved Madrid in the round of 16 by scoring a second-half hat trick in a 3-1 win against Paris Saint-Germain after Madrid had lost 1-0 in Paris and conceded early at the Bernabéu, according to the Associated Press.

Benzema’s 12th Champions League goal this season came with a header off a cross by Vinícius Júnior six minutes into extra time.

The hosts had looked defeated after going down 3-0 in regulation, but substitute Rodrygo evened the aggregate score in the 80th and Madrid found a way to reach the last four for the 10th time in the last 12 seasons.

Chelsea had overpowered Madrid early and built a lead through goals by Mason Mount in the 15th, Antonio Rüdiger in the 51st and Timo Werner in the 75th.

“Not many teams can come here and dominate them, as we did,” Rüdiger said. “Over the two legs, if you make the type of mistakes that we did, you get punished.”

Madrid will next face either Manchester City or Atlético Madrid, which play on Wednesday in the Spanish capital with City defending a 1-0 lead from the first leg.

Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti has reached the Champions League semifinals for the eighth time as a manager, equaling the record held by José Mourinho and Pep Guardiola, Associated Press reported.

“We suffered a lot,” Ancelotti said. “In the end, after the 180 minutes, I think we deserved to advance.”

In the other quarterfinal on Tuesday, modest Spanish club Villarreal advanced past Bayern Munich 2-1 on aggregate after a 1-1 draw in the second leg in Germany.

The loss will add to Chelsea’s off-the-field turmoil amid the forced sale of the club after sanctions in Britain against oligarch owner Roman Abramovich following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Chelsea had eliminated Madrid 3-1 on aggregate in last year’s semifinals en route to its second Champions League title. But Madrid couldn’t play at the Bernabéu that time because the venue was undergoing major renovation work. Instead, the first leg was at the small Alfredo Di Stéfano Stadium in the club’s training center, a match that ended 1-1 before Chelsea won 2-0 in London.

On Tuesday, the defending champions looked the more dangerous team during most of the match but both sides had opportunities in a high-intensity encounter that went back-and-forth toward the end of regulation.

Chelsea’s American substitute Christian Pulisic had two good chances for a decisive goal in stoppage time but couldn’t capitalize on them. The visitors also had a couple of opportunities later in extra time as they pushed for a goal that would take it to penalties, according to the Associated Press.

The English side got a dream start when Mount opened the scoring after quick touches by Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Werner caught the Madrid defense off guard and left the forward with an easy shot from inside the area. 

The visitors got the second with a firm header by Rüdiger off a corner by Mount, and they thought they had another in the 62nd after Marcos Alonso scored from inside the area, but the goal was called back after video review because of a handball.

As the final whistle blew — and Bayern Munich’s dejected superstars slumped to the ground — Villarreal’s substitutes raced onto the field to join the teammates who ousted the six-time European champions, Associated Press reported.

There would have been room enough in Bayern’s stadium for the entire population of Villarreal to celebrate with them Tuesday after the team reached the Champions League semifinals for the first time since 2006. 

Such are the disparities in size and status between these clubs, that all 50,000 residents of the southeastern Spanish city could fit into Bayern’s 75,000-capacity Allianz Arena.

“We are a small city but they are strong players,” Villarreal coach Unai Emery said after his team earned a late 1-1 draw that secured a 2-1 aggregate victory in the quarterfinals.

Villarreal had won the first leg 1-0 at home when it squandered chances for an even bigger lead, and Bayern had leveled the aggregate score when Robert Lewandowski netted seven minutes into the second half. This time it was Bayern that missed chances to score again, and Samuel Chukwueze completed a counterattack in the 88th minute to extend Villarreal surprising run in the competition, according to the Associated Press.

“They made the mistake today of not killing us off and we took advantage of that,” Villarreal striker Gerard Moreno said. “What this team has done is great.”

Especially given that Villarreal only qualified for the Champions League by winning the Europa League and is seventh in the Spanish league after struggling domestically. Bayern, meanwhile, is the runaway Bundesliga leader.

And while Bayern lifted the European Cup in 2020, the furthest Villarreal has reached in the competition is the semifinals the single time in 2006.

“If you take just this game into account, without the first game, we should have gone through convincingly,” Bayern forward Thomas Müller said. “It’s difficult to accept this; I don’t know what to say.”

But the same resolve that saw Villarreal beat Manchester United on penalties in the 2021 Europa League final has now seen the team oust both Juventus and Bayern in the knockout phase of the Champions League, Associated Press reported.

There could be another six-time champion to eliminate to a reach a first Champions League final. Liverpool or Benfica awaits in the semifinals, with the English club holding a 3-1 lead over the Portuguese side heading into Wednesday’s second leg at Anfield.

Even when Lewandowski leveled the quarterfinal on aggregate — with a low shot after being set up by Müller — Villarreal continued to cause Bayern problems.

The decisive moment came when Dani Parejo gained possession by the Villarreal penalty area and then launched the breakaway by sending the ball to Giovani Lo Celso. Lo Celso then slid a pass across the face of goal and Chukwueze struck into the top corner of the net.

Villarreal was delirious and held out for the memorable win, according to the Associated Press.

“We knew we were going to suffer in defense but we were going to have our chances,” Moreno said. “And, in the end, Chukwueze was able to make the most of it. We want to thank those who came here tonight and those who are in Villarreal. It’s great to be a Villarreal fan, and you have to enjoy nights like this.”

Chennai Super Kings beat Royal Challengers Bangalore by 23 runs in their IPL match here on Tuesday, The Indian Express reported.

Invited to bat, CSK posted a massive 216 for 4 with Shivam Dube (95 not out off 46 balls) and Robin Uthappa (88 off 50 balls) sharing 165 runs for the third wicket, the highest this season.

For RCB, Wanindu Hasaranga de Silva took two wickets while Josh Hazlewood got one. Chasing the huge target, RCB were restricted to 193 for 9, according to The Indian Express.

Ahmed top-scored for RCB with 41, while Dinesh Karthik and Suyash Prabhudessai chipped in with 34 each.

For CSK, Maheesh Theekshana took four wickets for 34 runs while Ravindra Jadeja got three.

Vladimir Putin vowed Tuesday that Russia’s bloody offensive in Ukraine would continue until its goals are fulfilled and insisted the campaign was going as planned, despite a major withdrawal in the face of stiff Ukrainian opposition and significant losses, Associated Press reported.

Russian troops, thwarted in their push toward Ukraine’s capital, are now focusing on the eastern Donbas region, where Ukraine said Tuesday it was investigating a claim that a poisonous substance had been dropped on its troops. It was not clear what the substance might be, but Western officials warned that any use of chemical weapons by Russia would be a serious escalation of the already devastating war.

Russia invaded on Feb. 24, with the goal, according to Western officials, of taking Kyiv, the capital, toppling the government and installing a Moscow-friendly regime. In the six weeks since, the ground advance stalled and Russian forces lost potentially thousands of fighters and were accused of killing civilians and other atrocities.

Putin insisted Tuesday that his invasion aimed to protect people in parts of eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed rebels and to “ensure Russia’s own security.”

He said Russia “had no other choice” but to launch what he calls a “special military operation,” and vowed it would “continue until its full completion and the fulfillment of the tasks that have been set.” 

For now, Putin’s forces are gearing up for a major offensive in the Donbas, which has been torn by fighting between Russian-allied separatists and Ukrainian forces since 2014, and where Russia has recognized the separatists’ claims of independence. Military strategists say Moscow appears to hope that local support, logistics and the terrain in the region favor its larger, better-armed military, potentially allowing Russia to finally turn the tide in its favor, according to the Associated Press.

In Mariupol, a strategic port city in the Donbas, a Ukrainian regiment defending a steel mill claimed a drone dropped a poisonous substance on the city. It indicated there were no serious injuries. The assertion by the Azov Regiment, a far-right group now part of the Ukrainian military, could not be independently verified.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that while experts try to determine what the substance might be, “The world must react now.” Evidence of “inhuman cruelty” toward women and children in Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv continued to surface, he added, including of alleged rapes.

“Not all serial rapists reach the cruelty of Russian soldiers,” Zelenskyy said.

The claims came after a Russia-allied separatist official appeared to urge the use of chemical weapons, telling Russian state TV on Monday that separatist forces should seize the plant by first blocking all the exits. “And then we’ll use chemical troops to smoke them out of there,” the official, Eduard Basurin, said. He denied Tuesday that separatist forces had used chemical weapons in Mariupol.

Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said officials were investigating, and it was possible phosphorus munitions — which cause horrendous burns but are not classed as chemical weapons — had been used in Mariupol, Associated Press reported.

Much of the city has been leveled in weeks of pummeling by Russian troops. The mayor said Monday that the siege has left more than 10,000 civilians dead, their bodies “carpeted through the streets.” Mayor Vadym Boychenko said the death toll in Mariupol alone could surpass 20,000.

Zelenskyy adviser Mykhailo Podolyak acknowledged the challenges Ukrainian troops face in Mariupol. He said via Twitter that they remain blocked and are having issues with supplies, while Ukraine’s president and generals “do everything possible (and impossible) to find a solution.”

“For more than 1.5 months our defenders protect the city from (Russian) troops, which are 10+ times larger,” Podolyak tweeted. “They’re fighting under the bombs for each meter of the city. They make (Russia) pay an exorbitant price.”

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the use of chemical weapons “would be a callous escalation in this conflict,” while Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said it would be a “wholesale breach of international law.”

US President Joe Biden for the first time referred to Russia’s invasion as a “genocide.” He was even blunter later Tuesday, repeating the term and saying: “It’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”

President Joe Biden on Tuesday said Russia’s war in Ukraine amounted to “genocide,” accusing President Vladimir Putin of trying to “wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian," Associated Press reported.

“Yes, I called it genocide,” he told reporters in Iowa shortly before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington. “It’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”

At an earlier event in Menlo, Iowa, addressing spiking energy prices resulting from the war, Biden had implied that he thought Putin was carrying out genocide against Ukraine, but offered no details. Neither he nor his administration announced new consequences for Russia or assistance to Ukraine following Biden’s public assessment.

Biden’s comments drew praise from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had encouraged Western leaders to use the term to describe Russia’s invasion of his country.

“True words of a true leader @POTUS,” he tweeted. “Calling things by their names is essential to stand up to evil. We are grateful for US assistance provided so far and we urgently need more heavy weapons to prevent further Russian atrocities.”

A United Nations treaty, to which the U.S. is a party, defines genocide as actions taken with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

Past American leaders often have dodged formally declaring bloody campaigns such as Russia’s in Ukraine as genocide, hesitating to trigger an obligation that under international convention requires signing countries to intervene once genocide is formally identified. That obligation was seen as blocking President Bill Clinton from declaring Rwandan Hutus’ killing of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis in 1994 as genocide, for example, according to the Associated Press.

Biden said it would be up to lawyers to decide if Russia’s conduct met the international standard for genocide, as Ukrainian officials have claimed, but said “it sure seems that way to me.”

“More evidence is coming out literally of the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine, and we’re only going to learn more and more about the devastation and let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies,” he said.

Just last week Biden had he did not believe Russia’s actions amounted to genocide, just that they constituted “war crimes.”

During a trip to Europe last month, Biden faced controversy for a nine-word statement seemingly supporting regime change in Moscow, which would have represented a dramatic shift toward direct confrontation with another nuclear-armed country. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said, Associated Press reported.

He clarified the comments days later, saying: “I was expressing the moral outrage that I felt toward this man. I wasn’t articulating a policy change.”

A gunman wearing a gas mask set off smoke grenades and fired a barrage of bullets inside a rush-hour subway train in Brooklyn, wounding at least 10 people Tuesday, authorities said, Associated Press reported.

Police were trying to track down the renter of a van possibly connected to the violence. 

Chief of Detectives James Essig said investigators weren’t sure whether the man, identified as Frank R. James, 62, had any link to the subway attack. 

Authorities were looking at the man’s apparent social media posts, some of which led officials to tighten security for New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell called the posts “concerning.”

The attack transformed the morning commute into a scene of horror: a smoke-filled underground train, an onslaught of at least 33 bullets, screaming riders running through a station and bloodied people lying on the platform as others administered aid.

Jordan Javier thought the first popping sound he heard was a textbook dropping. Then there was another pop, people started moving toward the front of the car, and he realized there was smoke, he said, according to the Associated Press.

When the train pulled into the station, people ran out and were directed to another train across the platform. Passengers wept and prayed as they rode, Javier said.

“I’m just grateful to be alive,” he said. 

Five gunshot victims were in critical condition but expected to survive. At least a dozen people who escaped gunshot wounds were treated for smoke inhalation and other injuries. 

Sewell said the attack was not being investigated as terrorism, but that she was “not ruling out anything.” The shooter’s motive was unknown. 

Sitting in the back of the train’s second car, the gunman tossed two smoke grenades on the floor, pulled out a Glock 9 mm semi-automatic handgun and started firing, Essig said. A rider’s video shows a person raising an arm and pointing at something as five bangs sound.

Passengers in the smoke-filled car pounded on the door to an adjacent car, seeking to escape, rider Juliana Fonda, who was in that adjoining car, told the news site Gothamist. Fonda is a broadcast engineer for Gothamist’s owner, public radio station WNYC, Associated Press reported.

Investigators believe the shooter’s gun jammed and kept him from firing more, said two law enforcement officials who weren’t authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity. 

Essig said police found the weapon, along with extended magazines, a hatchet, detonated and undetonated smoke grenades, a black garbage can, a rolling cart, gasoline and the key to a U-Haul van.

That key led investigators to James, who has addresses in Philadelphia and Wisconsin, the detective chief said. The van was later found, unoccupied, near a subway station where investigators determined the gunman entered the train system, Essig said, according to the Associated Press.

Sri Lanka is suspending its repayment of foreign debt, including bonds and government-to-government borrowings, pending the completion of a loan restructuring program with the International Monetary Fund to deal with the island nation's worst economic crisis in decades, the government said Tuesday, Associated Press reported.

Sri Lankans for the past months have been enduring shortages of fuel, food and other essentials and daily power outages. Most of those items are paid for in hard currency, but Sri Lanka is on the brink of bankruptcy, saddled with dwindling foreign reserves and $25 billion in foreign debt. Nearly $7 billion is due this year.

"Sri Lanka has had an unblemished record of external debt service since independence in 1948," the Ministry of Finance said in a statement. "Recent events, however, including the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout from the hostilities in Ukraine, have so eroded Sri Lanka's fiscal position that continued normal servicing of external public debt obligations has become impossible."

The ministry said the IMF has assessed Sri Lanka's foreign debt as unsustainable, and staying current on foreign debt repayment is no longer a tenable policy, according to the Associated Press.

In addition to seeking help from the IMF, the government has turned to India and China for help in dealing with the shortages.

"The government intends to pursue its discussions with the IMF as expeditiously as possible with a view to formulating and presenting to the country's creditors a comprehensive plan for restoring Sri Lanka's external public debt to a fully sustainable position," the ministry said.

Meanwhile, protesters camped out around the president's office for a fourth day demanding the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, holding him responsible for the economic crisis. Supporters of the protesters supplied drinking water and food, and Muslim protesters broke their Ramadan fasting at the site to share food with those around them.

Much of the anger expressed in weeks of protests has been directed at the Rajapaksa family, which been in power for most of the past two decades. Critics accuse the family of borrowing heavily to finance projects that have earned no money, such as a port facility built with Chinese loans, Associated Press reported.

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, a former president who is the current president's older brother, sought in a speech Monday night to reassure people that the government is working on resolving the problems.

"We are embarking on an enormous program to overcome the crisis we face today. Every second spent by the president and this government is used up exhausting avenues to rebuild our country," he said.

He refused to yield power, saying the governing coalition will continue to rule Sri Lanka because opposition parties rejected its call for a unity government, Associated Press reported.