Russia said on Monday it had shot down a Ukrainian drone close to one of its air bases for long-range bombers deep inside its own territory and that three Russian air force personnel had been killed in the incident.

The drone was allegedly flying near Russia’s Engels air base where long-range strategic bombers that may have been used to target Ukrainian cities and infrastructure are based. No planes were damaged in the incident, the defence ministry said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.

Unverified Russian and Ukrainian social media accounts reported that a number of planes had been destroyed however. Reuters was not able to independently verify those reports.

The air base, one of two strategic bomber bases housing Russia’s air-delivered nuclear capability, is located near the city of Saratov, about 730 km (450 miles) southeast of Moscow and hundreds of kilometres from the frontlines in Ukraine.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, which has never publicly claimed responsibility for attacks inside Russia but calls them “karma” for Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion.

The same base was attacked earlier this month by Ukrainian drones, Russia said at the time.

“A Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) was shot down at low altitude while approaching the Engels military airfield in the Saratov region,” the defence ministry statement, published on Monday, said.

“Three Russian servicemen of the technical staff who were at the airfield were fatally wounded as a result of falling drone wreckage.”

Russia has 60 to 70 strategic bomber planes of two types – the Tu-95MS Bear and the Tu-160 Blackjack. Both are capable of carrying nuclear bombs and nuclear-armed cruise missiles as well as conventional munitions.

Moscow has used its air force to fire cruise missiles in what it calls its “special military operation” to degrade Ukraine’s military potential. Kyiv has said such attacks amount to war crimes and had likened Russia to a terrorist state.

The earlier Dec. 5 strike on the same base, along with another attack the same day on another base, raised questions about the effectiveness of Russian air defences and shocked Russian commentators.

If Ukraine could strike that far inside Russia, it may also be capable of hitting Moscow, they said on social media.

Earlier on Monday, Roman Busargin, governor of the Saratov region, said that civil infrastructure facilities had not been damaged in the latest incident at the base, which he said the authorities were investigating.

“There is absolutely no threat to residents … Civil infrastructure facilities were not damaged,” Busargin said.

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BANGKOK (Reuters) – The youngest daughter of billionaire former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra remains Thailand’s top choice to become its next leader, according to an opinion poll, with more than double the score of incumbent and nearest rival Prayuth Chan-ocha.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 36, whose father Thaksin and aunt Yingluck both led popularly elected governments toppled in coups, was the top choice for 34% of respondents in a survey by the National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA).

Paetongtarn’s support rose sharply from 21.6% from a September poll, when the majority surveyed were undecided. NIDA polled 2,000 voting-age people between Dec. 17 and Dec. 22.

Thailand must hold an election by May next year, according to its election commission, but no date has yet been set.

Best known by her nickname, “Ung Ing”, Paetongtarn is an executive in the Pheu Thai party, which has yet to name her as its prime minister candidate.

The Shinawatra name has proven to be a huge election draw in Thailand since 2001, synonymous with populist policies that won Thaksin, Yingluck and their allies tens of millions of votes from the rural poor and urban working classes in ballots between 2001 and 2011.

Respondents in NIDA’s poll who backed Paetongtarn said it was due to her “party’s policies and previous achievements of the Shinawatra family.”

Prayuth’s ratings also improved to 14.05% from 10.1%, according to NIDA. He has been in power since 2014, when as army chief he led a coup against a government run by Yingluck.

Thaksin and Yingluck have been in self-imposed exile to avoid jail sentences handed down by courts during military rule.

Pita Limjaroenrat, leader of the opposition Move Forward party, was third in the poll with 13.25%, while 8.25% were undecided.

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In more than three decades of emergency medicine, Beijing-based doctor Howard Bernstein said, he has never seen anything like this.

Patients are arriving at his hospital in ever-increasing numbers; almost all are elderly and many are very unwell with COVID and pneumonia symptoms, he said.

Bernstein’s account reflects similar testimony from medical staff across China who are scrambling to cope after China’s abrupt U-turn on its previously strict COVID policies this month was followed by a nationwide wave of infections.

It is by far the country’s biggest outbreak since the pandemic began in the central city of Wuhan three years ago. Beijing government hospitals and crematoriums also have been struggling this month amid heavy demand.

“The hospital is just overwhelmed from top to bottom,” Bernstein told Reuters at the end of a “stressful” shift at the privately owned Beijing United Family Hospital in the east of the capital.

“The ICU is full,” as are the emergency department, the fever clinic and other wards, he said.

“A lot of them got admitted to the hospital. They’re not getting better in a day or two, so there’s no flow, and therefore people keep coming to the ER, but they can’t go upstairs into hospital rooms,” he said. “They’re stuck in the ER for days.”

In the past month, Bernstein went from never having treated a COVID patient to seeing dozens a day.

“The biggest challenge, honestly, is I think we were just unprepared for this,” he said.

Sonia Jutard-Bourreau, 48, chief medical officer at the private Raffles Hospital in Beijing, said patient numbers are five to six times their normal levels, and patients’ average age has shot up by about 40 years to over 70 in the space of a week.

“It’s always the same profile,” she said. “That is most of the patients have not been vaccinated.”

The patients and their relatives visit Raffles because local hospitals are “overwhelmed”, she said, and because they wish to buy Paxlovid, the Pfizer-made COVID treatment, which many places, including Raffles, are running low on.

“They want the medicine like a replacement of the vaccine, but the medicine does not replace the vaccine,” Jutard-Bourreau said, adding that there are strict criteria for when her team can prescribe it.

Jutard-Bourreau, who like Bernstein has been working in China for around a decade, fears that the worst of this wave in Beijing has not arrived yet.

Elsewhere in China, medical staff told Reuters that resources are already stretched to the breaking point in some cases, as COVID and sickness levels amongst staff have been particularly high.

One nurse based in the western city of Xian said 45 of 51 nurses in her department and all staff in the emergency department have caught the virus in recent weeks.

“There are so many positive cases among my colleagues,” said the 22-year-old nurse, surnamed Wang. “Almost all the doctors are down with it.”

Wang and nurses at other hospitals said they had been told to report for duty even if they test positive and have a mild fever.

Jiang, a 29-year-old nurse on a psychiatric ward at a hospital in Hubei province, said staff attendance has been down more than 50 percent on her ward, which has stopped accepting new patients. She said she is working shifts of more than 16 hours with insufficient support.

“I worry that if the patient appears to be agitated, you have to restrain them, but you cannot easily do it alone,” she said. “It’s not a great situation to be in.”

The doctors who spoke to Reuters said they were most worried about the elderly, tens of thousands of whom may die, according to estimates from experts.

More than 5,000 people are probably dying each day from COVID-19 in China, Britain-based health data firm Airfinity estimated, offering a dramatic contrast to official data from Beijing on the country’s current outbreak.

The National Health Commission did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the concerns raised by medical staff in this article.

China reported no COVID deaths on the mainland for the six days through Sunday, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Sunday, even as crematories faced surging demand.

China has narrowed its definition for classifying deaths as COVID-related, counting only those involving COVID-caused pneumonia or respiratory failure, raising eyebrows among world health experts.

“It’s not medicine, it’s politics,” said Jutard-Bourreau. “If they’re dying now with COVID it’s because of COVID. The mortality rate now it’s political numbers, not medical.”

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The possible sinking of a boat with 180 Rohingya Muslims on board will make 2022 one of the worst years for the community as refugees try to flee desperate conditions in camps in Bangladesh, the U.N. refugee agency told Reuters on Monday.

Nearly 1 million Rohingya from Myanmar are living in crowded facilities in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, including tens of thousands who fled their home country after its military conducted a deadly crackdown in 2017.

In Buddhist-majority Myanmar, most Rohingya are denied citizenship and are seen as illegal immigrants from South Asia.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said over the weekend that it feared that a boat that started its journey from Bangladesh at the end of November was missing at sea, with all 180 on board presumed dead.

The UNHCR said the vessel, which was not seaworthy, may have started to crack in early December before losing contact.

Nearly 200 Rohingya are feared dead or missing at sea this year already. “We hope against hope that the 180 missing are still alive somewhere out there”, said UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch.

The UNHCR estimates nearly 900 Rohingya died or went missing in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal in 2013 and more than 700 in 2014.

“One of the worst years for dead and missing after 2013 and 2014,” Baloch said of 2022, adding the number of people trying to flee had returned to levels seen before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Trends show the numbers reaching back to 2020, when over 2,400 people attempted the risky sea crossings with more than 200 people dead or missing.”

The number of Rohingya leaving Bangladesh in boats this year has jumped more than five fold this year from a year earlier, rights groups estimate.

Baloch said it was not clear where exactly the boat with 180 aboard went missing, nor whether the lifting of COVID restrictions in Southeast Asia, a favoured destination for the Rohingya, was leading to the rush of people.

Sayedur Rahman, 38, who fled to Malaysia in 2012 from Myanmar, said his wife, two sons aged 17 and 13, and a daughter aged 12 were among the missing.

“In 2017, my family came to Bangladesh to save their lives,” Rahman said, referring to that year’s exodus of Rohingya from Myanmar.

“But they are now all gone … Now I’m devastated,” Rahman said. “We Rohingya are left to die … on the land, at sea. Everywhere.”

Earlier this month, two Myanmar Rohingya activist groups said that up to 20 people died of hunger or thirst on what the UNHCR said was a separate boat that was stranded at sea for two weeks off India’s coast. The boat, with at least 100 people on board, was said to be in Malaysian waters.

Amid the feared fatalities, some boats have made land or been rescued at sea.

On Monday the International Organisation for Migration said in a statement that 57 Rohingya males disembarked in Indonesia’s Aceh Besar district early on Dec. 25 with the support of local community members. It said the male-only boat is believed to have set off from Bangladesh and spent nearly a month drifting at sea.

Indonesian officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Two boats carrying a total of 230 Rohingya refugees, including women and children, landed on the shores of Indonesia’s Aceh province in November, while this month, Sri Lanka’s navy rescued 104 Rohingya adrift off the Indian Ocean island’s northern coast.

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A lethal blizzard paralyzed Buffalo, New York, on Christmas Day, trapping motorists and rescue workers in their vehicles, leaving thousands of homes without power and raising the death toll from storms that have chilled much of the United States for days.

At least 30 people have died in U.S. weather-related incidents, according to an NBC News tally, since a deep freeze gripped most of the nation, coupled with snow, ice and howling winds from a sprawling storm that roared out of the Great Lakes region on Friday.

CNN has reported a total of 26 weather fatalities.

Much of the loss of life has centered in and around Buffalo at the edge of Lake Erie in western New York, as numbing cold and heavy “lake-effect” snow – the result of frigid air moving over warmer lake waters – persisted through the holiday weekend.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said the storm’s confirmed death toll climbed to 13 on Sunday, up from three reported overnight in the Buffalo region. The latest victims included some found in cars and some in snow banks, Poloncarz said, adding that the death tally would likely rise further.

“This is not the Christmas any of us hoped for nor expected,” Poloncarz said on Twitter on Sunday. “My deepest condolences to the families who have lost loved ones.”

New York Governor Kathy Hochul called it an “epic, once-in-a-lifetime” weather disaster that ranked as the fiercest winter storm to hit the greater Buffalo area since a crippling 1977 blizzard that killed nearly 30 people.

“We have now surpassed the scale of that storm, in its intensity, the longevity, the ferocity of its winds,” Hochul told an evening news conference, adding that the current storm would likely to go down in history as “the blizzard of ’22.”

The latest blizzard came nearly six weeks after a record-setting but shorter-lived lake-effect storm struck western New York.

Despite a ban on road travel imposed since Friday, hundreds of Erie County motorists were stranded in their vehicles over the weekend, with National Guard troops called in to help with rescues hindered by white-out conditions and drifting snow, Poloncarz said.

Many snow plows and other equipment sent on Saturday and Sunday became stuck in the snow, “and we had to send rescue missions to rescue the rescuers,” he told reporters.

The Buffalo police department posted an online plea to the public for assistance in search-and-recovery efforts, asking those who “have a snow mobile and are willing to help” to call a hotline for instructions.

The severity of the storm was notable even for a region accustomed to harsh winter weather.

Christina Klaffka, 39, a North Buffalo resident, watched the shingles blow off her neighbor’s home and listened to her windows rattle from “hurricane-like winds.” She lost power along with her whole neighborhood on Saturday evening, and was still without electricity on Sunday morning.

“My TV kept flickering while I was trying to watch the Buffalo Bills and Chicago Bears game. I lost power shortly after the 3rd quarter,” she said.

John Burns, 58, a retiree in North Buffalo, said he and his family were trapped in their house for 36 hours by the storm and extreme cold that he called “mean and nasty.”

“Nobody was out. Nobody was even walking their dogs,” he said. “Nothing was going on for two days.”

Snowfall totals were hard to gauge, he added, because of fierce winds that reduced accumulation between houses, but piled up a 5-foot (1.5-meter) drift “in front of my garage.”

Hochul told reporters on Sunday that the Biden administration had agreed to support her request for a federal disaster declaration.

About 200 National Guard troops were mobilized in western New York to help police and fire crews, conduct wellness checks and bring supplies to shelters, Hochul said.

The larger storm system was moving east on Sunday, after knocking out power to as many as 1.5 million customers at the height of outages late last week and forcing thousands of commercial flight cancellations during the busy holiday travel period.

More than 150,000 U.S. homes and businesses were without power on Sunday, down sharply from the 1.8 million without power as of early Saturday, according to PowerOutage.us. In Buffalo, 15,000 residents were still without electricity on Sunday evening, Poloncarz said.

He said one electrical substation knocked offline was sealed off by an 18-foot-tall mound of snow, and utility crews found the entire facility frozen inside.

Christmas Day temperatures, while beginning to rebound from near-zero readings that were widespread on Saturday, remained well below average across the central and eastern United States, and below freezing even as far south as the Gulf Coast, National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist Rich Otto said.

Nearly 4 feet of snow was measured at Buffalo airport by Sunday, according to the latest NWS tally, with white-out conditions lingering south of Buffalo into the afternoon as continuing squalls dumped 2-3 inches of snow an hour.

In Kentucky, officials confirmed three storm-related deaths since Friday, while at least four people were dead and several injured in auto-related accidents in Ohio, where a 50-vehicle pileup shut down the Ohio Turnpike during a blizzard on Friday.

Other deaths related to extreme cold or weather-induced vehicle accidents were reported in Missouri, Tennessee, Kansas and Colorado, according to news reports.

(The story has been refiled to remove extraneous word in headline)

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