Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Friday invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the G7 summit in Alberta later this month, an invitation Modi accepted despite strained ties between the countries.

The countries expelled each other’s top diplomats last year over the killing of a Sikh Canadian activist in Canada and allegations of other crimes.

The invitation prompted anger from the World Sikh Organization of Canada, which wrote to Carney in May asking him not to invite Modi. Tensions remain high between Canada and India over accusations about Indian government agents being involved in the murder of a Canadian activist for Sikh separatism in British Columbia in 2023.

Carney extended the invitation to Modi in a phone call between the two leaders on Friday. The summit runs from June 15 to 17.

Carney noted Canada is in the role of G7 chair and said there are important discussions that India should be a part of.

“India is the fifth-largest economy in the world, the most populous country in the world and central to supply chains,” Carney told reporters, adding that there has been some progress on law enforcement dialogue between the two countries.

“I extended the invitation to Prime Minister Modi and, in that context, he has accepted,” Carney said.

Carney said there is a legal process underway in the killing of the Canadian Sikh activist and said he would not comment on the case, when asked by a reporter if he thought Modi was involved.

The tit-for-tat expulsions came after Canada told India that its top diplomat in the country is a person of interest in the 2023 assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, and that police have uncovered evidence of an intensifying campaign against Canadian citizens by agents of the Indian government.

Modi said he was glad to receive a call from Carney and congratulated him on his recent election victory.

“As vibrant democracies bound by deep people-to-people ties, India and Canada will work together with renewed vigour, guided by mutual respect and shared interests. Look forward to our meeting at the summit,” Modi said in a social media statement.

Nijjar, 45, was fatally shot in his pickup truck after he left the Sikh temple he led in Surrey, British Columbia. An Indian-born citizen of Canada, he owned a plumbing business and was a leader in what remains of a once-strong movement to create an independent Sikh homeland.

Four Indian nationals living in Canada were charged with Nijjar’s murder.

Balpreet Singh, legal counsel and spokesperson for the World Sikh Organization of Canada, called Carney’s invitation to Modi a “betrayal of Canadian values.”

“The summit to which Mr. Modi is being invited falls on the anniversary of the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar two years ago,” he said. “So for us, this is unacceptable, it’s shocking and it’s a complete reversal of the principled stand that Prime Minister (Justin) Trudeau had taken.”

Canada is not the only country that has accused Indian officials of plotting an assassination on foreign soil.

In 2023 US prosecutors said an Indian government official directed a failed plot to assassinate another Sikh separatist leader in New York.

Russia bombarded Ukraine’s second-largest city with massive strikes in the early hours of Saturday, its mayor said, one night after Moscow carried out one of the war’s largest aerial assaults on Ukraine.

Russia has conducted extensive attacks on Ukraine in recent days, in what is being viewed as retaliation for an audacious drone operation by Kyiv that debilitated more than a third of Moscow’s strategic cruise missile carriers.

The northeastern city of Kharkiv – which sits about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the Russian border – was shaken by “at least 40 explosions” on Saturday, killing at least two people and wounding more than a dozen, according to a Telegram post by Mayor Igor Terekhov.

“Kharkiv is currently experiencing the most powerful attack since the start of the full-scale war,” Terekhov said. “The enemy is striking simultaneously with missiles, (drones) and guided aerial bombs. This is outright terror against peaceful Kharkiv.”

Video released by emergency services showed a large fire burning in a multi-story apartment block in the Osnovyanskyi district in the city’s southwest, where Terekhov said two people had died.

One person was also killed in a strike that hit a house in the Kyivskyi district to the north, he said.

A day earlier, in the apparent retaliation to Ukraine’s drone swarm, Russia launched a barrage of drones and ballistic missiles across broad swaths of Ukraine, killing at least six people and injuring dozens of others.

“They gave Putin a reason to go in and bomb the hell out of them last night,” US President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One late on Friday.

Trump had earlier warned Russian retaliation was imminent, after speaking with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.

It was not immediately clear if Putin intends to further escalate Moscow’s retaliation.

Trump is eager to bring an end to the three-year war, but has been reluctant to impose new sanctions on Russia while the US pushes the warring nations to strike a ceasefire deal.

On Friday, he said he will use further sanctions against Russia “if necessary.”

“If I think Russia will not be making a deal or stopping the bloodshed… I’ll use it if it’s necessary,” he told reporters.

Officials from Russia and Ukraine met in Istanbul on Monday for a second round of peace talks, but the meeting lasted barely over an hour and the only real outcome was an agreement to work towards another prisoner swap.

The body of a Thai hostage, Nattapong Pinta, who was abducted alive during the October 7 attacks was recovered from southern Gaza in a military operation on Friday, according to a statement from the Israeli military and the Shin Bet security service.

The announcement comes just days after Israel recovered the bodies of two Israeli-American hostages from Gaza.

Pinta, 35, was taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel where he had been working in agriculture, according to an Israeli military official, who said it is estimated that he was killed during the first months of captivity. Pinta was a husband and father working in Israel to support his family in Thailand, the official said.

“We will not rest until all the hostages, living and deceased, are returned home,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.

Pinta was abducted by the Mujahideen, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said, a militant group that took part in the Hamas-led October 7 terror attack on Israel. The IDF said it is the same organization that kidnapped the Bibas family and killed Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas, the mother and two young sons who became the most prominent among Hamas’ captives.

Earlier this week, Israel announced that the bodies of Judy Winston-Haggai, 70, and Gadi Haggai, 72, were recovered from southern Gaza. The two were also taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz. The couple had four children and seven grandchildren.

The retrieval of Pinta’s body comes with an intense Israeli operation underway in Gaza, with the Civil Defense reporting at least 38 people were killed in Israeli attacks on Friday.

The IDF said four soldiers were killed and five wounded early Friday morning when an explosive was detonated in a building in Khan Younis in which they were operating, causing part of the structure to collapse.

A total of 55 hostages remain in Gaza, including one taken in 2014. Twenty are believed to still be alive.

Of the 251 people taken hostage by Hamas militants on October 7, many were migrant workers from poor rural parts of Asia, who had gone to work in Israel’s agricultural, construction and health care sectors to send money back home.

Four people were killed in an “extremely violent” blaze seemingly caused by a battery-powered electric scooter that tore through a 10-story housing block in Reims, the capital of France’s Champagne region, authorities said Saturday.

A 13-year-old jumped to his death from the 4th floor apartment where the fire started in the early hours of Friday and a burned body found inside is believed to be that of his older brother, aged 15, said Reims prosecutor François Schneider.

An 87-year-old woman and her 59-year-old son who lived on the 8th floor suffocated to death in the smoke, he said.

Two people were seriously injured, including the dead boys’ stepfather who was badly burned, and 26 others were treated in hospital for lighter injuries, he said.

Schneider said there is “no doubt” that the blaze was accidental, spreading quickly from the scooter that caught fire for reasons unknown.

Battery fires “are extremely difficult to extinguish” and fire officers battled the blaze for more than three hours, the prosecutor said.

A planned exchange of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war failed to take place on Saturday, with Moscow accusing Kyiv of postponing the swap at the last minute, something Ukrainian officials dismissed as “dirty games” from the Kremlin.

Russia said Ukraine unexpectedly postponed a transfer involving prisoners of war and the bodies of dead soldiers, leaving more than 1,200 frozen Ukrainian bodies waiting in refrigerated trucks at an exchange point with no one to collect them.

Ukraine rejected Russia’s account of the events, saying that the two sides had agreed to exchange seriously wounded and young troops on Saturday but a date had not yet been set for the repatriation of soldiers’ bodies.

During a second round of direct peace talks in Istanbul on Monday, Russia and Ukraine agreed to exchange more prisoners this weekend. Vladimir Medinsky, the head of Russia’s delegation for peace talks with Ukraine, said this week that the exchange would be the largest since of the three-year war.

“In strict accordance with the Istanbul agreements, the Russian side began a humanitarian operation to transfer more than 6,000 bodies of killed Ukrainian servicemen,” as well as badly wounded soldiers under the age of 25, Medinsky said Saturday afternoon on Telegram.

He claimed that 1,212 bodies of killed Ukrainian soldiers were at the exchange point, with the rest “on their way.” He also said that Russia gave Ukraine the first list of 640 prisoners of war for exchange, listed as “wounded, seriously ill and young people,” in order to start the swap.

In a video posted by Russia’s Defense Ministry on Telegram, two men wearing hazmat suits are seen opening the doors to the back of a truck parked on the side of a road. Inside the truck were dozens of sealed white bags, which the ministry said contained the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.

Medinsky said Russia’s Defense Ministry contact group was waiting at the border with Ukraine, but alleged that Kyiv had “unexpectedly postponed the transfer of bodies and the exchange of prisoners of war for an indefinite period” and had given “pretty weird reasons” for doing so.

Ukraine swiftly rejected the accusations, saying Medinsky’s claims “do not correspond to reality.” It said the exchange of prisoners of war and soldiers’ bodies were separate processes.

“Unfortunately, instead of constructive dialogue, we are again faced with manipulations and attempts to use sensitive humanitarian issues for informational purposes,” Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War wrote on Telegram.

“We call on the Russian side to stop playing dirty games,” it added.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Russia was creating “artificial obstacles” and making “false statements” to obstruct the exchange of living prisoners, reneging on what had been agreed in Istanbul.

“The Ukrainian side has faced yet another attempt to renege on the agreements after the fact,” the ministry said.

Although prisoner of war swaps had been a rare point of agreement between the warring countries, the unraveling of Saturday’s scheduled exchange underscores the lack of trust that has so far marred the peace talks.

The spat came soon after Russia launched another aerial assault on Ukraine, killing three people in the city of Kharkiv.