Texas is no stranger to winter wildfires, but the ferocity of the Smokehouse Creek fire — the state’s largest on record after burning through more than 1 million acres — caught even the experts off guard.

Its severity was due to a perfect storm of environmental factors: highly flammable grasses and strong winds combined with record-high temperatures and dry conditions — the kind of extreme weather often exacerbated by climate change.

This fire adds to an ever-lengthening list of rapidly spreading, destructive wildfires in the US and elsewhere. As humans continue to heat up the world with fossil fuel pollution, scientists warn these kinds of fires will only become more common.

The past several years have brought some of the United States’ most devastating fires. The fire that ripped through Maui in August, whipped up by a combination of heat, drought and strong winds, killed at least 100 people and was the deadliest US wildfire in more than a century.

In California, 80% of the state’s largest wildfires have occurred in the last decade, including the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise.

But it’s not just the US grappling with alarming new fire behavior. Canada experienced its worst wildfire season on record in 2023, with flames scorching more than 18 million hectares (44.5 million acres) — more than double the previous record.

In Greece, winds and record temperatures led to deadly fires last summer, the largest ever recorded in the European Union. And in early February, wildfires tore through parts of Chile, killing more than 130 people.

“We have certainly seen plenty of extreme and catastrophic fires and fire seasons across the globe in the past decade,” said John Abatzoglou, a climate professor at the University of California, Merced.

In many cases, climate change is playing a role, he added, “enabling more active fire seasons and very large fire events.”

Why did the Texas fires grow so explosively?

Then, a hard freeze late in the fall meant all that grass went dormant. Sapped of moisture, they were highly flammable. It only took a short period of warm, dry weather for them to dry out further, providing a carpet for the fire to spread.

Temperatures were unseasonably hot the day the fires started, climbing to more than 85 degrees Fahrenheit in some parts of the panhandle, Kanclerz said.

Strong winds helped the fire pick up, and the passage of a windy cold front whipped it up further, causing the fire to shift direction and expand.

The region’s geography compounded the situation. The fire was able to rage across the open landscape with little to stop it, making firefighting efforts extremely challenging. The fire grew explosively, engulfing up to 150 football fields of land every minute in the first few days.

Kanclerz said it was clear before the fires broke out that wind, temperature and humidity indicators added up to critical fire conditions.

“But the magnitude of the fire exceeded our expectations,” he said.

It’s hard to witness, he added. Huge fires in these parts of Texas are “not unheard of,” he said, “but we hate to see the frequency of them.”

A shifting climate

Wildfires are fueled by a knot of factors, both natural and human-caused, but scientists say that global warming is loading the dice in favor of more intense and severe blazes.

Hotter temperatures are the clearest climate change-fueled contributor to wildfires. Heat sucks the moisture from vegetation making it much more combustible. “Drier fuels are a critical part of fire, the drier the fuel the easier it is to start a fire,” said Mike Flannigan, professor of wildland fire at the University of Alberta.

As well as drying out vegetation, heat could also change the vegetation. In Hawaii, hotter summers have made it easier for fast-growing and more combustible invasive species to take hold, displacing native vegetation such as shady forests.

Periods of drought, which are becoming longer and more intense as the world warms, also dry out vegetation and increase the likelihood of fires igniting and spreading rapidly. The Maui fires happened as a third of the island struggled with drought.

But drought isn’t always needed for fires to spread explosively, Abatzoglou said – something evidenced by the fact that as of earlier in the week, there was no drought where the Smokehouse Creek fire ignited and spread to.

In West Texas, shorter periods of dryness can be enough to fuel huge fires when there is a bumper crop of grasses as well as high winds, he said.

Scientists are still working to understand what impact, if any, global warming is having on the winds that whip up wildfires.

Research has found climate change is fueling the rapid intensification of hurricanes, pushing storms to explode at a deadly pace. Hurricane Dora, a Category 4 storm which passed about 700 miles south of Hawaii’s Big Island, enhanced the strong winds that helped drive the Maui fires.

But it’s hard to attribute climate change to the winds that fueled the Texas fires, Abatzoglou said, “any link right now is most likely weak.”

Overall, however, climate projections “paint a future of more extreme fire weather conditions for the general region,” he added.

It’s a picture that extends across the US, according to a recent report from Climate Central, a nonprofit research group, which found wildfire seasons are lengthening and intensifying as climate change increases the likelihood of the kind of extreme weather that favors fires.

West Texas is one of the most affected states, said Kaitlyn Trudeau, a senior researcher at Climate Central. The Texas High Plains region, for example, experiences 32 additional days of warm, dry, windy conditions compared to the 1970s, she said.

“As long as the climate keeps warming and makes fire weather more common, the risks will only keep rising.”

The official said the reason was that Hamas had not responded to two Israeli demands: a list of hostages specifying which are alive and which are dead; and confirmation of the ratio of Palestinian prisoners to be released from Israeli prisons in exchange for hostages.

The official asked not to be named as they discussed closed-door diplomatic maneuvers.

A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Sunday, for the talks that are hoped to bring a halt to the fighting.

The decision not to send an Israeli delegation was made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in coordination with Mossad director David Barnea – who has been a key Israeli negotiator – after Barnea received a message that Hamas had not responded to the conditions, the Israeli official said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined the terms in a speech on Thursday, saying: “I demand to know in advance the names of all the hostages who will be included in the outline. I have yet to receive an answer on the two questions and it is too early to say, in spite of our willingness, if we will achieve an outline for an additional release in the coming days.”

The Israeli decision that no delegation will go to Cairo comes a day after a senior Biden Administration official told reporters that Israel had “basically accepted” a proposal for a six-week ceasefire.

On Sunday a Hamas source said there were at least three sticking points remaining before the group would agree to a deal.

They are a permanent ceasefire; withdrawal of what the source called “occupation forces” – that is, Israeli troops – from the Gaza Strip; and the return of displaced people from the south to the north.

Another diplomatic source played down the prospects of an imminent deal, saying progress was slow and it was unlikely there would be a breakthrough within the next 48 hours.

Iranian singer Shervin Hajipour, whose song became popular during mass protests in 2022, has been sentenced to three years and eight months in prison and ordered to write a song about US “atrocities,” a human rights group reported.

The 27-year-old Grammy Award winner was accused of “inciting unrest against national security” and “spreading propaganda against the regime,” according to a report by Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) on Friday.

He was summoned by the police and questioned for “encouragement to protest” in 2022, two days after he posted a video of himself singing his song “Baraye,” which translates to “For…,” on Instagram. The sentence comes in the wake of a crackdown on voices of dissent within the country.

Hajipour, who gained international recognition and a Special Merit Award for Best Song for Social Change at the 2023 Grammys for the song, was detained in Sari, Mazandaran Province by security forces in September 2022 and released on bail that October.

His song became an anthem of protests sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini that evolved into a broader movement calling for greater freedoms and even an overthrow of the state.

The court’s verdict extends beyond the prison sentence, imposing additional penalties deemed necessary to reflect the “gravity of Hajipour’s actions,” HRANA said.

For two years following his imprisonment, Hajipour is barred from leaving Iran. He is also mandated to engage in activities that “promote the achievements” of the Islamic Revolution, including compiling content on culture, science and art, and producing a song about the “USA’s atrocities against humanity.”

Hajipour must also summarize two books on the status of women in Islam and “document human rights violations by the U.S. government over the last century,” HRANA reported.

On his Instagram account, Hajipour posted a picture of the verdict, thanking his lawyers and management team.

The northern Iran resident released yet another controversial song and music video last month, referencing his recent run-ins with authorities, with lyrics indicating that he’s the “trash who didn’t have anyone to post bail for him,” and that even though he’s “not allowed to sing (in public)” he is the “trash that will stay in Iran to rebuild this city” and never leave the country.

The images were stirring: Alexey Navalny’s mourners lining up on Friday around the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God in Moscow’s Maryino district, risking arrest to pay final respects to a man they call their hero.

Each red carnation clutched by a supporter of the Russian dissident can be seen as a small act of resistance in a country where the state has cleared the landscape of all political competition. And one of the chants of Navalny’s supporters at the funeral – ne prostim (we won’t forgive) – seemed directed at Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But the fact that Navalny’s funeral went ahead, after two cruel weeks of bureaucratic delay and official obfuscation, is perhaps a sign of the Kremlin’s confidence. Its crackdown on dissent is so complete, and genuine political opposition so marginalized, that the event was allowed to take place. The funeral of Navalny was the funeral of the Russian opposition movement – for now.

To be sure, a heavy contingent of police was on hand to make sure the event did not veer outside the boundaries of acceptable protest. Independent monitoring group OVD-Info reported that 91 people were arrested in 19 cities around Russia on the day of Navalny’s funeral, far fewer than the hundreds arrested on the day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine raised the stakes for public protest in Russia, introducing strict new criminal penalties for defaming the country’s military. Hundreds of thousands of Russians went into exile, many of whom were part of Navalny’s constituency. The person who has assumed the mantle of Navalny’s charismatic leadership – his widow, Yulia Navalnaya – is out of the country, and does not immediately present a direct political threat to Putin, who is poised to sail to re-election in two weeks. That all makes Friday’s turnout more remarkable, but what future is there for Navalny’s form of opposition?

Navalny returned to Russia following his recovery from nerve-agent poisoning in 2021 precisely because he wanted to remain an active player in politics. And his form of digitally engaged activism continued, even as state prosecutors piled on charges against him.

For that, he paid the price: Whatever the ultimate cause of his death in prison, Navalny’s term in a remote penal colony north of the Arctic Circle was designed to break him physically and psychologically.

Behind bars, Navalny had remained a potent symbol of resistance, sending messages that poked fun at the prison administration. Even in death, his sense of humor and pop-culture savvy surfaced. Kira Yarmysh, his spokeswoman, noted that music from an Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbuster was played as his body was laid to rest.

“Alexey considered Terminator 2 the best film on earth,” she wrote. “Music from the final scene was played at his funeral.”

To quote the Terminator, Navalny will be back.

“Schoolkids hear about heroes in schools but here we have a true hero which we were happy to work with through the years,” his longtime aide Maria Pevchikh said in a live YouTube broadcast on Friday. “Navalny will become a giant figure in Russian history,”

But while Putin is in power, the anti-corruption activist’s name will not be seen on streets and squares. So how long Russian schoolchildren will wait for him to enter their history books is a very open question.

Flights at Port-au-Prince airport in Haiti’s capital have been disrupted for the second straight day by heavy gunfire nearby, as the Caribbean nation grapples with surging gang violence and political instability.

The US Embassy in Haiti issued a security alert on Friday, warning of gunfire and disruptions to traffic near the domestic and international terminals of the Toussaint Louverture International Airport, as well as surrounding areas including a hotel and the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police.

“The US Embassy is temporarily halting travel of official US personnel to the airport and instructing any US personnel at the airport to remain there,” the embassy said.

It comes a day after shootings erupted across Haiti’s capital, forcing flight cancellations and killing at least four people during an attack on a police station.

American Airlines said Thursday it had suspended its daily service between Miami and Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince.

Rapid gunfire near the airport had “caused damage to some aircraft and endangered users” of the domestic terminal, according to Sunrise Airways.

A US flight carrying dozens of Haitian deportees was also canceled, according to a source with knowledge of the operation and a lawyer for one of the deportees.

“It’s baffling that we’ve continued to deport people to Haiti when the conditions are so dire,” he said, while also complaining that US authorities had failed to provide food to the detainees or let them out since 4 p.m. the previous day.

Surging gang violence

Haiti has been gripped by a wave of unrest and gang violence in recent years.

Warring gangs control much of Port-au-Prince, choking off vital supply lines to the rest of the country. Gang members have also terrorized the metropolitan population, forcing some 200,000 people to flee their homes amid waves of indiscriminate killing, kidnapping, arson and rape.

Some 1,100 people were killed, injured or kidnapped in January alone, in what the United Nations called the most violent month in two years.

More than 8,400 people were victims of such violence through last year, according to a report from the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BIUH).

Waves of crime and violence began to sweep across Haiti following the assassination of former President Jovenel Moise in 2021.

Public frustration has mounted against Prime Minister Ariel Henry for his failure to put a lid on the unrest, especially after he failed to hold elections supposedly slated for last month, citing the escalating violence.

On Wednesday, Henry told other Caribbean nations’ leaders during a regional summit that he would hold polls no later than August 31 next year, his first confirmation on when a vote will finally go ahead.

Leaders from the CARICOM regional bloc – a political and economic grouping of 20 developing countries and mostly island states – said they agreed to dispatch a team to assess the electoral needs of Haiti.

A powerful Haitian gang leader said gun fights that broke out across Port-au-Prince on Thursday were aimed at overthrowing Henry’s government, multiple media outlets reported.

Three other people were injured in separate attacks across the capital – one at the airport, a second near a prison in downtown Port-au-Prince, and a third inside the prison, the security source said.

International support

The security mission, authorized by the UN, has been seen by the international community as key to containing the situation in Haiti. Kenya volunteered to serve as the lead nation in that mission.

Officials from Kenya signed an agreement on Friday to send 1,000 police officers to Haiti as part of the security mission.

“From Kenya, we are ready for this deployment, and I request all the other partners across the globe to step up so that we can provide a response in good time,” Ruto said on Friday.

Henry thanked Kenya for agreeing to lead the mission, saying that after six months of fine-tuning it, “finally, we sign. It’s the last step.”

The signing of the deal is intended to satisfy a court ruling from Kenya’s High Court, which delayed the deployment of troops in January after finding that a reciprocal agreement with Haiti was needed.

The United States intended to contribute $200 million to the multinational security support mission to back the Haitian national police “with planning, with intelligence, with airlift capacity, communications, and medical equipment and services,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week.

Before the war, Mohammed Hamouda and his wife, Dina, would stroll along beaches in northern Gaza, where their three young children loved to swim, eat ice cream, and ride camels on the shoreline.

Now, the sound of laughter has been replaced by that of Israeli strikes raining down on the enclave.

“They are very fearful. All day, we have to be by their side,” Hamouda reflected from Rafah, in southern Gaza, where they have fled. “They keep asking me about when we will go back home.”

But the family has no home to go back to. They recently learned that their house in Beit Lahia was destroyed. Hamouda’s youngest child, Kareem, 2, is too young to understand, but his eldest children, Ella, 6, and Sila, 4, were devastated by the loss and would not stop crying. “I couldn’t find any words to console her (Ella),” he said.

Of the 2.2 million people living in Gaza, about half are under the age of 18. As a result of Israel’s partial blockade, the life expectancy for Palestinians in Gaza was already a decade shorter than in Israel, with rates of neonatal, infant and maternal mortality more than three times higher, according to the World Bank. Since the war began, life for young people in the strip has become even more fragile.

Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza after the militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing at least 1,200 people, including 36 children, and kidnapping more than 250 others.

I feel scared and fear the planes will bomb us, especially when my father leaves for work.”

Ella Hamouda, 9, displaced in southern Gaza

No relief for injured children

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has demolished family homes, razed entire neighborhoods, and turned swathes of the territory into rubble-filled wasteland. In recent weeks, the Israeli military intensified airstrikes in central and northern Gaza, ahead of an anticipated ground offensive in Rafah. Families like the Hamoudas fear they will have nowhere left to flee.

Nearly 30% of Gazans are estimated to have no home to return to, with more than 60% of housing units across the strip either totally destroyed or partially damaged, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported in February.

Ella dreams of the day she can return to the beach with her friends, siblings Amira, 8, Yehia, 10, and Mohamed, 6, Hamouda said.

He hasn’t had the heart to tell her that Amira was killed, along with her father, Waseem El Ostaz, and his wife, Helal, in a strike on their home in Beit Lahia, in November. Hamouda felt able to tell his daughter only of the death of Amira’s parents, who were close friends of the family.

“She cried a lot, and she was very sad… She stopped eating,” said Hamouda of Ella. “She asked me to bring over those kids after the war is over and take them to the beach … to make it up to them because they lost their parents, so that she can have a role in helping them and comforting them.”

Both Yehia and Mohamed were burned in the strike, according to Hamouda. Yehia also sustained a fractured lower limb. The two siblings were displaced to a relative’s house in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. 

Many children have sustained life-altering injuries from Israeli strikes, according to the UN’s children’s agency (UNICEF). Around 1,000 children lost one or both legs from the beginning of the war until the end of November, UNICEF reported.

Forced displacement leads to insecurity, hunger

Ayas, 8, who was disabled, and lived in an orphanage in Gaza City, was en route to a hospital in Rafah when he died, Hazem Saeed Al-Naizi, the orphanage director, said.

His condition had worsened after the orphanage was forced to flee with all 40 young people in its care – most of them children and infants living with disabilities – and bring them south. Due to shortages, Ayas couldn’t get the medicine he needed. Without it, his muscles stiffened, his convulsions and inflammation increased, making it difficult for him to eat or sleep, Al-Naizi said.

We hope that this war will end, and the suffering of the children of Palestine will end. Ayas is just a child among thousands of children who suffer here in Gaza and whose lives are exposed to danger every day. They die of hunger, disease, fear or bombing.”

Hazem Saeed Al-Naizi, orphanage director, displaced in southern Gaza

UNICEF warned in January of a triple threat to children in Gaza – not just the danger of raging war, but also of malnutrition and disease. Israel’s bombardment and restrictions on aid entering the strip have severely diminished food and water supplies, exposing the entire population to the risk of famine.

In February, UNRWA, the main UN relief agency in Gaza suspended deliveries to northern Gaza after an Israeli attack on one of their convoys, further limiting aid. Soon after, the UN World Food Programme also stopped deliveries, citing attacks.

One in six children under the age of two in northern Gaza are estimated to be acutely malnourished, according to an assessment by the Global Nutrition Cluster, which is co-chaired by WFP and UNICEF.

Ayas was displaced at least six times before his death, said Al-Naizi. At least 1.7 million Gazans have been forcibly displaced, according to the UN. Many of those – including about 610,000 children – have sought refuge in cramped shelters in Rafah, according to Save the Children.

Forced displacement, even to the homes of relatives or acquaintances, exposes children to the indignities of cramped living conditions with little privacy, according to Saeed Muhammad Al-Kahlot, a mental health specialist displaced in Rafah with his three children – Siwar, 15, Muhammad, 9, and Saba, 7.

As many as 17,000 children in Gaza are unaccompanied by or separated from their parents, UNICEF said in February — about 1% of the total displaced population. Children whose parents have been killed by Israeli bombardment – or who have been separated from their guardians – are forced to take on the role of parenting younger siblings.

“I also saw a kid who is barely seven years old, and he was getting his baby sister’s milk ready, and he was changing her diaper because he lost his mother,” said Hamouda.

Many kids who lost their parents are now playing the parent for their other siblings.”

Mohammed Hamouda, father-of-three, displaced in southern Gaza

Nearly 20,000 babies were born in Gaza from October 7 to January 19, UNICEF reported, meaning many newborns are starting life amid these dire conditions.

Robbed of an education

Dressed in a blue pinstripe dress with a frilly collar, Ella used to carry her pink and purple rucksack to pre-school – where she would play with her friend, Aya.

“She is very upset because she doesn’t know how to read or write.”

Children in Gaza are expected to lose at least a year of education because of the war, according to the UN. A recent damage assessment by UNICEF identified over 160 school buildings that were directly hit. Field reports from the agency also found that nearly four-fifths of school buildings across the strip have been damaged and at least 26 destroyed.

There is no safe place for more than 625,000 students who need schooling, UNICEF added. One in 100 teachers and one in 130 students have been killed by Israeli strikes, as of January 30. 

Psychological trauma, changes in behavior

The number of children in need of mental health support has doubled to more than 1 million since the start of the war – nearly all children in the strip, UNICEF estimated. 

“This situation we are going through has never been seen before in the previous wars,” he added.

Loss is a harsh and traumatic human experience. In the psychological clinic, one of the fathers, who was suffering from a panic attack, told me that he hugs his children every night before bed and firmly believes that this will be their last hug.”

Saeed Muhammad Al-Kahlot, mental health specialist and father-of-three, displaced in southern Gaza

“There is no safe place for us to take them to play,” he reflected. “I fear losing their souls and I fear that they might get injured or that they might suffer from a disability for life.

“I want my children to live like the rest of the world’s children.”

Humanitarian workers and government officials working to deliver urgently needed aid for Gaza say a clear pattern has emerged of Israeli obstruction, as disease and near-famine grip parts of the besieged enclave.

Other items that have ended up in bureaucratic limbo include dates, sleeping bags, medicines to treat cancer, water purification tablets and maternity kits.

Israel’s throttling of aid came into sharper focus Thursday when its military opened fire as desperate Palestinians gathered around food aid trucks in western Gaza City, according to eyewitnesses. This triggered panic and some people were shot while others were plowed by trucks whose drivers tried to flee, eyewitnesses say. At least 112 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more were injured, according to health officials. The IDF said it had fired warning shots to disperse a crowd after seeing that people were being trampled.

A White House readout of a phone call between US President Joe Biden and Qatari Emir Tamim al-Thani on Thursday said both leaders agreed the horrific event underscored “the urgency of bringing negotiations to a close as soon as possible and expanding the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza.”

US Senator Chris Murphy said the situation was “a result of the complete breakdown in social order in Gaza, which is spiraling out of control without a massive influx of humanitarian aid and a pause in the fighting.”

For months, queues of trucks bound for the enclave have been backed up along the highway leading from the Egyptian town of Arish, a major logistical hub for aid, to the Rafah crossing with Gaza. In a satellite image from February 21, a queue of trucks can be seen stretching out for 4 miles from the crossing.

Across the border, Israel’s bombardment edges closer to some two million people hemmed in between the southern Gazan city of Rafah and Egypt’s frontier. Further north, at least six children have died in hospitals in recent days from dehydration and malnutrition, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

It’s deliberately opaque, deliberately ambiguous

Senior humanitarian official

“While there’s a war being fought in Gaza, we are fighting a different war here,” said one humanitarian worker at Egypt’s Rafah crossing with Gaza. “It is a war to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza.”

Several sources said a substantial portion of the donations they handled were either rejected or held up by a long wait for clearance by Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, or COGAT, which manages the flow of aid into the strip.

“It’s deliberately opaque, deliberately ambiguous,” said another senior humanitarian official. “You can receive clearance from COGAT and arrive to find police or finance and customs officials who will send the truck back.”

“Israel assists, encourages and facilitates the entry of humanitarian aid for the residents of the Gaza Strip and for medical and other critical infrastructures in the strip,” the statement said. “Israel’s war is against the Hamas terrorist organization, not against the residents of the Gaza Strip.

Israel has long barred certain items from entering Gaza. In 2007, it imposed a blockade on the strip after Hamas took over. A year later, COGAT released a list of banned “dual use” items, making slight modifications to the document in the years that followed.

These are goods which, it said, could be repurposed for military use and would be barred from entering Gaza, such as concrete, agricultural fertilizer, certain chemicals and other miscellaneous items like binoculars, underwater cameras and water skis.

But those criteria appear to have been abandoned in the aftermath of Hamas’ brutal October 7 attack on Israel, which left about 1,200 people dead and over 250 people held hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

We provide minimal humanitarian aid… If we want to achieve our war goals, we give the minimal aid

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

The Israeli military responded with an intensive air, sea and land assault on Gaza that has sent the death toll soaring to over 30,000 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry, devastating most of the strip’s buildings and houses, as well as large swathes of its commercial sector and farmlands.

In a January 13 press conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted about permitting “minimal humanitarian aid” to enter Gaza.

“We provide minimal humanitarian aid,” Netanyahu said. “If we want to achieve our war goals, we give the minimal aid.”

The international community has repeatedly criticized Israel for issuing insufficient permits, and security clearances, for aid trucks to Gaza. There have also been instances where the Israeli military struck food deliveries. Looting by desperate civilians and criminal gangs in some of the hardest hit areas in the north of Gaza has intensified that crisis, bringing UN food deliveries there to a grinding halt.

Exacerbating the situation is an apparent ghost list impeding the delivery of a wide range of items.

“I’ve never seen a supply chain that ought to be so simple be so complicated,” said Save the Children US president and chief executive Janti Soeripto. “The level of barriers being put in place to hamper humanitarian assistance; we’ve never seen anything like it.”

She said toys were rejected because they were in a wooden box rather than a cardboard box, sleeping bags were denied because they had zippers, and sanitary pads were turned back because a nail clipper was included in the hygiene kit.

In January, US Senators Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley saw maternity kits and water filtration systems among the items Israel turned back from its inspection point in Nitzana.

“We learned that when a truck with just one of those items is turned down, the entire truck gets turned around and has to go back to the beginning of the process, which can take weeks,” Van Hollen said.

“We talked to the heads of international aid organizations that had been working in conflicts worldwide for decades,” the senator added. “They said they’d never seen a more broken system.”

The situation prompted Van Hollen to spearhead US congressional efforts to hold Israel accountable for its handling of humanitarian aid, which he described on the Senate floor earlier this month as a “textbook war crime.”

Israel’s elusive guidelines on restricted items

Publicly, COGAT claims that it has abided by its 2008 banned items list. In private, COGAT has said that that document is now obsolete, according to a humanitarian official in direct contact with the Israeli unit.

COGAT enforced the 2008 list when the war first erupted on October 7, the official said. “About three weeks in, they said that list is not valid for this response. This is a different context. They said ignore the list.”

“No one can argue that sleeping bags are going to win a war,” the official said. “We did push back on that and warned them that it would look pretty silly if this got out.”

Four sources described another incident when Israel rejected a shipment of dates – a rich source of nutrients desperately needed by a hungry population. Two of the sources said it was because the seeds were picked up as a suspicious object in the x-ray inspection imaging.

Other trucks carrying dates have been allowed into Gaza, according to UN data. But humanitarian workers have said they are worried about a repeat, and several have resorted to pitting dates prior to inspection.

COGAT provides a range of reasons for these denials. Sometimes it cites bureaucratic issues, such as an incorrect manifest, other times the items are in whole or in part deemed to be dual use, sources said. Some of the reasons provided to humanitarian organizations appeared to be expressly political. Most of the time, COGAT doesn’t provide a reason for the rejections at all.

The confusion prompted Israeli rights group GISHA to file a Freedom of Information Act request on February 7 asking the Israeli government to release details of any new restrictions on aid imposed since October 7.

“The Israeli public has a right to know what is being done in its name in Gaza.”

Anesthetics, crutches and other ‘frequently rejected items’

For doctors and patients inside Gaza, the implications are excruciating. There are numerous reports of preventable deaths for lack of oxygen and ventilators. Over 1,000 children have undergone leg amputations in Gaza, according to UNICEF, some without anesthesia. That figure was compiled by UNICEF at the end of November and has not been updated since.

There was no anesthesia. My anesthesia was the Quran which I was reciting

Ahed Bseiso, 17, recalling her leg amputation

“He brought the kitchen knife and cut my leg off with it. And in that moment, I said praise be to God. Because he brought me patience.”

Medicines in Gaza began to run out shortly after the war erupted on October 7. Injuries from intensive bombardment skyrocketed while Israel stifled aid deliveries.

“Towards the end of my 43 days in Gaza, we had run out of anesthetic, and we were doing procedures with no anesthetic at all,” said British-Palestinian surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah from his clinic in London, two months after his return from Gaza.

“We were having to do extremely painful cleaning procedures to stop wound infections on children with no anesthetic and no analgesic.”

In the absence of appropriate medical supplies, Abu-Sittah concocted a solution to fight infection: dish soap mixed with vinegar and saline.

“I would pour that over the wound and scrub the wound down,” Abu-Sittah said. “It was probably the darkest moment of my life. The child was screaming. The parent was crying, and you’re trying to just block all of this out and do it as quickly as possible.

“But knowing that if you hadn’t, that child would be dead by the end of the day.”

Another humanitarian source inside Gaza said that in early February he witnessed a six-year-old child with burns covering 40% of her body. She was at a hospital in Rafah, the best supplied population center in Gaza, where medics could only give her aspirin to ease her agony.

Another woman, Um Adel, said her granddaughter died due to a lack of oxygen at a hospital in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis.

Israel’s restrictions have also impacted medicines for the chronically ill. For weeks, COGAT temporarily prevented insulin pens for children with diabetes from entering Gaza, according to the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Palestine Jamie McGoldrick and one other source.

“On the goods that are being prohibited, it’s a full range,” said McGoldrick in a January 24 press conference. “Some of it is medical material such as basic drugs and material for treating not just trauma but for chronic illnesses.

“One example would be most recently the pens that are used for insulin for children,” he added. “In terms of the rationale for it, I really can’t explain it because I don’t know.

“These are essential commodities for us to address the emergency which is currently unfolding in a very dramatic fashion.”

At one of the waypoints of aid in Jordan, stacked boxes of donations extend for around eight miles, a backlog that would require around a thousand trucks to deliver, Jordan’s charity officials estimate.

The director of programs and planning for the Jordanian Hashemite Charity Organization (JHCO), Marwan al-Hennawy, slits open a box of food to show what should be reaching people in Gaza; this one contains rice, chicken stock, tuna and dates. It is enough to feed a family of five for two weeks.

Al-Hennawy scans the sea of boxes around him. “It’s painful to look around and see all this,” he says. “I feel like I’m trapped. I know Gazans desperately need this help but I can’t get it to them. It’s like a nightmare.”

Fungi are fascinating and integral parts of the web of life. They also have a bit of a mixed reputation.

On one hand, mushrooms and networks of fungal roots are sought-after sources of nutritionally rich food, mind-altering drugs and eco-friendly materials — and they help trees share nutrients and store carbon in a way that might fight climate change.

Other members of the fungi family tree are less desirable and act as disease-causing pathogens that can disrupt ecosystems and blight human and animal health.

But a newly described mystery involving a mushroom and a frog suggests that fungi’s role in the environment is anything but black-and-white.

Once upon a planet

Some naturalists stumbled upon a strange sight within a roadside pond in the Indian state of Karnataka in June 2023: a golden-backed frog with a tiny mushroom sprouting from its flank.

The team photographed the seemingly healthy amphibian and reported the discovery. Examining the images, an expert identified the mushroom as a common bonnet, a type of fungus that mostly grows on rotting wood.

It’s not clear why the mushroom made the frog its home. The odd growth could be the result of a fungal infection, which is common in frogs, or evidence of a symbiotic relationship.

The researchers plan to return to the same spot during the next monsoon season to investigate further.

Look up

The DART mission was a landmark test of asteroid deflection technology — a proof of concept in case humanity ever needs to defend Earth from a potentially devastating collision with a space rock, such as the one that doomed dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

The target of that 2022 NASA mission was Dimorphos, a moonlet asteroid that orbits a larger asteroid known as Didymos. When the DART spacecraft crashed into Dimorphos, it changed the asteroid’s orbital period — how long it takes to circle Didymos — by about 32 to 33 minutes.

Space scientists have since learned more about what happened to Dimorphos. Rather than forming a simple crater, the impact altered the asteroid in a fundamental way, new research has revealed.

“If you think of Dimorphos as starting out as resembling a chocolate M&M, now it would look like it has had a bite taken out of it!” said lead study author Dr. Sabina Raducan, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern’s Physics Institute in Switzerland.

Ocean secrets

Whale songs have long been known to echo through the surprisingly noisy ocean depths, but it’s not just marine giants making themselves heard.

Scientists have discovered a diminutive, translucent fish that makes a noise louder than an elephant. Living in shallow waters off the coast of Myanmar, members of the species Danionella cerebrum can make noises higher than 140 decibels.

“This is comparable to the noise a human perceives of an airplane during take-off at a distance of 100 (meters) and quite unusual for an animal of such diminutive size,” said ichthyologist Dr. Ralf Britz of the Senckenberg Natural History Collections in Dresden, Germany, in a news release.

Britz and his colleagues analyzed high-speed video recordings, micro-CT scans and genetic information to understand the unique way in which males of the species generate the thunderous sound.

Turn, turn, turn

Have you forgotten why February had an extra day this year? Here’s a quick refresher.

A leap year is essentially a necessary piece of cosmic bookkeeping that prevents the seasons from getting out of whack. Without one, the summer solstice we generally experience in June would happen in December 700 years from now.

A solar year is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds, according to NASA’s calculations. As a result, every year the commonly used 365-day calendar lags behind the solar year by about one-quarter of a day.

While this might not seem like much of a difference, over four years, it works out to roughly a full day.

Lunar update

Odysseus, the first US-made vehicle to make a soft landing on the moon in five decades, had a busy week after a hair-raising descent and touchdown near the lunar south pole on February 22.

Despite a bumpy landing that left Odie on its side — a setback captured in striking images — data has been transmitted from all six NASA instruments on board as well as commercial payloads, officials confirmed Wednesday.

Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 lander now faces another test: surviving lunar night, a dangerous situation as the swing into ultra-freezing temperatures during this period could cause damage to Odie’s hardware.

Elsewhere in our solar system, space scientists have spotted three faint and tiny moons orbiting the outermost planets in the Milky Way: Uranus and Neptune.

Curiosities

Explore these mind-expanding stories:

— Archaeologists have unearthed a 2,000-year-old clay head that once belonged to a figurine of a god. The rare find provides new context about life in Roman Britain.

— A dead star that feasted on a planet once in its orbit could foretell the eventual fate of our own solar system.

— Scientists have identified one reason why invasive Jorō spiders are spreading throughout United States.

For more than two decades, no one listened to Sally Leydon as she begged for help to find her mother who mysteriously vanished during a trip abroad in 1997.

At the time, Australian police dismissed her concerns, insisting that her mother, Marion Barter, had disappeared by choice, and wanted nothing to do with her family.

It was a story Leydon refused to accept, and on Thursday her efforts to find her mother led to a crowded courtroom in western Sydney, where a coroner handed down her findings in an inquest spanning almost three years.

For many, the final inquest hearing offered the ultimate live update of “The Lady Vanishes,” an Australian podcast that has meticulously pieced together evidence in the case since the first episode aired in March 2019.

On Thursday morning, Leydon’s most loyal Australian supporters crammed into the courtroom, wearing green, Barter’s favorite color, as the podcast’s followers in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Europe, the United Kingdom and beyond tuned into a live YouTube feed as Magistrate Teresa O’Sullivan delivered her findings.

“Marion Barter is deceased, and died some unknown time after October 15, 1997,” said O’Sullivan from the bench. Barter’s body has never been found.

Leydon didn’t need a coroner to confirm her mother’s death – she has long accepted that painful truth in the absence of any evidence otherwise.

But the coroner’s words confirmed what she’d suspected for years – that the early police investigation into her mother’s disappearance was botched, and that Ric Blum – a convicted conman now in his 80s, who admitted having an affair with Barter in the months before she vanished – had lied repeatedly on the stand and knew more about her mother’s disappearance than he was letting on.

A mother vanishes

In 1997, Marion Barter was ready for a change, and on June 22, she boarded a plane from Brisbane, Australia to the United Kingdom with plans for a holiday and perhaps a fresh start.

In rather dramatic fashion, the 51-year-old teacher had quit her job halfway through the school year, sold her house, and put her beloved antiques into storage on the understanding that one day she’d come home to get them, or have them shipped to her, if she settled in the UK.

As far as anyone knew, she was traveling alone.

On August 1, Barter phoned Leydon purportedly from a payphone in Tunbridge Wells in Kent, England.

Leydon, then 24 years old, told the podcast she had just finished telling her mother about the wedding dress she’d bought when the payphone ran out of credit. She never heard from her mother again.

At first Leydon didn’t dwell on the silence, but on October 18, when Barter didn’t phone her son, Leydon’s brother Owen, for his birthday, she started to worry.

One of the first calls Leydon made was to Barter’s bank to see if her mother was using her account. Regular amounts were coming out, a bank worker told her, but not from the UK.

Someone in Australia had been using her mother’s identification to withdraw 5,000 Australian dollars ($3,450.00) every day for three weeks over the counter in Byron Bay and the Gold Coast, where Barter used to live.

A shocked Leydon was sure it wasn’t her mother and reported it to the police.

Then came the response that set Leydon on a course that’s consumed most of her adult life.

Police told her that the bank confirmed that her mother had withdrawn her money and wanted nothing to do with her family.

Barter had returned to Australia, they said, and wanted to disappear.

A new life, and a new name

Years went by with little information about what happened to Barter, until an intriguing clue emerged via a police investigation that belatedly began a decade later.

Barter had changed her name in the weeks before she left and returned to Australia on August 2, 1997 – just one day after she last spoke with Leydon.

Barter’s new name was Florabella Natalia Marion Remakel, and her incoming passenger card listed her as a married resident of Luxembourg, according to the inquest.

The name “Remakel” opened new doors that led police to Blum.

In 1994, Blum placed an advertisement in an Australian-French newspaper, describing himself as a single, 47-year-old “tall, dark, sober” man, who was looking for a relationship with a view to marriage.

The ad was signed “Mr. F. Remakel,” but the phone number linked to a coin business in the New South Wales town of Ballina run by one of Blum’s many aliases.

The inquest heard Blum held at least 10 passports in different names that he used for international travel.

He told the inquest he frequently adopted new aliases for “fantasy … because it was legal.”

“I didn’t have a specific purpose,” he said.

When asked what name he was given at birth, Blum replied, “I don’t really know. But on the record of my birth … I was declared Willy Coppenolle.”

“This marks the mysterious beginning of Mr. Blum’s life,” the coroner noted in her findings.

A man of many names

Blum was born in July 1939 to unmarried parents in Tournai, Belgium, a picturesque city near the French border. He said he spent time in an orphanage before being returned to his mother and taking the name of her new husband – Wouters.

Blum arrived in Australia as Willy Wouters in 1969 but left just a year later. His next destination was France, where he was imprisoned for “fraud, forgery, confidence tricks, and giving a false identity,” the inquest heard.

After his release in 1974, he returned to Australia by boat, and in February 1976 became an Australian citizen under the name Frederick de Hedervary.

Around the same time, Blum married his fourth wife – a 19-year-old woman he met in 1969 on the boat from the United Kingdom – to whom he is still married.

Frederick and Diane de Hedervary settled into life in Australia before moving to Luxembourg, Belgium, and the UK for several years, and then returning to Australia in 1986.  By then, they had two children.

In 1997, the family was living in regional New South Wales, where Blum collected a disability pension and his wife received a carer’s pension. When it was put to Blum in court that at that time “money was tight,” he agreed.

Blum told the court he began an affair with Barter in February that year, though it’s unclear how they met – it may have been through the personal advertisement that Blum placed in 1994, presenting himself as “Mr F. Remakel.”

He claimed he may have answered an ad placed by Barter, but the coroner could find no evidence of that.

Blum said their affair ended in the weeks before she went overseas in June when he told her he couldn’t see her anymore because he was married with children.

He testified the last time he saw her was three weeks before she left for the UK, when she collected tea chests she’d left at his house with a man in uniform, who he took “to be a navy officer or a pilot.”

Deceived lovers

The real Mr. F. Remakel is the ex-husband of a woman Blum once knew, Monique Cornelius, who claimed they had an affair, which Blum denies.

According to testimony read out in court in February 2022, Cornelius told police Blum was a serial liar who told her he worked as a special agent at the British Embassy in Luxembourg.

She said he wrote her a letter in 1980 professing his love for her and suggesting he would buy a boat so they could sail away together.

“I am intimately persuaded that you will not regret your decision to leave with me and to start a new life,” he wrote in the letter, which was read to the court.

Their affair ended when she found out he was married and kicked him out, Cornelius told police. Blum told the court Cornelius had lied about their relationship, which was platonic, he said.

I am intimately persuaded that you will not regret your decision to leave with me and to start a new life.”

Ric Blum’s alleged words in a letter to Monique Cornelius

Other women told the inquest of their encounters with the man now known as Blum. Some were romantic, others not. But all involved allegations of deceit.

Ginette Gaffney-Bowan told the court that she placed an advertisement in a newspaper in the late-1990s that was answered by Blum, who she knew as Frederick De Hedervary.

She said at that time, she was “extremely lonely” and working long hours in her childcare business.

Gaffney-Bowan said Blum told her he had lost his home, so she said he could stay in the studio apartment at her property in Sydney during his frequent trips to the city.

She said their relationship wasn’t sexual, and instead he proposed a business partnership, dealing in coins. With dreams of closing her stressful childcare business, she gave him 30,000 Australian dollars ($19,500) in start-up funding. Soon after, he proposed that she sell her house so he could buy her what he called a “beautiful and spacious” apartment in Paris, she said. She refused.

Gaffney-Bowan told the court Blum belittled her and tried to drive a wedge between her and her daughters over the sale of her house. While Blum didn’t physically hurt her, she told the court he tried to blackmail her with nude photos he had taken of her. She said she became scared of him, went to the police and was granted an apprehended violence order in early 1999.

Blum told the court that Gaffney-Bowan had “dragged me into a bed” and asked him to take “salacious” photos of her, which he didn’t have developed. He denied taking her money.

Another lonely divorcee, Janet Oldenburg told the court she met Blum, who she knew as “Rick” or “Rich” in 1996 through her husband’s coin-collecting circles where they both lived in New South Wales. They reconnected in 1999 when she was 51 years old and had just finalized her divorce, she said.

Blum had offered her a job, but before she’d started, she said he urged her to move with him to the French Riviera “to start a new life.”

Blum denied ever telling Oldenburg he had feelings for her and said he had bought her a one-way ticket to Europe because she wanted to find an agent and start a new career as a belly dancer.

Oldenburg claimed that Blum abandoned her in England during their travels after inventing a story that he’d been attacked at a train station while taking a side business trip to Lille, France.

Blum admitted in court that he’d abandoned her in England because he no longer wanted anything to do with her. “My life was with my wife and kids in Australia,” he said.

He denied her claims he’d stolen jewelry and the title deeds to her house.

Several years later, Ghislaine Danlois-Dubois met Blum in 2006 through an advertisement she posted in a newspaper seeking companionship.  Via video link from Brussels, she told the court she knew him as Frederick de Hedervary.

At the time, Danlois-Dubois was a 72-year-old widow looking for a distraction, and quickly fell in love with the stranger, who told her he was a bank manager from Australia with an interest in coins, she said.

Danlois-Dubois told the court that after a whirlwind romance, de Hedervary suggested they get married on the Indonesian island of Bali, and that she should sell her house and give him the proceeds so he could open bank accounts for her children, so they had ready cash when they came to visit them in Australia.

She said she refused his requests to keep their impending marriage secret from her children, and he disappeared with her money, some 60,000 euros ($65,000).

Blum denied the allegations and told the court Danlois-Dubois “didn’t give him a penny.”

Four years later, Blum crossed paths with Andree Flamme, an elderly woman he says was confined to a wheelchair, living with dementia and who “couldn’t put two words together.”

When that was put to Flamme, who gave evidence to the inquest via a live link from Portugal last year, the then 92-year-old laughed. She denied ever needing a wheelchair while he stayed with her, and, yes, she said with a smile, she could put two words together.

He left a little piece of paper to say he was leaving, and he’d be back … but I never saw him again.”

Andree Flamme, alleged victim

Flamme told the court the man she knew as Frederick de Hedervary stayed with her for several weeks in May and June 2010. While there, she said he asked to inspect her late husband’s coin collection, then disappeared with them one day when she left the house for an errand.

“He left a little piece of paper to say he was leaving, and he’d be back … but I never saw him again,” Flamme said through a translator. Blum has denied the allegations.

A sixth woman, Marie Landrieu, submitted a statement to the inquiry alleging that she’d been fooled out of cash in 2012 by a man she knew as “Willy,” who was the cousin of her late husband.

She said Blum had proposed they buy a house together in Bali, so she gave him 100,000 euros ($108,000). But after they traveled to Indonesia, he said he needed to leave on urgent business.

She never saw him – or her money – again.

Blum told the court Landrieu gave him 50,000 euros ($54,000) in cash that he considered was owed to him from an inheritance from his mother.

He denied trying to seduce her, and said they went to the tropical island because she was “interested in seeing Bali,” according to the inquest findings.

Where is Marion?

In her findings, Coroner O’Sullivan said she accepted the testimony of the women, which showed Blum had a history of mispresenting himself to single, vulnerable women for financial gain.

She found that Blum “exploited” Barter, in the same way he later exploited other women who gave evidence against him. O’Sullivan said she “did not accept as accurate anything Mr. Blum has said” in the absence of corroborating evidence.

As to Blum’s role in Barter’s disappearance, she drew attention to an “extraordinary” claim by Blum on the final day of the inquest, one he made for the first time despite hours of questioning since his first police interview in 2021.

Blum, an elderly man with a full white beard, was asked in the witness box once again if he had any information on the whereabouts of Marion Barter.

“I myself believe she is alive, that’s what I believe. But I don’t know anything about what, what she did or not, nothing. I don’t know,” he stammered.

I myself believe she is alive, that’s what I believe.”

Ric Blum

O’Sullivan interjected with a question: “Why do you believe Marion is still alive?”

“She said that she wanted to separate from her family, she didn’t want anything to do with any member of her family,” Blum said. “She was a bit of a strange person.”

The next day, Blum was recalled via video to explain why he hadn’t offered this information to police or the inquest at any time in the previous three years.

He told the court he didn’t tell police when he was interviewed in June 2021 “because they never asked.” When pushed, he said, “I had no idea of the importance of it. It was just talking. What can I say?”

O’Sullivan said in her findings, “This evidence, along with his lies and deception throughout the inquest has convinced me that he does indeed know more than he is saying.”

She found Blum formed a relationship with Barter in 1997, while posing as Fernand Remakel and “encouraged her to start a new life with him” in Luxembourg.

The coroner found Blum “persuaded or otherwise encouraged” Barter to sell her house before they left, and evidence suggested they spent some time together in England.

During the trip Barter wrote to her daughter Leydon on notepaper branded “Hotel Nikko Narita” – the same hotel Blum stayed in on his way to Europe. Barter traveled via South Korea, according to her passenger card.

The coroner found that Blum likely gave the hotel notepaper to Barter after they met in England. On her return to Australia, the coroner also found that Barter withdrew money from her accounts in August and October 1997 “on the encouragement of Mr. Blum.”

The day before Barter transferred 80,000 Australian dollars ($52,000) from her bank account, on October 15, 1997, the court heard Blum opened a safety deposit envelope, but the coroner found no evidence that he received the proceeds.

O’Sullivan found that Barter spent some months living in the community undetected, between August and October that year – and that during that time, Blum was in contact with her.

She said Blum’s claim that he last saw Barter when she retrieved the tea chests from his house with a man in uniform in June were “implausible.” And while she determined that Barter was dead, she said there was no evidence to suggest how, why or when she died.

The coroner explained that it wasn’t in her power to assign blame for Barter’s death. But she referred the matter to the NSW Police Commissioner for investigation as an unsolved homicide.

Despite submissions from Leydon’s legal team that Blum should be referred to the director of public prosecutions for alleged perjury and making false statements during the inquest, O’Sullivan said that was best left to police as part of the investigation.

The coroner was scathing in her assessment of the initial police response, which she said was “inadequate” and led to the loss of information that could have determined far earlier what happened to Barter. She also praised Leydon’s “unwavering commitment” to finding her mother.

No remains have yet been located, but Leydon’s DNA has been added to the New South Wales and national DNA registries, the coroner said.

“This means that the DNA profile of Sally [Leydon] will remain on the NSW and National DNA databases and will be searched against all unidentified deceased profiles every day,” O’Sullivan said.

O’Sullivan concluded by reading Leydon’s own words about her mother, Marion Barter, read from her submission.

“[She was] a kind, caring soul with a wicked laugh. She was intelligent, she was cultured, and she had so many friends who loved and miss her still. She would always bring you flowers or a cake. She was a very generous human.”

Blum’s believed to be living freely in northern New South Wales and has not faced any charges relating to Barter or any of the other women who gave evidence against him.

“He and his family request that all media respect their privacy,” White said.

A mother and baby were among the seven people killed in an overnight Russian drone attack on the Ukrainian city of Odesa, officials said, the latest civilian victims of a relentless Russian bombing campaign.

A two-year-old boy, who officials said was named Timofii, was discovered under rubble on a ground floor after the strike, Odesa City Municipality said on Telegram. He was killed the day before his third birthday, Oleh Kiper, the head of Odesa region military administration, said in a TV interview.

Earlier in the day, Oleh Kiper, the head of Odesa region military administration said that authorities were looking for up to 12 people, four of whom are children.

The attack left the front facade of an apartment block in ruins.

Andriy Kostin, Prosecutor General of Ukraine noted that there is no military facility nearby, calling the attack a deliberate targeting of civilians.

Sunday has been declared a day of mourning in Odesa, according to the city’s administration.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack showed the need to further strengthen the country’s air defense capacities.

“One of the enemy drones hit a residential building in Odesa. 18 apartments have been destroyed,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday.

“More air defense systems, more missiles for air defense is what saves lives,” he said.

Ukraine has been asking its western allies for more military aid as Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its third year.

Republican leadership in the House has so far been refusing to hold a vote on providing more funding.

This is a developing story and will be updated.