One man carries six jars of cooking oil as he struggles to walk across the rubble. Two little girls run as they each carry stacks of white paper, used to build fire for heat and cooking. A group of men argue, elbowing each other as they battle to find a bag of flour, some tea or even a forgotten blanket.

These are the scenes from the central Gazan city of Deir al-Balah, where an apparent Israeli airstrike on Monday destroyed not only homes and streets, but also the neighborhood’s Al-Baraka bakery, one of the few still standing in the Strip.

The strike in Dier al-Balah occurred overnight, according to residents, and by morning men, women and children were digging through the rubble. But this time, the residents weren’t digging to find loved ones. They were desperately searching for food and other essential supplies.

As the Israel-Hamas war enters its ninth week, signs are emerging of social order breaking down, with reports of looting by people struggling to survive. Since October 9, Israel has blocked access to water, food and electricity in the Strip that is home to more than 2 million Palestinians.

More than 15,899 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel started its campaign there, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza.

In late October, the United Nations warned that order may be breaking down as thousands of desperate Palestinians were taking basic items like flour and hygiene supplies from warehouses. “People are scared, frustrated and desperate,” Thomas White, director of affairs in Gaza for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said at the time.

“Look at the people,” he said, referring to the crowd of Palestinians digging through the rubble. “This is all from hunger.”

Gaza’s entire population is in need of food assistance, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), adding that at the start of the current crisis, the relief organization was operating with 23 bakeries.

“But food systems are collapsing. The last bakery that WFP had been working with was shut down because it had no fuel or gas,” the UN agency says on its website.

Al-Baraka bakery used to ease people’s suffering by providing much-needed bread, said Ibrahim Dabbour, another resident of Deir al-Balah. “The bakery should be outside of military operation,” he added.

A day after the IDF said it was expanding its ground operation, it said it struck about 200 Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. Its targets included a school in the northeastern city of Beit Hanoun, which the IDF claimed contained “terror infrastructure,” including tunnel shafts stocked with weapons and explosives, a vehicle holding weapons and an arms storage facility.

The Israeli navy also struck a number of targets overnight, “assisting with the reinforcement of ground troops,” the IDF said.

The strikes come in the wake of the resumption of Israel’s military campaign against Hamas after the collapse of a truce between both sides. Israel has made it clear that its next phase will include the entire territory, including parts of southern Gaza, where thousands of displaced Palestinians fleeing the fighting in the north have been sheltering.

While the United States has warned Israel to minimize civilian casualties in the south, Israel is bent on destroying Hamas after the militant group’s October 7 assault, in which the militant group killed approximately 1,200 in Israel and kidnapped around 240 others.

Leaflets and evacuation phone calls

While Gazans often heed Israel’s calls to evacuate, many say that wherever they go, they are haunted by the prospect of death – whether it is by airstrike or starvation.

The Israeli military has repeatedly dropped leaflets over the southern city of Khan Younis in recent days, calling the area a “fighting zone” and telling residents to “evacuate immediately.”

On Sunday, the IDF again told people to evacuate several areas southeast of Khan Younis, instructing citizens to move further south. Southern Gaza had been designated a safe area when Israel was conducting its operation in the north, prompting more than 1 million people to move there from the north.

The instructions were repeated on social media, where the Israeli military Friday published a new map of Gaza, dividing the Strip into hundreds of numbered sectors which it called “evacuation zones.”

Critics have said the map is confusing and inaccurate.

“The Israeli army is again telling people in Khan Younis to flee,” Sari Bashi, program director at Human Rights Watch, said on X, formerly Twitter, commenting on an IDF image of one of the maps, which divides neighborhoods into blocks. “Again, the map contradicts the written instructions (What’s up with blocks 55? 38-46?).

“They know there’s no safe place to go and no safe way to get there,” Bashi added.

But few Palestinians have been able to make use of Israel’s map. Some have not seen the leaflets, while those who have say they have neither power nor internet access to scan the barcode, as Israel has cut off both.

Israel said it would use the map to advise people on where to evacuate.

The leaflets Israel has dropped include a QR code, which when scanned with a smart phone shows a map of the Gaza Strip, marked like a grid showing what Israel says are safe and unsafe zones for civilians.

Many other Gazans, living in poverty, are not in possession of smart phones.

“There is no electricity, there is no internet,” said Khalil Abu Marahil, adding that since his evacuation from Gaza City, he and many others have relied on leaflets, radios in hospitals or word of mouth for news.

Around 1.9 million people, more than 80% of Gaza’s total population, have been internally displaced across the Gaza Strip since October 7, according to UNRWA, which estimates that nearly 1 million people are sheltering in facilities in central and south Gaza, including Khan Younis and Rafah.

“We’ve had no internet for the 50 days now,” Sally Essam, a displaced Palestinian currently residing in Deir al-Balah, said. “Only God knows where next after Deir al-Balah.”

Top officials at the United Nations are warning of an “apocalyptic” situation in war-torn Gaza with “no place safe to go” for civilians, as Israel’s war with Hamas spreads into the south, where many had previously sought refuge.

“Every time we think things cannot get any more apocalyptic in Gaza, they do,” said Martin Griffiths, the top UN emergency relief official, in a statement on Monday. “People are being ordered to move again, with little to survive on, forced to make one impossible choice after another,” he said.

“Such blatant disregard for basic humanity must stop,” he also said.

Israel has been intensifying its aerial bombardment of southern Gaza in pursuit of Palestinian militant group Hamas and said over the weekend that it will expand ground operations to the whole of the territory.

“Intense battles” are still taking place in northern Gaza, where two Israeli soldiers were killed during “close-quarter combat” with Hamas fighters, the military said on Monday.

The Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza said 108 people had been killed at the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, with dozens more injured, after heavy explosions and gunfire rocked the facility.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Tuesday its troops have “completed the encirclement” of the Jabalia refugee camp. The camp, also in the north, have seen intensive Israeli military operations since the week-long pause in the conflict ended.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday appealed to the IDF to spare civilians from more suffering. “Civilians – including health workers, journalists and UN personnel – and civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times,” Guterres’ statement said, noting that despite evacuation orders, “there is nowhere safe to go in Gaza.”

Palestinian civilians have been told to flee large swaths of Gaza, with the IDF releasing QR codes that show several online maps detailing areas it deems unsafe. However it is unclear how many residents the warnings are reaching, given damage to the enclave’s telecommunications services and electricity shortages.

As of last week, 1.8 million people in Gaza were estimated to be internally displaced, according to the UN – roughly 80% of the population.

Scores of wounded people could be seen being in footage taken from rubble and to hospitals in southern Gaza throughout Monday. One Reuters video showed a baby being rushed from a civilian car into Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis. The 2-month-old lies on a stretcher, apparently unconscious, as doctors remove his clothes and connect him to an oxygen supply.

“They told us to leave Gaza, there’s a war in Gaza, so we left (the north) and came here to the south just like they asked. But this is what we’ve found in the south,” Ibrahim Esbeitan, the baby’s father said in the video, pointing at this child.

In Salah Al-Arja, in Rafah, residents were seen trying to rescue their loved ones from the rubble with their bare hands. “We were asleep and safe, they told us it was a safe area, Rafah and all, but at twenty past ten, they stuck it with barrels, destroying all the block, there were children, women, and martyrs,” an unnamed local resident told Reuters.

“There is no safe area, neither Rafah, nor Khan Younis, nor Gaza, nor Dier, they are all liars, they say it is a safe area, they let us seek refuge, they evacuated Khan Younis and Gaza and still they bomb.”

The head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, also warned against “horrors” that could follow in the wake of Israel’s expanding military operation, noting that an additional 60,000 people are now seeking shelter in overcrowded UN facilities.

“The evacuation order pushes people to concentrate into what is less than one-third of the Gaza Strip. They need everything: food, water, shelter, and mostly safety. Roads to the south are clogged,” Lazzarini said Monday, noting that access to water is limited in Gaza.

To resupply humanitarian aid efforts in Gaza, 180 humanitarian aid trucks carrying food, water, shelter materials and medical supplies were sent to the Rafah crossing on Monday at the request of the US Administration and in coordination with Egypt, according to Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. Two diesel fuel tankers were also sent from Egypt to aid agencies operating in the strip, it said.

Health system struggling

What remains of the health system and infrastructure in Gaza is far from sufficient for the battered population’s needs as it enters a third month of siege, experts say.

Eighteen of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are still functioning, but can only provide partial services, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday, adding that the 12 operational hospitals in the south are “the backbone of the health system.”

A WHO team visiting Nasser Hospital said the conditions there were “catastrophic” amid a flood of patients on Monday. “The the building and hospital grounds [are] grossly overcrowded with patients and displaced people seeking shelter,” the statement said. “The emergency ward is overflowing with patients…Many patients are being treated on the floor.”

In a voice message posted on Monday, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder also described harrowing conditions in Nasser Hospital rooms after a blast had hit less than 100 meters away.

“There must be a hundred people, children now have been woken up by the bombs and explosions,” Elder said as babies’ cries could be heard in the background.

“Parents just have that look of.. the feeling no parent ever wants to experience, which is helplessness,” he said.

“There is damage inside the [Kamal Adwan] hospital due to the heavy fall of shrapnel on the hospital building and on the displaced people in the hospital’s yard,” Anas Al-Sharif said as explosions were heard in the background.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu on Tuesday called for a thorough investigation into a military drone attack that the state emergency agency in northern Kaduna state said killed at least 85 people at the weekend.

The state’s governor, a religious leader and witnesses told Reuters on Monday that dozens of civilians were killed following the military drone attack that was targeting insurgents and bandits on Sunday night.

The Kaduna State Emergency Management Agency said on Tuesday at least 85 people had died during the attack, giving the first official confirmation of the toll from the weekend incident.

“The Northwest Zonal Office has received details from the local authorities that 85 dead bodies have so far been buried while search is still ongoing,” the agency said.

Tinubu, who is attending the Cop28 Climate Summit in Dubai, said the “the bombing mishap” in a village at Tundun Biri, was “very unfortunate, disturbing, and painful,” his spokesman Ajuri Ngelale said in a statement.

“The President directs a thorough and full-fledged investigation into the incident and calls for calm while the authorities look diligently into the mishap,” said Ngelale.

The Nigerian Army is yet to comment on the incident but the Air Force has denied being involved in the mission that led to Sunday’s attack.

Nigeria’s military, which is backed by the United States, Britain and other non-Western allies in a long war against Islamist insurgents in the northeast, has also been unleashing deadly aerial assaults for years in other parts of the country.

Kaduna is 163 km (101 miles) from the capital Abuja.

Beyond the war zone in the northeast, the army and air force has been called on to tackle the growing threat in Nigeria’s northwest and central region, including in Kaduna state, posed by armed criminal gangs that spray villages with bullets and carry out mass kidnappings.

British Home Secretary James Cleverly arrived in Rwanda on Tuesday to sign a new treaty to send asylum seekers to the African nation after the UK’s top court declared the deportation scheme unlawful.

The Rwanda plan is at the center of the government’s strategy to cut migration and is being watched closely by other countries considering similar policies.

But the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court last month ruled that such a move would violate international human rights laws enshrined in domestic legislation.

Since that ruling, Britain has been seeking to renegotiate its agreement with Rwanda to include a binding treaty that it would not expel asylum seekers sent there by Britain – one of the court’s major concerns.

Cleverly, who arrived in Rwanda’s capital Kigali on Tuesday morning, is due to meet with the country’s foreign minister, Vincent Biruta, to sign the agreement.

“Rwanda cares deeply about the rights of refugees, and I look forward to meeting with counterparts to sign this agreement and further discuss how we work together to tackle the global challenge of illegal migration,” Cleverly said.

Under the plan, Britain intends to send thousands of asylum seekers who arrived on its shores without permission to Rwanda to deter migrants crossing the Channel from Europe in small boats.

In return, Rwanda has received an initial payment of 140 million pounds ($180 million) with the promise of more money to fund the accommodation and care of any deported individuals.

Pressure

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is under intense pressure to cut net migration, which hit a record 745,000 last year, and end the flow of asylum seekers who pay people smugglers for their Channel crossings, often in overcrowded, unseaworthy boats.

Britain’s immigration minister Robert Jenrick said the government had to act because those arriving on small boats were effectively breaking into the country.

“The law says you can’t enter the country illegally. If you or I crossed an international border, we literally broke into another country, we would expect to be treated very seriously,” he told Sky News.

The vast majority of those arriving in Britain came via legal routes, and the government also announced plans to cut those numbers on Monday, raising the minimum salary they must earn in a skilled job.

Ministers are also expected to publish new legislation soon, declaring Rwanda a so-called safe country, designed to stop legal challenges against the planned deportation flights.

“Stop the boats” is one of five goals Sunak set for his government before a national election expected next year.

The Supreme Court ruled the government’s scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was unlawful because there was a risk that deported refugees would have their claims wrongly assessed or returned to their country of origin to face persecution.

The court said the plan breached international undertakings – including the European Convention on Human Rights, the United Nations’ Refugee Convention and Convention against Torture.

There are growing tensions in the Conservative Party over how to respond, with some members of parliament putting pressure on the government to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, after the European Court of Human Rights originally blocked deportation flights from leaving.

This year almost 29,000 people have arrived on the southern English coast without permission, after a record 45,755 were detected in 2022.

The Rwanda policy was originally announced by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson last year, but no asylum seekers have been sent to the country yet.

Critics, ranging from opposition lawmakers as well as some Conservatives to church leaders and the United Nations refugee agency, have argued the policy is flawed, a waste of money, immoral and simply would not work.

Sultan Al Jaber, the oil executive who is leading the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, sent shockwaves through the gathering by claiming in the days before the UN-backed talks that there is “no science” that says phasing out fossil fuels is necessary to keep global warming under a critical threshold — comments Al Jaber said were misinterpreted.

Al Jaber held a surprise news conference Monday where he fiercely defended his commitment to climate science, after an increasing number of scientists and advocates expressed alarm at the comments and concern for the direction of the talks.

The future role of fossil fuels is one of the most controversial issues countries are grappling with at the COP28 climate summit. While some are pushing for a “phase-out,” others are calling for the weaker language of a “phase-down.” Scientific reports have shown that fossil fuels must be rapidly slashed to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius — the goal of the Paris climate agreement, and a threshold above which scientists warn it will be more difficult for humans and ecosystems to adapt.

In his response, Al Jaber told Robinson, “there is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5.” He said he had expected to come to the She Changes Climate meeting to have a “sober and mature conversation” and was not “signing up to any discussion that is alarmist.”

He continued that the 1.5-degree goal was his “north star,” and a phase-down and phase-out of fossil fuel was “inevitable” but “we need to be real, serious and pragmatic about it.”

In an increasingly fractious series of responses to Robinson pushing him on the point, Al Jaber asked her “please, help me, show me a roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuels that will allow for sustainable socio-economic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.”

Al Jaber’s presidency of the COP28 summit has been controversial. The Emirati businessman is the UAE’s climate envoy and chairs the board of directors of its renewables company, but he also heads the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).

Al Jaber told reporters Monday, “I have always been very clear on the fact that we are making sure that everything we do is centered around the science.”

“I honestly think there is some confusion out there, and misrepresentation and misinterpretation,” he said, adding, “I have said over and over that the phase down and the phase out of fossil fuel is inevitable. In fact, it is essential … it needs to be orderly, fair, just and responsible.”

“The COP President is clear that phasing down and out of fossil fuels is inevitable and that we must keep 1.5C within reach,” adding, “we are excited with the progress we have made so far and for the delivery of an ambitious (global stocktake) decision. Attempts to undermine this will not soften our resolve.”

Fossil fuels are the main driver of the climate crisis and as the world continues to burn oil, coal and gas, global temperatures are soaring to unprecedented levels. This year has seen record global heat, which has driven deadly extreme weather events.

Fossil fuel production in 2030 is expected to be more than double what would be necessary to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees, a recent report from several scientific institutions, including the UN Environment Programme, found. That report used scenarios laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) to reach its conclusion.

Carbon capture refers to a set of techniques that aim to remove carbon pollution from the the air and to capture what’s being produced from power plants and other polluting facilities. While some argue carbon capture will be an important tool for reducing planet-heating pollution, others argue these technologies are expensive, unproven at scale and a distraction from policies to cut fossil fuel use.

Scientists and climate groups heavily criticized Al Jaber’s comments.

Romain Ioualalen, global policy lead at non-profit Oil Change International, said in a statement Al Jaber’s statements during the panel discussion were “alarming,” “science-denying” and “raise deep concerns about the Presidency’s capacity to lead the UN climate talks.”

Joeri Rogelj, a climate professor at Imperial College London, said he strongly recommended Al Jaber revisit the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“That report, approved unanimously by 195 countries including the UAE, shows a variety of ways to limit warming to 1.5°C — all of which indicate a de facto phase out of fossil fuels in the first half of the century. Will that take the world back to the caves? Absolutely not,” he said in a statement.

Mohamed Adow, director of climate think tank Power Shift Africa, said Al Jaber’s remarks were a “wake up call” to the world and COP28 negotiators. “They are not going to get any help from the COP Presidency in delivering a strong outcome on a fossil fuel phase out,” he said in a statement.

This COP summit will conclude the first global stocktake, where countries will assess their progress on climate action progress and work out how to get the world on track to limiting catastrophic global warming.

This story has been updated with additional information.

ISIS has claimed responsibility for a deadly explosion that ripped through a Catholic mass service at a university gym in the southern Philippines on Sunday.

At least four people were killed and dozens of others were injured in the blast at the Mindanao State University in Marawi City, according to authorities.

In a communique, ISIS said its fighters “detonated an explosive device on a large gathering of Christian disbelievers in Marawi City,” according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a counterterrorism threat intelligence organization that tracks the online activity of extremist groups.

Photos of the scene showed soldiers and emergency workers standing among debris in the gym. A section of the seating area was blown up, chairs strewn across the floor.

Lanao del Sur province Gov. Mamintal Adiong Jr., told reporters more than 40 people were being treated at a government hospital in Marawi, while a number of others with minor injuries were treated at the university’s infirmary following the blast.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. condemned the attack in a post on X, formerly Twitter. Without naming any specific groups or elaborating further, he described the blast as “senseless and most heinous, perpetrated by foreign terrorists.”

“Extremists who wield violence against the innocent will always be regarded as enemies to our society,” he said, adding that additional security personnel had been deployed to assist in the response.

The United States condemned the “horrific terrorist attack” in a government statement.

“The United States is in close contact with our Philippine partners and stands with the people of the Philippines in rejecting this act of violence,” State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines, is home to several Islamist insurgent groups and has long been a hotbed of insurgency against the Philippine government.

While the Philippines is mostly Catholic, Mindanao is home to a sizable Muslim population.

In 2017, ISIS-affiliated militants laid siege to Marawi for five months. The violence forced more than 350,000 residents to flee the city and the surrounding areas before Philippine forces liberated the city.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

A woman has been killed in an apparent shark attack at a beach resort on Mexico’s Pacific coast.

The woman, who has not been officially named, was found dead by emergency services at the scene in Melaque Bay, Cihuatlán municipality, on Saturday, according to a statement from the local civil protection and fire service, posted on Facebook.

One of the victim’s legs had been severed, according to the statement, which said the injury appeared to have been caused by a shark attack.

According to the statement, the incident took place on the same day as a swimming race in the bay, which is located in Jalisco state in western Mexico.

Local beaches will remain closed until further notice, the service said in a separate statement, adding that volunteers are on patrol, warning people to stay out of the water.

Pictures attached to the post show red warning flags in the sand.

The Cihuatlán municipal government also warned people to stay away from local beaches, in a statement posted on Facebook.

“Our priority is to guarantee the safety and wellbeing of every citizen,” the statement reads.

The municipal government of nearby La Huerta also warned citizens about “the presence of a shark on the southern coast of Jalisco” in a statement on Facebook.

The corruption trial of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu restarted Monday after a two month pause that followed the state of emergency declared after the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Israeli Minister of Justice Yaris Levin lifted the state of emergency effective December 1.

Netanyahu’s corruption trial first began in January 2020, making him the first sitting Israeli prime minister to appear in court as a defendant, on trial for charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery. He denies any wrongdoing.

The prime minister faces charges in three separate cases.

In Case 1000, he is charged with fraud and breach of trust in connection with allegations that he received gifts like cigars and champagne from overseas businessmen.

In Case 2000, he is also charged with fraud and breach of trust and is accused of seeking favorable coverage in one of Israel’s top newspapers in exchange for limiting the circulation of one of the paper’s main rivals.

In the most serious case, Case 4000, he is charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust for allegedly advancing regulatory benefits worth the equivalent of more than $250 million at the time to his friend Shaul Elovitch, who was the controlling shareholder for the telecommunications company Bezeq.

In return, the prosecution says, Elovitch ensured positive coverage of the Prime Minister in an online news site he owned called Walla! News. Elovitch has denied the charges.

Israeli Minister of Regional Cooperation David Amsalem criticized the resumption of the trial in a time of war.

“War? Kidnapped? Evacuees? Economics? No and no… What is most important now is to renew Netanyahu’s trial, and to engage the Prime Minister of Israel with the unfounded testimonies and delusional trifles,” Amsalem, who is also a minister in the Ministry of Justice, said on X.

Netanyahu has called the indictments a “stitch-up” and an effort by Israel’s liberal and media elites to topple him and his right-wing bloc. Under Israeli law, he is not required to step down from office unless he is convicted and that conviction is upheld throughout the appeals process.

Earlier this year, his government pushed through a law effectively stripping the country’s courts of the power to declare a prime minister unfit for office. Critics argue the law was passed for Netanyahu’s benefit amid the ongoing corruption trial and have challenged it before the country’s Supreme Court.

Torrential rains and flash floods have ripped through parts of East Africa for several weeks, killing more than 350 people and displacing over 1 million across Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania.

In Kenya, at least 136 have died and nearly half a million have been displaced, according to the Interior Ministry. Persistent rains since October have affected 38 out of 47 counties across the country, which have been hit by flash floods, general flooding, and mudslides, President William Ruto revealed in an emergency cabinet meeting last week.

The northeastern parts and the eastern coast of the country have been the worst-hit areas with severe damage to homes and infrastructure, including disruptions to cargo rail services from the port of Mombasa last month.

The unusually heavy rains are largely caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon and are forecast to continue into the new year by the Kenya Meteorological Department.

El Niño is a climate pattern that originates in the Pacific Ocean along the equator and impacts weather all over the world. This phenomenon has been associated with severe flooding in eastern Africa, resulting in landslides, elevated waterborne diseases, and food shortages. Meanwhile, the northern and southern regions of the continent often endure prolonged periods of severe drought during El Niño events.

But the Horn of Africa is also one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to climate change. While the overall amount of rain annually is expected to fall in the region the more the Earth warms, the frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall events are projected to increase. That means the Horn of Africa may experience more drought as well as floods from heavy rain.

President Ruto has activated the National Disaster Operation Center to carry out emergency response. On Thursday, the Interior Ministry announced a decrease of rainfall in northern Kenya is expected this week.

Speaking at COP28 in Dubai on Friday, Ruto captured the immediate reality and devastation of climate change as witnessed by the catastrophic rains.

“The situation in our Horn of Africa region, like many other developing countries, lays bare the harsh reality of climate change,” he said.

‘Either way people suffer’

The extreme flooding comes just months after the region suffered its worst drought in four decades.

“Whether there’s less water or too much water, either way, people suffer,” Afi added.

According to the United Nation’s humanitarian agency (OCHA), the death toll from flooding has risen to 110 in Somalia and 57 in Ethiopia.

In northern Tanzania, authorities said 49 people were killed by floods accompanied by mudslides following heavy rains in the country’s Manyara province.

Up to 85 people were reported injured, Manyara governor Queen Sendiga said Monday, according to state media.

Tanzania President Samia Suluhu Hassan directed response agencies “to help rescue and prevent more disasters from happening.”

In eastern Kenya, the deluge has wreaked havoc on the Dadaab Refugee Camp, which is home to some 300,000 refugees. The camp has experienced a significant number of new arrivals over the last three years — some of them fleeing food insecurity and drought conditions in Somalia.

In November, in Hagadera, a camp inside the Dadaab complex, three out of the 15 blocks of homes were submerged, leaving around 20,000 people — about 13% of the camp — displaced and sheltering in schools and places of worship, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC).

Surge of water-borne diseases

Aid agencies have reported surges of water-borne diseases like cholera and acute watery diarrhea due to damaged latrines and lack of access to safe drinking water.

Relief efforts to reach those in the hardest-hit areas of the camp with food, clean water and medical aid have been hindered by damaged and impassable roads, according to the IRC.

“It’s a poignant reminder of its disproportionate impact and a call to action for all of us to mobilize rapidly to address this imbalance with urgency, solidarity, and inclusivity.”

After large earthquakes, there is an expectation that aftershocks could occur in the hours and days that follow, but aftershocks from some of the strongest earthquakes in recorded United States history may still be happening — nearly 200 years later, new research has found.

Frequent aftershock activities stemming from a trio of quakes that occurred near the Missouri-Kentucky border between 1811 and 1812, and a separate earthquake in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1886, are likely continuing today, according to a study published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.

One of the regions researchers focused on, called the New Madrid seismic zone, encompasses present-day Memphis and the surrounding Mid-Mississippi River Valley area, and the other includes Charleston and the surrounding coastal plain. Seismic activity in these relatively stable regions of North America is not well understood, and its nature is debated among scientists, the study authors wrote.

“You use the time, distance and the magnitude of event pairs, and try to find the link between two events — that’s the idea,” said lead study author Yuxuan Chen, geoscientist at Wuhan University in China, in a news release. “If the distance between a pair of earthquakes is closer than expected from background events, then one earthquake is likely the aftershock of the other.”

Background events, also known as background seismicity, basically refers to the current rate of seismic activity that’s considered normal for a specific region.

The researchers found that approximately 30% of all earthquakes from 1980 to 2016 near the Missouri-Kentucky border, all magnitude 2.5 or greater, were likely aftershocks from the three major earthquakes that struck the area in 1811 and 1812, which registered between magnitudes 7.3 and 7.5. In the Charleston area, the findings showed that roughly 16% of the region’s modern-day quakes were likely aftershocks from the magnitude 7.0 earthquake of 1886.

Identifying whether modern earthquakes are in fact aftershocks of previous large quakes, or are new, unrelated quakes is important for understanding these regions’ future disaster risk — even if the newer seismic activity causes little to no damage, the researchers said.

Earthquakes vs. aftershocks

The modern seismic activity the researchers studied is likely a mixture of aftershocks from the big quakes from the 1800s and background seismicity, Chen said.

“In some respects, the earthquakes look like aftershocks if you look at the spatial distribution, but earthquakes could be tightly clustered for a couple of reasons,” said Susan Hough, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey who was not involved in the study. “One is that they’re aftershocks, but also you could have a process of creep going on that’s not part of an aftershock process. Exactly what their results mean is still open to question.”

Another thing to consider when trying to determine whether a quake is an aftershock is how seismically active (or inactive) the region is normally, Hough said.

“In an area where small earthquakes are common, it doesn’t take as long for aftershock rates to drop below the normal seismic rate,” Hough said. “Aftershock sequences in relatively quiet areas could appear to last longer simply because there’s less background seismic activity.”

Debate on long-lived aftershocks

Hough coauthored a similar 2014 study using extensive computer modeling to understand activity in the New Madrid seismic zone, and it came to a different conclusion.

“Are small earthquakes in the New Madrid seismic zone aftershocks of 1811-1812 or not?” Hough said in an email. “We’ve looked into it, and it doesn’t look consistent with a long-lived aftershock sequence.”

She and coauthor Morgan Page, a geophysicist with the USGS Earthquake Science Center, came to the conclusion that the recent tremors were instead new, unrelated earthquakes caused by strain buildup along the New Madrid zone.

Because there were no seismographs in this area in the early 1800s, there is no official data recorded from these quakes. The magnitude and impact data that exists was estimated through newspaper reports and personal journals. Using those reports, the USGS has a pretty good record of where the quakes were centered and how widespread the impacts were felt.

If the 1811 to 1812 sequence was in fact still causing aftershocks, the area would have seen a certain number of small and moderate quakes during the 19th and 20th centuries, Hough explained.

“The new study considers the question from a different angle, considering how tightly clustered earthquakes are, and concluding that some of the events are ongoing aftershocks,” Hough said. “The question remains: if New Madrid earthquakes are aftershocks, why don’t they follow the rules that aftershocks are known to follow?”

The big difficulty with confirming or denying the results of these studies or the long-lived aftershock more broadly is that among seismologists there is no universally agreed-upon definition on what an aftershock of an earthquake is, said John Ebel, a professor of geophysics at Boston College who was not involved in the latest study.

“Every seismologist who studies such phenomena has no choice but to make assumptions about how to define foreshocks, mainshocks and aftershocks,” said Ebel, who is also a senior research scientist at Boston College’s Weston Observatory, in an email. “Thus, different seismologists will define foreshocks, mainshocks and aftershocks in somewhat different ways, and that makes comparing studies by different investigators subject to uncertainty and disagreement.”

For Hough’s 2014 study, the researchers considered an aftershock sequence to be over when the rate of earthquakes fell below the rate before the main shock. Aftershocks might still be continuing, but once the normal seismic rate for the area returns, she said, you can no longer identify them as aftershocks.

Defining an aftershock

In areas of frequent seismic activity such as California, the aftershocks of a large earthquake last less than a decade, Ebel said. He added this is particularly the case for earthquakes of magnitude 6.5 or greater that have occurred in the past 50 years or so.

However, locations away from plate boundaries, such as in Central or Eastern North America, the rate of background earthquakes is very low. Other studies have also speculated that aftershocks in areas away from plate boundaries could last many centuries. The new study just applies another statistical method to reach a similar conclusion, according to Ebel.

“Because all such studies rely on statistical analyses, which inherently have some variability in them, these studies cannot answer the questions that they address with complete certainty,” Ebel said.

It would be easier to distinguish this, he explained, if we had thousands of years of earthquake data for both California and Eastern North America.

“For this reason, we seismologists sometimes disagree about which earthquakes are foreshocks or aftershocks,” Ebel said, “and I think those disagreements are inherently unresolvable.”