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“Anybody who meets Tarek can tell immediately he has special needs,” Diaa Abu Abed said. “His brain works like a child’s does.”
Diaa Abu Abed identified the men who stopped his brother as Israeli soldiers. Some Israeli settlers are also known to wear military fatigues and have access to military assault rifles.
When Tarek Abu Abed told the men that he did not have identification, an argument ensued, according to his brother.
That is where the video, which is filmed down a street from the incident, begins. It shows three men in military fatigues standing over a man who is on his hands and knees, and next to a man in a red shirt, identified by Diaa as Tarek’s friend.
“The man in the video wearing red came to defend him to tell the Israeli soldiers that my brother has special needs,” Diaa Abu Abed said. “He’s known amongst the community for his mental disabilities. The soldiers refused to listen.”
The men had their rifles aimed at Tarek Abu Abed, and shouting can be heard. Abu Abed appears to be attempting to stand up as several local residents look on. He then stands up and approaches one of the men, seemingly agitated. A second man then approaches Abu Abed from behind.
A gunshot rings out, and Abu Abed collapses to the ground. He writhes in pain, as two of the men continue to point their weapons at him.
Diaa Abu Abed said that an onlooker called him, and he arrived on the scene soon after.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said in a statement on Tuesday that it had transported a 34-year-old man with a bullet wound in his leg from Qalqas to the hospital.
Tarek Abu Abed suffered heavy bleeding and has undergone surgery on his leg, his brother said.
The Israel-Hamas war has increasingly spilled over into the West Bank with settler attacks and clashes leaving hundreds of Palestinians dead.
At least 256 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops or Israeli settlers in the West Bank and east Jerusalem since October 7, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its troops were operating in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis Tuesday as top officials at the United Nations warned of an “apocalyptic” situation in war-torn Gaza with “no place safe to go” for civilians.
“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 would expand ground operations to the whole of the territory.
The chief of general staff of the IDF, Leutenant General Herzi Halevi, said Tuesday its forces were “now encircling” Khan Younis. Halevi said that the IDF was now entering the “third phase of the ground operations,” though he did not specify what that meant.
Meanwhile, in central Gaza, video and witness accounts indicated there had been multiple strikes in the area of Deir al-Balah, with many casualties being taken to the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital.
“Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital is the only hospital in the central area and cannot accommodate such a large number of people, especially considering that massacres against our people are still ongoing,” Dr. Khalil Al Daqran said.
“Many are still trapped under rubble and are being rescued and brought to the hospital,” Al Daqran added. “We are appealing to the world to put an end to this aggression against our people and allow medical aid and supplies to enter Gaza.”
In northern Gaza, the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health said 108 people had been killed at the Kamal Adwan hospital, with dozens more injured, after heavy explosions and gunfire rocked the facility.
Also in the north, the IDF said Tuesday its troops had “completed the encirclement” of the Jabalia refugee camp.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday appealed to the IDF to spare civilians 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.”
Overall, 15,800 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since October 7, according to a report published Tuesday by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, which cites sources from the Hamas-controlled enclave.
Senior US officials have urged Israel to make its operations more surgical and deliberate to minimize civilian casualties. Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters on Sunday she believed “that they have listened.”
US officials’ recent conversations with their Israeli counterparts about not replicating in the southern part of the strip the devastation it caused in the north had been “hard,” “firm” and “direct,” they said.
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 in footage being taken from rubble, 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 struck 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 Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, said Tuesday his non-governmental organization was forced to halt nearly all of its aid operations in Gaza.
He issued a strong statement arguing that the “pulverising of Gaza now ranks amongst the worst assaults on any civilian population in our time and age.”
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.
A US State Department spokesperson said Israeli officials “need to do more” to increase the amount of humanitarian assistance entering Gaza. He noted that the number of aid trucks going into the Palestinian enclave was lower than it was before the Israel-Hamas truce.
“We don’t think Israel is doing enough,” Matt Miller told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday. “There is not enough fuel, there’s not enough food, there’s not enough water getting in.”
Meanwhile, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said the US military had on Tuesday airlifted another 36,000 pounds of “vital supplies to the people of Gaza.”
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 building and hospital grounds [are] grossly overcrowded with patients and displaced people seeking shelter,” the statement said. “The emergency ward is overflowing…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 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.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Just a few pieces of debris stood between Munna Qureshi and dozens of laborers who his team had been tasked with rescuing from deep inside a Himalayan tunnel after all previous attempts to free them had failed.
“I could hear the laborers gasping on the other side with excitement,” the 29-year-old said. “My heart was racing as I removed the last rock between us.”
Qureshi is among 12 specialized workers who were called by Indian authorities to help with last month’s rescue of 41 construction workers trapped in the collapsed tunnel in northern Uttarakhand state.
For nearly three weeks the construction workers were cut off from the world, some 60 meters inside the mountain, receiving food and air through a thin tube and frequent updates from rescuers outside.
Engineers worked round the clock to drill a safe passage through the broken rock using a state of the art machine, while officials flew in experts to help with rescue efforts. But ultimately, after 17 days, it was Qureshi and his colleagues who succeeded in bringing the men to safety after the drill broke beyond repair just meters from the trapped workers.
Known locally as “rat hole miners”, they belong to a niche group of highly skilled, but poorly paid excavators who typically crawl through narrow tunnels to extract coal from deep within the ground.
It is a profession so dangerous it has been banned in some parts of the country. But it has been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks, and the men celebrated as heroes by many across the country.
“Rat hole mining may be illegal,” Lt General Syed Ata Hasnain, a retired official from India’s National Disaster Management Authority told reporters shortly after the rescue. “But a rat miner’s talent and experience is not.”
Workers employed in the dangerous profession are among the most vulnerable and marginalized in India, hence the unflattering local moniker. Mostly migrants from some of India’s poorest states, they are paid about $5 for a day’s work, according to local reports.
Slimly built and nimble, they are expected to enter tiny crevices in mines, often deprived of oxygen and at risk of being buried under loose soil.
Most coal mining in India takes place in northeastern Meghalaya state, home to some of the country’s largest coal deposits, amounting to more than 576 million metric tons.
Rat hole mining was banned in the state by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in 2014 due to health and environmental risks, but it’s still carried out illegally in secluded pockets of the region.
According to Hasina Kharbhih, the founder of Impulse, a non-profit that advocates for the safety of these workers, an estimated 225 “rat hole miners” died between 2007 and 2014, before the practice was banned.
In 2018, four years after the ban was implemented, another 15 died after becoming trapped in an illegal coal mine for two weeks.
“This number however is the tip of the iceberg,” Kharbhih said. “I am sure if other regions where this happened were thoroughly researched, these numbers would go up.”
Most of the men called to rescue the laborers said they knew the risks when they joined the profession.
“I always thought this job would take my life someday,” one of the workers, Nasir Khan, said. “I never thought it would earn me respect.”
However, retired judge B.P. Katoki, who set up the tribunal that banned rat mining in Meghalaya, said India shouldn’t “normalize” such a dangerous profession.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami announced 50,000 rupees ($600) will be handed out among the workers as a token of appreciation. But some of the “rat miners” said they are still waiting for details of the compensation.
And despite the media attention, they said they had not been thanked or rewarded by the authorities.
Just two hours after the men were rescued, a list of 90 men who took part in the effort was circulated by an Uttarakhand government official on a media WhatsApp group. Conspicuously missing were the names of the 12 “rat miners” who put their lives on the line to complete that final breakthrough.
“This does not surprise me,” said Mohammad Irshad Ansari, one of the “rat miner” workers. “A laborer is and will only be seen as a laborer. Whatever we may have done, it does not change that we are poor.”
One of the men, Monu Kumar, said he received a hero’s welcome when he arrived home in northern Uttar Pradesh state.
“There was music playing, we were garlanded, and my family and neighbours distributed 30 kilograms worth of sweets to everyone,” he said.
“People (in the village) are saying that we did so much, put our life on the line, but we did not get anything in return.”
To get to the trapped workers, the “rat miners” had to crawl through an 80-centimeter (2.6 feet) diameter pipe inserted into the debris, crouch for hours in the small space and dig through the final 12 meters (about 40 feet) of rubble with their bare hands.
Khan said it was “unlike anything we have ever seen before.”
“It was not just debris, stone, or a mountain; there were steel pipes, water, and ropes in there. We used many tools to slowly get them out,” he added.
Two “rat miners” went in at a time on rotating four-hour shifts, with one cutting the stone and the other pulling the debris out of the pipe.
“It was difficult. It was risky,” said Kumar. “There is no doubt about that.”
Ansari wants to keep going to rescue more men should the situation arise, but Khan’s family has urged him to quit his job, saying the risk is not worth the low pay.
Despite working for three decades in the industry, he cannot afford to send his three children to school.
“This work is also seasonal. We do not have it in summer months as access to oxygen is a problem, and in monsoons as the water makes it unsafe,” he said. “By working for only four months in a year, how can I afford to send my children to school? I did not go to school and nor will they.”
Kumar feels the media attention won’t last long.
“Soon, these calls will stop coming,” he said. “No one is going to remember us.”
Friends and relatives gathered Monday to mourn the death of Yuval Castleman, the Israeli civilian who responded to a deadly terror attack in Jerusalem, shooting and killing the perpetrators before he himself was shot dead by an Israeli reservist soldier.
Dozens traveled to Castleman’s parents’ home in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Tiv’on to attend his shiva, the traditional seven-day Jewish mourning period, as anger has grown across the country at the circumstances leading to his death.
Castleman, a former police officer, was driving to work Thursday when he saw two gunmen open fire at a bus stop in Jerusalem. Moments later, he had rushed to the scene.
A video showed two uniformed soldiers scrambling out of a red car and grabbing their guns. A third person, an army reservist according to Israel’s military, appears to have mistaken Castleman for an attacker and began shooting at him. Bullets from one of the Israeli soldiers may have also struck Castleman, the IDF said.
“When the soldiers saw him I’m assuming they thought he was a terrorist. But then when Yuval realized that that’s what they’re thinking, he opened his jacket to show he had nothing underneath, and got down on his knees. He opened his hands, so they could see he had nothing in his hands,” said Itkovich.
“He was shouting in Hebrew. He was shouting ‘I’m an Israeli.’ He threw his wallet, his identification, on the way so they could see he’s an Israeli. And they just shot him. They gunned him down,” he said.
Castleman died at the Shaare Zedek medical center later Thursday. Three other victims were killed in the attack, for which Hamas claimed responsibility.
At Castleman’s shiva Monday, his father Moshe praised his “heroic” son.
Moshe said there should be an investigation into his son’s fatal shooting “to prevent such a thing happening again.”
Itzkovich, who served in the police alongside Castleman, accused the soldier who shot him of violating protocols.
“There’s certain things that you’re not supposed to do. Even if Yuval was a terrorist – even if the citizen that they thought was a terrorist was a terrorist – the man had surrendered,” Itzkovich said. “By these protocols, they’re supposed to arrest him. He should never have been shot.”
Itzkovich expressed his disbelief that the soldier had “ignored” the protocols he said are drilled into those serving in the Israeli police and military.
“They taught us in the army, and in the police force, that the protocols are very, very strict. It’s like a mantra,” he said.
“If you wake me up at 4 in the morning, I will tell you exactly what those protocols are. I trust the army, and I trust the police force, and I know that they gave the orders exactly as they gave it to me, when I was there. And this guy, this soldier – he ignored them. It’s not that he didn’t know them, he just ignored them. And that was what my friend got killed for. It’s devastating.”
The IDF originally said it would not investigate the incident. But, amid widespread media coverage of Castleman’s death, Israel Police said they would investigate it, and the IDF then said it would join the investigation because the suspect in the killing is a soldier.
IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said he felt “deep sorrow” for Castleman’s “tragic death.”
“The IDF has clear instructions on how and when to shoot, and all of this is very clear. And there’s a clear moral rule – when someone puts their hand up – he should not be shot,” he also said, cautioning that “until the investigation is not over, we cannot indict a person. We have to wait for its outcomes.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called for a “thorough inquiry” into the shooting, describing Castleman as “a hero of Israel.”
But that call followed an earlier statement by Netanyahu that prompted fury in parts of Israel. In a widely panned comment on the incident, Netanyahu defended the right for Israeli citizens to bear arms and suggested that some civilian deaths were the “price” that came with such a policy. “That’s life,” he said.
“We know that during upticks of terror over the past decade, and even before that, having armed civilians often saved lives and prevented a bigger catastrophe,” Netanyahu said in a press conference to Tel Aviv on Saturday night. “Under the current circumstances, we should continue with this policy, I surely support it. We might have to pay prices, but that’s life.”
Asked for his response to Netanyahu’s comments, Castleman’s father said he would not discuss them “because the Prime Minister spoke later and corrected what he had said, and after he understood what had happened, he said that my son was a hero – and that’s exactly how it was.”
Applications to carry private firearms in Israel surged in the month following the Hamas attack on October 7, according to the Ministry of National Security. As of October 30, the ministry had received 180,500 new applications with its centers receiving an average of 10,000 new requests per day – compared to 850 new requests per week prior to the terror attacks.
Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir has voiced his desire for more Israelis to carry firearms.
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.
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.
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.
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.