The Israeli military said Tuesday it had thwarted an aerial attack by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, as fears rise across the region that the Israel-Hamas war could widen.

Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, a spokesperson for the Houthi forces, told Houthi-owned Al-Masirah TV that ballistic missiles and drones had been launched against targets in Israel in what he said was the third operation in support of the Palestinian people.

He added that there were plans for more strikes until the “Israeli aggression” ceased.

“Our armed forces launched a large batch of ballistic and winged missiles and a large number of drones at various targets of the Israeli enemy,” he said, referring to all of Israel as “occupied territories.”

The Houthis are a Shia political and military organization in Yemen that have been fighting a civil war in the country against a coalition backed by Saudi Arabia. They have voiced support for the Palestinians and organized protests in Yemen against Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that it had used its Arrow aerial defense system for the first time to successfully intercept a surface-to-surface missile that was fired from the area of the Red Sea.

The use of the Arrow defense system, which is designed to intercept high altitude missiles, indicates the Houthis used a more advanced, long-range missile in the attempted attack.

Israeli jets also intercepted what the IDF described as “aerial threats” in the area. The IDF said all threats were intercepted outside of Israeli territory.

The attempted strikes on Israel mark an escalation by the Iran-backed Houthis, with regional rivalries heating up despite the United States scrambling to contain a potential Middle Eastern war.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned Tuesday that an “expansion of conflicts in the region” was happening and that resistance group members would “not remain silent against America’s full support” of Israel and “will not wait for anyone’s advice.”

“We need to use the last political opportunities to stop the war and if the situation gets out of control, no side will be safe from its consequences,” he said, according to a readout from Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Houthi attacks on Tuesday follow another thwarted attempt two weeks ago. On October 19, a US warship near the coast of Yemen shot down four cruise missiles and 15 drones over a period of nine hours as they were heading north along the Red Sea, according to a US official familiar with the situation. Their trajectory left little doubt that the projectiles were headed for Israel, the official said.

Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said the missiles were fired by Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen and were launched “potentially toward targets in Israel.” US interceptions of Houthi launches are exceedingly rare.

Iran, despite decades of draconian US-inspired sanctions, has continued to provide training and arms to the Houthis in Yemen, the Syrian regime, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

Hezbollah, another powerful Shia militia, and Israel have been engaged in daily skirmishes on the Israel-Lebanon border since the war began. In October, the US deployed two carrier groups to the eastern Mediterranean to deter Iran, Syria and Hezbollah from opening new fronts against Israel.

Since the latest war in Gaza erupted following Hamas’ deadly October 7 rampage, US bases in Iraq and Syria have also come under sporadic attack.

Mali’s northern Tuareg rebels said they have seized a base in Kidal vacated by the United Nations on Tuesday, potentially leading to a showdown in the strategic city where Mali’s army is hoping to wrest back control.

The UN mission, known as MINUSMA, has until Dec. 31 to pack up after Mali’s military junta ordered it to leave in June. Its withdrawal from other bases has already prompted fighting between Mali’s army and the rebels, who are vying for control of areas vacated by the peacekeepers.

Kidal is the eighth MINUSMA base to close in central and northern Mali and is one of the most important. It lies in a zone historically controlled by the rebels that Mali’s junta wants to take back.

MINUSMA confirmed its departure in a statement in which it said that it had destroyed equipment before leaving.

“The conditions for departure from all of these bases were extremely difficult,” it said.

The rebel movement, the Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development (CSP-PSD) said in a statement it “now has control of areas abandoned by MINUSMA in Kidal.”

Security analysts said that fighting could now break out in Kidal, adding to insecurity in the West African country where Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State also operate.

The exact situation surrounding the base is unclear. One source with knowledge of events said that the rebels took control of the runway next to the camp shortly after the UN left. A local resident said the rebels had taken the camp, without providing details.

The UN said that it did not know what happened after it departed.

Mali’s military authorities have expressed concern that the UN has left bases without handing them over to the army.

“We note once more with regret that this retreat was not the subject of a handover” to the military, the junta said in a statement on X.

MINUSMA has operated in Mali since 2012 when Islamist militants took control of the north. Violence has persisted ever since.

Collins Dictionary has named “AI” as its word of the year, defining it as an “abbreviation for artificial intelligence: the modelling of human mental functions by computer programs.”

“Considered to be the next great technological revolution, AI has seen rapid development and has been much talked about in 2023,” the UK-based dictionary publisher said in a statement announcing its decision.

While AI’s capabilities in mimicking human speech fascinated people at first, they were also the source of some anxiety, according to Collins.

“If computers were suddenly experts in that most human of domains, language, what next? Cue an explosion of debate, scrutiny, and prediction, and more than enough justification for Collins’ 2023 Word of the Year: AI,” the statement continues.

The inaugural Global AI Summit on AI Safety got underway in the United Kingdom Wednesday. It is being hosted by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at Bletchley Park, which served as headquarters for the Allied Forces codebreaking program during World War II, and will feature speakers including US Vice President Kamala Harris.

Other contenders for Collins’ word of the year included “de-influencing,” when a social media influencer uses their popularity “to warn followers to avoid certain commercial products, lifestyle choices, etc,” as well as “nepo baby,” which refers to a person “whose career is believed to have been advanced by having famous parents.” Also on the shortlist were “canon event,” defined as an experience “essential to the formation of an individual’s character or identity,” and ”ultra-processed foods,” which are “prepared using complex industrial methods” and often consist of “ingredients with little or no nutritional value.”

In addition, Collins mentions the weight-loss drug “semaglutide,” also known as “Ozempic,” which has become a sensation after appearing to help people lose weight by suppressing their appetites, as well as “greedflation,” a term that refers to the alleged practice of some businesses making excessive price hikes in a bid to maximize profits at a time of high inflation in the UK.

Last year, the dictionary named “permacrisis”—“an extended period of instability and insecurity”—as its word of the year, following on from “NFT,” the abbreviation of “non-fungible token,” or “a unique digital certificate, registered in a blockchain, that is used to record ownership of an asset such as an artwork or a collectible” in 2021.

When King Charles III touched down for his four-day state visit in Kenya, it seemed inevitable the new monarch would have to grapple with Britain’s legacy of colonialism.

Mounting demands for formal apologies and reparations have overshadowed recent royal tours to former British colonies.

Buckingham Palace would have been keen to avoid a repeat of Prince William and Catherine’s Caribbean trip last year, which was marred by anti-monarchy demonstrations and awkward meetings with local republican lawmakers.

As Kenya approaches its 60th anniversary of independence from Britain in December, Charles candidly addressed the “most painful moments” of the long and intricate relationship during his visit to the capital Nairobi on Tuesday.

In a strongly-worded speech at a state banquet held in his honor by Kenyan President William Ruto, the 74-year-old royal told guests that “the wrongdoings of the past are a cause of the greatest sorrow and the deepest regret.”

He recognized the “abhorrent and unjustifiable acts of violence committed against Kenyans” in their struggle for statehood adding, “there can be no excuse.”

“It matters greatly to me that I should deepen my own understanding of these wrongs, and that I meet some of those whose lives and communities were so grievously affected,” Charles continued.

“None of this can change the past. But by addressing our history with honesty and openness we can, perhaps, demonstrate the strength of our friendship today. And, in so doing, we can, I hope, continue to build an ever-closer bond for the years ahead.”

Kenya is a country that holds special significance for several members of the British royal family. This visit is Charles’s fourth to the east African nation and his first to a Commonwealth nation since his coronation.

It’s where the Prince of Wales proposed to Kate Middleton. And it’s of course where his mother visited as a princess but left as a Queen following her father’s death in 1952.

But it was also that same year that Mau Mau freedom fighters – originating from the country’s largest ethnic Kikuyu tribe – rebelled against British colonialists.

As the empire wrestled the insurgency in one of its most important colonies, it declared a “state of emergency” and rounded up thousands of Kenyans, holding them in squalid conditions where they were subjected to horrific acts of torture by the colonial administration, including castration and sexual assault.

Estimates from the Kenyan Human Rights Commission (KHRC) suggest some 100,000 people in custody were tortured, maimed or killed during the violent eight-year period.

While the King showed contrition for their mistreatment, he did not offer a formal apology or mention reparations in his speech. Calls for a full apology have dominated local conversation in recent days, with the KHRC on Sunday urging Charles to issue an “an unconditional and unequivocal public apology” during his trip.

However, that is not in his power to give and is the purview of the UK government rather than any members of the royal family. The King can only act on the advice of his ministers when he represents the country abroad.

Ruto responded to the King’s acknowledgment of historic wrongdoings, particularly the violent suppression of the Mau Mau uprising in the 1950s, describing Britain’s colonial rule as “brutal and atrocious” and the administration’s response as “monstrous in its cruelty.”

“While there have been efforts to atone for the death, injury and suffering inflicted on Kenyan Africans by the colonial government, much remains to be done in order to achieve full reparations,” the Kenyan president said.

However, Ruto also commended the King’s “exemplary courage and readiness” to recognize “uncomfortable truths.”

Earlier on Tuesday, the monarch visited the Uhuru Gardens, where Kenya declared its independence in 1963. He laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. He later toured a new museum showcasing Kenya’s history, including a “Tunnel of Martyrs,” where British-signed death warrants serve as a stark reminder of past injustices.

“This is a highly encouraging first step, under your leadership, to deliver progress beyond tentative and equivocal half measures of past years,” Ruto added.

A decade ago, the British government paid £19.9 million (around $30 million at the time) in compensation to over 5,000 Kenyan claimants for human rights violations and conceded that it sincerely regretted the historic abuses, but denied liability for them.

The wounds and trauma inflicted during that dark period are still prevalent today, according to Evelyn Wanjugu Kimathi, the daughter of one of the leaders of the Mau Mau uprising, Dedan Kimathi.

She said the Mau Mau community want more than gestures and vowed to keep fighting for reparations. “We want closure … we’ll still continue pushing. The struggle continues,” Kimathi added.

It’s not just in Kenya that the royal family has faced a reckoning over the impact of Britain’s imperial past as well as the complex subject of its legacy of slavery. Shifting attitudes have sparked debate in many of the former British colonies that make up the 56-member Commonwealth organization he now heads up.

While King Charles is somewhat constrained on royal tours taken on behalf of UK government, he has previously expressed a willingness to Commonwealth leaders to “find new ways to acknowledge our past.”

In remarks at last year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Charles expanded on this challenge of modernity, saying “this is a conversation whose time has come” and it starts “with listening.”

Buckingham Palace said earlier this year that it would support research into the monarchy’s historical ties to the slave trade and the King takes the subject “profoundly seriously.”

With freezing temperatures of down to minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit) and vegetation hundreds and sometimes thousands of meters below the mountain tops, the summits of the Andes mountains maintain an extremely harsh environment.

So how did a species of leaf-eared mouse make this barren land their home?

That is the question a team of scientists from Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and the United States are looking to answer after discovering 13 mummified mice at elevations above 6,000 meters (19,685 feet) in the Atacama Plateau of Chile and Argentina. Their discovery further proves the species is the world’s highest dwelling mammal, according to the study recently published in Current Biology.

The mice, called Phyllotis vaccarum, are commonly found living in the Andes mountains at lower elevations, all the way down to sea level. In 2020, a living mouse was recorded at the summit of Llullaillaco, a volcano with an elevation of 6,739 meters (about 22,110 feet) on the border of Chile. It currently holds the world record for highest living mammal, said Jay Storz, co-study author for the new and 2020 studies.

The discovery of the living mouse spurred Storz to conduct expeditions at 21 different volcanoes. The 13 mummified mice were found on the Salín, Púlar and Copiapό volcanoes.

“Every time that we’ve found anything at those super extreme elevations, we’re completely blown away,” said Storz, a biology professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “It’s really hard to overstate how inhospitable these environments are.”

On the summit of these volcanoes, each breath of air only contains about 40% of the oxygen that is available at sea level, Storz said. The temperatures also rarely rise above freezing, and the wind forces are extremely strong, once recorded at over 116 miles per hour from a National Geographic weather station at 6,505 meters (21,342 feet).

Furthermore, the environment has been described to be Mars-like. In 2021, NASA researchers had studied the environment in efforts to “understand how the building blocks of life might respond to Martian conditions over time,” according to its website.

Freeze-dried mouse mummies

While the conditions are not ideal for living creatures, they create perfect conditions for preservation, as the mice are essentially freeze dried, Storz said. In normal circumstances, mummified mice are hard to come by since most deaths are caused by predators. But high up in the mountains, the mice have no predators.

The researchers performed radiocarbon dating — a method that uses the amount of carbon from organism material to estimate its age — which indicated the oldest mummies to be no more than 350 years old, while some could have recently died, according to the study.

Storz pointed to previous reports of the rodent, where archaeologists had thought the mice to be used as a part of Incan rituals. Since the samples are not as old as the Inca civilization (over 500 years), that theory has been ruled out.

“It’s still a mystery as to why they’re there — why they would ascend to these extreme elevations — but it’s also clear that they got there on their own,” Storz said, who also noted that the team found evidence of active burrows at the high elevations.

The team of researchers are currently conducting research on 31 live-trapped mice, including the record-holder mouse, to attempt to understand how the species can survive in the extreme conditions, Storz said. The research will also include analyses of their gut contents to find what the mice have been eating.

A second theory is that plant fragments, small insects and other dietary resources are carried to the top of the mountains by the wind, Fabián-Ruperto said.

“Life at such high elevations was believed to be impossible for mammals,” Fabián-Ruperto said, who was not involved in the study. “These observations surpass previous records in the Himalayas and other mountain ranges, challenging what we thought we knew about species’ survival capabilities.”

Life finds a way in extreme environments

The leaf-eared mouse weighs an average of 55 grams (about 1.9 ounces). With further research, scientists are hoping to learn how the tiny mouse can maintain a steady body temperature at such high altitudes, when the rate of heat loss could succumb the mouse to hypothermia and death within minutes, Fabián-Ruperto said.

One main reason for the species’ success could be its adaptability in higher altitudes, where the mice have been observed to be active during the daytime, instead of nocturnal like its lower-altitude counterparts, Storz said.

“Life always seems to find a way no matter how hostile the environment might be,” Storz said. He hopes this discovery illuminates how evolution can equip animals to live in environments originally thought to be uninhabitable.

A storm that brought heavy rain and violent winds to Northern Italy overnight and early Tuesday sent rapid floods through central Milan and caused Lake Como to breach its banks.

Several waterside bars were flooded at the lake — a popular tourist attraction — while civil protection authorities were forced to pump out water from areas nearby and erect mobile barriers.

The Seveso, a river that runs through the municipalities of Como, Monza e Brianza and Milan, also broke its banks, according to Italy’s civil protection agency.

Parts of Milan became inaccessible, while social media posts showed water gushing down stairs into underground train stations and pedestrians falling down or clinging to poles during strong gusts of wind.

The city’s safety councilor, Marco Granelli, said the winds felled trees, tore down scaffolding and ripped off roof tiles. Electricity was cut in several parts of the city as a precaution while authorities worked to clean up downed power lines.

Tuscany, in Central Italy, was also affected by heavy rainfall.

Eugenio Giani, president of the region, said Tuscany experienced floods, fallen trees and landslides after 257 millimeters of rain fell in 24 hours — more than the monthly average rainfall for this time of year. A tree fell on a car while it was moving, but the driver escaped unharmed.

Science shows that as the climate crisis accelerates, extreme weather events such as heavy rain and storms will become more frequent and more intense. Italy is particularly vulnerable to climate change due to its geography, which puts it at high risk of landslides, and because it is surrounded by the warming Mediterranean Sea, which increases the chance of strong storms.

Venice in the northeast also narrowly escaped flooding, according to the city’s Mayor Luigi Brugnaro. Strong winds blowing towards the north in the Adriatic Sea pushed water up into the city. Combined with the already high tides associated with the full moon, this caused an “exceptional” tide of 154 centimeters (around 61 inches). The highest-ever tide was recorded in 1966 at 194 centimeters.

Brugnaro said without the MOSE system of floodgates, which was active all night and throughout the day, the city would have experienced “record flooding” with 70% of its buildings under high water. The MOSE, which consists of 78 floodgates between the city lagoon system and the Adriatic sea, has been in place since 2020.

Rain is expected to fall all over the country throughout the rest of the week. Italy’s civil protection agency put all areas of the Veneto region, which includes Venice, under red alert until November 1. Six regions in the north are under the next-level orange alert, and 11 regions are under yellow alert over the coming 24 hours.

The storm comes during a busy holiday season with more than 8 million Italians expected to travel over the week of November 1.

This year has been particularly deadly for flooding in Italy. In May, flooding in the northern Italian region of Emilia Romagna killed at least 14 people. More than 20 rivers broke their banks, causing hundreds of landslides, submerging homes and devastating farmland.

The Israeli army began its full ground operation in Gaza on Friday, moving tanks, bulldozers, infantrymen and combat engineer units into the Strip.

But rather than make any quick advance on Gaza City, Israeli forces so far appear to have moved only slowly towards the enclave’s largest population center.

The first is in the northwest corner of the strip. A video released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Saturday morning showed bulldozers pushing through sand very close to the seashore. A breach in the perimeter fence, through which Israeli vehicles appeared to have entered Gaza, is clearly visible.

On Tuesday, photos released by the Israeli army showed soldiers even deeper into the Strip, just to the north of the Al Shati, or Beach, refugee camp, which would put them only three miles or so from the centre of Gaza City.

Finally, another piece of video evidence, which surfaced on Monday, points to a possible third entry point about 10 miles to the south, along the eastern perimeter. The video, filmed by freelance Palestinian journalist Yousif Al Saifi, showed an Israeli tank opening fire on a car on the main Salah Al Din road, which runs the length of the Strip.

The junction lies just to the southeast of Gaza City and is not far from Wadi Gaza, the waterway that Israel has been telling Gazans to relocate to the south of, in order to be more safe from Israeli attacks.

Thousands of miles away from the brutality of war in Gaza, Tariq Hamouda and his wife Manal are in disbelief over the loss of three generations of their family.

The Palestinian Americans, who live in Maple Grove, Minnesota, say it’s been over a week since they learned 42 relatives were killed in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, and they’re still unable to fully comprehend the news.

Hamouda says his wife, whose maiden name is Saqallah, lost four brothers, a sister and most of their children when two explosions destroyed the Saqallah family compound on October 19 in the Sheikh Ejleen neighborhood of Gaza City.

Hamouda and the family say it was an Israeli airstrike. Israel has launched numerous airstrikes on Gaza City since October 7, including multiple strikes in the area that day.

“She loves every member of her family. She spent the summer with them,” explained Hamouda, who says he and his wife are originally from the same neighborhood in Gaza but have lived in Minnesota since 2004.

There has been fear and numerous conflicts between Israel and militant groups in Gaza since then, but nothing like this, he says.

Israel declared war on Hamas on October 7, after the militant group broke through the barrier that separates Gaza from Israel and killed more than 1,400 people, including civilians and military personnel, and abducted over 220 others, according to Israeli authorities.

In response, Israel launched devastating airstrikes on Gaza. It says it wants to destroy Hamas, which governs the coastal territory. But 2.2 million Palestinians living there, unable to escape with closed Israeli and Egyptian border crossings, are caught in the crossfire.

Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 8,485 Palestinians and injured more than 21,000 others, according to the latest figures released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, drawn from sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave. Another 1.4 million people have been internally displaced, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says, after the IDF warned residents in northern Gaza to move south.

But Hamouda doesn’t have time to properly mourn the dead, he says, as he is still worried about what will happen to those who’ve so far survived.

‘Your whole world stops’

In South Florida, Manal’s cousin Eyad Abu Shaban is equally distraught. “It’s like your whole world stops,” he said.

“It’s not one, two, three, or four – it is 42 members, it’s really hard to cope with.”

Abu Shaban says the deceased range in age from three months to 77. They were all staying in a single compound. His uncle, Essam Abu Shaban, wife Layla Saqallah and their son Ahmed were among those killed. To avoid Israeli airstrikes, they had evacuated the nearby Tel El Hawa neighborhood and sought refuge in the Saqallah’s home, Abu Shaban says.

Before the airstrikes, the IDF called to say there could be military activity in the area, but they were never told to evacuate their home, Hamouda says surviving family members told him.

“They have bombed houses with warnings and without warnings,” he said, lamenting there is a lot of fear, confusion and nowhere to go.

His mother-in-law was on a balcony when the first strike hit, Hamouda says. She was able to flee with the help of a relative who also survived.

A second strike completely destroyed the compound, killing dozens of relatives, he says.

“My mother-in-law said her sons tried to evacuate, but they had no time,” Hamouda said, adding that his family was not involved in militant activity and that they “had nothing to do with anything at all.”

Abu Shaban, a Boca Raton real estate developer, said the family were only civilians, and counted numerous medical professionals among them.

Of Manal’s four brothers – Saed, Omar, Ameed and Khorsheed – three were eye doctors; the other was an ENT doctor. Hamouda says they operated Gaza’s largest network of family-owned eye clinics.

“We have no Hamas members [in our family]. They’re just ordinary people: doctors and grandmothers and grandfathers and uncles and aunts and children,” Abu Shaban said.

“I mean, if you want to exterminate Hamas then you should go to the source.”

Pleading for a ceasefire

The Maple Grove community has since rallied around the Hamouda family, showering them with love and support.

Community members visited the nearby Brooklyn Park Islamic Center last week to pray for the family. A staff member from Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s Minnesota office even called to offer condolences and extend an offer of assistance, Hamouda says.

But all Hamouda and Abu Shaban want is for the killing to stop.

“We’ve never seen in this day and age where the whole world is watching innocent people just being torn apart. Families, whole families, just wiped off the map,” Abu Shaban said.

“I want everybody to know that the people of Gaza are just like them, they hurt, they bleed, they have families, they have feelings.”

Photos and videos of the conflict flooding social media are too much to bear, he says.

Activists, human rights groups and international officials have all called for a ceasefire, but the war rages on, and has witnessed a new phase of dangerous ground operations.

Until the killing stops, Abu Shaban says his family still reels: “I’m still in this nightmare. I haven’t woken up yet.”

An Israeli strike targeting a Hamas commander in the densely populated Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza has left catastrophic damage and killed a large number of people, according to eyewitnesses and medics in the enclave.

“There were seven to eight huge holes in the ground, full of killed people, body parts all over the place,” he said. “It felt like the end of the world.”

According to a statement by the Israel Defense Forces, the airstrike targeted and killed Ibrahim Biari, whom it described as one of the Hamas commanders responsible for the October 7 attack on Israel, which left than 1,400 people dead and hundreds taken hostage.

The IDF also said “numerous other Hamas terrorists” were hit in the strike, and claimed the Central Jabalya Battalion had taken control of civilian buildings.

Hamas however has strongly denied the presence of one of its leaders in the refugee camp. Hazem Qassem, a spokesman for the militant group, accused Israel of attempting to justify what he described as a “heinous crime against safe civilians, children, and women in Jabalya camp.”

People in the area were hysterical, he added. “I saw women screaming and confused. They didn’t know whether to cry for losing their children or run and look for them, especially since many children were playing in the neighborhood.”

Images from the scene showed a huge crater among rubble and damaged buildings. Palestinians and rescue workers are seen attempting to find victims, some using their hands to scoop the detritus away.

Southern Gaza has also seen lethal airstrikes, and aid organizations have repeatedly warned that there is no safe place in the isolated enclave. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has killed at least 8,485 people and injured more than 21,000, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, which draws on information from the Hamas-controlled enclave.

‘A scene no one can imagine’

At the Indonesian hospital, the nearest major medical facility to Jabalya, videos showed a long line of bodies lying on the floor of the hospital as well as large numbers of wounded people, including children, as doctors rushed to treat their injuries.

Many of the injured could be seen receiving treatment on the floor because of the hospital’s overcrowded conditions. Hospital head Dr. Atef al-Kalhout estimated that scores had been killed in the blast.

“What you see is a scene no one can imagine: injured martyrs, charred bodies in the hundreds,” said another doctor, Mohammad al Rann. “All we can do is keep taking them in. Most of the injuries are from explosives and head injuries and amputations.”

Mohammed Hawajreh, a nurse with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza, said that some of the wounded also arrived at that hospital. “Young children arrived at the hospital with deep wounds and severe burns. They came without their families. Many were screaming and asking for their parents. I stayed with them until we could find a place, as the hospital was full with patients,” Hawajreh said in a statement.

According to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Interior in Gaza, twenty homes were “completely destroyed” in the bombing.

The world reacts

Jabalya, like other refugee camps in the Strip, is crowded with homes, shops, and apartment buildings, where many roads between them are barely wide enough for a car to pass.

Many Palestinian refugees settled in the camp in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, after fleeing villages in what became the state of Israel, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

The camp is the largest refugee camp in Gaza, says UNRWA, is spread out across 1.4 square kilometers, and has long grappled with overcrowding. It is also among the poorest areas in the enclave and home to busy open-air markets.

Shortly after the blast, Israeli human rights organization B’tselem condemned Israel’s weeks-long aerial bombardment of Gaza, saying “the scale of killing Israel has and continues to wreak on Gaza is horrifying,” in a statement released Tuesday.

“More than 8,000 people have been killed so far, more than half of them women and children. Entire buildings have collapsed with occupants still inside. Whole families have been wiped out in an instant. This criminal harm to civilians is intolerable and the obvious needs to be stated again and again – not everything is allowed in war, including war on Hamas,” it said.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the strike as a “massacre,” referencing “chilling documented scenes” of children and women. “It has its bones, in a large-scale massacre carried out in full view of the world and under the pretext of self-defense,” the statement added.

Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan and Egypt have also condemned the strike, with Egypt accusing Israel of breaking international law with what it said was the “inhuman” targeting of a residential area. “Egypt considered this as a new flagrant violation by the Israeli forces against the provisions of international law and international humanitarian law,” the ministry said.

When pressed multiple times throughout a White House briefing on the Jabalya strike and on whether Israel is doing enough to protect Palestinian civilians, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the US has “indications they are trying.”

“We’re not going to react to every event in real time, but we’ve certainly recognized that civilians have been hurt,” he said. “Civilians have been killed to the tune of many thousands … We recognize that, we observe that, and we’re not accepting of any single civilian death in Gaza.”

He added that “it is not the goal of Israeli forces to go out and deliberately take innocent civilian life and they have tried to make efforts to minimize that.”

“Those who are responsible for giving the orders for that crime should hear something from Mr. (Karim A. A.) Khan from the ICC (International Criminal Court),” he said in reference to the ICC prosecutor. “And if he has the courage, and I hope he does, we appreciate the fact that he came to Rafah crossing, and he made a statement there. But it would be also nice to issue a warrant of arrest for those who are responsible for such crimes.”

Wounded Palestinians heading to Egypt

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, said the patients were “seriously injured” and the Rafah border crossing is set to open Wednesday morning to allow them to pass.

Major UN agencies are calling for a humanitarian ceasefire to allow deliveries of aid for more than 2 million civilians trapped with scarce supplies of food, water, and medical equipment, and for the safe release of 240 hostages that Israel believes are being held by Hamas, the militant group that controls the enclave.

A Hamas military wing spokesman claimed Tuesday that in the coming days the group will free some foreign nationals they are holding hostage.

“Some countries have intervened through mediators to free some foreign nationals’ detainees in Gaza,” Abu Obeida, a spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, said in a video clip without naming the countries. “Therefore, we informed the mediators that we will release a number of foreigners in the coming days.”

He did not elaborate further on the nationalities or number of hostages they planned on freeing.

This story is developing and is being updated.

Russian President Vladimir Putin prides himself as the leader of what he calls a “multinational, multiconfessional” Russia. And the republic of Dagestan is in many ways a microcosm of Russia’s diversity: The mountainous region is home to over 30 ethnic groups with distinct languages.

But the images of antisemitic rioters overrunning Dagestan’s Makhachkala Uytash Airport have shaken Russia’s Jewish community, stoked international outrage and raised serious questions about the blowback from Putin’s war on Ukraine – now in the Russian leader’s view directly linked to events in Gaza.

On Monday, the Kremlin leader held an extensive meeting to address the situation in Dagestan, where rioters – fired up by rumors that Jews and Israelis were aboard a Red Wings Airlines flight that landed Sunday from Tel Aviv – surged into the airport terminal and stormed the runway.

Members of the crowd outside the airport held signs that included slogans such as “We are against Jewish refugees,” and “There is no place for child-killers in Dagestan.”

According to Russian state news agency TASS, “those gathered oppose the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

Authorities said at least 20 people were injured and 60 people were detained. State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said the incident “looked like a pogrom.”

The Israeli Prime Minister’s office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a joint statement on Sunday following the news, saying Israel expected Russian law enforcement “to safeguard the well-being of all Israeli citizens and Jews wherever they are and to take strong action against the rioters and against the wild incitement being directed against Jews and Israelis.”

In his remarks Monday, Putin called for law enforcement to take “firm, timely and precise actions to help protect constitutional order of Russia, rights and liberties of our citizens, the interethnic and inter-religious harmony.”

But the Kremlin leader also directed the finger of blame away from Russia.

“The events in Makhachkala last night were inspired through social networks,” Putin stated, insinuating that Ukraine and “the hands of Western intelligence agencies” had exploited emotions running high inside Dagestan over Israel’s relentless military campaign against Hamas in Gaza and rising civilian casualties.

“We can only help Palestine in the fight against those who are behind this tragedy,” Putin said, adding, “we, Russia, are fighting them within the framework of the Special Military Operation,” the official euphemism for Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.

Such remarks require serious unpacking.

Since the October 7 Hamas attacks, Putin has played a delicate international balancing act, putting himself forward as a potential mediator and calling for restraint on both sides – a position that has won praise from Hamas.

And in his remarks on Monday, Putin made his most pointed critique of Israel to date, saying that “horrifying events” in the Gaza Strip “cannot not be justified” and added that “your fists clench and you get tears in your eyes” when you see photos of “bloodied, dead children.”

A tense region of Russia

Such images clearly stirred anger in Dagestan, a majority Muslim republic that has historically been home to a variety of Islamic religious practices.

It has a miniscule Jewish population – Judaism is one of Dagestan’s long-established religions, practiced by communities of the Mountain Jews, who speak a form of Persian – but after centuries of coexistence with Muslim neighbors, that population has dwindled through emigration.

But Putin’s calls to contain the Gaza crisis in recent days have riled Israel. Russia’s ambassador to Israel was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem to protest a visit last week to Moscow by a Hamas delegation, according to a press release from Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday.

Putin, however, is playing to different audiences. Russia has a complex web of relationships in the Middle East: Putin backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (an enemy of Israel); he relies on Iran (another enemy of Israel) for a stockpile of drones to attack Ukraine; and he’s a high-fiving friend of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, another power player in the region.

He has also maintained cordial working relationships with Israeli counterparts, although his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cooled.

But such regional dynamics obscure a bigger picture. Putin has cast himself as locked in an existential fight against the United States and the West, with Ukraine the main battleground. His rhetoric – directed against “those who are behind this tragedy” – now appears to draw a direct line between Ukraine and Gaza.

In his remarks Monday, Putin accused the US of stoking the current conflict, stating “the United States needs constant chaos in the Middle East, so they discredit those countries that are insisting on the immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.”

In response to Moscow, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said, “we’ve heard crickets from the Kremlin,” on the airport mob.

“Nothing, no condemnation, no calling for the stoppage of hate, discrimination and bigotry,” Kirby said, adding, “It’s classic Russian rhetoric that when something goes like bad in your country … blame somebody else, blame it on outside influences.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Dagestan riot signals that Russia is “losing control.”

Observers have also been quick to note that Putin’s expressed concern over civilian casualties in Gaza rings hollow.

His military continues a ruthless war against Ukraine, a campaign that has targeted civilian infrastructure and leveled cities, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president over his country’s conduct during the war.

But Putin is counting on a strategy that has already won dividends: Internationally, Moscow’s diplomats have been pressing a global PR offensive that casts Russia as a staunch anticolonial power, winning support in the Global South – even as it pursues a war of conquest in Ukraine.

Anti-Israel rhetoric

Russian state media have echoed that narrative at home. Since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, some Russian state TV commentators and politicians have ramped up their criticism of Israel, as the Gaza war conveniently distracts international attention from Ukraine.

Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oleh Nikolenko accused Moscow of trying to shift responsibility. “Threats to exterminate the Jews are the result of the work of Russian state propaganda, which for decades cultivated feelings of hatred towards other peoples among Russians,” he noted.

But as the riots in Dagestan showed, anti-Israel rhetoric can veer quickly off script.

Earlier this month, Ramzan Kadyrov, the pro-Kremlin warlord who rules the neighboring Russian republic of Chechnya, expressed “complete support” for Palestine and floated the notion of deploying his “peacemaking” forces to resolve the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

That may seem a farfetched idea – Kadyrov has an abysmal human rights-record – but for nearly two decades, the Chechen strongman has helped Putin keep a brutal, uneasy peace in Russia’s north Caucasus, a region that includes Dagestan. Kadyrov has also provided footsoldiers for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

So keeping the peace in Dagestan is likely focusing minds in the Kremlin. Protests erupted last year in the republic in response to the Russian government’s mobilization orders, with some activists complaining that ethnic minorities were being unfairly conscripted for service in Ukraine. The Gaza war adds one more match to the fire.

In a keenly observed commentary on Sunday’s events, Harold Chambers of the independent Russia-watching site Riddle Russia pointed to Dagestan’s dismal economic state and the Ukraine war as factors fuelling local grievance.

“The attempted pogrom is not just rooted in antisemitic messaging, but in systemic dynamics in the region,” he wrote.

“General socioeconomic conditions in the republic continue to deteriorate. Basic necessities to live such as electricity, water, and gas are irregularly supplied, which led to sustained small protests only a few months ago. Additionally, Russia’s war in Ukraine has impacted Dagestan heavily, with significant casualties. Public appeals and small actions do not regularly succeed, with the authorities sweeping them aside.”

Russian investigative journalist Yevgenia Albats was equally cutting in her analysis.

“Are there anti-Semites in Makhachkala?” she wrote on X. “Yes, sure. Have they been there before? Yes, sure. What has happened now? 20 months of war, rising prices, hundreds, if not thousands of men killed, the pressure is accumulating and requires a release.”

Russia’s information campaign, she added, is a convenient tool, presenting “a picture for the Middle East, Iran, for the Global South: Russia is with you, Putin is the leader of the anti-American world.”

Putin has for months played a risky geopolitical game, gambling on anti-Western distrust to shore up support for his war on Ukraine. But an anti-Jewish riot in the southern region of Dagestan shows how quickly that model can backfire, particularly for those trapped inside the echo of Russian state propaganda.