Rivers in the heart of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil fell to their lowest levels in over a century on Monday as a record drought upends the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and damages the jungle ecosystem.

The port of Manaus, the region’s most populous city, at the meeting of the Rio Negro and the Amazon River, recorded 13.59 meters (44.6 feet) of water on Monday, compared to 17.60 a year ago, according to its website. That is the lowest level since records began in 121 years ago in 1902, passing a previous all-time low set in 2010.

Rapidly drying tributaries to the mighty Amazon have left boats stranded, cutting off food and water supplies to remote villages, while high water temperatures are suspected of killing more than 100 endangered river dolphins.

After months without rain, rainforest villager Pedro Mendonca was relieved when a Brazilian NGO delivered supplies to his riverside community near Manaus late last week.

“We have gone three months without rain here in our community,” said Mendonca, who lives in Santa Helena do Ingles, west of Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state. “It is much hotter than past droughts.”

Some areas of the Amazon have seen the least rain from July to September since 1980, according to the Brazilian government disaster alert center, Cemaden.

Brazil’s Science Ministry blames the drought on the onset of the El Niño climate phenomenon this year, which is driving extreme weather patterns globally. In a statement earlier this month, the ministry said it expects the drought will last until at least December, when El Niño’s effects are forecast to peak.

Underlying El Niño is the long-term trend of global warming, which is leading to more frequent and more intense extreme weather events, like drought and heat.

The drought has affected 481,000 people as of Monday, according to the civil defense agency in the state of Amazonas, where Manaus is located.

Late last week, workers from Brazilian NGO Fundação Amazônia Sustentável fanned out across the parched region near Manaus to deliver food and supplies to vulnerable villages. The drought has threatened their access to food, drinking water and medicines, which are usually transported by river.

Nelson Mendonca, a community leader in Santa Helena do Ingles, said some areas are still reachable by canoe, but many boats have not been able to bring supplies along the river, so most goods are arriving by tractors or on foot.

“It’s not very good for us, because we’re practically isolated,” he said.

Luciana Valentin, who also lives in Santa Helena do Ingles, said she is concerned about the cleanliness of the local water supply after the drought reduced water levels.

“Our children are getting diarrhea, vomiting, and often having fever because of the water,” she said.

Poland’s opposition is on course to remove the populist ruling party from power, the final results from a tight national election have confirmed, setting the stage for weeks of high-stakes negotiations to form Warsaw’s next government.

The incumbent Law and Justice party, known by its Polish acronym PiS, won the biggest share of the vote with 35.38%, but lost its parliamentary majority, according to official results released Tuesday by the National Electoral Commission after all ballots were counted.

PiS finished ahead of opposition party Civic Coalition (KO), led by former Polish Prime Minister and European Council President Donald Tusk, on 30.7%. The close result made the centrist Third Way and left-wing Lewica parties kingmakers; both groups are resoundly opposed to the hardline PiS and have indicated they will seek to form a new coalition government with Tusk’s bloc.

The situation points to an end to PiS’ divisive eight-year rule, which saw a drastic overhaul of Poland’s democratic institutions and grave warnings that the country was lurching towards populist authoritarianism. Tusk had promised to restore democratic norms in Poland and cooperate with Western European allies, among whom Warsaw was fast becoming a pariah.

But a nervy few weeks may lie ahead. Poland’s PiS-aligned President, Andrzej Duda, is expected to give the PiS every chance to form a government before turning over proceedings to Poland’s new block of opposition lawmakers. Tusk must also cement an ideologically broad coalition of politicians in order to present a workable alternative.

“We will definitely try to build a parliamentary majority,” incumbent Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said, despite PiS seemingly having no avenues through which to find one.

According to the Polish constitution, the president must call a new parliamentary session within 30 days of the election. Then, he has 14 days to nominate a candidate for prime minister, after which the nominee has 14 days to win a vote of confidence in parliament.

PiS’ only obvious potential partner is the far-right Confederation party, which turned in a poorer than expected electoral performance after a summer of gaining momentum.

Sunday’s election saw a record turnout of 74%, underscoring the intense polarization that gripped Poland over recent years, as well as the high stakes of the vote.

Tusk had painted the election as a last chance to save Polish democracy. “Democracy has won,” he told supporters after Sunday’s exit poll pointed to the election’s outcome. “This is the end of the PiS government.”

If Tusk does eventually take charge of Poland, he will face a monumental task in reversing PiS’ illiberal reforms of the country’s judiciary, public media and cultural bodies.

He will also seek to re-establish Poland as a major player in the European Union, and likely look to smooth over tensions that emerged between Warsaw and Kyiv over the imports of Ukrainian grain.

But before then, a period of instability appears likely at the heart of Poland’s government, at a pivotal moment in the war in neighboring Ukraine.

If you missed the annular eclipse that created a “ring of fire” over the Americas on Saturday, don’t worry: Another eclipse is on the way, and it will provide a different kind of spectacle.

Sky-gazers across North America are in for a treat in 2024 when a total solar eclipse will pass over Mexico, the United States and Canada.

The highly anticipated celestial event doesn’t occur until April 8, but eclipse fans are already booking hotels within the path of totality, and experts suggest making plans now so as not to miss out.

That’s likely because a total solar eclipse won’t be visible across the contiguous US again until August 2044. (It’s been nearly six years since the “Great American Eclipse” of 2017.) And an annular eclipse won’t appear across this part of the world again until 2046.

Here’s everything you need to know about the upcoming eclipse.

What is a total solar eclipse?

A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between Earth and the sun, completely blocking the sun’s face.

Those within the path of totality, or locations where the moon’s shadow will completely cover the sun, will see a total solar eclipse. People outside the path of totality will still be able to see a partial solar eclipse, where the moon only blocks part of the sun’s face.

During a total solar eclipse, the sky will darken as it would at dawn or dusk, and there are several stages of the eclipse for sky-gazers to anticipate.

The moon doesn’t suddenly appear between Earth and the sun — the event begins with a partial eclipse where it looks like the moon is taking a “bite” out of the sun, causing the sun to resemble a crescent. Depending on your location, the partial eclipse can last between 70 and 80 minutes, according to NASA.

When the moon begins to cross in front of the sun, the star’s rays will shine around valleys on the moon’s horizon, creating glowing drops of light around the moon in a phenomenon called Baily’s beads.

As totality nears, Baily’s beads will quickly disappear until a single point of light remains, resembling a glistening giant diamond ring.

The diamond ring will disappear when totality arrives, and there is no longer any sign of direct sunlight. Bright stars or planets may shine in the dark sky, and the air temperature will drop as the sun disappears. The sudden darkness causes animals to grow quiet.

The chromosphere, or part of the sun’s atmosphere, may glow in a thin pink circle around the moon during totality, while the sun’s hot outer atmosphere, or corona, will appear as white light.

As the moon continues its trek across the sun’s face, the diamond ring and Baily’s beads and the partial solar eclipse will appear on the opposite side of the moon until the sun fully reappears.

Where can I see the eclipse?

The total solar eclipse will be visible in parts of Mexico, Canada and more than 10 US states, while a crescent-shaped partial solar eclipse is expected to appear in 49 states — weather permitting.

The eclipse will first appear over the South Pacific Ocean and begin its journey across North America. Mexico’s Pacific coast is the first point of totality on the path, expected at 11:07 a.m. PT (8:07 a.m. ET).

The pathway will continue across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Then, it will cross over Canada in southern Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, ending on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland at 5:16 p.m. (3:46 p.m. ET).

How do I safely view the eclipse?

The only time it’s safe to view the sun without eye protection is during the “totality” of a total solar eclipse, or the brief moments when the moon completely blocks the light of the sun and no sunlight is visible, according to NASA.

Otherwise, wear certified ISO 12312-2 compliant eclipse glasses or use a handheld solar viewer before and after totality, and at all times during a partial eclipse.
Separately, you can observe the sun with a telescope, binoculars or camera that has a special solar filter on the front, which acts the same way eclipse glasses would.

Directly staring at the sun can result in blindness or disrupted vision. During the 2017 total solar eclipse, a young woman was diagnosed with solar retinopathy, retinal damage from exposure to solar radiation, in both eyes after viewing the eclipse with what doctors believed were eclipse glasses not held to the safety standard. There is no treatment for solar retinopathy. It can improve or worsen, but it is a permanent condition.

Sunglasses won’t work in place of eclipse glasses or solar viewers, which are 100,000 times darker and held to an international safety standard.

The lenses of solar eclipse glasses are made of black polymer, or resin infused with carbon particles, which blocks nearly all visible, infrared and ultraviolet light, according to The Planetary Society. Sunglasses don’t block infrared radiation.

For safe manufacturers and resellers of eclipse glasses and filters for optical devices, including cameras and smartphones, check out the list curated by the American Astronomical Society.

Put on your eclipse glasses before looking up and remember to turn away from the sun before you remove them again. Always keep an eye on any children wearing eclipse glasses to make sure they don’t remove them while looking at the sun.

If you normally wear eyeglasses, keep them on and put eclipse glasses over them or hold a handheld viewer in front of them, according to the American Astronomical Society.

Don’t look at the sun through any unfiltered optical device — camera lens, telescope, binoculars — while wearing eclipse glasses or using a handheld solar viewer, according to NASA.

Solar rays can still burn through the filter on the glasses or viewer, given how concentrated they can be through an optical device, and can cause severe eye damage.

If you bought eclipse glasses to see the “ring of fire,” save your eclipse glasses and viewers for the total solar eclipse in April by storing them at room temperature in an envelope or their original packaging to avoid scratches.

Editor’s Note: This story contains a graphic image.

When Palestinians in north Gaza heeded the warnings issued in the Israeli military’s phone calls, text messages, and fliers advising them to head south, they thought they were fleeing to potential safety.

The Israeli Defense Forces issued the guidance Friday, telling all civilians in north Gaza to evacuate to areas south of Wadi Gaza “for your own safety and the safety of your families” as the IDF continues “to operate significantly in Gaza City and make extensive efforts to avoid harming civilians.”

However, some Palestinians who followed the evacuation warnings and fled their homes in search of safety suffered the very fate they were running from: Israeli airstrikes killed them outside of the evacuation zone.

The killings underscore the reality that evacuation zones and warning alerts from the Israeli military haven’t guaranteed safety for civilians in the densely populated Gaza Strip, where Palestinians have no safe place to escape Israeli bombs.

“All of you go to the South. You and all your family members. Gather all of your stuff with you and head there,” the officer told them.

Aaed wanted to know what road would be safe to take and what time they should leave.

“It doesn’t matter which road,” the officer replied. “Do it as fast as you can. There is no time left.”

Aaed heeded the warning. By sunrise on Friday, he headed south with his family and relatives to stay with friends in Deir Al Balah, a city roughly eight miles south of Wadi Gaza and outside the evacuation zone.

The next day, an Israeli airstrike in the area destroyed parts of the building where Aaed’s family sought refuge – killing him and 12 other members of his family, including seven children.

His nephew Raji, 32, was staying in a different building nearby when he heard the explosion and feared the worst. He rushed to the scene after receiving a call telling him that his uncle’s family members were amongst the victims.

“The destruction was massive,” Raji said. “We started digging people out who were hit by the explosion, some of them were still alive … the gunpowder smell was very strong, the dust was everywhere.”

“These people all thought that they were finally safe and that nothing would happen in the area,” Raji said. “You can follow the orders so that you aren’t exposed to danger, but the danger will still reach you wherever you are.”

While an estimated 500,000 Palestinians have fled northern Gaza for the south since Friday, many others are unable to make the journey south of the evacuation zone and are stuck in northern Gaza.

Israel has defended its ongoing hammering of Gaza with airstrikes as targeting Hamas headquarters and assets which are hidden within civilian buildings, claiming that what may appear as a civilian building is actually “a legitimate military target.”

Independent UN experts have condemned Israel’s “indiscriminate attacks against Palestinian civilians.” Doctors Without Borders released an update Sunday night saying the strikes have also hit hospitals and ambulances and decried that the “indiscriminate bombing campaign in which most casualties have been civilians.”

Israel’s military airstrikes have killed more than 2,800 and injured 11,000 since October 7, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said Monday, according to the official Palestinian press agency, WAFA.

Israeli troops and military equipment have massed at the border with Gaza as Israel prepares to ramp up its response to the deadly October 7 attack by the Islamist militant group Hamas. Warplanes continued to blast Gaza over the weekend, as civilians fled southward, following Israel’s evacuation instructions.

Several United Nations agencies have also warned that mass evacuation under such siege conditions will lead to disaster, and that the most vulnerable Gazans, including the elderly and pregnant, may not be able to relocate at all.

“The order to evacuate 1.1 million people from northern Gaza defies the rules of war and basic humanity,” wrote Martin Griffiths, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in a statement late Friday. “Roads and homes have been reduced to rubble. There is nowhere safe to go.”

Raji, who has taken in the wounded children that survived the attack, says he has to put on a strong face to support them despite being broken internally.

“I feel the injustice, these are innocent people, what did they do?”

On the face of it, the crossfire on Lebanon’s border with Israel appears marginal, dwarfed by the scale and intensity of the Hamas-Israel war further south.

The fighting has stayed within a roughly 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) radius of either side of the demarcation line, with at least 13 people killed since last Saturday.

Yet this barely populated swathe of mountainous terrain could be the launching pad of a regional war, drawing in a myriad of actors, including Iran and the United States.

Hezbollah – an Iran-backed armed group that is also a regional force in its own right – dominates south Lebanon. It also operates alongside Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria, where the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights separates Israel from Tehran-aligned fighters.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian on Monday raised the specter of expanded fighting after talking to counterparts in Tunisia, Malaysia and Pakistan.

“Underlined the need to immediately stop Zionist crimes & murders in Gaza & to dispatch humanitarian aid,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“I stressed that time is running out for political solutions; probable spread of war in other fronts is approaching unavoidable stage,” he added.

It is a scenario that has gained more currency across a restive Arab and Muslim world as images of dead Palestinian civilians, including more than 500 children, flash on television screens and social media posts, reflecting a civilian death toll rapidly rising at a rate not seen in decades.

Meanwhile, the US has deployed two of its largest aircraft carriers — including the nuclear-powered USS Gerald Ford — to the eastern Mediterranean. It is an ominous sign of what may come if the situation on the Lebanon-Israel border combusts into a full-scale war.

Skirmishes escalate into serious clashes

For most of last week, the skirmishes were a low-rumbling exchange of fire between Lebanon-based militants and Israeli forces.

Palestinian militants fired the first shots from Lebanon, hours after Hamas’ surprise attack of October 7, launching rockets that were intercepted over Israel. Israel responded by shooting into Lebanese territory, including at Hezbollah positions. Hezbollah then launched missiles into Israel’s northern-most territory. That cycle repeated for several days.

By Friday morning, three Israeli soldiers and three Hezbollah fighters had been killed in the exchanges across the border.

But then the tit-for-tat escalated. At around 5 p.m. on Friday, Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah, who was also a south Lebanon native, was killed in an Israeli strike that wounded at least six other international journalists.

Israel said it was investigating the incident. In an Israeli military statement that was released around the time of the attack, it said it was shelling Lebanese territory with artillery fire in response to an explosion at a border fence in Israel’s Hanita, near to where Abdallah was killed.

The situation at the border spiraled further the next day.

On Saturday, Hezbollah launched a series of strikes at Israeli targets in the disputed Shebaa farms, which was followed by a barrage of artillery fire from Israel. On Sunday, the Lebanese militants fired at several Israeli locations at the border, killing one civilian and one soldier. Earlier that day, Israel turned the 4-kilometer area near its border into a closed military zone.

In Hezbollah’s statements on Sunday, the group said its cross-border attacks were in response to Abdallah’s killing and the killing of two elderly civilians in Sunday’s Israeli attacks in the border region.

Unlike low-tech rockets that are fired by Palestinian fighters in Lebanon — and are mostly intercepted by Israel — Hezbollah uses Russian anti-tank guided missiles known as Kornets.

Every Hezbollah attack over the last week was followed by a video released by the group that demonstrated precision. They were direct hits that seemed to blindside Israeli troops seen in the videos.

These videos are key to the psychological warfare that underpins this flare-up. It shows clearly how much more sophisticated the group’s arsenal had become since its last conflict with Israel in 2006, when it relied largely on inaccurate Soviet-era Katyusha rockets.

Back then, the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war ended with no clear victor or vanquished. At the time, many parts of Lebanon were devastated, but Hezbollah foiled Israel’s ultimate plan to dismantle the group, dealing a blow to Israel’s aura of invincibility.

In the intervening years, Hezbollah has dramatically built up its arsenal, and its fighters are far more experienced in urban warfare. They’re battle-hardened from fighting in Syria against ISIS, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, and armed opposition groups that tried to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly evoked a hypothetical scenario where his fighters would conduct an incursion into northern Israel in case war erupted between Lebanon and Israel again. Israel and US officials have repeatedly expressed alarm about Hezbollah’s precision-guided missiles, which were used against Israel for the first time this month.

Nasrallah has also said that his group boasts more than 100,000 fighters and reservists. Historically, Israeli and US officials have been reluctant to dismiss claims by the paramilitary leader, who oversaw a surge in the size and power of the group in the 32 years of his leadership.

Yet Nasrallah, known for his fiery televised speeches, has been noticeably silent since October 7. Observers don’t know what to make of this. In addresses he delivered in recent months, Nasrallah lauded the growing alliance between his group and Hamas, though they were on opposite sides of Syria’s bloody civil war.

He has also indicated that the loose rules of engagement between Hezbollah and Israel may soon change, with the Lebanon-based group possibly intervening on behalf of the Palestinians.

This has led many observers to speculate that Hezbollah may expand its fight against Israel in case of the much-anticipated Israeli ground invasion into Gaza.

Yet what happens from now is anyone’s guess. World leaders will continue to watch this border with bated breath.

Ibrahim Dahman and his family entered the hotel room and looked out toward the blue of the Mediterranean Sea. His two young sons were excited to spot a swimming pool below their window, but this was no vacation.

“But they don’t strike… they don’t strike hotels, right?” Dahman’s 11-year-old son, Zaid, asked nervously, as the family took the elevator down a short time later.

Exchanging an apprehensive look with his 30-year-old wife, Rasha, Dahman replied: “They don’t strike hotels, no.” A gentle white lie from a father trying to reassure his boys as the explosions, once distant, seemed now to be getting closer.

But for Dahman, this time feels different. While he wants to continue his work telling the stories of people in Gaza, he is now grappling with the reality of keeping his family safe at the same time.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians, including Dahman and his family, have been caught in the escalating crisis. Unlike across the border in Israel, there are no warning sirens, bomb shelters or high-tech Iron Dome defense system to intercept projectiles in Gaza.

Dahman has not stopped working since he was awoken by “the sounds of continuous rocket fire” from Gaza when Hamas launched its initial attack just over a week ago, signaling the start of what US President Joe Biden has called the largest massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust.

Situated in the al-Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City, the office has been something of a safe haven for Dahman. It was in this area he began his career in journalism in 2005, when he covered the Israeli withdrawal from the coastal enclave.

The office building sits in what Dahman called a “beautiful, upscale neighborhood in which all press offices and foreign and international institutions are located.” The neighborhood was considered one of the “quiet areas.”

But by Monday, things weren’t so quiet.

Racing to his home a few minutes’ drive away, Dahman had expected to work remotely from there but, in yet another signal that this situation was different from previous fighting, “the surprise was that the house had no electricity, water, or internet.”

After hunkering down for a few hours, he began to see smoke and dust outside his apartment windows, and so he threw a few essential items – clothes, canned food, snacks and bottled water – into suitcases and the family made the short drive to a hotel.

“The evening hours began with the sounds of air raids and shelling from naval boats towards the seashore and the residential towers near the hotel,” Dahman said, adding that despite the chaos swirling around him, he “felt some comfort due to the presence of civilian families and some journalists.”

He added: “I felt somewhat safe, but danger exists throughout the Gaza Strip. There is no safety, and there is no safe area.”

Between Monday and Wednesday, he continued to look after his family while reporting the latest developments, exhausted both mentally and physically as he was only sleeping for a few hours each night – if at all.

“Thursday came and here the suffering begins,” he recalled.

Hotel management asked guests to relocate to the building’s basement due to an ongoing Israeli operation a short distance away. “It seemed that the Israeli army informed the hotel that there was a bombing,” Dahman said.

Families huddled together against the walls of the corridors downstairs, with young children sleeping or seeking comfort in their parents’ laps. In stairwells, people sat cross-legged on the floor as many anxiously typed on their cellphones, trying to get hold of friends and relatives.

Upstairs, loud booms could be heard and plumes of smoke edged closer and closer as Israeli warplanes continued to bombard the cramped enclave.

After witnessing an airstrike hit a residential tower opposite the hotel, Dahman was shocked to see one of his own extended family members being helped into the lobby by bystanders.

His father’s cousin lived in the building next to the tower that had been struck and he and his wife had been caught in the chaos as they tried to flee. His relative was clearly in shock, covered in a layer of dirt and dust, his shirt and skin torn by the blast, but he was alive.

Watching the scene unfold, Dahman knew he needed to get his family out.

“The airstrikes on the residential towers were very violent. I did not expect that I would be alive,” he explained. “These were very difficult moments because my wife is in her second month of pregnancy, and I was afraid that something bad would happen to her.”

As quickly as they could, they crammed their few possessions into their car – its back windows shattered by the blast and one of the wheels now damaged – and fled. “Seconds after we left the hotel, they fired a rocket or a barrel (bomb) that heavily damaged the entire area,” he said.

The family stayed overnight with Dahman’s sister as airstrikes continued to intensify in the streets around them.

On Friday, Israel told the 1.1 million people living in the north of the enclave to leave their homes and head south to get out of harm’s way as a possible ground incursion looms.

Dahman and his family used one of the so-called designated evacuation routes along Salah al-Deen Street to make the treacherous hour-long journey down to the city of Khan Younis.

Dahman’s immediate family made it through unscathed. While they haven’t entirely escaped the persistent airstrikes, they feel safer now that they’ve made it to a family member’s four-story house in Khan Younis, where more than 200 people, including women, children and the elderly, have sought refuge after leaving their homes in the north behind.

The humanitarian situation has been deteriorating rapidly for days. The healthcare system is on the brink and the siege has made it impossible to get aid into a place where there is a shortage of everything.

Dahman never expected to become part of a story, but he is now one of thousands displaced by the conflict, forced to flee with his family for their lives, leaving their home, loved ones and life behind. It is thought that approximately 500,000 people have left northern Gaza for the south following the IDF’s warning on Friday, according to the latest estimates from Israel.

As thousands move to southern Gaza, the UN has warned of “a very limited capacity” awaiting them.

“There aren’t shelters available in the south in terms of the numbers that are coming. Number two, because we don’t have water ourselves. Food, yes, there’s some food in distribution sites, but we can’t get to them because of the bombardment,” Lynn Hastings, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said Sunday.

Dahman said: “This war is tougher and more difficult than all the previous wars, as I feel intense fear. I am worried about myself, my wife, and my children.”

He added that while the family has found a temporary shelter, they know it’s only a matter of time before they will need to be on the move once again.

Two people were shot dead in the Belgian capital Brussels on Monday evening in what the government described as a terrorist attack.

The suspect was still at large hours later, Belgian media reported, as authorities raised the terror alert in Brussels to its highest level.

“Horrified by the terrorist attack that claimed two victims in the heart of Brussels,” Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib posted to X.

“All necessary means must be mobilized to combat radicalism. Our thoughts go out to the victims, their families, and our police forces,” the minister added.

Following the attack, the terror threat level for Brussels was raised to 4, the highest level. Belgium as a whole was previously level 2.

The incident came as Belgium hosted Sweden in a Euro 2024 qualifier soccer game. The match was abandoned.

Police are on the streets to ensure safety, the city’s mayor Philippe Close posted on X.

“Following the shooting in Brussels, police services are mobilizing to guarantee safety in and around our capital, in collaboration with the Minister of the Interior,” Close said. “I am at the crisis center… to ensure coordination.”

Belgium’s Prime Minister Alexander De Croo posted to X: “My deepest condolences to the relatives of this cowardly attack in Brussels. I am closely following the situation, together with the Ministers of Justice and Home Affairs from [the Belgian Crisis Center]. We are monitoring the situation and ask the people of Brussels to be vigilant.”

The country’s Crisis Center also posted to X: “Tonight, a shooting took place in Brussels. There are fallen victims. Out of respect, we ask that no images or videos with relation to this incident are shared.”

The myriad tunnels under Gaza are best known as passageways used to smuggle goods from Egypt and launch attacks into Israel.

But there exists a second underground network that the Israel Defense Forces colloquially refer to as the “Gaza metro.” It’s a vast labyrinth of tunnels, by some accounts several kilometers underground, used to transport people and goods; to store rockets and ammunition caches; and house Hamas command and control centers, all away from the prying eyes of the IDF’s aircraft and surveillance drones.

Hamas in 2021 claimed to have built 500 kilometers (311 miles) worth of tunnels under Gaza, though it is unclear if that figure was accurate or posturing. If true, Hamas’ underground tunnels would be a little less than half the length of the New York City subway system.

“It’s a very intricate, very large – huge – network of tunnels on a rather small piece of territory,” said Daphne Richemond-Barak, a professor at Israel’s Reichman University and expert on underground warfare.

It’s unclear how much the tunnel network would have cost Hamas, which governs the impoverished coastal strip. The figure is likely significant, both in terms of manpower and capital.

Gaza has been under a land, sea and air blockade by Israel, as well as a land blockade by Egypt, since 2007 and is not believed to possess the type of massive machinery typically used to build tunnels deep underground. Experts say that diggers using basic tools likely burrowed deep underground to dig the network, which is wired with electricity and reinforced by concrete. Israel has long accused Hamas of diverting concrete meant for civilian and humanitarian purposes toward the construction of tunnels.

Hamas’ critics also say that the group’s massive expenditures on tunnels could have instead paid for civilian bomb shelters or early warning networks like those across the border in Israel.

The asymmetric advantage

Tunnels have been an attractive tool of warfare since medieval times. Today they offer militant groups like Hamas an edge in asymmetric warfare, negating some of the technological advantages of a more advanced military like the IDF.

What makes Hamas tunnels different from those of al Qaeda in the mountains of Afghanistan or the Viet Cong in the jungles of Southeast Asia is that it has constructed a subterranean network below one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. Nearly 2 million people live in the 88 square miles that make up Gaza City.

“It’s always difficult to deal with tunnels, don’t get me wrong, in any context, even when they are in a mountainous area, but when they are urban area, then everything is more complicated – the tactical aspects, strategic aspects, the operational aspects, and of course, the protection that you want to ensure for the civilian population,” said Richemond-Barak, who is also a senior fellow at the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare and the Modern War Institute at West Point.

Since the October 7 terror attack in Israel in which at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed, the IDF has repeatedly alleged that Hamas is hiding inside these passages “underneath houses and inside buildings populated with innocent Gazan civilians,” effectively turning them into human shields. Israeli military airstrikes have since killed at least 2,670 Palestinians, the Ministry of Health in Gaza said in a statement on Sunday.

The IDF is expected to go after the network in its forthcoming ground incursion into Gaza, as it has in recent years gone to extreme lengths to eliminate Hamas’ tunnels. Israel launched a ground assault on Gaza in 2014 to try and eliminate the underground passages.

On Friday, Israel warned about 1.1 million living in Gaza to move south ahead of its likely operation, according to the United Nations. Critics said such an order was impossible to carry out on short notice in the middle of a war zone. The top UN human rights official said the evacuation call “defies the rules of war and basic humanity.”

Moving civilians out of Gaza City would help make it safer to eliminate tunnels, but such operations will be dangerous, Richemond-Barak said.

The IDF can either render the tunnels temporarily unusable or destroy them. According to Richemond-Barak, bombing the underground passages is typically the most efficient way to eliminate them, but such strikes can impact civilians.

What is clear is that technology alone won’t be enough to stop the subterranean threat.

Israel spent billions of dollars attempting to secure the border with a smart system that boasts advanced sensors and subterranean walls, yet Hamas was still able to launch its October 7 assault by land, air and sea.

Richemond-Barak said a holistic approach is required, one that employs visual intelligence, border monitoring and even asking civilians to keep an eye out for anything suspect.

“There is no foolproof solution to deal with a tunnel threat,” Richemond-Barak said. “There’s no Iron Dome for tunnels.”

Conditions in Gaza have deteriorated dangerously, experts say, with serious shortages of clean water and food as tens of thousands of Palestinians attempt to flee crippling airstrikes and an Israeli ground offensive.

Israel’s military said Saturday its forces are readying for the next stages of the war, including “combined and coordinated strikes from the air, sea and land” in response to the unprecedented October 7 terrorist attacks by the Islamist militant group Hamas, which controls the enclave.

Further escalation of the long-running conflict increasingly risks spilling over regionally, prompting the Pentagon to order a second carrier strike group and squadrons of fighter jets to the region as a deterrence to Iran and Iranian proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“We are on the verge of the abyss in the Middle East,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned in a statement Sunday.

He issued urgent appeals to Israel and Hamas: “To Hamas, the hostages must be released immediately without conditions. To Israel, rapid and unimpeded aid must be granted for humanitarian supplies and workers for the sake of the civilians in Gaza.”

“Each one of these two objectives are valid in themselves. They should not become bargaining chips and they must be implemented because it is the right thing to do,” he said.

For days, Israel has cut off the Gaza population’s access to electricity, food and water, prompting warnings of dire humanitarian crisis.

Pope Francis on Sunday also called for the establishment of humanitarian corridors in Gaza and for the release of hostages taken by Hamas.

In over a week of bombardment, Israeli airstrikes have killed least 2,670 people in Gaza, including hundreds of children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Casualties in the besieged strip over the past eight days have now surpassed the number of those killed during the 51-day Gaza-Israel conflict in 2014, a ministry spokesperson said.

A growing number of nations, global rights groups and organizations are calling on Israel to respect international rules of war, urging the protection of civilians’ lives, and not to target hospitals, schools and clinics in densely inhabited Gaza. Many families, some of whom were already internally displaced, are now crammed into an even smaller portion of the 140-square-mile territory.

Hamas rocket attacks on Israel have meanwhile continued into the weekend. A barrage on the city of Sderot saw residents being evacuated to other areas of the country on Sunday.

Calls for Israel to respect rules of war

Gaza is suffering shortages of every kind, including body bags, say aid groups. Internet access, through which residents communicate their plight to the world, is shrinking. Food stocks are dwindling, the World Food Programme has warned.

Hospitals have run out of painkillers and many Gazans are beginning to suffer from severe dehydration due to lack of drinking water, according to medical NGO Medecins sans Frontieres.

“The situation is very difficult…today for two hours we searched for drinkable water—even drinkable water is not available anymore,” said Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaiseeb, the organization’s deputy medical coordinator in Gaza. “There is food. No electricity, no pumping of normal water as well, the hospitals are barely working… They are bombing all day. We don’t know what’s going to [happen] tomorrow and where we are going.”

Aid has been piling up on the Egyptian side of Rafa crossing, the only entrypoint into Gaza that Israel does not control.

But so far, the crossing appears nonfunctional; Egypt says that airstrikes on the Gaza side have made roads inoperable, and Jordan has said it is seeking assurance that aid convoys will not be targeted by Israeli warplanes.

Footage on Sunday showed aid deliveries continuing to arrive into Egypt’s El-Arish stadium in preparation to enter Gaza once the Rafah crossing is open.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised Sunday that “Rafah will be open,” after meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi

“We’re putting in place with the UN, with Egypt, Israel, with others, the mechanism by which to get the assistance in and to get it to people who need it,” Blinken said.

He also announced the appointment of former US Ambassador to Turkey David Satterfield to help coordinate US aid efforts. Satterfield will be “on the ground tomorrow” in Israel, he said.

El-Sisi said on Sunday during his meeting with Blinken that Israel’s response to the deadly Hamas attack had gone beyond its right to self-defense.

It “amounts to the collective punishment of the Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million Palestinians,” he said.

His criticism echoed that of several rights groups, with Amnesty International and Norwegian Refugee Council describing the forced relocation of civilians as a violation of international law earlier in the week.

Mass evacuation ahead of Israel’s expected escalation

The clock is ticking for residents fleeing south through the battered streets of Gaza after the Israeli military told civilians to leave northern areas of the densely populated strip. More than half of Gaza’s 2 million residents live in the northern section that Israel said should evacuate, or risk danger in its next phase of retaliation.

“I cannot stress more than enough to say now is the time for Gazans to leave.”

Civilians packed into cars, taxis, pickup trucks and donkey-pulled carts. Roads were filled with snaking lines of vehicles strapped with suitcases and mattresses. Those without other options walked, carrying what they could.

Videos showed explosions and bodies along a Gaza evacuation route on Friday. Several bodies, including those of children, could be seen on on a flat-bed trailer that appears to have been used to evacuate.

The IDF on Sunday denied that the Israeli military was involved in the strike on Salah Al-Deen street, suggesting an explosive device had been planted on the route.

It appears from footage the IDF has viewed that “the explosion came from beneath,” he said.

Several UN agencies have warned that mass evacuation under siege conditions will lead to disaster, and that the most vulnerable Gazans, including the sick, elderly, pregnant and disabled, will not be able to relocate at all.

Palestine Red Crescent Society spokesperson Nebal Farsakh told that although they had been notified by Israel to evacuate Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, they did not have the means to do so.

“We have around 300 patients at the hospital. Some of them are in the intensive care unit. We have children in incubators. We can’t evacuate them,” Farsakh said.

What would a ground invasion look like?

Israel, which has massed troops and military equipment at the border with Gaza, said its ramped up offensive will feature hundreds of thousands of reservists and encompass “a wide range of operational offensive plans.”

In addition to widespread airstrikes, Israel’s army is preparing troops for an “expanded arena of combat,” the IDF said in a statement on Saturday. The preparations have placed “an emphasis on significant ground operations.”

The IDF hit 250 military targets mostly in northern Gaza on Sunday, it said in a statement. It claimed to have killed Muetaz Eid, Commander of the Hamas Southern District of National Security, during the strikes. Eid was located through intelligence from the IDF and the Israel Security Agency, the statement said. Hamas did not immediately comment on the IDF report.

Complicating an Israeli offensive in Gaza are up to 150 hostages captured by Hamas – including soldiers, civilians, women, children and the elderly – and who are being held in the crowded enclave.

IDF spokesperson Conricus said it is a priority to get hostages out of Gaza, despite the difficulty that a dense urban area adds to the fight.

Pointing to the “elaborate network of tunnels” that Hamas has, he said hostages “are most likely held underground in various locations.”

“Fighting will be slow. Advances will be slow, and we will be cautious,” he said.

He also showed small booklet which he said contains tactics used by Hamas to kidnap and torture people.

“This was found on the body of one of the terrorists. This is a booklet, okay? This booklet is an instruction guide how to go into civilian premises, into a kibbutz, a city, a moshav… how to break in. And first thing, what do you do when you find the citizens? You torture them,” Herzog said.

In a first clear and stark denouncement, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday condemned the Hamas attacks, saying the militant group’s actions “do not represent the Palestinian people.”

Abbas “affirmed his rejection of the killing of civilians on both sides and called for the release of civilians, prisoners and detainees on both sides,” during a phone call with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday, the official Palestinian press agency WAFA reported.

He also warned against forcing Palestinians out of Gaza, which he said would represent “a second catastrophe for the Palestinian people,” according to WAFA.

Regional concerns grow

As Israel battles Hamas, it also faces the threat of a wider conflict on new fronts.

Israel has said it is ready in case there are attacks from neighboring Lebanon or Syria.

Syria’s military reported late Saturday that an “air aggression” by Israel, originating from the Mediterranean Sea, damaged Aleppo International Airport and rendered it nonoperational.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Mission to the UN warned on Saturday that if Israel does not stop its attacks on Gaza, “the situation could spiral out of control and ricochet far-reaching consequences.”

The comments came as Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian met with Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Doha, Qatar on Saturday, according to Iran’s official news agency IRNA. The agency said it was the first official meeting between Iranian officials and Haniyeh since surprise Hamas attack on Israel that Hamas called Al-Aqsa storm.

Hostilities with neighboring Lebanon are being closely monitored internationally, as an escalation could draw the powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah paramilitary group into the conflict.

For days, Lebanon-based Palestinian militants have launched rockets into Israel, leading to Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory, including Hezbollah positions. Hezbollah has fired back at Israeli border positions with precision-guided missiles.

Mourners also gathered Saturday for the funeral of Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah in southern Lebanon after he was killed when Israel fired artillery into the area where he and other journalists were on Friday. The IDF said it was reviewing the circumstances surrounding the incident on the Lebanese border.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is gathering world leaders in Beijing this week for a high profile forum with a clear set of goals: laud China’s role backing economic development over the past decade and project its expanding ambitions as an alternative global leader to the United States.

That bid takes on heightened significance as renewed conflict in Israel and Gaza threatens to trigger broader instability in the Middle East, a region where the US is the traditional power broker, but China has been growing its influence and efforts to play a role in peace.

Leaders, representatives and delegations from more than 140 countries, including in the Middle East and many Global South nations, are expected to meet in the Chinese capital for the carefully choreographed two-day gathering – China’s first time hosting an international event at this level since emerging this past January from nearly three years of pandemic isolation.

Beijing has been remarkably close-lipped in the lead-up to the event, an important milestone for Xi marking a decade since the launch of his signature foreign policy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), hailed by officials as China’s “most important diplomatic event” of the year.

Officials only announced the dates six days before the forum’s start, and did not release a list of attendees in advance as of Monday morning, a day before the event.

Likely missing from that guest list are top leaders from major Western powers, at least some of whom, a Chinese state-run media outlet earlier this year implied, weren’t invited.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whose on-going assault on Ukraine is another major point of global instability and division, is expected to attend. The last time he was in Beijing was for the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in early 2022. Three weeks later, Russian tanks and troops poured over Ukraine’s border.

The forum will signal the future path for Xi’s Belt and Road, which for the past 10 years funneled hundreds of billions in Chinese financing toward building ports, bridges, highways and power plants largely in poorer countries across the world, expanding China’s global influence along the way.

But Chinese officials, experts say, will also use the gathering of friendly countries to pitch a much broader vision for how China wants to impact the world, as it promotes an alternative to the liberal world order championed by democratic countries.

“Xi’s message is clear – the current, US-led order has failed to bring either peace or prosperity to many developing nations, and a new order is necessary to tackle today’s issues and anticipate tomorrow’s challenges,” said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank in Washington.

“He wants to be seen as being capable of convening world powers in Beijing and (of demonstrating that) when he hosts a summit there is a deliverable outcome … (including a) very clear path forward to discuss reforming global governance,” he added.

China’s way

Xi’s bid comes at a critical time for Beijing.

It faces stark economic challenges at home with a spiraling property crisis, high unemployment and slowing growth – and sees its rise increasingly threatened by what it believes are American efforts to contain and stifle its development.

The Chinese leader is also grappling with apparent turmoil in the top echelons of the ruling Communist Party. Beijing abruptly replaced several senior officials including its foreign minister without explanation this summer. Its defense minister has not been seen in public since August amid reports suggesting he is under investigation.

Winning backing for China’s global leadership from a broad swath of developing and emerging economies is key to Xi’s strategy to push back against perceived international threats, analysts say.

This week in Beijing Xi will be surrounded by nations like Russia, who have grown increasingly aligned with China – especially as Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has drawn the US and its allies closer together, while Moscow and Beijing have looked to strengthen alternative groups like BRICS and make them more explicitly anti-West.

In an interview with Chinese state broadcaster CCTV broadcast Sunday ahead of the event, Putin lavished praise on Xi, hailing his “unique approach of dealing with other countries” that has shown no imposition or coercion, but rather providing others with opportunities.

In a sweeping more than 13,000-word policy document released last month ahead of the forum, Beijing laid out the broad strokes of its international vision, warning the world “is at risk of plunging into confrontation and even war.” China “lights the path forward” with a plan to “promote solidarity and cooperation among all countries,” it said, while providing limited specifics.

The pitch appears at odds with accusations from countries in China’s region that it is itself threatening regional stability with its aggression, including in the disputed South China Sea – claims Beijing rejects.

During the forum, Chinese leaders will likely cite the latest outbreak of conflict between Israel and militant Islamist group Hamas as another example of “how the various Chinese ideas and proposed principles may help better address regional security challenges,” according to Li Mingjiang, an associate professor of international relations at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. Officials have made similar suggestions throughout the conflict in Ukraine.

But the latest conflict may also spotlight limits to China’s ability to play a role in its resolution.

Israel last week expressed “deep disappointment” with Beijing’s response to the conflict, which follows a terror attack on Israeli territory by Hamas, in particular its failure to explicitly condemn Hamas terrorism in its statements.

Most actors in the region may not see China as a player that can fundamentally address these issues, as this remains “an early moment in China’s Middle East presence,” Jonathan Fulton, an Abu Dhabi-based senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, said.

Even as Beijing may look to pitch its larger ambitions on the world stage this week, many delegations attending this week’s event will be more interested in enhancing their economic partnerships with the world’s second largest economy and getting a sense for how China will direct funding into the Belt and Road Initiative in the years to come.

Some governments in the Middle East are “laser focused” on how cooperation with China and the BRI can facilitate development, according to Fulton. “There’s a massive appetite for that in the Middle East.”

Belt and Road ahead

Ten years on, the initiative itself has a mixed legacy.

It has propelled construction of much-needed infrastructure and development projects in poorer countries across the world to the tune of what Beijing has said is “up to one trillion dollars of investment.”

It’s also pushed other powers to beef up their own efforts. Last month, the US and its partners pitched the latest of those rival programs on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi.

But Belt and Road projects have also sparked backlash over accusations of lax environmental and labor standards – and of saddling some countries with unmanageable levels of debt, an issue now compounded by a shifting financial environment in the wake of the pandemic and war in Ukraine.

A report from the Boston University Global Development Policy Center released earlier this month found that Chinese development finance projects carry significantly higher risks to biodiversity and to Indigenous lands than projects financed by the World Bank.

Overseas development finance from China’s two major development banks has also decreased significantly since a peak in 2016, the report’s data show.

China has pushed back on criticisms of the initiative, but also signaled ahead of the forum that there will be a shift to environmentally friendly, better-vetted projects in the years ahead.

The next stage of BRI will continue to create “high-quality” projects that can “better benefit people in partner counties,” Cong Liang, a top official with China’s National Development and Reform Commission, said at a press conference last week.

The shift will likely also mean a decrease in funding for big-ticket infrastructure projects, which have already been on the decline in recent years, experts say.

“This also reflects the reality that the Chinese economy is slowing down – China doesn’t have as many resources to squander along BRI as it did during the first decade,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.

Ten years on, Chinese decision makers are becoming “more selective and more calculating” about the benefits of their financing, she said. “Now they have new focuses.”