In southern Israel’s Negev desert, residents of the Bedouin village of Khirbet Karkur live in tents and metal-clad makeshift homes. Not far from the border with Gaza, they hear the sounds of the war unfolding next door.

There are some 300,000 Arab Bedouins living in the Negev. As Muslim-Arab citizens of Israel, many are still struggling to find their place in Israeli society 75 years after the Jewish state was established, despite many of them serving in the military.

The war with Hamas has only deepened that sense of uncertainty. Bedouins living near the Gaza border feel they have been doubly victimized: first by being within striking distance of Hamas rockets with minimal protection, and second by state marginalization that has only grown worse since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.

The village of Khirbet Karkur is not recognized by the Israeli state. Residents live a semi-nomadic life, in an open desert area and in dwellings that aren’t connected to the Israeli electricity grid or water supply. Like many other unrecognized villages, it has no schools or hospitals, and residents say that women have been forced to give birth in cars on the way to hospital because ambulances struggle to reach the town.

Villagers say the rest of the country had all but forgotten them – until last week, when a swarm of journalists travelled along dirt roads to the dusty village to mark the release of 52-year-old Farhan Al-Qadi from Hamas captivity. Khirbet Karkur is his hometown.

Al-Qadi was abducted along with 250 others by Hamas-led militants on October 7. He was taken from Kibbutz Magen, where he was working as a security guard, and was rescued last week from a tunnel in Gaza by Israeli security forces, the Israeli military said.

Speaking to reporters the day after his rescue, Al-Qadi said he wishes “that the war ends for all Palestinian and Israeli families.”

Israeli officials have said that Al-Qadi’s kidnapping and release shows that all its citizens – Jews and Muslims alike – are equally vulnerable to terrorism, adding that the state is committed to securing the freedom of every citizen.

Israel’s Bedouin community is considered a subset of the country’s Arab population, which makes up about 20% of the total population in the country of 10 million.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Al-Qadi the day he was released, and according to a transcript supplied by the Prime Minister’s Office, said: “I want you to know that we do not forget anyone, just as we did not forget you. We are committed to returning everyone, without exception.”

In November, the prime minister visited the IDF’s so-called Bedouin battalion in the Negev, a unit mostly made up of Muslim Bedouin soldiers, saying that “Jewish and Bedouin commanders are standing shoulder-to-shoulder,” and that “our partnership is the future of us all against these savages.”

But some Bedouin leaders and residents of Al-Qadi’s village say the state is celebrating his rescue without taking proper action to address the community’s decades-long needs.

Waleed Alhwashla, a Bedouin member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, said that while Netanyahu and his coalition portray Israeli Arabs as equal to Jewish citizens, the reality on the ground is starkly different.

‘Displacement and segregation’

The semi-nomadic Bedouin group is predominantly tribal, with family trees that extend into Gaza and Egypt’s northern Sinai. Many identify distinctly as Bedouin Israelis, while others see themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Unlike most Jewish Israelis, Bedouins are not required to serve in the Israeli military, though some choose to do so anyway, often in specialized units operating in the Negev desert.

Bedouins who join the military receive support from the state to complete high school studies, Hebrew courses and driving lessons. Some also join up to protect the land they live in, Israeli media reported, especially after October 7.

Most Bedouins live in the 4,700-square-mile Negev, which before Israel’s founding in 1948 was home to some 92,000 Bedouins. Only 11,000 remained after the Arab-Israeli war that followed.

Today, over 300,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel live in the Negev, including more than 80,000 who reside in unrecognized Bedouin villages, according to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. Many of those settlements predate Israel’s founding.

These villages are often situated next to waste dumps, with little access to water and electricity, said Fayez Sohaiban, a relative of Al-Qadi and former mayor of the nearby Bedouin city of Rahat.

“People are suffocating,” he said.

Residents of unrecognized villages regularly face demolition orders for their buildings due to lack of building permits, they say.

Demolitions have occurred on a “weekly” basis this year, according to the rights group Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality (NCF). In the first half of 2024 alone, 2,007 Bedouin structures were demolished by the state despite a temporary halt in the early months of the war, the group said, up from 1,767 demolitions during the same period of the previous year.

Bedouin residents and leaders say their plight has worsened since the war started.

In May, Amnesty International said that Israel had demolished 47 homes in the unrecognized village of Wadi al-Khalil “without proper consultation or compensation,” adding that Israeli authorities have over the years “employed numerous pretexts to push for the displacement and segregation of the Bedouin community in the Negev,”  from expanding highways and industrial zones, to establishing forests for the Jewish National Fund and the designation of military zones. A report by the NCF said in the case of Wadi al-Khalil, the demolition was justified by the Israeli state as necessary for the extension of Highway 6, “a project not yet scheduled for construction nor budgeted by the state, despite the humanitarian crisis it caused.”

Bedouin-Israeli communities are also among the poorest in the country, with close to 80% of Bedouin children living below the poverty line, NCF said, citing data from Israel’s National Insurance Institute.

Some villagers are afraid to criticize the government, citing fear of retribution by the authorities, which they say has increased since October 7. Villagers say authorities closely monitor their social media for any signs of support for Palestinians in Gaza, or criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war.

United Nations officials have repeatedly called on Israel to stop demolishing homes and property belonging to the Bedouin community.

Victims of October 7

When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 22 Bedouins were killed, seven of them by rocket fire that fell onto unrecognized villages, according to Alhwashla. A total of eight Bedouins were kidnapped, according to the Hostage Families Forum. Three have been freed, one is believed to be dead in Gaza, one was killed by IDF fire while attempting to flee, and three remain in Hamas captivity, according to the forum.

In April, when Israel and Iran traded direct fire for the first time, a 7-year-old Bedouin girl in the Negev was severely wounded by shrapnel from an intercepted missile, according to Israeli officials.

Last week, residents of unrecognized Bedouin villages filed a petition with the High Court of Justice “demanding that the state provide protective measures against rocket and missile fire,” according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a partner to the petitioners.

“Approximately 85,000 residents of these unrecognized villages lack any means of protection against rocket, missile, or drone attacks,” the association said, adding that residents have since October 7 been forced to rely on “makeshift protective measures, such as sheltering under bridges, digging trenches, or finding narrow crevices in the ground.”

“These villages are without sirens, Iron Dome coverage, or any formal state-regulated protection, due to their unrecognized status,” the association said, citing the petition.

Still, Bedouin communities feel that such efforts have done little to alleviate their longstanding hardships.

Despite their Israeli citizenship, they feel underrepresented, neglected and that their plight has even worsened as the war grinds on.

“We hold the Israeli passport and Israeli ID card. We live in this country and respect the law, so we must be treated the same way Jews are treated,” he said.

Xi Jinping had a clear aim as he hosted delegates from more than 50 African countries for a major summit in Beijing this week: proving beyond doubt that China is the continent’s premier foreign partner.

The Chinese leader made his case with ceremony on Thursday when, flanked by dozens of African leaders and the UN secretary general in the Great Hall of the People, he vowed to elevate ties between China and the continent to an “all-weather community with a shared future” – a status that Beijing reserves for its staunchest diplomatic allies.

He also made a raft of promises to the continent, to be fulfilled over the next three years: more than $50 billion in financial support; the creation of one million jobs; tens of millions in food and military aid – while vowing to “deepen cooperation with Africa in industry, agriculture, infrastructure, trade and investment.”

Leaders including South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, Kenya’s William Ruto and Nigeria’s Bola Tinubu assembled in the Chinese capital this week for the three-day forum that Beijing hailed as its largest diplomatic gathering in years.

Xi’s bid to African governments comes as China appears to be reining in its previously free-flowing funding for Africa’s development – amid its own economic slowdown and criticism its lending there had helped to saddle countries with unsustainable debt.

Now, other powers like the United States are ramping up their own efforts to boost ties with the resource-rich continent, as they seek to counter China’s political influence and secure access to critical resources key to powering the green energy transition.

The three-yearly forum on China-Africa cooperation, which wrapped Friday, was a key opportunity for Xi and his officials to telegraph their commitment to the continent, whose backing has only grown in importance for Beijing in the face of its mounting friction with the West.

Here are the main takeaways from Xi’s pitch to the continent this week.

End of the infrastructure drive?

Xi and Chinese officials appeared keen to show that Chinese investment, including in African infrastructure, was not over – even as data show Chinese lending for Africa’s development and big-ticket infrastructure has fallen substantially in recent years.

The Chinese leader announced a commitment to back 30 infrastructure connectivity projects across unspecified countries and ambitions for “a network of land-sea links.” He said China would launch 30 clean energy projects, seen as part of a push from Beijing to make Africa’s market a destination for its green tech like solar panels and electric vehicles that now face tariffs in the US and Europe.

Deals cut in a procession of bilateral meetings this week also included infrastructure. China, Zambia and Tanzania inked a memorandum of understanding to “revitalize” the existing Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority line on Wednesday, and Nigeria and China referenced developing the West African country’s “transportation, ports and free trade zones,” in a joint statement.

However, such projects and China’s overall pledge of roughly $50 billion in financial support for the continent, while heftier than that of the last forum in 2021, was still less robust than those of the previous decade, observers said.

“It is not insignificant, but if you look at the details, it is not as striking as it used to be,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, noting that this amount would be spread across many countries and a number of areas of cooperation from health to green technology.

“It also means the funding for hard infrastructure will be reduced across the board. There might be a few major projects, but the more funding they take, the less there will be for other things,” she said.

African country leaders had arrived in China seeking seeking investment, trade, and support industrializing their raw commodity sectors to create jobs. They are expected to be closely watching for follow-through on Beijing’s wide-ranging promises in the coming years, with analysts saying fulfillment of past commitments have been difficult to track.

A debt crisis loomed large

This year’s gathering also played out under the shadow of a debt crisis across a number of African countries, which have struggled under heavy foreign debt, including from Chinese loans, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic – and raised questions about China’s role in fueling the issue.

Analysts have largely debunked earlier “debt trap” claims that Beijing was purposefully seeking to indebt countries in order to gain leverage over their assets, as it lent toward the construction of highways, rail lines and power plants across Africa under Xi’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative.

African leaders have also pushed back on the premise while in Beijing, with South Africa’s Ramaphosa rejecting the “notion that when China (invests), it is with an intention of, in the end, ensuring that those countries end up in a debt trap or in a debt crisis” in comments to reporters.

China is also not seen by observers to be the main cause of African debt distress in most cases, with debt to its lenders making up a comparatively small portion of the continent’s overall public debt.

But the influx of Chinese loans increased the debt burden, and while Beijing has defended its lending practices and its efforts to ease debt repayment, observers suggest it has moved too slowly or been inflexible in cases helping countries that are heavily indebted to it get relief.

These realities – along with China’s own economic slowdown – are seen to have reduced its appetite for such lending. Even before the pandemic, Chinese lenders had already been slashing funding for the big-scale infrastructure projects and touting a transition to so-called “small yet beautiful” investments, with smaller budgets and environmental or social impact.

Xi highlighted such projects while laying out Beijing’s plan for supporting the region in the coming years, but did not address the debt shouldered by countries in his public remarks.

Competing visions

Instead, the Chinese leader reached back into history to paint the West as the driver of challenges both for China and for Africa – part of what observers say is Beijing’s effort to portray the continent as firmly on its side when it comes to its broader geopolitical rivalry with the US.

China, Africa and other developing nations have for decades “been endeavoring to redress the historical injustices” of Western modernization, Xi told visiting delegations, in an apparent allusion to colonialism and exploitative practices in centuries past.

Now, Xi predicted, China would, along with African countries, “set off a wave of modernization in the Global South.”

Analysts say Beijing sees the continent’s backing as crucial to Xi’s aim of positioning China as a champion of the Global South – and an alternative global leader to the US.

Playing up that backing was also a likely motivation behind China’s elevation of diplomatic ties with attending African countries to a “strategic” level and its designation of the “all-weather China-Africa community with a shared future for the new era,” observers say.

The US and its Group of Seven (G7) allies have launched their own effort to fund infrastructure in developing countries, with US officials saying African countries should have “choices” when it comes to their partnerships.

Noting that “more countries” were increasing attention on ties with African nations, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday said Beijing “welcomes” such support for the continent – as long as it’s not done with a “condescending approach.”

Visiting leaders at the summit also rebuffed the idea of competition defining the relationship. Speaking on the summit’s sidelines, Senegal’s Foreign Minister Yassine Fall said that there would always be global competition, but noted that “Africans today are saying that China is on our side.”

African country leaders, however, are unlikely to be willing to choose between Washington and Beijing.

“Overall (at the forum), the African side created the impression that China remains pivotal,” said Paul Nantulya, a senior China specialist at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington.

“But this does not mean that they will ditch the US and others. They clearly do not want to isolate themselves from opportunities and multiple engagements and partnerships,” he said.

Brazil’s Center for Research and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents (Cenipa) said on Friday that a preliminary report into the August crash of a Voepass airliner showed icing detectors had been activated on the ATR aircraft.

According to a Cenipa official, the plane’s airframe icing button was activated at least three times during the flight, while cockpit recordings showed the copilot said there was “a lot of icing.”

The ATR-72 aircraft from local carrier Voepass swirled out of control before plunging to the ground on Aug. 9, killing all 62 on board.

Cenipa said that the copilot’s comment indicated that the plane’s de-icing system might have failed, but said that still needed to be confirmed.

According to Cenipa, investigations into the crash will probably last for over a year.

The preliminary report on the crash confirmed that the pilots had repeatedly turned the airframe de-icing system on and off.

The report gives a timeline of the flight but does not present clear causes.

“That is consistent with the flight crew being aware of airframe icing and them trying to deal with it using systems on board the aircraft,” said Anthony Brickhouse, a U.S. aviation safety expert.

The turboprop, bound for Sao Paulo’s international airport, had taken off from Cascavel, in the state of Parana and crashed in the town of Vinhedo, some 80 km (50 miles) northwest of Sao Paulo.

In-flight icing can “distort the flow of air over the wing and adversely affect handling qualities,” according to Federal Aviation Administration documents, triggering an airplane to “roll or pitch uncontrollably, and recovery may be impossible.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

An American activist has been shot and killed during a protest near Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian officials.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA said the activist was shot in the head during a protest in Beita, near Nablus, on Friday. She was taken to hospital, where she was pronounced dead, WAFA reported.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Marathoner Rebecca Cheptegei ran in the Paris Olympics last month. This week, her boyfriend doused her with gasoline and set her ablaze, police said — the third horrific killing of an Olympian in Kenya in recent years.

In the past three years, two other female Olympians have been killed in Iten, Kenya, about 70 miles away from where Cheptegei died. The women were killed by their significant others, authorities said, bringing international attention to a pattern of domestic violence against female athletes who live and train in Kenya’s Rift Valley region, home to some of the world’s most elite runners.

In October 2021, the body of Agnes Tirop, a rising star in distance running, was found inside her home with numerous stab wounds. She was in her running gear — a black sports bra and shorts — and likely going to a training session when her husband attacked her, authorities said.

About six months later, marathoner Damaris Mutua’s boyfriend allegedly strangled her and left a pillow over her face. He fled the country after the attack and has been a fugitive ever since, according to police.

Tirop’s husband was arrested in the coastal city of Mombasa as he allegedly tried to leave the country, the Kenyan Directorate of Criminal Investigations said at the time. He’s free on bail and his case is ongoing. He pleaded not guilty to murder but admitted to killing Tirop in an affidavit requesting bail, according to court documents.

And as yet another killing stuns the nation’s running community, activists and officials are calling for more action and resources in the ongoing fight against domestic violence.

“We must do more to combat gender-based violence in our society, which in recent years has reared its ugly head in elite sporting circles,” Kenya’s sports minister Kipchumba Murkomen said in a statement.

Deaths of female athletes spark outrage and calls for action

Cheptegei ran for Uganda, but trained in Kenya. Her father told local media that she bought land in Trans Nzoia and built a house to be near the hub of long distance training. His daughter and her boyfriend were fighting over the land shortly before the attack, Joseph Cheptegei said.

Her boyfriend, who was also burned, is being treated at a hospital in the city of Eldoret.

The deaths of the female athletes have sparked outrage and reignited calls for more action against domestic abuse. In 2022, a group of female athletes in the region formed Tirop’s Angels to educate runners about gender-based violence and engage Kenyan men and leaders on prevention efforts.

“We started Tirop’s Angels out of emotions, we were heartbroken,” Chelimo said. “We realized that female athletes are suffering, and they’re silent. They needed to know they’re not alone, and they have rights, too.”

After Cheptegei’s death, Tirop’s Angels said it was devastated to mourn yet another loss in the running community.

“Another talented athlete taken from us by the menace of gender-based violence,” the group said in a statement Thursday. “This ongoing violence must not be ignored.”

Wealth and fame make young female runners more vulnerable

All three women were working to make a mark as elite runners.

Cheptegei finished 44th in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics. Tirop had just returned from a race in Switzerland and had broken the women’s 10km record in Germany a month before she was killed. Mutua, who had just placed third at a half marathon in Angola days before her death, was a bronze medalist at the 2010 Singapore Youth Olympics.

Iten and its surrounding regions are revered training grounds for long-distance runners due to their crisp air and high altitude. Success in races overseas can mean brand sponsorships, stipends, performance bonuses and sometimes paid travel expenses for races — resources that allow runners to participate in international competitions.

This makes domestic violence especially prevalent in running communities in the region, said Chelimo, a long-distance runner who also trains in the area.

A mix of (potential) wealth, fame and a patriarchal culture — where a man is expected to be the breadwinner — leaves young, ambitious women either prey to unscrupulous men trying to get their hands on their future earnings or vulnerable to intimate partners who wish to control them, she said.

Tirop was 25, Mutua was 28 and Cheptegei was 33.

“We (society) don’t protect these young women … we don’t even give them training (to advocate for themselves) … we just expect them to run and break records. Where is the outrage? Where is the anger?” said Njeri Migwi, founder of Usikimye, an organization that provides refuge to victims of sexual- and gender-based violence across Kenya.

As part of its education efforts, Tirop’s Angels brings in experts to help young runners live well-rounded lives and provides them with tips on financial literacy, investments and relationship red flags.

But it acknowledges that a major cultural shift is needed in the region for real change to happen. The group said it’s working with local schools to educate children on forms of abuse and ensure that future generations of runners learn crucial lessons at a young age.

Domestic abuse in the region is rooted in patriarchy, an expert says

The root cause of sexual and gender-based violence in Kenya is the country’s entrenched patriarchy, which is more dominant in remote rural regions, Migwi said.

In Kenya, according to government data from 2022, more than one-third of women ages 15 to 49 have experienced physical violence by a husband, intimate partner or someone else. Married women are much more likely to have been victims of violence than those who have never been married (41% versus 20%), according to the survey.

But domestic violence is a worldwide problem.

A review of data from 2000 to 2018, covering girls and women aged 15 to 49 in 161 countries, found that 27% of ever-partnered women have experienced domestic violence.

In the United States, one in four women have experienced severe violence by a domestic partner, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Advocacy groups have described the murder of US women by men they know as “a silent epidemic.”

Residents of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, are taking stock after nine days of what they say has been the most intense and sustained Israeli military operation in their city since October 7.

Witnesses describe it as a Gaza-style campaign, with widespread destruction of infrastructure, severed water and electricity supplies, and people rationing food for fear of going outside. It has been the deadliest period in the West Bank since November, according to the UN.

The military withdrew from Jenin and Tulkarem on Friday, according to residents. But an Israeli security source said that “the overall operation in Jenin is not over, it is only a pause.”

Though the war in Gaza has attracted most attention, Israel’s military has persistently and increasingly brought unsparing military tactics to the West Bank.

Israel’s security forces on August 28 launched what they dubbed a “counterterrorism operation” in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas, in the northern West Bank. It has come to be known as Operation Summer Camps.

“We will not let terrorism in Judea and Samaria raise its head,” the head of the Israel Defense Forces, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, said during a visit to Jenin over the weekend, using the biblical names for the West Bank commonly used in Israel.

Residents say Jenin has been left transformed and scarred.

“It felt like Gaza,” 36-year-old Lina Al Amouri said by telephone from Jenin. She and her husband fled several days into the IDF incursion, but went back when they heard rumors that the operation had quieted.

“When we returned yesterday, we saw that all the streets were destroyed,” she said. “Soldiers were everywhere, continuing to bulldoze everything around them, not just the streets.”

“We heard many gunshots, and then we received news that my mother-in-law’s nephew had been shot seven times near the camp. They let him bleed until he died and prevented ambulances from reaching him.”

The IDF has previously said that it often must impede ambulances to check for militants.

Eight children killed

Nearly 700 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah and the UN, whose figures do not distinguish between militants and civilians.

Since the Israeli operation began last Wednesday, 39 Palestinians have been killed, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah reported. Among them were at least nine militants, according to public statements from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Eight children have also been killed according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

He left home on Friday to get food and attend Friday prayers. On his way back, Arafat said, he was gunned down in the street, where he lay for hours as he bled out.

The Israeli military has severely restricted access to the city since its operation began, so international media have had to rely on residents, local journalists, and social media video for independent information about the operation.

Journalists this week said that they were fired on by the Israeli military during a raid in Kafr Dan, near Jenin. Mohammed Mansour, a journalist for WAFA, was injured when the car he was driving was struck by gunfire, according to video of the aftermath and his employer.

Armored bulldozers also daily used heavy duty plows to tear up roads. The military says this is necessary to unearth improvised explosive devices planted under the tarmac. But the tactic has caused significant infrastructure damage, leaving many roads impassable.

The UN says that since October, Israeli authorities have “destroyed, demolished, confiscated, or forced the demolition” of 1,478 structures in the West Bank. Jenin’s mayor said that more than 70% of his city’s critical infrastructure has been destroyed.

While deadly ground raids in the West Bank were a regular occurrence before Hamas’ brutal October 7 attack, air strikes – though not entirely unheard of – were extremely rare. When in July 2023 Israel used a drone to launch airstrikes as part of a large operation in Jenin, it made headlines around the world. Not a single Palestinian in the West bank was killed by an air strike in the preceding three years, according to the UN.

‘Don’t play with us’

Since October, such strikes have become a near-daily occurrence. And their use has dramatically ramped up in recent weeks. The UN says that of all deaths by Israeli air strikes since October, nearly a third came in August alone.

“No place in Palestine is safe, not just Gaza,” Health Minister Majed Abu Ramadan said during a visit to Jenin on Thursday – the first time a Palestinian official visited the city since Israel’s operation began. “We witness the occupying enemy repeating the systematic destruction I saw before, targeting both human life and infrastructure.”

Brigadier General Nitzan Nuriel, who ran the counter-terrorism bureau of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office until 2012, and now serves in the reserves, said that Operation Summer Camps was launched to send a message to Israel’s adversaries.

“The message to the other side is, ‘Don’t play with us. Don’t think that if we are very much down in the south and probably we are going to be busy up in the north, we will not be able to take care of what’s going in Judea and Samaria.’”

The Israeli military, Halevi said during his visit to Jenin, will go “city to city, camp to camp, with excellent intelligence, very good operational capabilities, very strong aerial intelligence support, and above all, with very moral and determined soldiers and commanders.”

Duha Turkman, 18 years old, sheltered with her sister at an aunt’s house for a week when the operation began, too scared to go outside because of the Israeli snipers they saw on surrounding rooftops.

“We tried to conserve food as much as we could,” she said. “We were eating very little, had no water, and no electricity.”

Suddenly, on the seventh day, Israeli soldiers burst through their door, she said. A video taken by Turkman shows shrapnel pockmarking the stairwell of the house. They soon fled to an uncle’s house elsewhere in the city.

“When we look at Gaza, we realize that we have been going through this for nine days, and it is already incredibly difficult for us,” she said. “We can only imagine what the people in Gaza are enduring. The situation here mirrors Gaza with airstrikes, bulldozing, and it doesn’t seem like the situation will change anytime soon.”

At least 17 students have been killed and 14 injured following a fire in an elementary school dormitory in central Kenya.

The inferno occurred late Thursday at the Hillside Endarasha Academy in Kieni, in the country’s Nyeri county, Resila Onyango, a spokesperson for the Kenya National Police Service said. She added their bodies had been “burnt beyond recognition.”

She was unable to confirm whether the fire was under control, saying those details would be established by teams on the ground.

Kenyan President William Ruto on Friday offered his condolences. Describing the incident as “devastating news,” Ruto said “our thoughts are with the families of the children who have lost their lives in the fire tragedy at the Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri County,” in a post on X.

“I instruct relevant authorities to thoroughly investigate this horrific incident. Those responsible will be held to account,” his post continued, adding his government was “mobilizing all the necessary resources to support the affected families.”

The Kenya Red Cross also posted a statement Friday, saying it would provide “psychosocial support services to the pupils, teachers and affected families.”

The statement added that 11 children have so far been taken to hospital, with the area of the fire cordoned off by police.

Kenya Red Cross, alongside a “multi-agency response team,” is currently on the ground responding add has set up a tracing desk at the school, the statement continued.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

China is ending most foreign adoptions of its children, leaving hundreds of American and other foreign families with pending applications in limbo.

Since the early 1990s, China has sent tens of thousands of adoptees overseas – with about half arriving in the United States – as its draconian one-child policy forced many families to abandon children, especially girls and babies with disabilities.

But in recent decades, as China’s economy boomed and births slowed, international adoptions of Chinese children have declined in number. Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, they have largely been on hold.

Now the Chinese government is officially ending the program – which it said is in line with global trends, but also comes as officials try to reverse the country’s sharply declining birthrates and avert a looming demographic crisis.

China’s Foreign Ministry announced Thursday that no more Chinese children would be sent abroad for adoption. The only exceptions will be for foreigners adopting the children or stepchildren of blood relatives in China.

“This is in line with the spirit of relevant international conventions,” the ministry’s spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular news conference. “We are grateful for the desire and love of the governments and adoptive families of relevant countries to adopt Chinese children.”

The ban raises uncertainty for hundreds of American families currently in the process of adopting children from China.

The US embassy in Beijing is seeking clarification in writing from China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs on the new directive, the State Department said Thursday, according to the Associated Press.

In a phone call with US diplomats in China, Beijing said it “will not continue to process cases at any stage” other than those covered by an exception clause, AP reported.

“We understand there are hundreds of families still pending completion of their adoption, and we sympathize with their situation,” the State Department said.

More than 160,000 Chinese children have been adopted into families all over the world since China officially opened its doors to international adoption in 1992, according to China’s Children International, an international organization created by and for Chinese adoptees. About half of these children have been adopted to the US.

Between 1999 and 2023, American parents adopted 82,674 children from China, accounting for 29% of all US adoptions, according to data from the US State Department.

China suspended international adoptions in 2020 during the pandemic to “ensure the health and safety” of the children, according to a notice from the US State Department on intercountry adoptions from China at the time.

No Chinese children were sent to the US for adoption in 2021 or 2022. Last year, 16 children were adopted from China, according to the US State Department.

Beijing scrapped its decades-long and highly controversial “one child” policy after realizing the restriction had contributed to a rapidly aging population and shrinking workforce that could severely distress the country’s economic and social stability.

To arrest the falling birth rate, the Chinese government announced in 2015 that it would allow married couples to have two children. But after a brief uptick in 2016, the national birth rate has continued to fall.

Policymakers further relaxed limits on births in 2021, allowing three children, and ramped up efforts to encourage larger families, including strengthening maternity leave and offering tax deductions and other perks to families.

But those efforts have yet to see results amid changing gender norms, the high cost of living and education, and looming economic uncertainty.

“It reduced the threat of an enemy offensive. We prevented them from acting. We moved the fighting to the enemy’s territory so that [the enemy] could feel what we feel every day,” Syrskyi said, in a rare interview that offered a candid assessment of the war.

Last month, Ukrainian forces stormed into Kursk in a cross-border incursion that caught even American officials by surprise. It signaled that, despite Russia’s advantage in terms of men and armor, its military has vulnerabilities.

In what is the most detailed explanation of the rationale behind the incursion, Syrskyi outlined the key objectives of the operation: to stop Russia from using Kursk as a launchpad for a new offensive, to divert Moscow’s forces from other areas, to create a security zone and prevent cross-border shelling of civilian objects, to take prisoners of war and to boost the morale of the Ukrainian troops and the nation overall.

Speaking to Amanpour at an undisclosed location near the frontline, the general, who took over as army chief in February, said Moscow moved tens of thousands of troops to Kursk, including some of its best airborne assault troops.

And while admitting that Ukraine was under immense pressure in the area around Pokrovsk, the strategic city that has for weeks been the epicenter of war in eastern Ukraine, Syrskyi said his troops have now managed to stall the Russian advances there.

“Over the last six days the enemy hasn’t advanced a single meter in the Pokrovsk direction. In other words, our strategy is working.” he said.

“We’ve taken away their ability to maneuver and to deploy their reinforcement forces from other directions … and this weakening has definitely been felt in other areas. We note the amount of artillery shelling as well as the intensity of the offensive have decreased,” he said.

‘The frontline is my life’

Speaking to Amanpour just after inspecting the frontlines on Thursday, Syrskyi said that there’s no doubt that Ukraine is outgunned and outmanned as it tries to defend itself against the Russian aggression.

“The enemy does have an advantage in aviation, in missiles, in artillery, in the amount of ammunition they use, of course, in personnel, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles,” he said.

But Syrskyi also said the fact that Russia has such a material advantage has forced Ukraine to become smarter and more efficient in the way it’s fighting the war.

“We cannot fight in the same way as they do, so we must use, first of all, the most effective approach, use our forces and means with maximum use of terrain features, engineering structures and also, to use technical superiority,” he said, highlighting Ukraine’s advanced drone program and other home-grown high-tech weaponry.

Syrskyi was named Ukraine’s commander in chief in February, after President Volodymyr Zelensky fired Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi. He took over at a particularly difficult time for Ukraine.

The months-long delays in the delivery of US military assistance caused critical ammunition shortages.

At the same time, Ukraine was struggling to replenish its troops, exhausted and diminished after fighting Russia’s relentless offensive for two years.

Syrskyi said recruiting more soldiers was a priority. The Ukrainian government then passed a controversial mobilization law, requiring all men between 18 and 60 to register with Ukraine’s military and to carry their registration documents on them at all times – an effort to make the recruitment process more transparent and fair.

Syrskyi admitted his troops are heading to the battlefield after receiving less training than he’d like them to.

“Of course, everyone wants the level of training to be the best, so we train highly qualified professional military personnel,” he said. “At the same time, the dynamics at the front require us to put conscripted servicemen into service as soon as possible,” he added, explaining that new recruits get one month of basic military training followed by half a month to a full month of more specialized training before they are sent to fight.

Syrskyi told Amanpour that the delays in US military assistance did cause major setbacks on the battlefield and led to a slump in morale – something he admitted was still an issue.

He said he takes frequent trips to the frontlines and makes sure he spends time with his troops.

“We speak the same language … we understand each other no matter who I am talking to – whether this is an ordinary soldier, a rifleman, for example, or a brigade commander, or a battalion commander,” he said.

“I have been in this war since 2014,” he said, referring to Russia’s incursion into the Donbas 10 years ago. “In other words, the frontline is my life. We understand each other, I know all the problems that our servicemen, soldiers, and officers experience,” he added.

Syrskyi ended the candid interview by thanking Ukraine’s Western allies for their support. Switching from Ukrainian to English, he said: “Together we are stronger. Together we can win.”

Pope Francis has repeated his divisive comments that in some countries people prefer having pets to children, a message that has struck a chord with many conservatives around the world.

The idea has re-entered the American political dialogue in the wake of a resurfaced clip of now-Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance criticizing some prominent Democrats as “childless cat ladies.”

Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019 and has written about his journey to joining the Catholic Church, also sent a series of emails that called Democratic leaders “childless sociopaths” who “don’t have a direct stake in this country.”

Pope Francis, 87, who is in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, made his remarks to political leaders as part of a 12-day tour of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. He said, “You’re an example for everyone, for all the countries that maybe, and this might sound funny, these families prefer to have a cat or a little dog instead of a child.”

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo laughed at the remark with Francis turning to him and saying, “it’s true, isn’t it?”

Francis has in the past criticized couples who choose to have pets rather than children, saying this “takes away our humanity.”

He has lamented low birth rates in Europe, particularly on his doorstep in Italy, and has backed plans by three government led by Giorgia Meloni to reverse the trend.

While US President Donald Trump’s running mate and Francis may agree on the importance of having children, the pope’s approach is at odds with Trumpism when it comes to migrants and climate change.

In 2016, Francis described then presidential candidate Trump’s plan to build a wall to stop migrants the US-Mexico border as “not Christian.”