Wading through muddy floodwaters up to chest height, hundreds of people slowly make their way to safety, their belongings held high above their heads to keep them dry.

Entering the city of Feni in southeast Bangladesh, it becomes clear why it is described as the epicenter of one of the country’s worst floods in living memory. Since Wednesday night, water has inundated 11 districts, and large swathes of the city of nearly 1.5 million people are now submerged.

Bangladesh lives on its rivers and waterways — its people relying on the vital life source for fishing and farming rice paddies. The country is also well-acquainted with flooding and cyclones — especially in recent years, as scientists say human-caused climate change exacerbates extreme weather events.

But this flood took them by surprise – and people here blame officials in India.

As we waded past their homes, some people shouted, “We hate India” and “This is Indian water.”

“They opened the gate, but no information was given,” said Shoriful Islam, 29, an IT worker who returned to his hometown from the capital Dhaka to volunteer in rescue efforts.

India denied the dam release was deliberate and said excessive rain was a factor – although it conceded that a power outage and communications breakdown meant they failed to issue the usual warning to neighbors downstream.

“India used a water weapon,” Islam said. “India is taking revenge for destroying the last government.”

‘I don’t know if they’re alive’

The only way in or out of the flood zone is by boat – all the main roads are completely cut off to vehicles, and rescue efforts are being slowed by the lack of electricity and near-total communications blackout in the city.

The army and navy have been mobilized to coordinate relief operations – and a nationwide volunteering effort has sprung up in the past few days, with people arriving from Dhaka and other parts of the country to lend a hand with rescues and delivering aid.

Some of them are also returning to their hometown to search for their family members.

Volunteer Abdus Salam, 35 – who usually works as an English teacher in Dhaka – said 12 members of his family are stranded in a rural area 15 miles (25 kilometers) from the center of Feni, including his two sisters, brother, and their children.

“There’s no electricity, no gas, no internet,” he added, calling for the international community to send assistance.

Nearly 5 million people are impacted by the floods in Bangladesh, and at least 18 people have been killed – but there are fears that number could rise much higher as the flood waters recede.

In neighboring India, officials say at least 26 people have been killed, and more than 64,000 people are seeking shelter in relief camps in the Tripura region.

Not an ordinary flood

Anger is now rising among the flood victims in Bangladesh about the source of the water that flooded their homes.

Pranay Verma, India’s high commissioner to Bangladesh, told Bangladesh’s interim government an “automatic release” occurred at the dam due to high water levels, according to the interim government’s press secretary, Shafiqul Alam.

But some believe politics played a part.

“India displayed inhumanity by opening the dam without warning,” said Nahid Islam, one of the two student representatives in Bangladesh’s interim government, headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus.

Three weeks ago, Bangladesh ejected its long-standing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina after a student-led protest movement against job quotas morphed into a nationwide movement to force her out of power when she ordered a bloody crackdown, killing hundreds of people.

Hasina fled by helicopter to India on August 5, after tens of thousands of people marched on the capital and her residence. During her 15 years in power, Hasina formed strong ties with India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is now serving a rare third term.

After her ouster, reports emerged of reprisal attacks against people viewed as loyal to Hasina’s party – many of them Hindus – which sparked major concern in neighboring Hindu-majority India.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in statement Thursday that it was “factually not correct” to blame the flooding on water released from Dumbur dam.

It said flooding in Bangladesh was “primarily” due to water flowing from large catchment areas on the Gumti River, downstream from the dam.

“Floods on the common rivers between India and Bangladesh are a shared problem inflicting sufferings to people on both sides, and requires close mutual cooperation towards resolving them,” the statement said.

‘They’re very scared’

As the diplomatic row builds, rescue teams are working around the clock in the flood zone – where every rescue operation is a huge logistical challenge.

What would usually be a four-hour drive from Dhaka is double that on the gridlocked roads as rescue workers and volunteers try to access the flood region from all over the country. Boats are hard to come by – so many families arrive to retrieve their relatives but then have no way to reach them.

“I’m helpless because I don’t have a boat,” said Yasin Arafat, 24, who came from Dhaka to try to reach his father, mother, grandmother and younger brother.

He has heard there are 35 families clinging to a rooftop in his village, including two pregnant women. But it’s a three-hour boat ride from the city and he can’t find a rescue boat to take him there.

“They have no water, no food, and they’re very scared,” he said. “In the last 48 hours, I haven’t had any news.”

Even when people can source a boat, there are sections of the city on higher ground – including the railway track – where the vessels need to carried manually by dozens of volunteers.

The main highway through Feni has now turned into its main waterway – and is being used as the central route for people to make it to dry land.

Some of the people able to walk out are wading through waist- or chest-high muddy water – risking water-borne diseases, snakes or drowning to try to reach safety.

For many others in the deepest parts of the flood, it’s impossible to try walking – so they are stranded in villages several kilometers from the city center. Even the boat journey to these areas is risky – navigating through dense trees and marshes risks clogging the engine or hitting underwater obstacles invisible in the murky water.

Our boat passes by a government building being used as a rescue center, where an estimated 500 people are sheltering.

Other multi-story buildings – including a flooded hospital and several schools – are being used as a temporary home for those living in single-story shacks that are now underwater. They are physically safe but lacking food, water and medicine.

Peyara Akther, 36, is trying to rescue her sister Tanzina and her sick newborn baby from the rural outskirts of the city. She said the 1-month-old hasn’t been eating for the past few days and needs to get to a doctor.

But after searching for an hour to make it to the school where she believes her sister might be sheltering, there’s no sign of them – the communications blackout compounding the mounting problems facing these rescue operations.

Akther makes her way home, in the hope her sister has found another way there.

We head further north with a different boat to witness the next rescue operation.

A Feni-born man who works as a security guard at a hospital in Qatar flew back to Bangladesh when he heard what was happening in his hometown.

He managed to source a boat in the hope of rescuing his 55-year-old mother, but her location is too remote to reach. Instead, he came to a shelter to retrieve other relatives.

The family of four – a mother, child and grandparents – struggle into the boat, clambering up with the help of people on board. They are all exhausted and visibly hungry, devouring snacks of nuts and dried fruits, and gulping down water.

“We are happy now,” said grandfather Mizanur Rahman Khan, 65. “We are safe.”

As the darkness closes in on Friday evening, rescue efforts continue into the night to try to get the families of Feni to safety.

The main hope in this city is that the stranded people will survive long enough for aid to come – or for the floodwaters to recede.

The empty boxes are piling up on the floor as Halyna goes through her medical kit, taking out packs of pills and discarding any unnecessary packaging. She can’t afford to waste space. She’s running away and the journey ahead is long and risky.

Halyna, 59, and her husband Olexey, 61, are from Selydove, a town just south of Pokrovsk that’s near the current epicenter of the war in eastern Ukraine. They delayed leaving for as long as they could, staying even after all their friends were gone, hoping things would take a turn for the better.

But a few days ago, everything changed.

A nurse and a miner, the couple are among tens of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing Pokrovsk and the surrounding towns as it becomes more and more likely that the city could become the next key battleground of the war in Ukraine.

Russian forces have been inching toward the city for weeks, but the situation has become critical in recent days. Moscow has been pushing hard to capture Pokrovsk even as it struggles to contain the Ukrainian incursion in the Kursk border region.

Pokrovsk is a strategic target for Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear that his goal is to seize all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Pokrovsk sits on a key supply road that connects it with other military hubs, and forms the backbone of Ukrainian defenses in the part of Donetsk region that is still under Kyiv’s control.

The front line is now so close that the fighting is audible in the city center. The unmistakable deep thuds of explosions coming from the suburbs.

Every now and then, the whizz of Ukrainian counter strikes, fired from farther inland going over the city trying to strike Russian positions to the east.

Serhiy Dobryak, the head of Pokrovsk military-civilian administration, has been working non-stop in recent days, desperately trying to convince people to evacuate before it becomes too dangerous or even impossible to do so.

“Most people leave voluntarily, some we have to persuade. We started mandatory evacuation for families with kids this week,” he said, adding that about 1,000 people are leaving every day.

But fleeing isn’t easy – even for people who can afford it.

Arina, 31, desperately wants to leave Pokrovsk. She and her husband worked as dentists in Selydove, which is now too dangerous to go to.

They are struggling to find a place to live. The problem seems to be their son David, a toddler.

“It feels like kids are considered animals, especially if they are younger than three. The landlords only allow children older than six or seven or they offer horrible apartments for any price they want,” she said, sitting on a swing at a deserted playground in Pokrovsk.

David was playing in the sandbox, oblivious to what was happening around him. He ditched his sandals and was running around barefoot, looking overjoyed to have all the toys to himself.

Arina took him to the playground to shield him from the chaos at home, pretending everything was as it should be. On a sunny summer Saturday, the playground would normally be bursting with families with kids. But nothing is normal in Pokrovsk now.

David is almost 3 years old, born just a few months before the start of the full-scale invasion. He knows nothing but the war. “He only started to react to the explosions two months ago. I tell him it’s fireworks, I don’t want to tell him what is happening. But I’ve written ‘There is a war’ in his baby album,” she said, tears flooding her eyes. Arina quickly wiped them away, not wanting David to see her cry.

People have to keep living, she said.

Like for many others in the area, the war didn’t start two and half years ago for Arina. She was in medical school in Donetsk in 2014, when Russia forcibly annexed Crimea and Russian-sponsored separatists took over large swathes of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Some 2 million people, including Arina, were forced to flee their homes.

“You get used [to running away]. And it’s horrible that you can get used to such a thing. You have to adapt to a new reality all the time. First you fall into depression and panic. Try to start a life in a new place. You live and live and then you wake up at five in the morning from (missiles and rockets) flying over your head,” she said.

Donetsk region’s police officer Pavlo Dyachenko, has spent the past few weeks coordinating evacuations from Pokrovsk and other towns in the area.

He said his main problem is that to many people, it still doesn’t seem that bad. Compared with images from other cities under attack, Pokrovsk is still relatively calm. People here have a routine. They are out and about in the mornings, getting supplies and running errands. By mid-afternoon, the streets are deserted. Everybody here knows that drones are most likely to strike later in the day.

Most big supermarkets and shops have now closed, but smaller businesses remain open – including a small restaurant popular with the locals that is owned by Yulia, 34.

She and her family – a husband and a daughter – are all packed up and ready to leave. They’ve shut their other restaurant in Pokrovsk but kept the one in the city center open.

This is not what Dyachenko wants to hear though.

“It gets more and more dangerous,” Dyachenko added.

Dobryak, the head of Pokrovsk military-civilian administration, said that previous experience from the region suggests about 10% of people tend to stay no matter what, so the city will continue providing critical services for as long as it can.

But given the fast advances of Russian forces toward the city in recent days, it seems more than likely that the fighting will get worse and could reach the heart of the city soon.

An officer from one of the Ukrainian brigades fighting in the area said they have been outnumbered and outgunned by Russian troops, some of whom are from the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic and know the area well.

But there are other problems too. The officer said that communication between the different brigades hasn’t been ideal and most of the defenses built in the area were not effective.

Dobryak said the city and regional administrations have been told by the military where and how to build defenses and fortifications – a process that started when Moscow launched the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

He said he is hoping Pokrovsk’s defenses can withstand the attack – but he knows it’s a tall order.

“Whatever fortification we have, they have 10 times more men and vehicles. Same with artillery rounds. We lost the momentum in the winter when we were not receiving the (US) aid package. But our heroic men fight with what they have,” he said.

Refugees not welcome?

Among the hundreds of anxious people crowding the city’s train station on Saturday afternoon, a few looked like they wanted to leave. Many were visibly exhausted and heartbroken, Pokrovsk being the only home they’ve ever known.

As the evacuation train prepared to pull out, many were crying, waving their last goodbyes to loved ones staying behind.

Oksana’s husband Oleh, 34, was going to travel with them on the train, making sure they were safe. But he would then go straight back home. A miner, he needs to keep working – money is tight, and he can’t afford to leave his job.

“I’ll go if the mine shuts down and they tell us to go,” he said.

The family were hesitant to leave Pokrovsk because Liubov, 70, recently suffered a stroke and is now unable to speak or walk. When three police officers in body armor and helmets carried her up into the train, she looked completely stoic, her face showing no sign of emotion.

“It just became too dangerous here. The authorities and the girls’ school were convincing us to go, most of our friends are also going,” Oksana said, adding that at the end, she wanted her children – Hanna, 14, and Dasha, 9, to be settled in a new place by the time they go back to school in a week’s time.

Like most children in the region, the two have been attending online classes during the war. In-person education is too dangerous around here. Earlier this month, a school in Pokrovsk that had been turned into a shelter was hit by two Russian rockets. It now stands in ruins.

Dasha is about to start fourth grade and between the war and the Covid pandemic before that, she has never experienced normal schooling. Yet her desires are just the same as those of any youngster anywhere.

“When we have our own house, we will get a dog and a cat,” she said, pointing to the promise her parents have made for after the war. The dog will be a poodle, Dasha said. “The name will depend on the color,” she added.

But even as the front line rolls closer and closer, some are still not convinced they will leave. Many don’t have anywhere to go; some feel unwelcome in the rest of Ukraine.

“Of course the authorities are asking us to leave, but where can we go? We don’t have any friends or family that we could stay with, and nobody wants to let an apartment to people with animals,” she said.

Oksana, 47, and several other women in the shop said they felt abandoned. Donbas, the area that spans Donetsk and Luhansk regions, has always been culturally different compared to the rest of the country, its economy powered by mining and heavy industry. Flourishing before the events of 2014, the region took a hit when the war started.

Many Ukrainians blamed the people in the Donbas region for the war – especially since some local residents did initially welcome the pro-Russian separatists with joy.

“We were only united when it was Kyiv. Kyiv is crying – the whole country is crying. When Donbas is being pounded and we are being pounded for a long time, there is no word about united Ukraine,” she said.

Like most people in Donbas, Oksana is a Russian speaker – another thing that sets her apart from western Ukrainians.

“They say it’s Putin’s language. I am Ukrainian and I speak Russian, it’s my language and I speak it, even though I understand Ukrainian too,” Oksana said, adding that she cannot imagine leaving Pokrovsk, her home for 25 years.

Sitting on a bench surrounded by bags and suitcases, Halyna and Olexey said they didn’t have a choice. Not leaving was not an option.

“There is no power, no water, the gas was disconnected a long time ago. There were explosions everywhere, everything was destroyed,” Olexey said, waiting for a car to pick him and Halyna up.

They are determined to return. They are going to Italy to join their daughter who has been living there since 2022. They haven’t seen their granddaughter in over two years and are afraid she won’t understand them, as she now goes to an Italian school. Halyna said she was looking forward to seeing her daughter and granddaughter again, of course, but is categorically opposed to living in Italy forever.

“I don’t want to live in Italy. I want to live in the country that I was born in. I want to live here, in my home, in Ukraine,” Halyna said. “I don’t know Italian, I don’t know English, when we get there, I won’t be able to go anywhere without my daughter. I don’t want that,” Olexey added.

The next morning, just 24 hours after fleeing their home, Olexey and Halyna found themselves lost in Dnipro. Used to their lives in a small town, the couple was trying to navigate the big city, looking for a cash machine.

They were struggling to come to terms with their new reality.  They are refugees now.

A British safety adviser for the Reuters news agency was killed and two journalists injured when a Russian strike hit a hotel in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, on Saturday night.

Reuters had a six-person crew staying at the Hotel Sapphire as part of its team covering the war in Ukraine. A spokesperson for the news agency identified the killed safety adviser as Ryan Evans, a British citizen who was assigned to its reporting team in Ukraine.

Reuters added that two of its journalists were being treated in hospital, one for serious injuries. In a statement on Sunday afternoon, it said “we are urgently seeking more information about the attack, including by working with the authorities in Kramatorsk, and we are supporting our colleagues and their families. We send our deepest condolences and thoughts to Ryan’s family and loved ones. Ryan has helped so many of our journalists cover events around the world; we will miss him terribly.”

Evans, a former British soldier, had been working with Reuters since 2022 and advised its journalists on safety around the world including in Ukraine, Israel and at the Paris Olympics, the news agency said. He was 38.

Three other colleagues have been accounted for and suffered mild injuries, Reuters added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed in his daily address on Sunday that British and American citizens were in the Kramatorsk hotel, adding “My condolences go out to the family and friends. This is a daily Russian terror that continues, because Russia has the ability to continue.”

A spokesperson for the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said, “We are aware of reports of a British national missing in Ukraine and are seeking more information from the local authorities.”

The US State Department has confirmed that an American citizen was among those injured but has not identified the person.

Rescuers uncovered the body of one man under the rubble, the head of Kramatorsk City’s military administration, Oleksandr Honcharenko, said in an update on Sunday afternoon. He did not give further details or identify the body.

The head of Donetsk regional military administration, Vadym Filashkin, said the injured journalists include “citizens of Ukraine, the United States, Latvia and Germany.” He confirmed on Telegram Sunday morning that the deceased was a British citizen.

The Reuters crew managed to file video on Sunday morning of the extensive damage done to the hotel, showing emergency services searching through huge piles of rubble with torches. Footage filmed inside the hotel showed several destroyed hotel rooms.

The video also showed extensive damage to the hotel’s roof.

Kramatorsk has often been the target of Russian shelling since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine in February 2022. It remains one of the largest cities under Ukrainian control in the country’s besieged east.

In April last year, Russian forces carried out a missile strike on Kramatorsk’s railway station that was being used to shelter civilians fleeing the fighting.

More than 50 people, including several children, died in that one attack, which was called “an apparent war crime” by Human Rights Watch and SITU Research.

For nearly a month, people in Lebanon and Israel braced for a wider war. A deadly rocket strike from Lebanon last month on the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights was followed by an Israeli retaliatory strike that killed Hezbollah’s top commander in southern Beirut.

The powerful Iran-backed group vowed to respond. The threat triggered a slew of flight cancelations on both sides of the border, a chorus of governments imploring their citizens to leave Lebanon and Israel, and a breathless diplomatic effort to avert an escalation that Western governments feared would spark a regional conflict.

On Sunday morning, Hezbollah said it had delivered its anticipated response by launching hundreds of drones and Katyusha rockets, Soviet-era short-range projectiles.

The swarm of airborne weapons, it said, sought to overwhelm Israel’s vaunted air defense systems and pave a path for its targets: 11 Israeli military sites in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said all of Hezbollah’s drone’s were intercepted.

Israeli officials said that it had pre-emptively struck Hezbollah targets overnight to prevent a much wider attack, saying it hit many rocket launchers in Lebanon.

Three people were killed in those Israeli attacks, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

The cross-border fire on Sunday morning marked a significant escalation after 11 months of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. But it appears to have dampened fears of a wider war, for now.

In Israel, authorities soon lifted security restrictions in the country’s northern-most territory, known as the upper Galilee. In Lebanon, Hezbollah said it had concluded attacks on Israel for the day.

This signals the resumption of the low-intensity conflict at the border. It also seems to mark the conclusion of the anticipated Lebanese escalation that brought the Middle East, once again, to the brink of all-out war. Hezbollah has said this was the “first phase” of its response but has been scant on the details of a follow-up. The phrase may be rhetorical – the group is prone to keeping its threats open-ended.

But while Hezbollah’s promised response appears to be largely out of the way, Israel must continue to wait for another threat to transpire: Iran’s vowed “revenge” for the killing of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which it blamed on Israel.

A region on a knife’s edge

After the attacks in Beirut and Tehran at the end of last month, Western and Israeli intelligence officials, diplomats and analysts scrambled to figure out what the retaliations promised by Iran and its most powerful non-state partner might look like.

It sparked shuttle diplomacy with the United States, the United Kingdom and France urging Hezbollah and Iran to exercise restraint. This appeared to expedite another round of talks over a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, in a bid to ward off another escalation by the Iran-led axis, which has repeatedly conditioned stopping its attacks on Israel and its allies on an end to the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

The talks to end the war continue to move at a glacial pace, despite intense diplomatic efforts by the US. But the latest escalation has shown that neither Iran nor its allied non-state fighting groups in the region can stomach the prospect of a wider war.

Hezbollah had repeatedly vowed to retaliate to any Israeli strike in Beirut with an attack on major urban centers in Israel. Yet, whether by design or due to Israel’s claimed pre-emptive strikes, it fell short of that threat. Its stated targets remain within the border area that has been the site of the hostilities since October and the short-range Soviet-era rockets it used have been a mainstay of Hezbollah’s attacks on Israeli forces for decades.

The risk of an all-out conflict appears to be significantly lower in the aftermath of Sunday’s cross-fire. Yet Iran’s open-ended threat will continue to contribute to the war of nerves that has defined much of the low-grade conflict between the Tehran-led axis and Israel, and the region will remain on a knife’s edge for as long as the war in Gaza goes on.

Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic and disturbing descriptions of sexual violence.

Ibrahim Salem, 34, said he felt a deep sense of dread when a soldier ordered him to undress during his captivity in Israel’s notorious Sde Teiman prison.

“They told me to strip,” the Palestinian said, reflecting on the torment he endured during his eight months in Israeli detention. “That’s when I knew I was beginning my journey to hell.”

He and other Palestinians at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia were handcuffed, blindfolded, and transported on trucks “like animals,” he recalled.

No one heard from him for eight months.

On May 23, Saja Mishreqi, a lawyer at the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), who represented Salem, was informed by the Israeli Supreme Court that he was in Ktzi’ot Prison, a detention facility in the Negev run by the Israel Prison Service (IPS). He was eventually released without charge on August 1.

Ordered to strip naked

During interrogations, Salem said, he would be asked: “Where are the hostages? Where are Hamas’ weapons? Are you Hamas? Are you Qassam (Hamas’ military wing)? Are you Islamic Jihad?”

Salem alleges to have been beaten, verbally abused, had hot water poured on him, and told by soldiers that the rest of his family had been killed.

But the worst part, he said, was the sexual abuse.

Salem said much of prisoners’ time in detention was spent in their underwear, but before each interrogation session, soldiers would order him to strip naked.

“They would bring the metal detector and run it all over our bodies, then they would hover it over private parts and hit me there,” he said. As he crouched in pain, naked, with five or six soldiers looking, he said he felt the troops violate him from behind.

“With the pain, I would lean forward. Then suddenly, they would push it (a baton) into my butt,” he said. “Inside.”

After interrogation, he was given only “seconds” to put his underwear back on, he said, adding that any perceived delay in doing so would result in another beating from the soldiers.

The IDF added that it “cannot address the conditions of his arrest and detention for most of that period,” noting that misconduct during detention is “contrary to the law and IDF orders, and is therefore strictly prohibited.”

Salem was released to the Gaza Strip on August 1 after an assessment found that releasing him wouldn’t pose a risk to national security, the IDF said, adding that he was brought before a judge in a district court for a judicial review during his detention.

Taunted with pictures of exhumed bodies

Salem said an interrogator showed him a picture of what he was led to believe were exhumed remains of six family members he had buried in the yard of Kamal Adwan Hospital. Salem said the interrogator taunted him, making him count six bodies in the picture.

“On what grounds do you take away bodies and desecrate them?” Salem recalled telling the interrogator. “These bodies are ours. We need to bury them.”

The interrogator responded that the bodies “might be hostages” abducted by Hamas on October 7, to which Salem said he responded, crying: “My nephews, are they hostages? Five years old?”

More than 40,200 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 93,000 injured in Israel’s assault on the strip, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Leaked surveillance footage last month from the Sde Teiman prison provided a rare glimpse into the facility.

CCTV video obtained by Israel’s Channel 12 showed Israeli soldiers selecting one of more than two dozen Palestinian detainees lying on the ground. Behind a wall of shields obstructing the view of security cameras, the soldiers allegedly sodomize the detainee. The victim was taken to a hospital with injuries to his rectum, according to Israeli non-profit organization Physicians for Human Rights Israel. The Israeli military has declined to comment on the video.

Shortly after the incident, 10 Israeli soldiers were arrested over the alleged abuse of a Palestinian detainee at the facility, according to IDF. Five have so far been released, and five are under house arrest.

‘Systematic policies’

Mishreqi said that Salem was detained under Israel’s controversial Unlawful Combatants Law, which rights watchdog Human Rights Watch has said “strips away meaningful judicial review and due process rights.”

The law permits the military to detain people for up to 30 days without a detention order, after which they must be transferred to prison, according to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), a Jerusalem-based non-governmental organization (NGO). Over 4,000 Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip have been detained by Israel since the war began, PCATI said in a report last month, adding that the law deprives detainees of their rights as prisoners of war and the protections for civilian populations under humanitarian law in occupied territories.

As of April, more than 9,500 Palestinians were being held in Israeli prisons, including more than 3,500 without charge, according to Addameer Prisoner’s Support and Human Rights Association, a Palestinian NGO. The figure doesn’t include detainees from Gaza, the group said.

Salem is one of many former detainees who have recalled harrowing stories from their time in Israeli prisons to human rights groups and news outlets. Their testimonies have led to calls for reforms across all of Israel’s prisons.

Israel has greatly reduced the number of people being held at Sde Teiman in the wake of calls for its closure. In June, a state attorney told Israel’s Supreme Court that hundreds of Palestinian detainees have been transferred out of the facility.

A report published by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem this month documented “abuse and inhuman treatment of Palestinians” held in Israeli custody since October 7. The report, which collected testimonies from 55 Palestinians, showed “the rushed transformation of more than a dozen Israeli prison facilities, military and civilian, into a network of camps dedicated to the abuse of inmates as a matter of policy.” The IDF has repeatedly denied allegations of systematic abuse.

Salem said there were some 150 detainees with him in the second facility where he was held.

On the day of his release, Salem said he was taken to the Gaza border by the IDF but was told he couldn’t return to his home in Jabalya, in northern Gaza. He is now living in a displacement camp in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

He has moved from detention tents to displacement tents throughout his ordeal, he said, and the memories of the abuse he said he experienced continue to live with him.

He has yet to reunite with his wife and children, who remain in northern Gaza, and can only communicate with them by phone. Two of his children require surgeries for injuries sustained in the Israeli airstrike, he said.

The Israeli military is striking what it says are “terror targets in Lebanon” after identifying that Hezbollah was “preparing to fire missiles and rockets toward Israeli territory.”

“A short while ago, the IDF identified the Hezbollah terrorist organization preparing to fire missiles and rockets toward Israeli territory,” Israel Defense Force spokesperson Daniel Hagari said early Sunday local time.

‎‏”In a self-defense act to remove these threats, the IDF is striking terror targets in Lebanon, from which Hezbollah was planning to launch their attacks on Israeli civilians,” Hagari added.

Flights from Tel Aviv airport in Israel will be temporarily suspended Sunday morning, the airport authority said, after the Israeli military said it is conducting pre-emptive strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Golan Regional Council has instructed all residents in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to remain near shelters until further notice, canceling agricultural, educational, and other public activity.

The Israeli military and Hezbollah have been exchanging fire for months, and the cross-border hostilities have raised the specter of a regional conflagration which have prompted intense diplomatic efforts to de-escalate tensions.

Israel’s latest strike aimed at Hezbollah targets in Lebanon come after its military said on Saturday that it was prepared for any possible retaliatory attacks by Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah or Iran for the killings of their senior leaders. The news comes amid claims in the Israeli media that there are situational assessments that Hezbollah could attack soon.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

German police have detained a suspect accused of stabbing to death three people at a music festival in the western city of Solingen on Friday in an attack which sent shockwaves through the country.

The suspect was detained at a refugee shelter following a major manhunt which saw authorities establish “extensive search measures” throughout the German state of North Rhine Westphalia and deploy special forces. Police had earlier arrested a 15-year-old boy in connection with the incident, but said he was not the alleged attacker.

“We have just recently arrested the real suspect. And now he’s being questioned and everything else is being clarified and then we can also say: Are we right? Do we have enough evidence? I can only tell you that it’s now more than just an assumption,“ Northrhine-Westfalia’s interior minister Herbert Reul told German public broadcaster ARD on Sunday.

“Not only did we have a lead on this person, we also found evidence,“ he added.

Prior to the suspect’s arrest, people in the city of Solingen had been warned to exercise caution and be on alert while the perpetrator remained on the run. For hours after the attack, authorities were unable to present a clear picture of what the suspect might look like.

Those killed have been revealed as two men aged 67 and 56, and a woman aged 56. Eight others were injured, including four with life-threatening injuries.

A motivation for the attack has not yet been determined but terrorism has not been ruled out.

While Islamic State claimed responsibility through its Amaq news service, it offered no evidence to back up its claim.

A police spokesman, Thorsten Fleiß, said the attacker specifically targeted the necks of his victims. “After evaluating the initial images, we assume that it was a very targeted attack on the neck,” he said during a press conference.

Several people were stabbed, apparently at random, in the attack at a central square in the city of Solingen on Friday evening, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) east of Düsseldorf, police said.

Crowds had gathered at the square in Solingen Friday to celebrate the “Festival of Diversity,” a three-day event marking the 650th anniversary of the city’s founding. Police say the attack happened close to the stage where a musical act was performing.

Eyewitness Lars Breitzke said the attack happened just meters away from him. Speaking to local newspaper the Solinger Tageblatt, Breitzke said he realized something was wrong by the expression on the face of the singer on stage. Then, he said, “a person just meters away from me fell down.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the attack as an “upsetting” and “terrible” event.

Friday’s attack came amid rising rates of knife crime in Germany, recently prompting the Interior Ministry to propose tightened laws to tackle the issue.

Police data shows that there were 8,951 incidents of knife crime that caused serious bodily harm in Germany in 2023 – 791 cases more than the previous year.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Officers from France’s anti-fraud office, attached to French customs, took him into custody Saturday evening after he arrived at Bourget Airport on a flight from Azerbaijan, BFMTV reported.

Durov, 39, was wanted under a French arrest warrant due to the lack of moderation on Telegram which led to it being used for money laundering, drug trafficking and sharing pedophilic content, according to BFMTV.

According to BFMTV, the Telegram founder had not regularly travelled to France and Europe since the arrest warrant was issued.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Israel said Saturday its military was prepared for any possible retaliatory attacks by Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah or Iran for the killings of their senior leaders.

The news comes amid claims in the Israeli media that there are situational assessments that Hezbollah could attack soon.

Both Hezbollah and Iran have been threatening to retaliate against Israel since a string of figures in Iran-backed militant groups were killed over a span of weeks. Those killings included the death of Hezbollah’s most senior military commander Fu’ad Shukr in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut at the end of July and the assassination of Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Asked about the threats of retaliation, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters Saturday that the military was prepared for any possible attack by either Hezbollah or Iran.

“We take our enemies’ threats seriously and we’ve been ready for a long period. We’re highly prepared both in the offense and defense, but above all, any threat toward the citizens of Israel we identify, we eliminate, and that’s how we’ll continue. Any development that will be, we’ll update the public immediately,” Hagari said.

Hagari was then pressed by a reporter from Israel’s state-run Kan 11 television channel, who said there were situational assessments that Hezbollah could attack soon. The IDF spokesperson did not say whether he was familiar with those assessments, nor did he give any indication of when an attack might be expected.

“We’ve been, like I said, we’ve been ready, first of all, both in offense and defense, for a long time. We operate to eliminate threats and will continue to do so. With any change or development, we will immediately update the public. Our mission is to defend the citizens of Israel,” Hagari said.

A major attack against Israel could risk disrupting the ceasefire talks that US officials have said were at an advanced stage prior to the assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran, which Iran has blamed on Israel. Israel hasn’t confirmed or denied responsibility.

There are currently 109 Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, including 36 believed to be dead, according to data from the Israeli government press office. This week, the bodies of six Israeli hostages were retrieved from tunnels in Gaza in an Israeli military operation in the city of Khan Younis.

Israel’s war in Gaza was launched after Hamas-led militants attacked the country on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli authorities. More than 40,200 people have died in Gaza during the war, according to Palestinian authorities.

French authorities are investigating a purported arson attack on a synagogue Saturday morning.

The incident took place in La Grande-Motte, a southern seaside town not far from Montpellier. Observant Jews typically go to synagogue on Saturday morning to celebrate the Sabbath.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on X that the incident was “clearly criminal” and that “all means are being mobilized to find the perpetrator.”

Darmanin is traveling to the synagogue later in the day, the ministry said. At the request of French President Emmanuel Macron, Darmanin has requested that prefects across France reinforce the already heightened security presence around Jewish institutions across the country, the ministry said.

Francois-Xavier Lauch, the prefect of the Herault department where La Grande-Motte is located, said in a statement on Saturday morning that he denounced the incident in “the strongest possible terms” and was en route to the scene.

Like much of Europe, France has seen a rise in anti-Jewish attacks since the October 7 terror attacks against Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. Such incidents increased by 284% in France from 2022 to 2023, according to data from the French interior ministry.

Synagogues across France have become common targets. In May, French police shot dead an armed attacker who tried to start a fire at a synagogue in the northern French city of Rouen.