Khan Younis hospital stretched by influx of patients as Israel bombs Gaza | Israel-Palestine conflict News

The number of displaced people arriving at Nasser Medical Complex continues to increase, with new shelters being set up in the facility’s car park and many people sleeping on the ground in the open.

The hospital located in Khan Younis, where teams from Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) provide surgical care to patients with trauma and burn injuries, has also seen a constant influx of new patients, pushing its capacity to breaking point.

“The hospital has been receiving multiple severely injured patients nearly every hour,” said Chris Hook, MSF medical coordinator in Khan Younis. “With the situation as it is in the hospital – there is no available space any more – it really is a terrible situation. Everyone is genuinely worried about what will come next.”

Israel’s military said its fighter jets and helicopters struck targets in Gaza including “tunnel shafts, command centers and weapons storage facilities”. It acknowledged “extensive aerial attacks in the Khan Younis area”.

“In a military campaign that has lasted weeks, with only a brief respite, the speed and scale of the bombing continue to plumb the depths of brutality,” said MSF’s Hook. “Almost two million people are left without options. The only solution is an immediate and sustained ceasefire and the unrestricted supply of aid to the entirety of the Gaza Strip.”

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Cyclone Michaung nears southern Indian states, water enters Chennai airport | Weather News

At least four people have died, factories have closed and the runway of one of India’s busiest airports lies submerged due to torrential rain, as two southern Indian states brace for the impact of a severe cyclone.

Cyclone Michaung was expected to make landfall on the coast of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh around noon (06:30 GMT) on Tuesday, the country’s weather office said.

Four people died in rain-related incidents in neighbouring Tamil Nadu state, including two killed when a building wall collapsed, the state’s disaster management minister and a top official in his department said.

In Tamil Nadu’s capital Chennai, the state’s largest city and a major electronics and manufacturing hub, cars were swept away as floodwater flowed through the streets, while the city’s airport, one of the busiest in India, shut operations until Tuesday morning.

Media showed pictures of grounded planes with their wheels submerged as the rain pelted down.

Taiwan’s Foxconn and Pegatron halted Apple iPhone production at their facilities near Chennai due to heavy rains, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters news agency.

Several areas of the city were submerged in knee-deep water and there have been power outages since Monday morning, a Reuters witness said, evoking memories of December 2015, when around 290 people died after catastrophic floods.

Authorities in both states were on high alert, evacuating thousands of people living in coastal areas, officials in both states said, with warnings issued to fishermen not to venture out to sea.

Schools, colleges, offices and banks were closed on Monday and Tuesday in at least four districts of Tamil Nadu, including Chennai, because of weather conditions, a government notice said.

Parts of Andhra Pradesh were likely to get more than 200mm (8 inches) of rain over the next 24 hours, India’s weather office said. Authorities in the state evacuated nearly 7,000 people in eight coastal districts and were preparing to evacuate a total of 28,000, depending on the cyclone’s path and severity, a senior official in the state’s disaster management department said.

At least 800 people have been evacuated so far from Bapatla, the coastal town in Andhra Pradesh where the cyclone is expected to make landfall on Tuesday, said P Ranjit Basha, district collector of Bapatla.

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Working at a giant snail’s pace a boon for Ivorian farmers | Business and Economy

They may weigh a maximum of 500 grammes (one pound) and only grow to 10 centimetres (four inches), but the farming of giant snails is proving to be big business in the Ivory Coast.

Considered a delicacy for their tasty flesh, the giant snails are also used to make cosmetics manufactured from their slime and shells.

But nearly 90 percent of the West African country’s forests have disappeared over the last 60 years, something which, together with the widespread use of pesticides, has decimated wild snails’ natural habitat.

Most forest has been lost to agricultural production in the world’s top producer of cocoa – to the detriment of the creatures that naturally thrive in a hot, humid environment.

As wild snail numbers have steadily fallen, farms that specialise in breeding them have increasingly sprung up. There are some 1,500 in the humid south alone.

A popular appetiser in the Ivory Coast, the snails are bred on farms such as one of many in the town of Azaguie, some 40km (25 miles) north of the commercial capital, Abidjan.

Inside some 10 brick and cement containers topped with mesh lids is a layer of earth and another of leaves.

Between the two slither thousands of snails, juveniles and breeders – some much larger than those found in Europe.

The gastropods are watered and fed every two days.

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No end to suffering of Gaza children as Israeli attacks rage on | Israel-Palestine conflict News

More than 6,600 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 7, the government’s media office says.

Thousands more are missing under the rubble amid relentless bombardment, it added.

On Friday, Catherine Russell, executive director of the United Nations Children’s Fund, warned that Gaza is once again “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child”, following the resumption of the war.

Russell said hundreds of children will die each day if violence returns to the scale and intensity seen before the seven-day pause in fighting that ended on Friday.

“It does not have to be this way. For seven days, there was a glimmer of hope for children amidst this horrific nightmare,” Russell said in a statement.

About half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million is below the age of 18. Many Palestinian minors in Gaza have been traumatised by war, with some having experienced five Israeli assaults since 2008.

The study conducted by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics before the war began on October 7 found that 13 percent of children and minors aged five to 17 suffer from anxiety.

The bureau estimated that about 52,450 children and minors are expected to suffer from stress in 2023, while 13,000 could suffer from signs of depression.

But the numbers are expected to rise exponentially because of the October 7 war, the statistics bureau said.

The Defence for Children International-Palestine, an NGO, said in early November that Israeli forces killed twice as many Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip in October as the total number of Palestinian children killed in the occupied West Bank and Gaza combined since 1967.

More than 15,500 people have been killed in the besieged Palestinian territory in more than eight weeks of combat and heavy bombardment, the Ministry of Health says.

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From north to south, nowhere safe in Gaza as 700 killed in 24 hours | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Israel’s war on Gaza is escalating, leaving death and devastation across the besieged strip.

At least 700 Palestinians have been killed in the past 24 hours – one of the highest daily death tolls since the war began on October 7.

From the north to the south, Palestinians in Gaza say nowhere is safe.

The Israeli military targeted the Jabalia refugee camp for a second day. Several homes were destroyed, killing dozens of people. More are buried under the rubble.

Israel has also called on residents from certain neighbourhoods in Khan Younis in southern Gaza to evacuate. Roads leading to other parts of the city or further south have been destroyed or heavily damaged.

More than 15,500 people have been confirmed killed in Gaza since the start of the conflict, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

A Palestinian Civil Defence spokesperson told Al Jazeera that conditions across Gaza are “beyond dire”, warning that rescuers lack the resources to reach all victims of Israeli bombardment.

“There are dozens of civilians being killed in every single air strike. Hundreds are also being wounded,” said Mahmoud Basal.

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Photos: More deaths and destruction as Israel targets southern Gaza | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Israel has carried out deadly bombardments in Gaza for a second day after a weeklong truce with Hamas collapsed despite international calls for an extension.

Clouds of grey smoke from the strikes hung on Saturday over Gaza, where the Hamas-run Ministry of Health said nearly 200 people had been killed since the pause in hostilities expired early on Friday.

Residents feared the latest bombings presage an Israeli ground operation in the south of the Palestinian territory that would pin them into a shrinking area and possibly try to push them into Egypt.

The southern part of Gaza, including Khan Younis and Rafah, was pounded by Israeli war planes and artillery on Saturday. Thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering there because of fighting in the north.

Residents said houses had been hit and three mosques destroyed in Khan Younis.

Palestinian witnesses said Israeli tanks had taken up positions near the road between Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah.

“A night of horror,” said Samira, a mother of four. “It was one of the worst nights we spent in Khan Younis in the past six weeks since we arrived here. … We are so afraid they will enter Khan Younis.”

Officials said the overall death toll in Gaza since the October 7 start of the Israel-Hamas war has surpassed 15,200 while more than 40,000 people have been wounded in the Israeli attacks.

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‘Hell on Earth’ in Gaza: Israel strikes hit Deir el-Balah | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Israel’s attacks on Gaza have stretched into a second day after a seven-day truce with Hamas ended as Qatar and Egypt mediate talks to renew a pause in hostilities.

The United Nations said on Saturday that the fighting would worsen the extreme humanitarian emergency in Gaza.

“Hell on Earth has returned to Gaza,” said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office in Geneva.

“Today, in a matter of hours, scores were reportedly killed and injured. Families were told to evacuate, again. Hopes were dashed,” UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said, adding that children, women and men of Gaza had “nowhere safe to go and very little to survive on”.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza said Israeli tanks have not stopped shelling the enclave and gunboats are attacking its coastline.

“Houses have been targeted. At least three mosques were hit. Areas across the Gaza Strip – the north, south and centre – have all been targeted.”

The Israeli army said on Saturday that it hit more than 400 targets overnight, including in the Khan Younis area in the south, to which tens of thousands of civilians evacuated over the past month.

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Thousands march for Palestine as Israel and Hamas resume fighting | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Thousands of people in Jordan have participated in a march for the eighth week in a row in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in a protest that coincides with the end of a humanitarian pause and resumption of Israeli attacks.

The march began after the Friday prayer in front of the Grand Husseini Mosque in the centre of the capital, Amman, and proceeded to Palm Square, an Anadolu Agency correspondent reported.

Jordan’s government condemned Friday’s resumption of Israel’s “futile, aggressive” war on Gaza, calling for a “deterrent” international stance against Israel.

Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank gathered in the city of Hebron to protest against the Israeli assault on Gaza.

In Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, tens of thousands of people took part in a march to show solidarity with Palestinians.

More than 175 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds wounded in Israeli attacks on the blockaded Gaza Strip since the humanitarian pause ended on Friday morning, according to Palestinian authorities.

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Palestinians flee homes, dig in rubble as Israel resumes strikes on Gaza | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Palestinians in Gaza were fleeing their homes and rushing their dead and wounded to hospitals as Israel resumed its bombardment of the besieged enclave.

Combat between Israel and Hamas was renewed on Friday following the expiry of a weeklong truce. An agreement on extending the pause in fighting was not reached before the 7am (05:00 GMT) deadline.

The deal, which started on November 24 and was twice extended, had produced a pause in the fighting and allowed an increase in aid flows into Gaza, while scores of Israelis taken prisoner on October 7 were exchanged for hundreds of jailed Palestinians.

However, hostilities resumed immediately as the latest deadline passed.

Smoke billowed over the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis following Israeli strikes, with deaths recorded in both places.

In Khan Younis, a group of men chanted “God is greatest” as they rushed through the streets carrying a body wrapped in a white shroud.

‘War on children’

At the hospital reception, 10-year-old Lina Hamdan said: “We were getting ready to sleep when I heard a bomb. My brothers started screaming.”

In Rafah, a young man rushed a badly wounded child out of a refugee camp hit by an explosion, while others could be seen pulling a motionless person from the rubble.

Marwan al-Hams, the director of al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, where many Palestinians fled after being told by Israel to leave the north of the territory, said strikes had killed at least nine people in the city, including four children.

In the north of the Gaza Strip, the fireball from a large explosion could be seen from across the border in the Israeli city of Sderot.

Speaking from a hospital in Gaza, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said on Friday that a bomb had landed “literally 50 metres away”.

“I cannot overstate how much the capacity of hospitals has been reduced,” he said. “We cannot see more children with the wounds of war, with the burns, with the shrapnel littering their body, with the broken bones.”

“This is a war on children,” he added.

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Mountain villages fight for future as melting glaciers spell floods | Climate Crisis

On the steep slope of a glacier jutting through the Hunza Valley in Pakistan’s mountainous far north, Tariq Jamil measures the ice’s movement and snaps photos. Later, he creates a report that includes data from sensors and another camera installed near the Shisper glacier to update his village an hour’s hike downstream.

The 51-year-old’s mission: mobilise his community of 200 families in Hassanabad, in the Karakoram mountains, to fight for a future for their village and way of life, increasingly under threat from unstable lakes formed by melting glacier ice.

When glacial lakes overfill or their banks become unsound, they burst, sparking deadly floods that wash out bridges and buildings and wipe out fertile land throughout the Hindu Kush, Karakoram, and Himalayan mountain ranges that intersect in northern Pakistan.

Himalayan glaciers are on track to lose up to 75 percent of their ice by the century’s end due to global warming, according to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

After all the sensors are installed, village representatives will be able to monitor data through their mobile phones. “Local wisdom is very important,” Jamil said. “We are the main observers. We have witnessed many things.”

Hassanabad is part of the United Nations-backed Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) II project to help communities downstream of melting glaciers adapt.

Amid a shortfall in funding for those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, village residents say they urgently need increased support to adapt to threats of glacial lake floods.

“The needs are enormous,” said Karma Lodey Rapten, regional technical specialist for climate change adaptation at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Pakistan is the only country to receive adaptation funding from the Green Climate Fund – the Paris Agreement’s key financing pot – to ease the risk of such floods.

While countries like Bhutan have worked with other funders to minimise the threat from glacial lake floods, the $36.96m GLOF II scheme – which ends this year – is a global benchmark for other regions grappling with this threat, including the Peruvian Andes and China.

Since 2017, weather stations as well as sensors measuring rainfall, water discharge, and river and lake water levels have been installed under the administration of Islamabad and UNDP. GLOF II has deployed speakers in villages to communicate warnings, and infrastructure like stone-and-wire barriers that slow floodwater.

In Hassanabad, a villager regularly monitors the feed from a camera installed high up the valley, checking water levels in the river by the glacier’s base, during risky periods such as summer, when a lake dammed by ice from the Shisper glacier often forms.

Pakistan is among the world’s most at-risk countries from glacial lake floods, with 800,000 people living within 15km (9.3 miles) of a glacier. Many residents of the Karakorams built their homes on lush land along rivers running off glaciers.

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