GAZA – Setiap pagi, jauh sebelum matahari terbit di kaki langit, Salim Abu Rayala, seorang nelayan Palestin dari kem pelarian Al-Shati di barat bandar Gaza, membuka ikatan bot kayunya yang lapuk dan menolaknya ke perairan Mediterranean.

Abu Rayala memahami dengan baik sifat dwi laut – potensinya untuk menyediakan tangkapan yang baik dan kapasitinya untuk meragut nyawanya.

Bagaimanapun, bapa kepada lapan anak itu tidak mempunyai pilihan lain. “Saya mesti berjuang untuk keluarga saya,” katanya.

Pada usia 55 tahun, lelaki itu telah menghabiskan lebih tiga dekad memancing ikan sardin, belanak, dan siakap di sepanjang pantai Gaza.

Tetapi sejak bermulanya perang Israel terhadap Semenanjung Gaza pada Oktober 2023, laut telah berubah menjadi tempat yang berbahaya, putus asa, dan prospek yang semakin berkurangan.

“Saya masih keluar setiap hari, walaupun saya tidak menangkap apa-apa,” kata Abu Rayala.

“Beberapa hari, saya belayar cukup jauh untuk membasahi pukat sebelum pulang dengan tangan kosong. Saya mempertaruhkan nyawa saya untuk sia-sia, tetapi apakah pilihan yang saya ada?”

Dengan sekatan ketat Israel terhadap akses ke perairan nelayan Gaza, nelayan tempatan menghadapi ancaman tembakan, gangguan, dan penangkapan yang berterusan jika mereka tersasar di luar sempadan yang ditetapkan.

“Kadang-kadang, mereka (tentera Israel) menembak ke udara. Lain kali, mereka menyasarkan enjin bot,” Abu Rayala bercerita.

“Saya telah melihat rakan-rakan cedera dan bot musnah. Tetapi kami berterusan – kami mempunyai keluarga untuk diberi makan.”

Ketika serangan Israel berterusan, industri perikanan berada di ambang kehancuran total, menghadapi cabaran seperti kekurangan bahan api dan kekurangan alat ganti.

“Saya pernah membawa pulang ikan untuk makan malam. Sekarang, saya menjual apa sahaja yang saya tangkap hanya untuk membeli beras, minyak dan sayur-sayuran. Ia bukan lagi untuk menyuburkan keluarga saya – ini tentang kelangsungan hidup,” kata Abu Rayala.

Setiap kilogram ikan dijual pada harga 30 dolar AS. “Harganya jauh lebih tinggi berbanding tahap sebelum perang, tetapi saya masih tidak boleh mencari rezeki,” keluhnya.

Di seluruh kawasan kejiranan pantai Gaza, adegan serupa berlaku setiap hari. Beribu-ribu nelayan telah kehilangan tempat tinggal atau kehilangan pekerjaan. Ramai yang telah menggunakan cara mencari rezeki alternatif, malah menjual peralatan memancing mereka dengan kereta sorong atau mengutip kayu api dari bangunan yang dibom.

Ahed Baker, seorang lagi nelayan di kem pelarian Al-Shati, sedang menampal pukat. Bot kecilnya telah kekal di dalam air selama lima minggu. “Bahan api terlalu mahal, dan saya tidak mempunyai umpan pun,” katanya kepada Xinhua.

“Laut pernah menjadi talian hayat kami. Kini ia tersumbat, pecah, dan penuh dengan bahaya,” katanya.
“Tiada apa-apa lagi yang tinggal untuk kami. Tanahnya kering. Langit menghujani bom. Dan walaupun laut kosong, ia kekal satu-satunya tempat yang saya benar-benar tahu bagaimana untuk mengemudi.”

XINHUA

AL-MUGHAYYIR, Tebing Barat, 18 April – Fatima Abu Naim, seorang ibu kepada lima anak, tinggal di sebuah gua di lereng bukit di Tebing Barat yang diduduki, di bawah tekanan yang semakin meningkat daripada peneroka Yahudi yang katanya, cuba mencuri kambing biri-biri keluarganya dan datang secara kerap untuk memberitahu dia dan suaminya supaya meninggalkan tempat itu.

“Mereka berkata, ‘Pergi, saya mahu tinggal di sini’,” katanya.

Mesej pedas yang sama daripada peneroka telah didengari di seluruh Tebing Barat dengan kekerapan yang semakin meningkat sejak permulaan perang di Gaza 18 bulan lalu, terutama di lereng bukit yang sebahagian besarnya kosong di mana orang Badwi menggembala kawanan mereka.

Menurut laporan minggu lalu oleh agensi kemanusiaan Pertubuhan Bangsa-Bangsa Bersatu OCHA, hampir separuh daripada lebih 40 serangan peneroka yang didokumenkan pada akhir Mac dan awal April melanda masyarakat Badwi dan penggembala, “termasuk insiden yang melibatkan pembakaran, pecah masuk dan kemusnahan sumber mata pencarian kritikal”.

Polis Israel tidak menjawab permintaan untuk komen.

Tebing Barat, kawasan seluas kira-kira 5,600 kilometer persegi yang terletak di antara Jordan dan Israel, telah menjadi pusat konflik selama beberapa dekad antara Israel dan Palestin sejak ia dirampas oleh Israel dalam perang Timur Tengah 1967.

Di bawah pendudukan tentera sejak itu, tetapi dilihat oleh rakyat Palestin sebagai salah satu bahagian teras negara merdeka masa depan, ia telah terus dipisahkan oleh kelompok penempatan Israel yang berkembang pesat yang kini merebak ke seluruh wilayah.

Penempatan Israel dianggap oleh kebanyakan negara sebagai haram di bawah undang-undang antarabangsa, walaupun Israel mempertikaikan perkara ini. Menteri-menteri dalam kerajaan sayap kanan Perdana Menteri Benjamin Netanyahu bercakap secara terbuka mengenai pengilhakan kawasan itu sepenuhnya.

Kawasan berpenduduk jarang di Lembah Jordan, dekat selatan bukit Hebron atau di kawasan tanah tinggi tengah Tebing Barat telah mendapat tekanan yang semakin meningkat daripada pos-pos luar peneroka yang telah mula meragut kawanan besar biri-biri di lereng bukit yang digunakan oleh Badwi dan penggembala lain.

Menurut laporan bersama minggu lalu oleh kumpulan hak asasi Israel Peace Now dan Kerem Navot, peneroka telah menggunakan pos penggembalaan seperti itu untuk merampas sekitar 78,600 hektar tanah, atau 14% daripada keseluruhan kawasan Tebing Barat, mengganggu dan menakut-nakutkan masyarakat berdekatan untuk mengusir mereka.

“Lembah Jordan atau kawasan selatan adalah di mana dahulunya terdapat padang rumput yang besar untuk rakyat Palestin, dan inilah sebabnya kawasan ini menjadi sasaran,” kata Dror Etkes, salah seorang pengarang laporan itu.

“Tetapi jika anda melihat peta, pos-pos di mana-mana. Mereka terus membina lebih banyak lagi.”

Laporan itu memetik dokumen dari pejabat peguam negara untuk menunjukkan bahawa kira-kira 8,000 hektar tanah Tebing Barat telah diperuntukkan untuk ragut oleh peneroka Israel di pos-pos luar, yang menerima pembiayaan yang besar dan sokongan material lain termasuk kenderaan daripada kerajaan.

“Masyarakat Badwi dalam cara mungkin paling terdedah,” kata Yigal Bronner, seorang aktivis di lembaga Kerem Navot yang telah memantau penderaan peneroka selama bertahun-tahun dan yang mengatakan masalah itu menjadi lebih teruk sejak perang di Gaza.

Tanpa dapat memberi ragut haiwan mereka, ramai orang Badwi tidak mampu untuk memelihara ternakan mereka, menyebabkan mereka tidak mempunyai sebarang cara untuk mencari rezeki, katanya.

“Orang ramai benar-benar bergelut untuk memenuhi keperluan hidup.”

“INI TANAH KAMI”

Lereng bukit yang ditiup angin di mana keluarga Fatima tinggal di perkhemahan yang didirikan di sekitar dua gua batu di luar perkampungan Al-Mughair, adalah tipikal kawasan berceranggah di sepanjang tulang belakang Tebing Barat.

Keluarga itu telah pun terpaksa berpindah dari Lembah Jordan, di mana masyarakat Badwi telah menghadapi serangan berulang kali oleh kumpulan peneroka ganas yang menjalankan kumpulan mereka sendiri.

Kini, menetap di rumah ketiga mereka tahun ini, dia berkata mereka sekali lagi menghadapi pencerobohan daripada penceroboh yang katanya baru-baru ini membunuh enam ekor biri-biri keluarganya dan memaksa suaminya menahannya (biri-biri).

“Masalah dengan peneroka bermula setahun setengah yang lalu, tetapi kami baru diganggu selama dua bulan. Matlamatnya adalah untuk membawa kami keluar dari sini,” katanya.

“Kambing biri-biri tinggal di dalam kandang. Mereka tidak membenarkannya keluar atau apa-apa.”

Suami Fatima, yang telah berdepan dengan peneroka, telah ditahan minggu ini atas sebab yang dia (Fatima) tidak ketahui. Kumpulan hak asasi rakyat Palestin dan Israel berkata tiada penyelesaian undang-undang secara berkesan bagi komuniti penggembala dan kepahitan perang Gaza telah mengeraskan lagi sikap.

“Ini tanah kami,” kata Asher Meth, 65 tahun, seorang peneroka Tebing Barat yang sedang bersiar-siar di mata air Ein al-Auja, di Lembah Jordan yang dihalang oleh komuniti Badwi berdekatan.

“Dan jika negara Israel bangkit, dan berkata ‘sebenarnya, ambil tanah itu’ dan berkata ‘tanah ini kini bahagian daripada Israel’, orang Arab akan lebih memahami dan berundur daripada cuba membunuh kami.”

Beberapa ratus meter dari mata air, di sebuah perkhemahan besar Badwi, Odeh Khalil, 70 tahun, telah mendengar mesej itu.

Sejak kehilangan 300 ekor biri-biri akibat serbuan oleh peneroka Ogos lalu, dia telah menyimpan baki haiwannya di dalam kandang tetapi buat masa ini, dia berkata dia bertekad untuk bertahan.

“Orang ramai tidak boleh hidup tanpa biri-biri. Jika kami pergi, semuanya akan hilang,” katanya.

“Mereka mahu mengusir kami dan mengatakan ini adalah hak milik Israel.”

REUTERS

GENEVA – Some 6.7 million additional people are expected to be newly displaced worldwide by the end of next year, the Danish Refugee Council said on Friday, just as aid cuts from key donors take effect.

The UN refugee agency said last year that the number of forcibly displaced people around the globe stood at over 117 million people and warned that number could rise.

“These are not cold statistics. These are families forced to flee their homes, carrying next to nothing, and searching for water, food, and shelter,” said Charlotte Slente, secretary-general of the Danish Refugee Council in a statement.

Twenty-seven countries account for nearly a third of all global displacements.

The projection is based on an AI-driven model that predicts displacement trends by analyzing over 100 indicators, including security, politics, and economics in those countries.

It forecasts that nearly a third of new displacements will be from Sudan, which is already the world’s worst refugee crisis after almost two years of war.

“Starvation has been used as a weapon of war, pushing Sudan from one catastrophic famine to another,” the report said.

Another 1.4 million people are expected to be forcibly displaced from Myanmar, the report said.

The US is cutting billions of dollars in foreign aid programs globally as part of a significant spending overhaul by the world’s biggest aid donor.

The Danish Refugee Council is one of the aid groups hit and has had more than 20 contract terminations.
Cuts from Washington and other key donors are already impacting refugees.

The UN refugee agency said that funding shortages had shuttered programs to protect adolescent girls from child marriage in South Sudan and a safe house for displaced women in danger of being killed in Ethiopia.

“Millions are facing starvation and displacement, and just as they need us most, wealthy nations are slashing aid. It’s a betrayal of the most vulnerable,” said Slente.

She blasted the decision to cancel 83 percent of USAID’s humanitarian aid programs around the world.

Slente said: “We’re in the middle of a global ‘perfect storm’: record displacement, surging needs, and devastating funding cuts.”

She said major donors “are abandoning their duty, leaving millions to suffer. This is more than a crisis. It is a moral failure.”

AN-AFP/REUTERS

GENEVA – Kira-kira 6.7 juta orang tambahan dijangka akan dipindahkan di seluruh dunia menjelang akhir tahun depan, kata Majlis Pelarian Denmark pada Jumaat, sama seperti pemotongan bantuan daripada penderma utama berkuat kuasa.

Agensi pelarian PBB berkata tahun lalu bahawa jumlah orang yang dipindahkan secara paksa di seluruh dunia berjumlah lebih 117 juta orang dan memberi amaran bahawa jumlah itu boleh meningkat.

“Ini bukan statistik kaku. Ini adalah keluarga yang terpaksa meninggalkan rumah mereka, tidak membawa apa-apa, dan mencari air, makanan, dan tempat tinggal,” kata Charlotte Slente, setiausaha agung Majlis Pelarian Denmark dalam satu kenyataan.

Dua puluh tujuh negara menyumbang hampir satu pertiga daripada semua pemindahan global.

Unjuran ini berdasarkan model dipacu AI yang meramalkan arah aliran pemindahan dengan menganalisis lebih 100 penunjuk, termasuk keselamatan, politik dan ekonomi di negara tersebut.

Ia meramalkan bahawa hampir satu pertiga daripada pemindahan baharu akan datang dari Sudan, yang sudah pun menjadi krisis pelarian terburuk di dunia selepas hampir dua tahun perang.

“Kebuluran telah digunakan sebagai senjata perang, mendorong Sudan daripada satu bencana kebuluran kepada yang lain,” kata laporan itu.

1.4 juta lagi orang dijangka dipindahkan secara paksa dari Myanmar, kata laporan itu.

AS memotong berbilion dolar dalam program bantuan asing di seluruh dunia sebagai sebahagian daripada baik pulih perbelanjaan yang ketara oleh penderma bantuan terbesar dunia itu.

Majlis Pelarian Denmark adalah salah satu kumpulan bantuan yang terjejas dan telah mempunyai lebih daripada 20 penamatan kontrak.
Pemotongan dari Washington dan penderma utama lain sudah memberi kesan kepada pelarian.

Agensi pelarian PBB berkata bahawa kekurangan pembiayaan telah menutup program untuk melindungi remaja perempuan daripada perkahwinan kanak-kanak di Sudan Selatan dan rumah selamat untuk wanita pelarian yang berisiko dibunuh di Ethiopia.

“Berjuta-juta orang menghadapi kebuluran dan perpindahan, dan sama seperti mereka amat memerlukan kita, negara-negara kaya mengurangkan bantuan. Ia adalah pengkhianatan kepada mereka yang paling terdedah,” kata Slente.

Dia mengecam keputusan untuk membatalkan 83 peratus program bantuan kemanusiaan USAID di seluruh dunia.

Slente berkata: “Kami berada di tengah-tengah ‘ribut sempurna’ global: permindahan rekod, keperluan yang melonjak dan pemotongan pembiayaan yang dahsyat.”

Dia berkata penderma utama “meninggalkan tugas mereka, menyebabkan berjuta-juta menderita. Ini lebih daripada krisis. Ia adalah kegagalan moral.”

AN-AFP/REUTERS

BEIT LAHIYA, Genting Gaza – Apabila malam tiba di utara Gaza, sebahagian besar lanskap bandar bangunan runtuh dan serpihan bertimbun menjadi gelap gelita.

Tinggal di dalam runtuhan rumah mereka, anak lelaki Rawya Tamboura yang masih kecil berasa takut akan kegelapan, jadi dia menghidupkan lampu suluh dan lampu telefonnya untuk menghiburkan mereka, selagi bateri masih ada.

Terlantar untuk sebahagian besar perang selama 16 bulan, Tamboura kembali ke rumahnya. Tetapi ia masih merupakan cangkang kehidupan yang mengecewakan, dia berkata: Tiada air mengalir, elektrik, haba atau perkhidmatan, dan tiada alat untuk membersihkan runtuhan di sekeliling mereka.

Hampir 600,000 penduduk Palestin membanjiri kembali ke utara Gaza di bawah gencatan senjata yang kini berusia sebulan di Gaza, menurut Pertubuhan Bangsa-Bangsa Bersatu (PBB). Selepas kelegaan awal dan kegembiraan kerana kembali ke rumah mereka – walaupun rosak atau musnah – mereka kini menghadapi realiti hidup dalam runtuhan untuk masa hadapan.

“Sesetengah orang berharap perang tidak pernah berakhir, merasakan lebih baik terbunuh,” kata Tamboura.

“Saya tidak tahu apa yang akan kami lakukan untuk jangka panjang. Otak saya terhenti merancang untuk masa depan.”

Gencatan senjata selama enam minggu akan berakhir pada Sabtu, dan tidak pasti apa yang akan berlaku seterusnya. Terdapat usaha untuk melanjutkan ketenangan kerana fasa seterusnya dirundingkan. Jika pertempuran meletus lagi, mereka yang kembali ke utara boleh mendapati diri mereka sekali lagi berada di tengah-tengahnya.

Kerja membina semula secara besar-besaran tiada cara untuk mula

Laporan minggu lalu oleh Bank Dunia, PBB dan Kesatuan Eropah (EU) menganggarkan ia akan menelan belanja kira-kira $53 bilion untuk membina semula Gaza selepas seluruh kawasan kejiranan musnah akibat pengeboman dan serangan Israel terhadap militan Hamas. Pada masa ini, hampir tiada kapasiti atau pembiayaan untuk memulakan pembinaan semula yang ketara.

Satu keutamaan ialah menjadikan Gaza segera didiami. Pada awal Februari, Hamas mengancam untuk menahan pembebasan tebusan melainkan lebih banyak khemah dan tempat perlindungan sementara dibenarkan masuk ke Gaza.

Ia kemudian membalikkan dan mempercepatkan pembebasan tebusan selepas Israel bersetuju untuk membenarkan rumah bergerak dan peralatan pembinaan.

Agensi kemanusiaan telah meningkatkan perkhidmatan, menyediakan dapur percuma dan stesen penghantaran air, dan mengedarkan khemah dan terpal kepada ratusan ribu di seluruh Gaza, menurut PBB.

Presiden Donald Trump meningkatkan tekanan dengan menggesa seluruh penduduk Gaza disingkirkan secara kekal supaya AS boleh mengambil alih wilayah itu dan membangunkannya semula untuk orang lain. Menolak cadangan itu, rakyat Palestin berkata mereka mahu bantuan untuk membina semula untuk diri mereka sendiri.

Perbandaran Gaza City mula membaiki beberapa tali air dan membersihkan runtuhan dari jalan-jalan, kata seorang jurucakap, Asem Alnabih. Tetapi ia kekurangan alat berat. Hanya beberapa daripada 40 jentolak dan lima lori sampah masih berfungsi, katanya. Gaza dipenuhi dengan lebih 50 juta tan runtuhan yang akan membawa 100 trak yang bekerja pada kapasiti penuh selama 15 tahun untuk membersihkannya, anggaran PBB.

Keluarga cuba bertahan hari demi hari

Rumah Tamboura di bandar utara Beit Lahiya telah musnah akibat serangan udara pada awal perang, jadi dia dan keluarganya tinggal di Hospital Indonesia berdekatan, tempat dia bekerja sebagai jururawat.

Selepas gencatan senjata, mereka bergerak semula ke satu-satunya bilik di rumahnya yang separuh utuh. Siling sebahagiannya runtuh, dindingnya retak; peti sejuk dan sinki yang masih hidup tidak berguna tanpa air atau elektrik. Mereka menyusun cadar dan selimut di satu sudut.

Tamboura berkata, anak lelakinya yang berusia 12 tahun membawa bekas air berat dua kali sehari dari stesen pengedaran. Mereka juga perlu mencari kayu api untuk memasak. Kemasukan bantuan bermakna terdapat makanan di pasaran dan harga turun, tetapi ia kekal mahal, katanya.

Dengan Hospital Indonesia terlalu rosak untuk berfungsi, Tamboura berjalan sejam setiap hari untuk bekerja di Hospital Kamal Adwan.

Dia mengecas telefonnya dan telefon suaminya menggunakan penjana hospital.

Ramai saudara-mara Tamboura pulang untuk tidak menemui apa-apa yang tinggal di rumah mereka, jadi mereka tinggal di dalam khemah di atas atau di sebelah runtuhan yang diterbangkan angin musim sejuk atau banjir semasa hujan, katanya.

Asmaa Dwaima dan keluarganya kembali ke Gaza City tetapi terpaksa menyewa sebuah apartmen kerana rumah mereka di kejiranan Tel Al-Hawa telah musnah. Hanya beberapa minggu selepas pulang, dia pergi melawat rumah empat tingkat mereka, kini timbunan serpihan yang rata dan terbakar.

“Saya tidak boleh datang ke sini kerana saya takut. Saya mempunyai imej rumah saya dalam fikiran saya – keindahan dan kehangatannya. … Saya takut untuk menghadapi kebenaran ini,” kata doktor gigi berusia 25 tahun itu. “Mereka bukan sahaja memusnahkan batu, mereka memusnahkan kami dan identiti kami.”

Keluarganya terpaksa membina semula rumah itu sekali sebelum ini, apabila ia diratakan oleh serangan udara semasa pusingan pertempuran antara Israel dan Hamas pada 2014, katanya.

Buat masa ini, mereka tidak mempunyai cara untuk membina semula sekarang.

“Kami perlu mengalihkan runtuhan kerana kami mahu mengeluarkan pakaian dan beberapa barangan kami,” katanya. “Kami memerlukan peralatan berat … Tiada batu bata atau alat pembinaan lain dan, jika ada, ia sangat mahal.”

Keputusasaan semakin meningkat

Tess Ingram, jurucakap UNICEF yang melawat utara Gaza sejak gencatan senjata, berkata keluarga ditemuinya “berduka kehidupan yang pernah mereka jalani ketika mereka mula membina semula”.

Keputusasaan mereka, katanya, “semakin memuncak”.

Huda Skaik, seorang pelajar berusia 20 tahun, berkongsi bilik dengan tiga adik-beradik dan ibu bapanya di rumah datuk dan neneknya di Gaza City. Ia adalah peningkatan daripada kehidupan di khemah-khemah di tengah Gaza di mana mereka dipindahkan untuk sebahagian besar peperangan, katanya.

Di sana, mereka terpaksa tinggal dalam kalangan orang asing, dan khemah mereka dihanyutkan oleh hujan. Sekurang-kurangnya di sini mereka mempunyai dinding dan bersama keluarga, katanya.

Sebelum perang terputus, Skaik baru sahaja mula belajar kesusasteraan Inggeris di Universiti Islam Gaza. Dia kini mendaftar dalam kelas dalam talian dianjurkan oleh universiti. Tetapi Internet lemah, dan elektriknya bergantung pada panel solar yang tidak selalu berfungsi.

“Bahagian yang paling teruk ialah kami baru memahami bahawa kami kehilangan semuanya,” katanya. “Kemusnahan adalah besar, tetapi saya cuba untuk kekal positif.”

AN-AP

CAIRO – Mona Ibrahim has already buried two of her children.

In the span of just two months, the Sudanese mother watched helplessly as severe malnutrition killed her 10-year-old daughter, Rania, and her eight-month-old son, Montasir, in the famine-stricken Zamzam displacement camp.

“I could only hold them as they faded away,” Ibrahim, 40, said via video call, sitting outside her straw-and-plastic shelter near North Darfur state’s besieged capital El-Fasher.

Rania was the first to succumb. In El-Fasher’s only functioning hospital, understaffed and unequipped, she died in November just three days after being admitted with acute diarrhea.

Her baby boy Montasir followed weeks later, his tiny body bloated from severe malnutrition.

El-Fasher, under paramilitary siege since May, is only one grim battlefield in the 21-month war between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces.

In July, a UN-backed review declared famine in Zamzam, a decades-old displacement camp home to between 500,000 and a million people.

By December, it had spread to two more camps in the area, Abu Shouk and Al-Salam, as well as parts of the Nuba Mountains in southern Sudan, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification determined.

Now, Ibrahim fears for her four-year-old daughter, Rashida, who battles severe anemia with no access to medical care.

“I am terrified I will lose her too,” she said. “We’re abandoned. There is no food, no medicine, nothing.”

At Salam 56, one of Zamzam’s 48 overcrowded shelters, exhaustion was etched onto mothers’ faces as they cradled their children, too weak to stand.

Multiple families gathered around bowls with a few scraps of peanut residue traditionally used as animal feed. “It’s all we have,” said Rawiya Ali, a 35-year-old mother of five.

Contaminated water collects in a shallow reservoir during the rainy season, which the women trudge 3 km to fetch.

“Animals drink from it and so do we,” Ali said.

Salam 56 is home to over 700 families, according to its coordinator Adam Mahmoud Abdullah.

Since war began in April 2023, it has received only four food aid deliveries, the most recent in September, a mere 10 tonnes of flour, he said. “Since then, nothing has come,” Abdullah said.

The desolation in Zamzam lays bare the true cost of the war, which has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted over 12 million others, and created the “biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded,” according to the International Rescue Committee. About 700 km southeast of Zamzam, the situation was just as dire.

Outside one of the last functioning community kitchens in the town of Dilling in South Kordofan state, queues stretched endlessly, according to Nazik Kabalo, who leads a Sudanese women’s rights group overseeing the kitchen.

Photos show men, women and children standing hollow-eyed and frail — their bellies swollen and skin pulled taut over fragile bones.

After days without a single morsel, “some collapse where they stand,” Kabalo said. “For others, even when they get food … they vomit it back up,” she said.

In South Kordofan state, where agriculture once thrived, farmers are eating seeds meant for planting, while others boil tree leaves in water to stave off hunger.

“We are seeing hunger in areas that have never seen famine in Sudan’s history,” Kabalo said.

With vast oil and gold reserves and fertile agricultural land, Sudan has had its economy bludgeoned by war and decades of mismanagement, and now, hunger is everywhere.

AN-AFP, Jan 29, 2025

HONG KONG — In a series of war games in the seas and skies around Taiwan last month, China deployed some of its newest strike aircraft, warships and missile forces.
However, one of the most menacing weapons used in the drills: an updated version of a bomber that first flew in the early years of the Cold War.

Like America, which still relies on upgraded versions of the B-52, a bomber from the same era, China has successfully modernized its jet-powered H-6 to carry on flying deep into the 21st Century.

These bombers were shown on China’s state-controlled media taking off for missions designed to intimidate Taiwan as part of the war-game drills. Dubbed Joint-Sword 2024B by China’s military, the maneuvers were a “stern warning” to people on Taiwan seeking independence, the Chinese military said.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense reported that 153 Chinese military aircraft, 14 naval vessels and 12 other ships were detected around the island over a 25-hour period after the start of the exercise on Oct. 14.

The ministry also reported that 111 of the aircraft had crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entered the island’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).

Taiwan’s defense ministry told Reuters that “three groups of three H-6 aircraft” had been detected operating in the island’s air space during China’s military exercise.

Two of the groups “conducted simulated attack drills,” the ministry said.

China’s defense ministry didn’t respond to questions for this story.

Some modernized versions of China’s H-6 bomber are now capable of launching ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads while others can carry multiple long-range anti-ship and land attack missiles, according to defense analysts and Pentagon reports on the Chinese military.

Some versions can be refueled in flight, allowing them to fly from bases on the Chinese mainland and strike at targets deep into the Western Pacific, where the U.S. has large bases on Guam and elsewhere.

Asked about the military drills, Taiwan’s defense ministry said the island was using “joint intelligence surveillance to keep track of the communist military’s movements around Taiwan,” while also dispatching “air, sea and missile forces to respond as appropriate to ensure national defense and security.”

Major Pete Nguyen, a Pentagon spokesperson, said the U.S. was “prepared to respond to any threat and protect the homeland.” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “has often said that he does not believe conflict with the PRC is imminent nor inevitable,” Nguyen said in response to questions.

Beijing says that Taiwan is part of China and has not ruled out the use of force to bring the island under its control. The leaders of democratically governed Taiwan reject these sovereignty claims.

China’s military capabilities are in the spotlight as tensions with the U.S. remain high with Donald Trump returning to office.

In a display of its growing military prowess, China put its J-35A stealth fighter on display at the Zhuhai air show this week.

SERIOUS THREAT

Unlike America, which stopped building the B-52 in 1962, China has continued to make the twin-engine H-6 at a plant in central China.
However, H-6 production may have recently slowed or been halted, according to Thomas Shugart, a former U.S. Navy submarine officer and an expert on China’s military. He estimates the Chinese air force now has about 230 of these bombers.

The H-6 is derived from the Tupolev Tu-16 bomber, which the Soviet Union introduced into service in the early 1950s and was given the NATO code name Badger.

China began building these aircraft under license in the late 1950s, according to experts on the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military.

The Taiwanese and Japanese militaries have reported that H-6 bombers have been frequently deployed on flights near their airspace in recent years.

They are also sent on flights over the South China Sea where Beijing claims sovereignty over extensive areas of disputed territory.

In a conflict, these bombers would pose a serious threat to ships and targets on land, according to U.S. and Taiwanese military experts.

Shugart said that Chinese military doctrine for island landing campaigns, such as an invasion of Taiwan, calls for strikes against headquarters, communications facilities, logistics centers and other key targets, along with attacks on airfields, ports and ships at sea. “I would expect H-6s to be involved in all of these sorts of operations,” he said.

These attacks would likely be coordinated with missile strikes, possibly without warning, that would soften air defenses and crater runways to trap aircraft on the ground, Shugart added.
He said these aircraft could then be hit with cruise missiles launched from H-6 bombers.

China’s official media in mid-September provided some insight into the role the H-6 might play in a clash off the Chinese coast.

State broadcaster CCTV showed footage of one of these bombers flying in an exercise with fighters and a long-range WZ-7 surveillance drone. The drone penetrated the air defenses of a potential adversary, identified a target and relayed this information to the H-6, according to the footage. The bomber was shown launching an anti-ship missile.

Beijing says that Taiwan is part of China and has not ruled out the use of force to bring the island under its control. The leaders of democratically governed Taiwan reject these sovereignty claims.

China’s military capabilities are in the spotlight as tensions with the U.S. remain high with Donald Trump returning to office.

In a display of its growing military prowess, China put its J-35A stealth fighter on display at the Zhuhai air show this week.

SERIOUS THREAT

Unlike America, which stopped building the B-52 in 1962, China has continued to make the twin-engine H-6 at a plant in central China.
However, H-6 production may have recently slowed or been halted, according to Thomas Shugart, a former U.S. Navy submarine officer and an expert on China’s military. He estimates the Chinese air force now has about 230 of these bombers.

The H-6 is derived from the Tupolev Tu-16 bomber, which the Soviet Union introduced into service in the early 1950s and was given the NATO code name Badger.

China began building these aircraft under license in the late 1950s, according to experts on the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military.

The Taiwanese and Japanese militaries have reported that H-6 bombers have been frequently deployed on flights near their airspace in recent years.

They are also sent on flights over the South China Sea where Beijing claims sovereignty over extensive areas of disputed territory.

In a conflict, these bombers would pose a serious threat to ships and targets on land, according to U.S. and Taiwanese military experts.

Shugart said that Chinese military doctrine for island landing campaigns, such as an invasion of Taiwan, calls for strikes against headquarters, communications facilities, logistics centers and other key targets, along with attacks on airfields, ports and ships at sea. “I would expect H-6s to be involved in all of these sorts of operations,” he said.

These attacks would likely be coordinated with missile strikes, possibly without warning, that would soften air defenses and crater runways to trap aircraft on the ground, Shugart added.

He said these aircraft could then be hit with cruise missiles launched from H-6 bombers.

China’s official media in mid-September provided some insight into the role the H-6 might play in a clash off the Chinese coast.

State broadcaster CCTV showed footage of one of these bombers flying in an exercise with fighters and a long-range WZ-7 surveillance drone.

The drone penetrated the air defenses of a potential adversary, identified a target and relayed this information to the H-6, according to the footage.

The bomber was shown launching an anti-ship missile.

REUTERS

JERUSALEM — With virtually no food allowed into the northernmost part of Gaza for the past month, tens of thousands of Palestinians under Israeli siege are rationing their last lentils and flour to survive.

As bombardment pounds around them, some say they risk their lives by venturing out in search of cans of food in the rubble of destroyed homes.

Thousands have staggered out of the area, hungry and thin, into Gaza City, where they find the situation a little better.

One hospital reports seeing thousands of children suffering from malnutrition.

A nutritionist said she treated a pregnant woman wasting away at just 40 kilograms (88 pounds).

“We are being starved to force us to leave our homes,” said Mohammed Arqouq, whose family of eight is determined to stay in the north, weathering Israel’s siege. “We will die here in our homes.”

Medical workers warn that hunger is spiraling to dire proportions under a monthlong siege on northern Gaza by the Israeli military, which has been waging a fierce campaign since the beginning of October.

The military has severed the area with checkpoints, ordering residents to leave.

Many Palestinians fear Israel aims to depopulate the north long term.

On Friday, experts from a panel that monitors food security said famine is imminent in the north or may already be happening.

The growing desperation comes as the deadline approaches next week for a 30-day request the administration of President Joe Biden gave Israel: raise the level of humanitarian assistance allowed into Gaza or risk possible restrictions on US military funding.

The US says Israel must allow a minimum of 350 trucks a day carrying food and other supplies. Israel has fallen far short.

In October, 57 trucks a day entered Gaza on average, according to figures from Israel’s military agency overseeing aid entry, known as COGAT. In the first week of November, the average was 81 a day.

The UN puts the number even lower — 37 trucks daily since the beginning of October.

It says Israeli military operations and general lawlessness often prevent it from collecting supplies, leaving hundreds of truckloads stranded at the border.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Israel had made some progress by announcing the opening of a new crossing into central Gaza and approving new delivery routes.

But he said Israel must do more.

“It’s not just sufficient to open new roads if more humanitarian assistance isn’t going through those roads,” he said.

Israeli forces have been hammering the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, and Jabaliya refugee camp.

Witnesses report intense fighting between troops and militants.

A trickle of food has reached Gaza City.

However, as of Thursday, nothing entered the towns farther north for 30 days, even as an estimated 70,000 people remain there, said Louise Wateridge, spokesperson for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, speaking from Gaza City.

The government acknowledged in late October that it hadn’t allowed aid into Jabaliya because of military “operational constraints” in response to a petition by Israeli human rights groups.

On Saturday, COGAT said it allowed 11 trucks of food and supplies into Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya. But Alia Zaki, a spokeswoman for the WFP, said Israeli troops at a checkpoint forced the convoy to unload the food before it could reach shelters in Beit Hanoun.

It was not clear what then happened to the supplies.

Palestinians in the north described a desperate daily struggle to find food, water, and safety as strike-level buildings, sometimes killing whole families.

Arqouq said he goes out at night to search bombed-out buildings: “Sometimes you find a half-empty package of flour, canned food, and lentils.”

He said his family relies on help from others sheltering at a Jabaliya school, but their food is also running low.

“We are like dogs and cats searching for their food in the rubble,” said Um Saber, a widow.

She said she and her six children had to flee a school-turned-shelter in Beit Lahiya when Israel struck it.

Now they live in her father-in-law’s home, stretching meager supplies of lentils and pasta with 40 others, mostly women and children.

Ahmed Abu Awda, a 28-year-old father of three living with 25 relatives in a Jabaliya house, said they have a daily meal of lentils with bread, rationing to ensure children eat.

“Sometimes we don’t eat at all,” he said.

Lubna, a 38-year-old mother of five, left food behind when fleeing as strikes and drone fire pummeled the street in Jabaliya.
“We got out by a miracle,” she said from Beit Lahiya, where they’re staying.

Her husband scavenged flour from destroyed homes after Israeli forces withdrew around nearby Kamal Adwan hospital, she said. It’s moldy, she said, so they sift it first.
Her young daughter, Selina, is visibly gaunt and bony, Lubna said.

The offensive has raised fears among Palestinians that Israel seeks to empty northern Gaza and hold it long-term under a surrender-or-starve plan proposed by former generals.

Witnesses report Israeli troops going building to building, forcing people to leave toward Gaza City.

On Thursday, the Israeli military ordered new evacuations from several Gaza City neighborhoods, raising the possibility of a ground assault there.

The UN said some 14,000 displaced Palestinians were sheltering there.

Food and supplies are also stretched for the several hundred thousand people in Gaza City.

Much of the city has been flattened by months of Israeli bombardment and shelling.

Dr. Rana Soboh, a nutrition specialist at Gaza City’s Patient Friend Benevolent Hospital, said she sees 350 cases of moderate to severe acute malnutrition daily, most from the north and also from Gaza City.

“The bone of their chest is showing, the eyes are protruding,” she said, and many have trouble concentrating.

“You repeat something several times so they can understand what we are saying.”

She cited a 32-year-old woman shedding weight in her third month of pregnancy — when they put her on the scale, she weighed only 40 kg.

“We are suffering, facing the ghost of famine hovering over Gaza,” Soboh said.

Even before the siege in the north, the Patient Friend hospital saw a flood of children suffering from malnutrition — more than 4,780 in September compared with 1,100 in July, said Dr. Ahmad Eskiek, who oversees hospital operations.

Soboh said staff get calls from Beit Lahiya and Jabaliya pleading for help: “What can we do? We have nothing.”

She had worked at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north but fled with her family to Gaza City. Now, they stay with 22 people in her uncle’s two-bedroom apartment.

On Thursday, she had had a morsel of bread for breakfast and later a meal of yellow lentils.

As winter rains near, new arrivals set up tents wherever they can.

Some 1,500 people are in a UN school already heavily damaged in strikes that “could collapse at any moment,” UNRWA spokesperson Wateridge said.

With toilets destroyed, people try to set aside a classroom corner to use, leaving waste “streaming down the walls of the school,” she said.

She said that others in Gaza City move into the rubble of buildings, draping tarps between layers of collapsed concrete.

“It’s like the carcass of a city,” she said.

AN-AP

GENEVA — The UN condemned on Friday the staggering number of civilians killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, with women and children comprising nearly 70 percent of the thousands of fatalities it had managed to verify.

In a fresh report, the United Nations human rights office detailed the “horrific reality” that has unfolded for civilians in both Gaza and Israel since Hamas’s attack in Israel on October 7, 2023.

It detailed a vast array of violations of international law, warning that many could amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly even “genocide.”

“The report shows how civilians in Gaza have borne the brunt of the attacks, including through the initial ‘complete siege’ of Gaza by Israeli forces,” the UN said.

It also pointed to “the Israeli government’s continuing unlawful failures to allow, facilitate and ensure the entry of humanitarian aid, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and repeated mass displacement.”

“This conduct by Israeli forces has caused unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness and disease,” it continued.

“Palestinian armed groups have also conducted hostilities in ways that have likely contributed to harm to civilians.”

The report took on the contentious issue of the proportion of civilians figuring among the now nearly 43,500 people killed in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Palestinian territory.

Due to a lack of access, UN agencies have since the beginning of the Gaza war relied on death tolls provided by the authorities in Hamas-run Gaza.

This has sparked accusations from Israel of “parroting… Hamas’s propaganda messages” but the UN has repeatedly said the figures are reliable.

Youngest victim aged one day

The rights office said it had now managed to verify 8,119 of the more than 34,500 people reportedly killed during the first six months of the war in Gaza, finding “close to 70 percent to be children and women.”

This, it said, indicated “a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, including distinction and proportionality.”

Of the verified fatalities, 3,588 of them were children and 2,036 were women, the report said.

“We do believe this is representative of the breakdown of total fatalities — similar proportion to what Gaza authorities have,” UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told AFP.

“Our monitoring indicates that this unprecedented level of killing and injury of civilians is a direct consequence of the failure to comply with fundamental principles of international humanitarian law,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.

“Tragically, these documented patterns of violations continue unabated, over one year after the start of the war.”

His office found that about 80 percent of all the verified deaths in Gaza had occurred in Israeli attacks on residential buildings or similar housing, and that close to 90 percent had died in incidents that killed five or more people.

The main victims of Israeli strikes on residential buildings, it said, were children between the ages of five and nine, with the youngest victim a one-day-old boy and the oldest a 97-year-old woman.

The report said that the large proportion of verified deaths in residential buildings could be partially explained by the rights office’s “verification methodology, which requires at least three independent sources.”

It also pointed to continuing “challenges in collecting and verifying information of killings in other circumstances.”

Gaza authorities have long said that women and children made up a significant majority of those killed in the war, but with lacking access for full UN verification, the issue has remained highly contentious.

Israel has insisted that its operations in Gaza are targeting militants.

But Friday’s report stressed that the verified deaths largely mirrored the demographic makeup of the population at large in Gaza, rather than the known demographic of combatants.

This, it said, clearly “raises concerns regarding compliance with the principle of distinction and reflect an apparent failure to take all feasible precautions to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.”

AN-AFP

UNITED NATIONS — Myanmar’s conflict-torn Rakhine state is heading toward famine, the United Nations warned on Thursday, as the country’s civil war squeezes commerce and agricultural production.

“Rakhine’s economy has stopped functioning,” a new report from the UN Development Programme said, projecting “famine conditions by mid-2025” if current levels of food insecurity are left unaddressed.

Some two million people are at risk of starvation, it said.

Amid the fighting roiling the country, international and domestic trade routes leading into the already impoverished state have been closed, leaving the entrance of aid and goods severely restricted.

In addition to intense fighting, people in Rakhine are facing “absence of incomes, hyperinflation (and) significantly reduced domestic food production,” the UNDP report warned.

Myanmar has been racked by conflict between the military and various armed groups opposed to its rule since the ruling junta ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in February 2021.

Clashes have rocked western Rakhine since the Arakan Army (AA) attacked security forces in November 2023, ending a ceasefire that had largely held since the junta’s 2021 coup.

With the farming economy in crisis, the UNDP predicted local food production would only cover 20 percent of the state’s needs by March or April.

Internal rice production is “plummeting,” it said, due to “a lack of seeds, fertilizers (and) severe weather conditions.”

Some 97,000 tons of rice are set to be cultivated in Rakhine this year, compared to 282,000 tons last year, according to the UNDP.

A “steep rise” in internally displaced people, meanwhile, means many fields are unable to be worked.

According to UN figures, Rakhine state recorded more than 500,000 displaced people in August, compared to just under 200,000 in October 2023.

Facing particular risk are populations including members of the long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority and displaced people.

AN-AFP

CAIRO — Mohammad Atteya has been separated from his family in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya for two weeks since being evacuated to hospital with a head wound.

Now he is torn by regret for leaving them in the epicentre of a massive Israeli military assault.

“They speak to me about their nights of horror, they tell me how every night they pray for their safety and they bid one another farewell. Hell is boiling there, I feel it inside my chest. I wish I hadn’t left,” he said.

While he waits in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, only a few kilometres from home but unable to return, 23 members of his extended family are sheltering in one house with barely enough to eat.

“They are eating what is left of some canned food, no fresh vegetables or fruit, no meat or chicken and no clean water,” he said.

In the month since Israel launched a renewed campaign in the border town of Beit Lahiya, one of the first targets of last year’s ground assault, multiple strikes have killed hundreds of Palestinians.

A hit on a residential building on Oct. 29 killed at least 93 people, health officials said. Israel’s military said it was targeting a spotter on the roof.

Thousands of Palestinians have been evacuated from Beit Lahiya and the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia as the Israeli military roots out bands of Hamas fighters still operating from amongst the rubble.

The area has been cut off from Gaza City to the south, communication has been patchy, supplies of food dwindling and prices of whatever is available reaching exorbitant levels.

It is unclear how many civilians remain in northern Gaza. The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service estimated 100,000 people remain in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, about half of those there at the start of the new Israeli campaign on Oct. 5.

The repeated bombardments have destroyed shelters and those remaining are huddled together in whatever structures still stand. “That is why every Israeli hit on a house leads to dozens of casualties,” said Atteya.

The Israeli military has disputed some of the casualty figures reported by Palestinian officials. Top United Nations officials say the situation in northern Gaza is “apocalyptic” with the entire population at imminent risk of death.

AMBUSHES AND GUNBATTLES

More than a year into the war in Gaza, the Israeli military believes that Hamas, whose fighters rampaged through communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, has been depleted but not yet extinguished.

“We expect this campaign to last an additional few weeks at least. There is a lot of work to do there in order to dismantle Hamas’ capabilities in this region,” an Israeli military official said last week.

The army says it has killed or captured hundreds of Hamas fighters during the northern Gaza operation, and at least 17 Israeli soldiers have been killed in gunbattles and ambushes in the wrecked streets or bombed-out buildings.

On Tuesday, Hamas’ armed wing said fighters in Jabalia had killed five Israeli soldiers at point blank range a day earlier, in one of several such announcements the group has made in past weeks. The Israeli military did not immediately comment.

Access for reporters is restricted and communications are erratic making independent verification of what is happening on the ground difficult.

Israel accuses Hamas fighters of hiding among civilians. In a night-time raid on the Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the few health facilities struggling to operate in the north, an Israeli military official said around 100 Hamas fighters were captured, some posing as medical staff, along with weapons and ammunition.

Hamas rejected the accusations. Eid Sabbah, the hospital’s director of nursing, described a terrifying raid in a voice note to Reuters. “The terrorising of civilians, the injured and children began as they (the Israeli army) started opening fire on the hospital,” he said.

In advance of attacks, the Israeli military sends out evacuation orders to civilians in leaflet drops and targeted telephone calls.

“Evacuation is the worst feeling ever,” Atteya said. “You are told to run for your life, you try to ask the voice (Israeli caller), how much time do I have, he says ‘run’. What can you take with you when you go running?”

A public servant, Atteya had dreams for his children, aged between 15 and 2, in Hamas-run Gaza before the war, which health officials in Gaza say has killed more than 43,300 Palestinians.

“I don’t say the Hamas government was ideal. They couldn’t improve economic conditions,” he said. “We had a life, a good one, not good enough but we didn’t have the (Israeli) occupation’s killing machine tearing us up everyday.”

The future is hard for Atteya to envisage. Many Palestinians believe the Israeli campaign is aimed at preparing the way for a return of Israeli settlers to post-war Gaza.

“They are making buffer zones, that’s why they are demolishing and bombing residential districts, and some of their fanatics want to return settlers in Gaza. This is how bad the situation is,” he said.

The Israeli military denies such plans and says the evacuation orders are meant to keep civilians out of harm’s way.

REUTERS

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — After over a year of war in Gaza, Palestinian fishermen gather along the coastline, desperately casting their nets in hopes of catching enough for their families amid widespread hunger.

Since Israel began a military onslaught in Gaza after Hamas’ October 2023 attack, Israeli restrictions in the waters off the enclave have made life almost impossible for fishermen, who no longer sail out to sea and instead must stay by the shore.

In Khan Younis, Ibrahim Ghurab, 71, and Waseem Al Masry, 24, fish for sardines from the shoreline in front of a encampment of tents and makeshift shelters for those displaced by the war.

“Life is difficult,” Ghurab said. “One tries to secure food. There is no aid, we don’t receive anything anymore. In the beginning there was some (humanitarian) aid, very little, but now there is no more.”

Fishermen like Ghurab and Al Masry struggle daily to bring in even a modest catch to feed their families. There is rarely any fish left over from a daily haul to be sold to others.

Fishing was an important part of daily life in Gaza before the war, helping people eke out a living by selling their daily hauls in the market and feed the population.

But scant aid is reaching Gaza amid Israeli restrictions and frequent fighting, and many people have no income. The price of simple goods are largely out of reach for most.

“We have to come here and risk our lives,” Al Masry said, describing shootings by the Israeli military from the sea that he accused of targeting fisherman on the beach in Khan Younis.

Ghurab similarly said that Israeli military boats had fired upon fisherman at Khan Younis.

The Israeli military did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on the claims the military had shot at fishermen.

Israel’s retaliatory war against Hamas for the Islamist militant group’s deadly, cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023 has devastated densely populated Gaza and displaced most of the 2.3 million population.

REUTERS

AL-QUSAYR — The flow of displaced families crossing from Lebanon into Syria via a secondary crossing has slowed to a trickle after an Israeli strike there last week, a local official told AFP on Monday.

The land crossing on Lebanon’s northeastern border, known as Jousieh on the Syrian side, connects to Qusayr in Syria’s Homs province.

It was put out of service last Friday when the Israeli strike created a large crater that blocked vehicle traffic.

The raid came after the main land border with Syria, known as Masnaa on the Lebanese side and which lies between Beirut and Damascus, was forced to close by an Israel strike on October 4.

The attacks have heavily constrained the ability of people to flee Lebanon overland at a time when all airlines except the national carrier have suspended flights.

“The movement of displaced people has dropped by 90 percent since the (Jousieh) crossing was targeted,” said Dabbah Al-Mashaal, a Syrian official who oversees the crossing.

“We used to receive about 1,500 people a day, but today the number does not exceed 150,” he told AFP.

Lebanese authorities said on Friday that more than half a million people, mostly Syrians, had crossed into Syrian territory since Israel began heavily striking Lebanon late last month at the start of its all-out war with Hezbollah.

Six official land crossings connect the two countries, although there are many unofficial routes along the porous border.

Four connect Lebanon to Homs province to the northeast. The province is home to the city of Qusayr, which became a major hub for Hezbollah when it intervened in the Syrian civil war in support of President Bashar Assad.

At the Jousieh crossing on Monday, people were seen crossing into Syria on foot, carrying their belongings in plastic bags and pushing buggies, according to an AFP correspondent.

The Israeli army said on Friday that it had destroyed Hezbollah infrastructure at the crossing.

Israel has repeatedly accused the Iran-backed group of transferring weapons into Lebanon from Syria.

Since September 23, Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed at least 1,672 people, according to an AFP tally of nationwide health ministry figures though the real number is likely to be higher due to data gaps.

AN-AFP

KHAN YOUNIS — As Gaza braces for a cold, wet winter, displaced Palestinians living in tents and makeshift shelters by the sea are sewing clothes from blankets in a desperate effort to stay warm.

Nidaa Attia, 31, and others measure, cut and sew the clothing in a tent near the beach at Al-Mawasi in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

The work is entirely manual and labor intensive. Lacking electricity, they generate power by using the pedals of a bicycle connected by a belt to their sewing machine.

“Winter is coming for the second time (since the start of the war) and people are without any (warm) clothes,” Attia said.

Nearby a young child stood on a table while another woman measured him for a jumper to protect him from the cold winter.

“There are no clothes coming into the Gaza Strip, so we thought a lot about how we could find a solution to the lack of fabrics, and we came up with the idea of recycling thermal blankets into winter clothes,” Attia said.

Her “Needle and Thread” initiative, launched in September, relies mostly on volunteers, though some receive a small payment. The clothes are sold for between 70 and 120 shekels ($18-$30) but prices are lower for those who bring blankets.

A Gazan winter can be harsh, marked by cold temperatures and strong winds. Last year heavy rains flooded some shelters.

After more than a year of war, many in Gaza have no income. Some have tried to sell their possessions, including second-hand clothes, but few can afford the prices of even basic goods.

The amount of international aid entering Gaza has plummeted to its lowest level all year, according to UN data, while a global hunger monitor has also warned of a looming famine.

Displaced

Most of the roughly two million people in Gaza have been displaced by Israel’s relentless assault on the coastal strip.

“We have been displaced for more than a year now. We lived through one winter and now winter is coming again,” said Samira Tamous, who is originally from Gaza City in the north of the Strip but now lives in a makeshift shelter in Al-Mawasi.

“There are no winter clothes at all, not in the market and not to dress my daughter,” said Tamous, whose 13-year-old child with Down syndrome was putting on clothing made under the “Needle and Thread” project.

The Israeli offensive in Gaza was triggered by an attack led by Hamas militants on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken as hostages back into the Palestinian enclave, according to Israeli officials.

The overall death toll in Gaza is approaching 43,000, according to the enclave’s health ministry.

AN-REUTERS

BEIRUT — Israel’s military campaign in southern Lebanon has caused vast destruction in more than a dozen border towns and villages, reducing many of them to clusters of grey craters, according to satellite imagery provided to Reuters by Planet Labs Inc.

Many of the towns, emptied of their residents by the bombing, had been inhabited for at least two centuries.
The imagery reviewed includes towns between Kfarkela in southeastern Lebanon, south past Meiss al-Jabal, and then west past a base used by U.N. peacekeepers to the small village of Labbouneh.

“There are beautiful old homes, hundreds of years old. Thousands of artillery shells have hit the town, hundreds of air strikes,” said Abdulmonem Choukeir, mayor of Meiss al-Jabal, one of the villages hit by Israeli attacks.

“Who knows what will still be standing at the end?”

Reuters compared satellite images taken in October 2023 to those taken in September and October 2024. Many of the villages with striking visible damage over the course of the last month sit atop hills overlooking Israel.

After nearly a year of exchanging fire across the border, Israel intensified its strikes on southern Lebanon and beyond over the last month. Israeli troops have made ground incursions all along the mountainous frontier with Lebanon, engaging in heavy clashes with Hezbollah fighters inside some towns.

Lebanon’s disaster risk management unit, which tracks both victims and attacks on specific towns, said the 14 towns reviewed by Reuters had been subject to a total of 3,809 attacks by Israel over the last year.

Israel’s military did not immediately respond to Reuters questions about the scale of destruction. Israel’s military spokesman Daniel Hagari said on Oct. 24 that Israel has struck more than 3,200 targets in south Lebanon.

The military says it is attacking towns in southern Lebanon because Hezbollah has turned “civilian villages into fortified combat zones,” hiding weapons, explosives and vehicles there. Hezbollah denies using civilian infrastructure to launch attacks or store weapons, and residents of the towns deny the assertion.

A person familiar with Israel’s military operations in Lebanon told Reuters that troops were systematically attacking towns with strategic overlook points, including Mhaibib.

The person said that Israel had “learned lessons” after its last war with Hezbollah in 2006, including incidents in which troops making ground incursions into the valleys of southern Lebanon were attacked by Hezbollah fighters on hilltops.

“That is why they are targeting these villages so heavily – so they can move more freely,” the person said.

The most recent images of Kfarkela showed a string of white splotches along a main road leading into a town.
Imagery taken last year showed the same road lined with houses and green vegetation, indicating the houses had been pulverized.

Further south, Meiss al-Jabal, a town 700 meters (yards) away from the U.N.-demarcated Blue Line separating Israeli and Lebanese territory, suffered significant destruction to an entire block near the town centre.

The area, measuring approximately 150 meters by 400 metres, appeared as a swatch of sandy brown, signalling the buildings there had been entirely flattened.
Images from the same month in 2023 showed a densely packed neighbourhood of homes.

‘Any sign of life’

At least 1.2 million people have been displaced by Israel’s strikes and more than 2,600 have been killed over the last year – a vast majority in the last month, Lebanon’s government says.

Residents of the border villages have not been able to reach their hometowns in months. “After war came to Meiss al-Jabal, after the residents left, we no longer know anything about the state of the village,” Meiss al-Jabal’s mayor said.

Imagery of the nearby village of Mhaibib depicted similar levels of destruction.
Mhaibib is one of several villages – alongside Kfarkela, Aitaroun, Odaisseh, and Ramyeh – featured in footage shared on social media showing simultaneous explosions of several structures at once, indicating they had been laden with explosives.

Israel’s military spokesman said on Oct. 24 that a command centre for Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit lay under Mhaibib, and that Israeli troops had “neutralised the main tunnel network” used by the group, but did not give details.

Hagari has said that Israel’s goal is to “push Hezbollah away from the border, dismantle its capabilities, and eliminate the threat to northern residents” of Israel.

“This is a plan you take off the shelf,” said Jon Alterman, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. “Militaries plan, and they’re executing the plan.”

Seth Jones, another senior vice president at CSIS, had earlier told Reuters that Hezbollah used frontline villages to fire its shorter-range rockets into Israel.

Lubnan Baalbaki, the conductor of Lebanon’s philharmonic orchestra and son of late Lebanese artist Abdel-Hamid Baalbaki, said his family had been purchasing satellite imagery of their hometown of Odaisseh to check if the family house still stood.

The house had been transformed by Abdel-Hamid into a cultural centre, full of his art works, original sketches and more than 1,000 books in an all-wood library. Abdel-Hamid passed away in 2013 and was buried behind the house with his late wife.

“We’re a family of artists, my father is well-known, and our home was a known cultural home. We were trying to reassure ourselves with that thought,” Baalbaki, the son, told Reuters.

Until late October, the house still stood. But at the weekend Baalbaki saw a video circulating of several homes in Odaisseh, including his family’s, exploding.

The family is not affiliated to Hezbollah and Baalbaki denied that any weapons or military equipment were stored there.

“If you have such high-level intelligence that you can target specific military figures, then you know what’s in that house,” Baalbaki said. “It was an art house. We are all artists. The aim is to erase any sign of life.”

AN-REUTERS

BEIRUT — The Israeli military said it killed a top Hezbollah commander Tuesday as part of a two-day aerial barrage that has left more than 560 people dead and prompted thousands in southern Lebanon to seek refuge from the widening conflict.

With the two sides on the brink of all-out war, Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets into Israel, targeting an explosives factory and sending families into bomb shelters.

Families that fled southern Lebanon flocked to Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon, sleeping in schools turned into shelters, as well as in cars, parks and along the beach. Some sought to leave the country, causing a traffic jam at the border with Syria.

Issa Baydoun fled the village of Shihine when it was bombed and drove to Beirut with his extended family. They slept in vehicles on the side of the road because the shelters were full.

“We struggled a lot on the road just to get here,” said Baydoun, who rejected Israel’s contention that it hit only military targets. “We evacuated our homes because Israel is targeting civilians and attacking them.”

Volunteers cooked meals for displaced families at an empty Beirut gas station that first became a hub for relief after a devastating port explosion in 2020.

Israel said late Tuesday that fighter jets carried out “extensive strikes” on Hezbollah weapons and rocket launchers across southern Lebanon and in the Bekaa region to the north.

Asked about the duration of Israel’s operations in Lebanon, military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said at a news conference that it aims to keep them “as short as possible, that’s why we’re attacking with great force. At the same time, we must be prepared for it to take longer.”

Tensions between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have steadily escalated over the last 11 months. Hezbollah has been firing rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and its ally Hamas, a fellow Iran-backed militant group.

Israel has responded with increasingly heavy airstrikes and the targeted killing of Hezbollah commanders while threatening a wider operation.

Israel said a strike in Beirut Tuesday had killed Ibrahim Kobeisi, who it said was a top Hezbollah commander with the group’s rocket and missile unit. Military officials said Kobeisi was responsible for launches towards Israel and planned a 2000 attack in which three Israeli soldiers were kidnapped and killed.

It was the latest in a string of assassinations and setbacks for Hezbollah, the strongest political and military actor in Lebanon and widely considered the top paramilitary force in the Arab world. The militant group offered no immediate comment on the Israeli claims.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said six people were killed and 15 were wounded in the strike in a southern Beirut suburb, an area where Hezbollah has a strong presence. The country’s National News Agency said the attack destroyed three floors of a six-story apartment building.

The U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees in Lebanon said one of its staffers and her young son were among those killed Monday in the Bekaa region, while a cleaner under contract was killed in a strike in the south.

Hezbollah said its missile attacks Tuesday targeted eight sites in Israel, including an explosives factory in Zichron Yaakov, 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the border. It fired 300 rockets, injuring six soldiers and civilians, most of them lightly, according to Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman.

The renewed exchange came after Monday’s barrages racked up the highest death toll in any single day in Lebanon since Israel and Hezbollah fought a bruising monthlong war in 2006.

On Tuesday, mourners carried 11 bodies through the streets of the Lebanese village of Saksakieh, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the Lebanon-Israel border, including those of four women, an infant and a 7-year-old girl. All were killed in Israel’s bombardment of the village Monday.

Some of the bodies were draped in Hezbollah flags, others wrapped in black clothes. A wreath of flowers was placed on top of the smallest one.

Mohammad Halal, father of 7-year-old Joury Halal, said his daughter was an “innocent child martyr.”

“She is a martyr for the sake of the south and Palestine,” Halal said and defiantly stated his allegiance to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Israel said it targeted sites where Hezbollah had stored weapons. Data from American fire-tracking satellites analyzed Tuesday by The Associated Press showed the wide range of Israeli airstrikes aimed at southern Lebanon, covering an area of over 1,700 square kilometers (650 square miles).

NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System typically is used to track U.S. wildfires, but can also be used to track the flashes and burning that follow airstrikes. Data from Monday showed significant fires across southern Lebanon and in the Bekaa Valley.

The Lebanese Health Ministry said at least 564 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since Monday, including 50 children and 94 women, and that more than 1,800 have been wounded — a staggering toll for a country still reeling from a deadly attack on communication devices last week.

Nearly a year of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel had displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border before this week’s escalation. Israel has vowed to do whatever it takes to ensure its citizens can return to their homes in the north, while Hezbollah has said it will keep up its rocket attacks until there is a cease-fire in Gaza, which appears increasingly remote.

The Israeli military says it has no immediate plans for a ground invasion but is prepared for one. It has moved thousands of troops who had been serving in Gaza to the northern border. It says Hezbollah has some 150,000 rockets and missiles, including some capable of striking anywhere in Israel, and that the group has fired some 9,000 rockets and drones since last October.

Israel said its warplanes struck 1,600 Hezbollah targets Monday, destroying cruise missiles, long- and short-range rockets and attack drones, including weapons concealed in private homes.

Monday’s escalation came after a particularly heavy exchange of fire Sunday, when Hezbollah launched around 150 rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel.

Last week, thousands of communications devices used mainly by Hezbollah members exploded in different parts of Lebanon, killing 39 people and wounding nearly 3,000, many of them civilians. Lebanon blamed Israel, but Israel did not confirm or deny responsibility.

AP

KYIV — After spending years in what she described as “boring, sedentary” roles in the offices of several Ukrainian companies, Liliia Shulha landed her dream job as a truck driver with Ukraine’s leading retailer, Fozzy Group.

“I always dreamed about big cars. Instead of (playing with) dolls, I drove cars when I was a child,” she told Reuters.

“Now the situation is such that they take people without experience and they train. I was lucky,” said Shulha, 40, wearing a company uniform in front of a large truck.

As the war with Russia drains the labor force, businesses are trying to cover critical shortages by hiring more women in traditionally male-dominated roles and turning to teenagers, students and older workers.

With millions of people, mostly women and children, abroad after fleeing the war, and tens of thousands of men mobilized into the army, the jobs crisis could endanger economic growth and a post-war recovery, analysts say.

Ukraine has lost over a quarter of its workforce since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, central bank data showed.

Nearly 60 percent of businesses said finding skilled workers was their main challenge, an economy ministry survey of over 3,000 companies showed.

“The situation is indeed critical,” said Tetiana Petruk, chief sustainability officer at steel company Metinvest, one of Ukraine’s largest employers with a workforce of about 45,000. It has about 4,000 vacancies.

“The staff deficit that we feel has an impact on our production,” Petruk told Reuters in an online interview.

“We are not the only ones who feel the staff shortages, all companies in the regions feel that, including our contractors.”

Reuters spoke to representatives of nine Ukrainian companies, from big industrial firms to retail groups and small private entrepreneurs. All said staff shortages and a growing mismatch of skills were big challenges.

Businesses said they were changing recruitment and business practices, automating, rotating existing staff and expanding their job descriptions, re-hiring retirees and offering more benefits, especially for younger workers.

They have also had to increase wages. The average monthly wage is now about 20,000 hryvnias ($470) compared to about 14,500 a year ago.

“There is a noticeable shift away from gender and age bias in candidate selection as employers adjust criteria to attract needed employees,” said the Kyiv School of Economics. “This trend also extends to entrepreneurship, where the share of female entrepreneurs is growing significantly.”

More women
Male-dominated industries are more affected by staff shortages, the central bank said.

The construction sector, transport, mining and others have all suffered because of military mobilization, for which men aged 25 to 60 are eligible.

To keep the economy running, the government provides full or partial deferrals for critical companies.

In the energy and weapons production sectors, 100 percent of staff are eligible for draft deferral. In some other sectors, firms can retain 50 percent of male staff. But the process to secure deferral is long and complicated.

As the government toughened mobilization rules this year, the number of men preferring informal employment — allowing them to stay off public data records — grew, some enterprises said.

In the agricultural southern region of Mykolayiv, women are being trained as tractor drivers. Women are also increasingly working as tram and truck drivers, coal miners, security guards and warehouse workers, companies say.

“We are offering training and jobs for women who have minimal experience,” said Lyubov Ukrainets, human resources director at Silpo, part of Fozzy Group.

Including Shulha, the company has six female truck drivers and is more actively recruiting women for other jobs previously dominated by men, including loaders, meat splitters, packers and security guards.

The share of female employees is growing in industries such as steel production. Petruk said female staff accounted for about 30-35 percent of Metinvest’s workforce and the company now hired women for some underground jobs.

Metinvest was unable to provide comparative figures for before the war.

Some other women are unable or unwilling to join the workforce because of a lack of childcare. Shulha, who works 15-day stretches on the road, has moved back in with her parents to ensure care for her 14-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter.

Young people
Businesses and economists expect labor market challenges to persist.

Employers are turning their attention to young people by offering training, job experience and targeted benefit packages.

Metinvest, which previously focused on students, is now increasingly working with professional colleges, Petruk said.

Silpo is more actively hiring teenagers for entry-level jobs in supermarkets and has launched a specialized internship program for students.

Mobile phone operator Vodafone repackaged its youth program, creating an opportunity for about 50 teenagers in 12 cities to get their first job experience.

“We want to offer the first proper experience of the official job to this young audience. Another objective is to build a talent pool,” said Ilona Voloshyna of Vodafone Retail.

“Also we want to understand the youth,” she said in a Vodafone shop in Kyiv as six teenagers consulted with visitors.

The government and foreign partners have launched several programs to help Ukrainians reskill.
“We provide the opportunity for everyone at state expense to obtain a new profession which is in demand on the labor market, or to raise their professional level,” said Tetiana Berezhna, a deputy economy minister.

AN-REUTERS

MISRATA — Sepana di tangan, Asawar Mustafa, seorang pelarian Sudan wanita di Libya, memeriksa penapis minyak di bahagian garaj untuk wanita sahaja di barat Libya, di mana menjadi seorang mekanik dianggap sebagai peranan lelaki.

Itu tidak menghalang gadis berusia 22 tahun itu yang kebimbangan utamanya sehingga baru-baru ini adalah kelangsungan hidup, setelah melarikan diri dari perang di Sudan bersama keluarganya dan meninggalkan tahun terakhir pengajiannya dalam bidang farmasi.

“Pada mulanya, pengalaman itu agak sukar,” kata Asawar, yang datang ke Libya bersama empat kakak, ibu dan abangnya, yang bekerja di bahagian lelaki di garaj yang sama.

Dia berkata dia takut “membuat kesilapan dan merosakkan kereta pelanggan.” Tetapi apabila dia mengasah kemahirannya, dia menjadi “ghairah” tentang mekanik, walaupun dalam menghadapi kebencian terhadap perempuan.

Orang ramai telah memberitahu Asawar “tempat anda di rumah” dan “di dapur,” dan bahawa “ini bukan pekerjaan untuk anda,” katanya.

Tetapi wanita muda itu bertekad “tidak membiarkannya menjadi penghalang… Sebaliknya, saya melucukan bahawa seseorang akan berkata demikian tanpa mengetahui keadaan saya.”

“Saya mempunyai satu matlamat: Saya mahukan pekerjaan itu.”

Setiap hari, Asawar, memakai selendang putih dan blaus hitam, mengalu-alukan beberapa pemandu wanita dari Misrata, sebuah bandar pelabuhan besar kira-kira 200 kilometer ke timur Tripoli.

“Sungguh menggembirakan melihat wanita membuat penembusan dalam semua bidang,” termasuk mekanik, kata Fawzia Manita, seorang pelanggan.

“Semakin ramai wanita memandu di Libya dan perlu berasa selesa di tempat di mana mereka berurusan dengan wanita, sedangkan jika mereka berurusan dengan lelaki, mereka akan berasa takut,” kata wanita berusia 39 tahun itu.

Libya sedang bergelut untuk pulih daripada perang dan huru-hara selama bertahun-tahun berikutan pemberontakan yang disokong NATO pada 2011 yang menggulingkan diktator lama Muammar Qaddafi.

Memandangkan kedudukannya yang berdekatan dengan Itali, yang pulau Lampedusa paling selatan terletak kira-kira 300 kilometer jauhnya, Libya juga merupakan tempat berlepas utama bagi pendatang, pelarian dan pencari suaka, terutama dari Afrika sub-Sahara, yang mempertaruhkan perjalanan Mediterranean berbahaya untuk sampai ke Eropah.

Bulan lalu, pihak berkuasa berkata sehingga empat daripada lima warga asing di negara Afrika Utara itu tidak berdokumen.

Keluarga Mustafa meninggalkan Sudan Oktober lalu di tengah-tengah perang yang tercetus pada April 2023 antara tentera Sudan di bawah Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan dan Pasukan Sokongan Pantas (RSF) separa tentera, diketuai oleh bekas timbalannya Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

Konflik itu telah menyebabkan puluhan ribu orang mati, menurut PBB. Ketika lebih daripada 10.7 juta rakyat Sudan telah kehilangan tempat tinggal, 2.3 juta telah melarikan diri ke negara jiran.

Selepas 10 hari pelayaran melalui padang pasir, Asawar tiba di Kufra, sebuah oasis di mana PBB mengatakan lebih 40,000 pelarian Sudan tinggal bersama 60,000 penduduk tempatan.

Pekan ini terletak kira-kira 1,200 kilometer (745 batu) dari Misrata, tempat Asawar akhirnya mendapat pekerjaan.

“Hari-hari itu adalah hari-hari terburuk yang pernah saya lalui,” katanya kepada AFP, tanpa mahu mengulas lanjut.

Dia enggan bercakap tentang pengalamannya mengembara dahulu ke Benghazi, di timur laut, kemudian ibu kota Tripoli, di barat, kemudian Misrata.

Di kedai pembaikan itu, dorongan abangnya yang berusia 19 tahun, Sahabi telah menjadi talian hayat.

“Saya di sini untuknya jika dia memerlukan bantuan” dan “jaminan,” kata Sahabi.

Abdelsalam Shagib, pemilik kedai berusia 32 tahun itu, turut menyokong Asawar, satu-satunya pekerja wanitanya.

Dia berkata perkhidmatan ditawarkan kepada pelanggan wanita perlu dipelbagaikan dan dikendalikan oleh lebih ramai wanita. Profesion “tidak boleh kekal dikhaskan untuk lelaki,” katanya.

“Wanita mungkin mahu bekerja dalam bidang ini,” katanya.

Menurut Bank Dunia, bahagian wanita dalam tenaga buruh di Libya mencapai 37 peratus pada 2022.

Terdapat garaj lain di Libya yang menawarkan bahagian untuk pemandu wanita, tetapi Shagib berkata dia adalah yang pertama memberikan perkhidmatan oleh seorang wanita.

“Hari ini, wanita yang datang ke sini senang berurusan dengan seorang wanita dan lebih selesa,” kata Asawar.

Dia berkata bahawa selagi “seorang wanita memiliki tekad,” tiada pekerjaan “monopoli lelaki.”

“Jika ada keinginan, anda tidak perlu teragak-agak.”

AN-AFP

Original Text

‘I wanted the job’: Sudanese woman defies Libya patriarchy as mechanic

MISRATA — Wrench in hand, Asawar Mustafa, a female Sudanese refugee in Libya, inspects an oil filter in the women-only section of a garage in western Libya, where being a mechanic is considered a man’s role.

That hasn’t deterred the 22-year-old whose main concern until recently was survival, having fled the war in Sudan with her family and abandoned her last year of studies in pharmacy.

“At first, the experience was a bit difficult,” said Asawar, who came to Libya with her four sisters, mother and brother, who works in the men’s section at the same garage.

She said she was afraid of “making mistakes and damaging the customer’s car.” But as she honed her skills, she became “passionate” about mechanics, even in the face of misogyny.

People have told Asawar “your place is at home” and “in the kitchen,” and that “this is not a job for you,” she said.

But the young woman was determined “not to let it become an obstacle… On the contrary, it was funny to me that someone would say that without knowing my circumstances.”
“I had one goal: I wanted the job.”

Each day, Asawar, wearing a white scarf and black blouse, welcomes a number of female drivers from Misrata, a large port city about 200 kilometers east of Tripoli.

“It’s great to see women making inroads in all fields,” including mechanics, said Fawzia Manita, a customer.

“More and more women are driving in Libya and need to feel comfortable in a place where they are dealing with women, whereas if they were dealing with men, they would feel intimidated,” said the 39-year-old.

Libya is struggling to recover from years of war and chaos following the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that overthrew longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi.

Given its proximity to Italy, whose southernmost island of Lampedusa is around 300 kilometers away, Libya is also a key departure point for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, who risk perilous Mediterranean journeys to reach Europe.

Last month, authorities said that up to four in five foreigners in the North African country were undocumented.

The Mustafas left Sudan last October amid the war that broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army under Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

The conflict has left tens of thousands dead, according to the UN. While more than 10.7 million Sudanese have been internally displaced, 2.3 million have fled to neighboring countries.

After a 10-day voyage through the desert, Asawar arrived in Kufra, an oasis where the UN says more than 40,000 Sudanese refugees live alongside 60,000 locals.

The town is around 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) away from Misrata, where Mostafa finally found a job.

“Those days were the worst days I’ve ever lived,” she told AFP, without wanting to elaborate.

She was reluctant to talk about her experience traveling first to Benghazi, in the northeast, then the capital Tripoli, in the west, then Misrata.

At the repair shop, the encouragement of her 19-year-old brother, Sahabi has been a lifeline.

“I’m here for her if she needs help” and “reassurance,” said Sahabi.

Abdelsalam Shagib, the 32-year-old owner of the shop, has also been supportive of Asawar, his only female employee.

He said the services offered to female clients should be diversified and conducted by more women. The profession “must not remain reserved for men,” he said.

“Women may want to work in this field,” he said.

According to the World Bank, the proportion of women in the labor force in Libya reached 37 percent in 2022.

There are other garages in Libya that offer a section for female drivers, but Shagib said his is the first to provide services by a woman.

“Today, women who come here are happy to deal with a woman and are more comfortable,” said Asawar.

She said that as long as “a woman is determined,” no job “is a man’s monopoly.”

“If the desire is there, you should not hesitate.”

AN-AFP

There are now nearly 2.5 million girls deprived of their right to education, representing 80 percent of Afghan school-age girls

PARIS — At least 1.4 million girls in Afghanistan have been denied access to secondary education since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, with the future of an entire generation now “in jeopardy,” the United Nations’ cultural agency said Thursday.

Access to primary education has also fallen sharply, with 1.1 million fewer girls and boys attending school, UNESCO said in a statement as the Taliban authorities marked three years since retaking Afghanistan on August 15, 2021.

“UNESCO is alarmed by the harmful consequences of this increasingly massive drop-out rate, which could lead to a rise in child labor and early marriage,” the agency said.

“In just three years, the de facto authorities have almost wiped out two decades of steady progress for education in Afghanistan, and the future of an entire generation is now in jeopardy.”

There are now nearly 2.5 million girls deprived of their right to education, representing 80 percent of Afghan school-age girls, the UN agency said.

The Taliban administration, which is not recognized by any other country, has imposed restrictions on women that the UN has described as “gender apartheid.”

Afghanistan is the only country in the world to stop girls and women attending secondary schools and universities.

“As a result of bans imposed by the de facto authorities, at least 1.4 million girls have been deliberately denied access to secondary education since 2021,” UNESCO said.

This represents an increase of 300,000 since the previous count carried out by the UN agency in April 2023.

UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay urged the international community to remain mobilized “to obtain the unconditional reopening of schools and universities to Afghan girls and women.”

The number of primary pupils has also fallen.

Afghanistan had only 5.7 million girls and boys in primary school in 2022, compared with 6.8 million in 2019, UNESCO said.

The UN agency blamed the drop on the authorities’ decision to ban female teachers from teaching boys as well as the lack of incentive for parents to send children to school.

Enrolment in higher education in equally concerning, the statement said, adding that the number of university students had decreased by 53 percent since 2021.

“As a result, the country will rapidly face a shortage of graduates trained for the most highly-skilled jobs, which will only exacerbate development problems,” UNESCO said.

AN-AFP

JERUSALEM — Israel vowed to “eliminate” new Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, the alleged mastermind of the October 7 attack, whose appointment further inflamed regional tensions as the Gaza war entered its 11th month on Wednesday.

The naming of Sinwar to lead the Palestinian militant group came as Israel braced for potential Iranian retaliation over the killing of his predecessor Ismael Haniyeh last week in Tehran.

Speaking at a military base on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was “determined” to defend itself.

“We are prepared both defensively and offensively,” he told new recruits.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said late Tuesday that Sinwar’s promotion was “yet another compelling reason to swiftly eliminate him and wipe this vile organization off the face of the earth.”

Sinwar — Hamas’s leader in Gaza since 2017 — has not been seen since the October 7 attack, which was the deadliest in Israel’s history.

A senior Hamas official told AFP that the selection of Sinwar sent a message that the organization “continues its path of resistance.”

Hamas’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah congratulated Sinwar and said the appointment affirms “the enemy… has failed to achieve its objectives” by killing Hamas leaders and officials.

Analysts believe Sinwar has been both more reluctant to agree to a Gaza ceasefire and closer to Tehran than Haniyeh, who lived in Qatar.

“If a ceasefire deal seemed unlikely upon Haniyeh’s death, it is even less likely under Sinwar,” according to Rita Katz, executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group.

“The group will only lean further into its hard-line militant strategy of recent years,” she added.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that it was up to Sinwar to help achieve a ceasefire, saying he “has been and remains the primary decider.”

Civilians in both Israel and Gaza met Sinwar’s appointment with unease.

Mohammad Al-Sharif, a displaced Gazan, told AFP: “He is a fighter. How will negotiations take place?“
In Tel Aviv, logistics company manger Hanan, who did not want to give his second name, said Sinwar’s appointment meant Hamas “did not see fit to look for someone less militant, someone with a less murderous approach.”

Iran-backed Hezbollah has also pledged to avenge the deaths of Haniyeh and its own military commander Fuad Shukr in an Israeli strike in Beirut hours earlier.

In a televised address to mark one week since Shukr’s death, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Tuesday his group would retaliate “alone or in the context of a unified response from all the axis” of Iran-backed groups in the region.

The United States, which has sent extra warships and jets to the region, urged both Iran and Israel to avoid an escalation.

President Joe Biden had calls with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, the Qatari emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Tuesday.

“No one should escalate this conflict. We’ve been engaged in intense diplomacy with allies and partners, communicating that message directly to Iran. We communicated that message directly to Israel,” Blinken told reporters.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in a telephone call that the West “should immediately stop selling arms and supporting” Israel if it wants to prevent war, his office said.

The Jeddah-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation met on Wednesday to discuss the situation in the Middle East.

Gambian Foreign Minister Mamadou Tangara, whose country currently chairs the bloc, said the “heinous” killing of Haniyeh risked “leading to a wider conflict that could involve the entire region.”

Israel has not commented on Haniyeh’s killing but confirmed it had carried out the strike on Shukr.

It held the Hezbollah commander responsible for a rocket attack in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights that killed 12 children.

Hezbollah has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli troops throughout the Gaza war.

The group said Tuesday that six of its fighters were killed in Israeli strikes on south Lebanon and that it had launched “dozens of Katyusha rockets” at a military base in the Golan Heights in retaliation.

Numerous airlines have suspended flights to Lebanon or limited them to daylight hours.

The Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by the Palestinian group’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, has already drawn in Iran-backed militants in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.

The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Palestinian militants seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 39 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,677 people, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.

The toll included two dozen deaths in the past 24 hours, according to ministry figures.

Israel said that its air force had “struck dozens of terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip” over the past day.

AN – AFP