Enclave’s health system ‘collapsing’
- Israeli forces order medical staff at Rafah’s Kuwaiti Hospital to evacuate as Gaza’s Health Ministry warns that the health system could collapse across the Strip in “a few hours”.
- Fierce clashes in Jabalia in north Gaza as Israel sends troops and tanks back into the area. The ground assault follows a night of intense air raids in the area.
- At least 360,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah, according to the United Nations, as Israel expands its offensive in the southern city as well as northern Gaza.
‘Pray for me, they are heavily shelling the area’
From the UK, Ibrahim Assalia was on the phone with his brother in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp as Israeli forces were attacking.
“Pray for me, they are heavily shelling the area,” Assalia recalled his brother as saying.
His brother survived the Saturday attack, but the Israeli army bombed six houses to rubble and killed 26 members of Assalia’s family, he told Al Jazeera from the UK.
‘We saw our family members cut into pieces’: how Colombia’s Wiwa people have been forced from their mountain – again
Indigenous communities have once more been pushed from their land by armed groups. Will it ever be safe to return to the Sierra Nevada?
- Photographs by Antonio Cascio
Luis Angel Mejía heard the first gunshots at 11pm. The deafening noise shook El Limón and surrounding areas in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, northern Colombia, until 2am.
“They were launching missiles that shook the earth. We heard gunshots, grenades and rockets non-stop,” Mejía says. “We thought: ‘As soon as the [firing] stops, they will probably come for us.’”
The barrage Mejía heard on 24 February was all the more disturbing for its echoes of the past; forcing to the surface bitter memories of the violent forced displacement his people, the Wiwa, suffered in the early 2000s. The fear that history might repeat itself led community members to flee, leaving behind their plantations and belongings.
Armenia detains scores of Azerbaijan land deal protesters
Armenian police on Monday said they had detained at least 88 people who were attempting to block streets in the country's capital in protests at government plans to concede land to Azerbaijan.
Armenia has conceded to handing over territory it has controlled since the 1990s and has embarked on border delimitation efforts, in a bid to secure an elusive peace deal.
What's behind the protests?
Protesters are upset at Prime Minister Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's decision last month to hand over several uninhabited border villages to Azerbaijan.
Both sides said it was an important milestone as they move toward a peace deal after fighting two wars since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Threats against NGO leaders multiply as Georgia green lights ‘Russian law’ for final vote
A decisive vote on Tuesday could see the final adoption of a law, dubbed the “Russian law” by critics, that targets civil society organisations and independent media in Georgia that receive foreign funding. For ten days now, the pro-Russian government in power in Tbilisi has made no secret of its intention to use force to impose the law as a means to silence opponents.
“Enemy of the Church”, “enemy of the state”, “LGBT propagandist”, “foreign spy”… These are some slogans on posters pasted outside the home of Giorgi Oniani.
Oniani, deputy managing director in Georgia of Transparency International – a German-based NGO fighting government corruption in over 110 countries – was left feeling anxious but not surprised.
He said he was convinced that those who put up the posters acted with the complicity of the ruling authorities.
“They're the ones who put it up, who are intimidating us. They're doing everything they can to disrupt our work,” he said. “All this took place in a group of buildings that is supposed to be protected because the prime minister lives there. But we discovered that the surveillance cameras were switched off. I called the police in the early hours but they refused to come and register my complaint.”
Japan's military needs more women, but it's still failing on harassment
By Sakura Murakami and Tim Kelly
As Japan embarks on a major military build-up, it's struggling to fill its ranks with the women that its forces need and its policymakers have pledged to recruit.
Following a wave of sexual harassment cases, the number of women applying to join the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) decreased by 12% in the year ending March 2023, after several years of steady growth. Some victims have said an entrenched culture of harassment could deter women from signing up.
But nine months after the defense ministry pledged to take drastic measures, it has no plans to take action on a key recommendation issued by an independent panel of experts - implementing a national system for reviewing anti-harassment training standards - according to two ministry officials responsible for training.
The rest of the world wants the Ukraine war to go away. Putin has other ideas
The changing language used by the Ukrainian military in 72 hours of daily updates tells the story: “Ongoing defensive fighting.” “Significantly worsened.” Russian “tactical success.”
You rarely ever hear Kyiv’s top brass sounding downbeat, but their steep southerly trajectory reflects the grave place Ukraine finds itself in. Russia is not just advancing slowly in one place; it appears to be advancing in four, across the frontline.
Moscow knows it is on the clock: in about a month, the $61billion of US military aid will start to translate into Ukraine having the weapons it has been begging for. So, Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be throwing whatever he can at it, knowing the fight will likely only get tougher for his forces in the summer ahead.
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