Foreign News
Tensions rise as two more boats with over 300 Rohingya land in Indonesia
Over 300 Rohingya refugees have arrived on the coast of Aceh province in Indonesia after weeks of drifting across the sea from Bangladesh.
The emaciated survivors – children, women and men – told of running out of supplies and of fearing death at sea as they landed on the unwelcoming shores of the villages of Pidie and Aceh Besar in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday morning.
“The boat was sinking. We had no food or water left,” told Shahidul Islam, a 34-year-old survivor, saying he had left from a refugee camp in Bangladesh.
A group of 180 refugees arrived by boat at 3am local time (20:00 GMT on Saturday) on a beach in the Pidie regency of Aceh province. The second boat carrying 135 refugees landed in neighbouring Aceh Besar regency hours later after being adrift at sea for more than a month, while a third boat is missing.
“We just want to find somewhere safe,” one refugee told Al Jazeera at a shelter on the coast. “We knew that we might die at sea, but finally we are safe. That’s all we want for our children.”
On Sunday evening, Aceh Besar’s acting regent Muhammad Iswanto said the refugees were transferred to a temporary shelter during the visit of a United Nations representative. “They are relocated to the camping ground by the province’s [refugee] task force. They will join other Rohingya refugees that have been there,” said the official.
Nearly a million Rohingya live in refugee camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar near its border with Myanmar, most after fleeing a military-led crackdown and alleged acts of genocide in Myanmar in 2017. Thousands of them risk their lives each year on long and expensive sea journeys, often in flimsy boats that sail from Bangladesh, to try to reach Malaysia or Indonesia.
But the mainly Muslim minority who fled Myanmar after persecution has not found refuge in these communities, where local villagers have tried to push refugee boats back to sea.
While the people of Aceh in Indonesia had previously welcomed refugees, tensions have been escalating as the number of arrivals has grown.
Over 1,500 Rohingya have arrived in Indonesia since last month after taking perilous journeys across the sea.
The residents in Aceh say they will neither provide funds nor supplies or shelter for the arriving Rohingya nor do they want them to stay in the area.
The local government in Pidie said earlier it would not take responsibility for providing the refugees with tents, or other basic needs, or “bear any expenses”.
Rijalul Fitri, head of Blang Raya village in Aceh, said on Sunday they do not want the refugees in their village. “We stayed up all night so as not to allow them to dock, but they arrived,” he said.
Fitri was adamant that the refugees must relocate. “They can’t stay here,” he said.
Over 100 protesters in Sabang Island in Aceh, where there is a temporary shelter, clashed with police as they called for the Rohingya refugees to be relocated.
“It’s one boat after another,” one woman told Al Jazeera. “We are poor people, why don’t they use the money to help us? Why are they giving them food?” she said, referring to volunteers distributing food and water to the refugees.
“We reject the Rohingya,” another protester said. “We want them to be moved as soon as possible. We don’t want to catch the diseases they carry,” he said.
The UN refugee agency’s protection associate Faisal Rahman said the organisation has been trying to reassure the local communities.
“We continue to explain the situation to the people and ensure that they will not be burdened with the handling of refugees,” he said, acknowledging that designated shelters were over-capacity.
But “the government is working to provide shelter as the number of refugees arriving is very high”, Rahman said.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Friday said temporary relief would be provided for refugees “with a priority on the interests of the local community”.
Indonesia’s government says it is looking for a new site to house the refugees, and has acknowledged the opposition from residents in its goal to find a sustainable solution, Al Jazeera correspondent Jessica Washington reported from Jakarta.
The UN says the difficult conditions and increase in crime in Bangladesh as well as the worsening crisis in Myanmar is the reason for the increase in the flow of refugees, with experts predicting more boats could arrive in the coming months.
“Around 75 percent of the new arrivals are women and children,” Emily Bojovic of the UN refugee agency’s Southeast Asia office told Al Jazeera.
(Aljazeera)
United States President Donald Trump’s administration is mulling a new travel ban that is expected to affect citizens from dozens of countries to varying degrees, The New York Times reported.
Quoting anonymous officials, the report published on Friday said the US government’s draft list featured 43 countries, divided into three categories of travel restrictions.
The first group of 10 countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Cuba and North Korea, would be set for a full visa suspension.
In the second group, five countries – Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar and South Sudan – would face partial suspensions that would affect tourist and student visas as well as other immigrant visas, with some exceptions.
In the third group, a total of 26 countries that includes Belarus, Pakistan and Turkmenistan would be considered for a partial suspension of US visa issuance if their governments “do not make efforts to address deficiencies within 60 days”, the draft memo said.
A US official speaking on condition of anonymity told the Reuters news agency there could be changes to the list and it was yet to be approved by the administration, including US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Trump issued an executive order on January 20 requiring intensified security vetting of any foreigners seeking admission to the US to detect national security threats.
The order directed several cabinet members to submit by March 21 a list of countries from which travel should be partly or fully suspended because their “vetting and screening information is so deficient”.
The US president’s directive is part of an immigration crackdown he launched at the start of his second term. He previewed his plan in an October 2023 speech, pledging to restrict people from the Gaza Strip, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and “anywhere else that threatens our security”.
The latest travel ban proposal, however, harkens back to Trump’s first-term ban on travellers from seven Muslim-majority nations, a policy that went through several iterations before it was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018.
That ban targeted citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen and ignited international outrage and domestic court rulings against it. Iraq and Sudan were later dropped from the list, but in 2018 the Supreme Court upheld a later version of the ban for the other nations as well as North Korea and Venezuela.
[Aljazeera]
At least 20 people have died in the US – including 12 in Missouri alone – after deadly tornadoes tore through several south-eastern states, flipping cars and flattening homes.
Three people were killed in a car crash during a fierce dust storm in Texas, while deaths have also occurred in Oklahoma and Arkansas.
More than 240,000 properties were without power across six states – including Texas, Missouri and Illinois – on Saturday afternoon, according to tracker PowerOutage.
Further severe weather is expected for the region, with tornado watches issued in central Mississippi, eastern Louisiana and western Tennessee.
Flash flooding and flood warnings have also been issued in the same three states, as well as parts of Alabama and Arkansas, as severe weather continues to track across the south-east.
The National Weather Service (NWS) has said these flash floods could prove deadly.
A tornado warning – the highest level of alert – was also issued in central Mississippi on Saturday morning.
The NWS warned of “multiple intense to violent long-track tornadoes” in those areas, describing the situation as “particularly dangerous”.
The meteorological agency said: “If you live in these areas, get to the sturdiest structure you have access to and remain in place until the storms pass.”
Mike Kehoe, governor of Missouri, said the state had been “devastated by severe storms and tornadoes, leaving homes destroyed and lives lost”.
Missouri’s emergency management agency said initial reports indicated 19 tornadoes had struck 25 counties so far.
Arkansas has seen three deaths and 29 injuries – prompting Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders to declare a state of emergency.
Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, also declared a state of emergency ahead of a predicted severe weather pattern hitting his state.
The NWS expects the threat of tornadoes to spread into Alabama, Florida and Georgia into Sunday.
Meanwhile, one person died on the road in Oklahoma, the BBC’s US partner CBS News reported, citing officials.
The same dust storm that caused three deaths in Texas on Friday night caused a pile-up of an estimated 38 cars.
“It’s the worst I’ve ever seen,” Sgt Cindy Barkley, of the state’s department of public safety, told reporters.
“We couldn’t tell that they were all together until the dust kind of settled.”
A further death has since been reported in Texas.
In Texas and Oklahoma, the destructive storms fuelled more than 100 wildfires and overturned several semi-trailer trucks, CBS reports.
One of those fires, known as the 840 Road Fire, has already burned 27,500 acres and remains 0% contained, according to the Oklahoma Forestry Service. The agency has issued a “red flag” warning for the state’s panhandle area, signalling a severe fire danger.
Tornadoes form when moist, warm air rises, mixing with cold air above to form thunderclouds. Winds blowing from different directions cause the air to rotate, creating a vortex of air moving upwards.
The four states where tornado-related deaths have been confirmed in the past day lie within a path frequently hit by the weather phenomenon.
It has earned this stretch of the US the unofficial name Tornado Alley, because its geography is ideal for tornado formation.
In 2024, 54 people were killed in tornado-related incidents, according to Noaa, Nine people died in Texas. There were eight in Oklahoma, five in Arkansas and one in Missouri.
Peak tornado season in Tornado Alley is from May to June – but meteorologists caution that tornadoes can occur at any time of year.
[BBC]
The US has launched a “decisive and powerful” wave of air strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen, President Donald Trump has said, citing the armed group’s attacks on shipping in the Red Sea as the reason.
“Funded by Iran, the Houthi thugs have fired missiles at US aircraft, and targeted our Troops and Allies,” Trump wrote on his Truth social platform, adding that their “piracy, violence, and terrorism” had cost “billions of dollars” and put lives at risk.
The Houthi-run health ministry said at least 13 people were killed and nine others injured in the strikes.
The group – which began targeting shipping in response to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza – said its forces would respond to US strikes.
In a statement, the Houthis blamed the US and the UK for “wicked” aggression targeting residential areas in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa – though it is understood that the UK was not behind Saturday’s strikes on the Middle Eastern country.
The Iranian-backed rebel group, considers Israel its enemy. It controls Sanaa and the north-west of Yemen, but it is not the country’s internationally-recognised government.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, it has launched hundreds of attacks on commercial vessels travelling through the Red Sea.
These attacks, Trump said, “will not be tolerated”. “We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective.”
Initially, the group said it was attacking ships connected with, or that had docked in, Israel. However, many of the vessels have no connection with Israel.
Trump said that it had been more than a year since a US-flagged ship had sailed safely through the Suez Canal – which the Red Sea leads to – and four months since a US warship had been through the body of water between east Africa and the Arabian peninsula.
The Suez Canal is the quickest sea route between Asia and Europe, and is particularly important in the transportation of oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Addressing the Houthis directly, Trump wrote that if they did not stop, “HELL WILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOU LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE”.
But the Houthis were unwavering in their response, saying the aggression would not wane their support for Palestinians.
“This aggression will not go without response and our Yemeni armed forces are ready to answer escalation with further escalation,” the group said.
Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the Houthi’s “benefactor”, Iran, was “on notice”.
For more than a year, major shipping companies were forced to stop using the Red Sea – through which almost 15% of global seaborne trade usually passes – and used a much longer route around southern Africa instead.
The Houthis launched 190 attacks in the Red Sea between November 2023 and October 2024, according to the US Congress.
Previously, the UK and US conducted joint naval and air strikes against the group. Israel has also targeted sites linked to the Houthis in separate strikes.
Trump urged Iran to cease its support for the Houthis, warning that Washington would hold Tehran “fully accountable and, we won’t be nice about it”.
He also accused the previous White House administration, under Joe Biden, of being “pathetically weak” and allowing the “unrestrained Houthis” to keep going.
[BBC]
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