Foreign News
Thousands of Palestinians flee as Israeli troops push into Gaza City
Thousands of Palestinians are continuing to flee Gaza City, as Israel’s major ground offensive aimed at occupying the city enters a second day.
Amid large-scale bombardment overnight, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said al-Ranitisi children’s hospital was targeted in three separate Israeli attacks, forcing half of its patients and their families to flee. The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.
Other hospitals said at least 35 people had been killed by Israeli fire across Gaza so far on Wednesday, most of them in the north.
Earlier, the Israeli military announced that it had struck more than 150 “terror targets” across Gaza City in two days in support of its ground forces.
Israel says its aim is to free its hostages and defeat up to 3,000 Hamas fighters in what it describes as the group’s “last stronghold”, but the offensive has drawn widespread international condemnation.
The leaders of more than 20 major aid agencies, including Save the Children and Oxfam, warned that “the inhumanity of the situation in Gaza is unconscionable”. With world leaders due to gather for the UN General Assembly next week, they called for “urgent intervention”.
For days, huge columns of Palestinians have streamed southwards from Gaza City in donkey carts, rickshaws, vehicles strapped high with belongings, and on foot.
Until now, they have been forced to flee down the main coastal road to an Israel-designated “humanitarian area” in al-Mawasi.
But on Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that it would open temporarily a second route for people to travel on – the central Salah al-Din road. It said the route would be open for 48 hours from 12:00 local time (10:00 BST).
Many Palestinians say they are unable to move south due to the rising costs associated with the journey. Some say renting a small truck now costs around 3,000 shekels ($900; £660), while a tent for five people sells for about 4,000 shekels.
Lina al-Maghrebi, 32, a mother of three from the city’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, told the BBC: “I was forced to sell my jewellery to cover the cost of displacement and a tent.”
“It took us 10 hours to reach Khan Younis, and we paid 3,500 shekels for the ride. The line of cars and trucks seemed endless.”
Aid groups, UN agencies and others say the “humanitarian area” they are expected to move to is heavily overcrowded and insufficient to support the roughly two million Palestinians who are expected to cram into it.
Some Palestinians who followed the military’s orders to evacuate to the zone say they found no space to pitch their tents and so returned north.
The IDF said on Tuesday that around 350,000 people had fled Gaza City, while the UN put the figure at 190,000 since August. Estimates suggest at least 650,000 remain.
As part of its operations, the IDF is reportedly utilising old military vehicles loaded with explosives that have been modified to be controlled remotely.
They are being driven to Hamas positions and detonated, according to Israeli media.
Meanwhile, families of the 48 remaining hostages held by Hamas – 20 of whom are believed to be alive – protested near Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem on Tuesday and Wednesday, arguing that the offensive would endanger their loved ones.
“All day long, you boast about killing and destruction,” said Macabit Mayer, aunt of hostages Gali and Ziv Berman. “Bringing down buildings in Gaza – who are you bringing these buildings down on?”
“Could it be that you are bringing these buildings down right now on Gali and Ziv and all the souls left there – the living and the deceased?”
The offensive has been widely criticised, with UN human rights chief Volker Türk describing it as “totally and utterly unacceptable”.
On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia said it condemned the assault “in the strongest terms”.
Pope Leo XIV meanwhile said conditions for Palestinians in Gaza were “unacceptable” and repeated his call for a ceasefire.
“I am deeply close to the Palestinian people of Gaza, who continue to live in fear and under unacceptable conditions, forced yet again to leave their land,” he told his weekly audience at the Vatican.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to offer tacit support for Israel’s offensive during a joint press conference with Netanyahu on Monday.
He said the US preferred a negotiated end to the war, but that “sometimes when you’re dealing with a group of savages like Hamas, that’s not possible”.
It came as a United Nations Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Among its findings were that Israeli security forces perpetrated sexual and gender-based violence, directly targeted children with the intention to kill them, and carried out a “systemic and widespread attack” on religious, cultural and education sites in Gaza.
Israel’s foreign ministry said it categorically rejected the report, denouncing it as “distorted and false”.
Israel launched its war in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
At least 64,964 people have been killed by Israel during its campaign since then, almost half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
With famine having already been declared in Gaza City by a UN-backed food security body, the UN has warned that an intensification of the offensive will push civilians into “even deeper catastrophe”.
[BBC]
A rare pink diamond is going on display in France for the first time since it was stolen almost 100 years ago to the day – the last time it was shown to the public.
The nine-carat, pear-shaped gemstone known as the “Grand Condé” was pilfered in an overnight raid on the Château de Chantilly in October 1926 and concealed in a hollowed-out apple.
The diamond – one of few royal jewels to survive the French Revolution – was recovered a few weeks later when a hungry maid at the hotel in which the thieves were staying took a bite of the apple.
It will once again be on display in the Condé Museum at the Château de Chantilly until 3 January.
The museum’s director Mathieu Deldicque said that while the apple story may sounds far-fetched, it was widely covered by newspapers at the time.
Deldicque has faced questions about whether the exhibition may be tempting fate, especially given the string of heists on European cultural institutions in the past 12 months, including the daring daylight robbery of jewellery from the Louvre museum in Paris.
While he declined to reveal to CNN how much the diamond was insured for, he noted that extensive academic study into the properties of the diamond had taken place to make it uniquely identifiable.
The results of this analysis, as well as previously unseen archive material about the gem’s history and theft, form part of the exhibition, according to the museum.
Naturally occurring pink diamonds are exceptionally rare and often sell for tens of millions of dollars. The highest price ever fetched for one at auction was $71.2m (£53.6m) in 2017, according to Sotheby’s.
The exact origins of the Grand Condé remain a mystery.
It was first mentioned in 1740 in an inventory of Louis Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, drawn up following his death, the Château de Chantilly said.
It then became part of the collection of Queen Marie-Amélie of Bourbon-Sicily, the wife of French King Louis Philippe I, and then her son, Prince Henri of Orléans, the Duke of Aumale.
He bequeathed it to the Institut de France, which now owns the Château de Chantilly, 50km (31 miles) north of Paris, along with thousands of artworks and manuscripts which became the Musée Condé collection.
(BBC)
A nursery owner and five members of her staff have been jailed after they were found to have poisoned more than 200 children with lead-tainted food.
Li Huifang, who operated the Heshi Peixin Kindergarten in Tianshui, in the Gansu province, was sentenced to life in prison for producing and selling toxic and harmful food, according to Chinese state media.
In July 2025, 247 pupils and staff at the nursery were found to have abnormally high blood lead levels after children began falling ill.
A report into the incident found that chefs at Heshi Peixin had used inedible paint to “enhance the look” of its meals to attract more students – despite the paint being being clearly marked as such.
In addition to the sentence, the Lanzhou Intermediate People’s Court also ordered the confiscation of 500,000 yuan (£56,200; $74,700) of Li’s personal assets, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Nursery executive principal Zhi Jinglin was sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined 300,000 yuan.
Four other members of staff who worked in the nursery’s kitchen received sentences of between six to eight years, according to state media.
The court found the four had been instructed by Li and Zhi to add toxic and harmful ingredients to food served to children and staff.
Food samples were later found to contain lead 2,000 times in excess of China’s national safety limit.
The investigation into the poisoning began after 235 children from Heshi Peixin nursery had to be treated for lead poisoning after eating steamed red date cakes and sausage corn buns.
Investigators found that the red date cake and the corn sausage rolls had lead levels of 1052mg/kg and 1340mg/kg respectively, both of which far exceed the national food safety standard limit of 0.5mg/kg.
Lead poisoning is “particularly harmful to young children” and can “severely damage the brain and central nervous system”, according to the World Health Organization.
Officials later found that dozens of provincial officials and hospital staff attempted to cover up the incident by tampering with blood tests and accepting bribes from a nursery investor.
China has since published a set of national guidelines for the provision of meals on campuses. Among the measures is the requirement for every new batch of food to be tested, and for flour, rice and cooking oil to be purchased from centralised procurement points only.
(BBC)
Five people have been killed and 16 injured in a Houthi missile attack targeting the presidential palace in the port city of Aden in southern Yemen, which is the seat of the internationally-recognised government, officials say.
Information Minister Moammar al-Eryani told the BBC that the prime minister and other ministers were unhurt when five ballistic missiles hit al-Maashiq Palace.
The Houthis’ military spokesman, Yahya Sarea, said they struck “the Saudi enemy’s military operations headquarters in Aden”.
A coalition led by Saudi Arabia backs the government and is providing air support for an offensive by pro-government forces against the Iran-backed Houthis.
Yemeni health minister Qasim Buhaibeh said the casualties included “those working to guard the site and civilian employees”.
The country’s Prime Minister Shaya Zindani condemned the Houthis’ attack on Aden, calling it “cowardly” and a “continuation of their criminal behaviour”.
He said the government continued to carry out its duties and vowed that it would not weaken the resolve of its forces to continue operations against the Houthis on Yemen’s south-western Red Sea coast and other front lines.
Earlier, the Houthis denied that they had attacked Saudi Arabia on Thursday, after the coalition said its forces had intercepted a cruise missile in the Medina region, home to one of Islam’s holiest shrines.
The Houthis have been launching missiles and drones at airports, oil and gas facilities, and military bases in Saudi Arabia in retaliation for the strikes on the territory that they control in western Yemen, including the capital Sanaa.
On Saturday, a Houthi missile strike killed 13 people at Riyadh’s international airport, which was the deadliest attack in Saudi Arabia in more than a decade.
Saudi Arabia’s deputy foreign minister accused Iran of encouraging the Houthis to escalate their conflict with the kingdom.
“Iran continues to arm, train and support the Houthi militia in violation of UN Security Council resolutions,” Rayed Krimly told reporters, according to AFP news agency.
“We think that the escalation by the Houthis at this latest stage of the conflict is encouraged by Iran,” he added.
There was no immediate response from Iran’s government. However, it has previously denied supplying weapons to the Houthis and said it only supports them politically.
Iran’s foreign minister has also said it is ready to provide “any assistance necessary to facilitate the start of talks” between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis.
Yemen has been devastated by a civil war that began in 2014, when the Houthis ousted the internationally-recognised government from Sanaa. The conflict escalated in 2015, after the Saudi-led coalition of Arab states intervened in an attempt to restore the government’s rule.
A four-year-old informal ceasefire began to unravel in July, when the Houthis announced a “maritime embargo” against Saudi Arabia and began missile and drone attacks on Saudi airports, oil facilities and tankers in the Red Sea.
The Houthis said they were retaliating for what they call a Saudi blockade of their territory, as well as an air strike on Sanaa airport that they blamed on the kingdom.
The conflict escalated in September after the Houthis seized part of Yemen’s south-western Red Sea coast near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a chokepoint for global shipping. Their advance contributed to a rise in oil prices following six months of war between the US, Israel and Iran.
Last week, pro-government forces said they had regained control of territory overlooking Bab al-Mandab after launching a major counter-offensive with the support of Saudi air strikes.
At least 1,282 people have been killed and 5,890 injured in the fighting in Yemen since 6 August, according to the government’s health ministry.
The UN says another 201,000 people have been displaced and that there has been an alarming surge in suspected cholera cases.
(BBC)
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