Foreign News
Fears for Gazans as aid groups halt work over deadly Israeli strike
Many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip will be wondering how they are going to feed their families after World Central Kitchen (WCK) paused its operations in response to the killing of seven of its aid workers in an Israeli air strike.
Another US charity it works with, Anera, has also suspended work because of the escalating risks faced by its local staff and their families.
Together, they were serving two million meals a week across the Palestinian territory, where the UN has warned that an estimated 1.1 million people – half the population – are facing catastrophic hunger because of Israeli restrictions on aid deliveries, the ongoing hostilities and the breakdown of order.
WCK’s decision to pause its work also led to the “freezing” of a maritime aid corridor from Cyprus, which the charity helped set up last month to increase the trickle of aid getting into the north of Gaza and avert a looming famine.
The WCK convoy was hit on Monday night as it travelled south along the Israeli-designated coastal aid route, just after they had unloaded more than 100 tonnes of food from a barge at a warehouse in Deir al-Balah.
That barge was part of a four-vessel flotilla that sailed back to Cyprus with 240 tonnes of supplies that could not be brought ashore in the wake of the strike.
The Norwegian Refugee Council warned that “what happened to World Central Kitchen threatens the entire aid system” and had left it “on the brink”.
Before the strike, World Central Kitchen was providing about 350,000 meals across Gaza each day
WCK accused the Israeli military of a “targeted attack” on vehicles clearly marked with the charity’s logo and whose movements had been co-ordinated with Israel authorities. The victims were British, Polish, Australian and Palestinian, and also included a dual US-Canadian citizen.
The military’s chief of staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, described the strike as a “grave mistake” that had followed “misidentification at night”.
He also vowed to take “immediate action” to ensure that more was done to protect aid workers, including the immediate establishment of a new “humanitarian command centre” to improve co-ordination. “Israel is at war with Hamas, not with the people of Gaza,” he stressed.
However, aid groups say they are not sure such promises will lead to meaningful changes. They also assert that this was not an isolated incident, with 196 Palestinian aid workers reportedly killed since the war began in October.
Jan Egeland, the secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council and a former UN humanitarian chief, told the BBC that WCK was “among those who have the closest co-operation with the Israelis”, in terms of sharing information about their workers’ locations and planned movements.
Before the strike, WCK was playing an increasingly prominent and important role in Gaza, with 400 Palestinian staff and 3,000 people working indirectly in its 68 community kitchens and distribution system across the territory.
WCK provided 12% of the 193,000 tonnes of aid from international organisations that had reached Gaza as of Tuesday, according to data from Cogat, the Israeli defence ministry body tasked with co-ordinating deliveries. However, UN agencies were responsible for 80% of the total.
WCK’s founder, the chef José Andrés, told Reuters news agency on Wednesday that it was “analysing the situation and how to keep doing the work we do”.
Anera – which was providing 150,000 meals a day in collaboration with WCK – said it understood the consequences pausing its own work would have on Palestinians, but that its Palestinian staff had for the first time deemed the risk to their safety and that of their families “intolerable”.
It said the charity’s logistics co-ordinator and his son had been killed in an Israeli air strike in Deir al-Balah in March, despite the fact that the co-ordinates of the shelter where they were staying had been provided to the Israeli military. “We’ve asked for explanation as to why that site was struck and we’ve received none,” Derek Madsen of Anera told the BBC. “These sites are known and so I think it is very difficult for us to understand how these strikes happen.”
For the people of Gaza, the suspension of WCK’s operations “means more famine, more dead children, more epidemic disease because people are so malnourished”, Mr Egeland warned.
At least 27 children are reported to have died as a result of malnutrition since October, according to the World Health Organization.
Mr Egeland urged Israel to start by opening the Karni and Erez border crossings with northern Gaza to allow aid convoys to drive there directly.
Most aid convoys are currently forced to start at the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom and Egyptian-controlled Rafah crossings with the south of Gaza and then pass through what the UN calls “high-risk areas”, mainly due to shooting and shelling or the breakdown in civil order.
The Open Arms. a Spanish charity vessel, returned to Cyprus on Wednesday after the maritime aid route was suspended (BBC)
Cogat says Israeli forces have co-ordinated the entry of more than 500 lorries into the north over the past two months via those routes as well as a new gate and military road that runs south of Gaza City.
Israel has also facilitated the now-suspended maritime corridor set up by WCK as well as airdrops of aid by Western and Arab countries, which the UN says are both helpful but cannot replace the large-scale delivery of aid by land.
The first WCK aid ship was carrying 200 tonnes of aid and took several days to reach Gaza. By comparison, a lorry can carry about 20 tonnes and the nearest Israeli container port is only a 40km drive from northern Gaza.
A C-130 transport plane meanwhile has a maximum payload of 21 tonnes, but only about 40 airdrops have taken place so far and they are considered expensive, ineffective and dangerous for people on the ground.
The UN says 159 lorry loads of aid crossed into Gaza by land each day on average between 1 and 28 March, and that the pre-war average was 500 lorry loads, including fuel.
Cogat says the pre-war average only included 70 food lorries and that 140 entered each day during March. It insists there is no limit to the amount of food and other humanitarian aid that can enter Gaza and accuses UN agencies of failing to distribute aid effectively.
There was no apparent drop-off in aid crossing into Gaza following the strike on the WCK convoy, with 217 lorries transferred via Israel and Egypt on Wednesday and 179 food packages being airdropped, according to Cogat.
But Nate Mook, who was chief executive of WCK until 2022, warned that the longer-term consequences could be “devastating” for Gazans because “we probably have not seen the last of the aid organisations to pull out”.
Aseel Baidoun of Medical Aid for Palestinians said it had not suspended operations after a strike in January damaged a residential compound that housed the British charity’s local team and their families, injuring several people. But now, she added: “We really are scared of the security situation.”
Natalia Anguera of Action Against Hunger told the BBC that it would try to continue working despite “more and more challenging” conditions.
“Most of our staff are… Palestinians. They are suffering themselves, but they also have a very strong and clear commitment to their humanitarian mandate. They want to go on delivering,” she said.
She said the international community needed to push strongly for a humanitarian ceasefire because it was the only way that aid organisations would be able to scale up their response to the level required.
Mr Egeland also stressed the importance of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which he said was “bigger than the rest of us combined” but was being “systematically undermined by Israel”.
Israel accuses UNRWA of supporting Hamas, which triggered the war when its gunmen attacked southern Israel on 7 October last year. The agency has denied this, but in January it sacked nine of the 12 employees accused in an Israeli document of playing a part in the attacks.
UNRWA called for a “complete reversal in policies” from Israel in response to Monday’s strike, including lifting the ban on it delivering aid to northern Gaza.
(BBC)
Gunmen on motorcycles have killed dozens of people in dawn raids across three villages in north-western Nigeria.
Armed men shot locals dead, set homes alight and abducted an unknown number of people in Niger State, Musa Saidu, head of the State Emergency Management Agency (Sema), told the BBC.
The attacks on Saturday morning occurred near the site of a suspected jihadist massacre earlier this month, in which more than 100 people were killed in a similar ambush.
Armed criminal gangs, known as bandits, have carried out attacks and kidnappings in Nigeria for years, mainly targeting those in the north-west – but reports of attacks in other parts of the country have risen sharply more recently.
Bandits swooped on the village of Tunga-Makeri early in the morning, before striking the nearby villages of Konkoso and Pissa, local officials said.
Police said six people were killed in one incident, and 20 more in the attacks on Konkoso and Pisa.
Officials confirmed at least 29 people had been killed as of Saturday, but Saidu said that death toll could rise.
The number of people abducted is also unknown because many residents fled their homes and ran into the nearby bush or neighbouring communities, he said.
“People are afraid because you can’t tell which community is going to be next,” he added.
A security report cited by AFP news agency said bandits came on 41 motorcycles, each carrying two or three men.
Abdullahi Rofia, a resident of neighbouring Agwara, told the BBC that many displaced people have taken shelter in his community, which was itself attacked two weeks ago.
“People are so traumatised, they no longer go to farm nor do they go to market,” he said.
“The bandits are not interesting in stealing or looting – they are more interested in killing and terrorising locals.”
Authorities have introduced emergency measures, including a restriction on late-night gatherings and a “partial curfew” that bans motorcycle taxis from operating after 20:00 local time (19:00 GMT).
Police confirmed that security teams have been deployed and rescue efforts are ongoing.
Nigeria’s leaders are under pressure to curb violence, with jihadist groups active in the north-west and separatist insurgents based in the country’s south-east.
The US launched Christmas Day strikes targeting Islamist militants in Nigeria’s northern Sokoto state and President Donald Trump warned of further attacks “if they continue to kill Christians”.
Many of the victims of jihadist violence are Muslim, according to organisations monitoring political violence in Nigeria.
A Nigerian official told BBC last month that 200 suspected bandits had been killed in an operation in the central Kogi state.
It came after more than 250 children and staff were abducted from a Catholic school in Papiri, in one of the largest recent mass-kidnappings. Their release was later secured.
[BBC]
Marco Rubio has assured European leaders the US does not plan to abandon the transatlantic alliance, saying its destiny “will always be intertwined” with the continent’s.
The US secretary of state told the Munich Security Conference: “We do not seek to separate, but to revitalise an old friendship and renew the greatest civilisation in human history.”
He criticised European immigration, trade and climate policies, but the overall tenor of the closely-watched speech was markedly different to Vice President JD Vance’s at the same event last year, during which he scolded continental leaders.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she was “very much reassured” by Rubio’s remarks.
Rubio, the Trump administration’s most senior diplomat, said it was “neither our goal nor our wish” to end the transatlantic partnership, adding: “For us Americans, our home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe.
“And I am here today to leave it clear that America is charting the path for a new century of prosperity, and that once again we want to do it together with you, our cherished allies and our oldest friends.”
However, he repeated several criticisms repeatedly levelled at Europe by the Trump administration, including describing immigration policies as a threat to civilisation, and saying a “climate cult” had taken over economic policy.
On trade, he said Europe and the US had “made mistakes together” by adopting a “dogmatic vision of free and unfettered trade”.
He repeated familiar calls from the US for Europe to invest more in defence, saying: “We want allies who can defend themselves so that no adversary will ever be tempted to test our collective strength.”
In response, von der Leyen said: “Rubio is a good friend, a strong ally. And this was, for me, very reassuring to listen to him.”
She continued: “We want a strong Europe. And this is, I think, the message of today.”
Elsewhere in his half-hour address, Rubio said the system of international co-operation “must be rebuilt” and singled out the UN for particular criticism, saying it had “played virtually no role” in resolving the Gaza and Ukraine conflicts.
He also said the organisation was “powerless to constrain the nuclear programme” of Tehran.
In recent weeks, US President Donald Trump has threatened strikes on Iran if a deal to curb its nuclear programme can be reached, as negotiations between the two intensify.
A second round of talks will be hosted by Oman in Geneva next week, the Swiss foreign ministry said on Saturday.
Outside the conference, an estimated 200,000 protesters held a rally against the Iranian government, local police report.
The demonstrators denounced the country’s leadership, following the government crackdown on January’s protests in which thousands of people were killed.
Rubio also said the US did not know whether the “Russians are serious about ending the war” in Ukraine, before adding: “But we’re going to continue to test it.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told the conference later on Saturday that no one in Ukraine believed his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin would leave the country alone, describing the Russian leader as a “slave to war”.
Zelensky has come under pressure from the White House to hold presidential elections, which have been suspended while the country is under martial law.
Asked about a Financial Times report that his administration was planning for elections as soon as May, Zelensky said it was “something new to me” and repeated that “nobody supports elections during the war”.
He said that Ukraine would need “two months of ceasefire” and “security infrastructure” to safely conduct elections.
[BBC]
Two Britons and one French person have died in an avalanche in the French Alps on Friday.
The British pair were part of a group of five people skiing off-piste with an instructor in the Manchet valley, near Val d’Isère, a spokeswoman for the resort told the BBC.
The French national was skiing alone when the avalanche struck at 11:30 local time (10:30 GMT), Albertville prosecutor Benoit Bachelet said in a statement announcing the deaths.
Another British person has minor injuries, he added.
A spokesperson for the Foreign Office told the BBC they are aware of the death of the two British men and they are “in contact with the local authorities and stand ready to offer consular assistance”.
A manslaughter investigation has now been launched by the Albertville public prosecutor’s office and will be carried out by CRS Alpes mountain rescue police.
The ski instructor, who was unharmed, tested negative after taking alcohol and drug tests, according to Bachelet.
Val d’Isère already experienced avalanches this winter, with one person dying in the resort of Tignes nearby last month.
France’s national weather service had issued a red alert for avalanche risk across the Savoie region on Thursday, which was then lifted on Friday. But the risk level remained high across the Alps with “very unstable snow cover”.
The avalanche comes in the wake of Storm Nils, which passed through France the day before, leaving between 60cm and 100cm of snow, the weather service said.
There have been a number of fatal avalanches in the region in recent weeks, including the death of a British man off-piste skiing at the La Plagne resort in January.
“We have had some very complicated, very unstable snow since the beginning of the season,” Luc Nicolino, slopes manager at La Plagne, told AFP.
“It’s a kind of mille-feuille with many hidden, fragile layers.”
[BBC]
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