Author: AFP

ABID: Severe flooding in west Africa has displaced nearly 950,000 people and disrupted children’s education at the start of the school year, international charity Save the Children said on Friday.

“Hundreds of thousands of children now displaced from their homes are facing disease, hunger from crop destruction, and disruption to their education, as schools have become crowded with fleeing families or damaged in the floods,” the NGO said.

Save the Children said around 950,000 people had been displaced — 649,184 in Niger, 225,000 in Nigeria and 73,778 in Mali. Niger’s government says more than 700,000 people have been left homeless, and 273 people have died since the rainy season started in June.

Neighbouring Nigeria has meanwhile seen 29 of its 36 states — mainly in the north — hit by rising waters of the River Niger and its major Benue tributary, with the country listing 200 deaths, Save the Children said. “According to Nigerian government data, over 115,265 hectares of farmland have also been damaged in a country with already high rates of food insecurity,” the NGO said.

The agency said one in every six children across Nigeria “faced hunger in June-August this year — a 25 per cent increase on the same period last year.” In Mali, whose government declared a state national disaster, more than half of those displaced are children, the NGO revealed.

Save the Children said climate change was making extreme weather and its consequences ever more serious and frequent, with Africa suffering disproportionally.

“These countries are already ravaged by conflict and insecurity, making it even harder to respond, said Vishna Shah-Little, regional advocacy, media and communications director for the agency in Western and Central Africa.

The genocide in Gaza entered its 12-month on Saturday with little sign of respite for the Palestinian territory or hope for Israeli hostages still held captive.

The chances of a truce appear slim, with both sides sticking doggedly to their positions, AFP reports.

Hamas’ October 7 gave Israel an excuse to spark the genocide. While the organization is demanding a complete Israeli withdrawal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that troops must remain on a key strip of land along the Gaza-Egypt border.

The United States, Qatar and Egypt have all been mediating to bring about a ceasefire in the region where Israel in Gaza has killed at least 40,939 people.

According to the United Nations human rights office, most of the dead are women and children.

However, the attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, including some hostages killed in captivity, according to official Israeli figures.

Of 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the attack, 97 remain in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Scores were released during a one-week truce in November.

Israel’s announcement last Sunday that the bodies of six hostages, including a US-Israeli citizen, had been recovered shortly after being killed, sparked grief and anger in Israel.

Marking the anniversary, UN Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA) chief Philippe Lazzarini posted on X on Saturday: “Eleven months. Enough. No one can take this any longer. Humanity must prevail. Ceasefire now.”

International pressure to end the war was further underlined by Friday’s shooting dead in the West Bank of a Turkish-American activist demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the occupied territory.

The family of 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi has demanded an independent investigation into her death, saying on Saturday her life “was taken needlessly, unlawfully, and violently by the Israeli military”.

The UN rights office said Israeli forces killed Eygi with a “shot in the head”.

Ankara said she was killed by “Israeli occupation soldiers”, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the Israeli action as “barbaric”.

Washington called her death “tragic”, and has pressed its close ally Israel to investigate.

West Bank raids

Israeli settlements in the West Bank, where about 490,000 people live, are illegal under international law.

Since the October 7 attack, Israeli troops or settlers have killed more than 662 Palestinians in the West Bank, which Israel occupied in 1967, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Eygi’s death came on the day Israeli forces withdrew from a deadly 10-day raid in the West Bank city of Jenin, where AFP journalists reported residents returning home to widespread destruction.

The Jenin pullout came with Israel at loggerheads with the United States over talks to forge a truce in the Gaza war.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday “90 percent is agreed” and urged Israel and Hamas to finalise a deal.

But Netanyahu denied this, telling Fox News: “It’s not close.”

Hamas is demanding Israel’s complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, saying it agreed months ago to a proposal outlined by US President Joe Biden.

AFP reporters said several air strikes and shelling rocked the territory overnight and early Saturday.

Gaza’s civil defence agency and the Palestinian Red Crescent said an Israeli air strike killed four people near the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

The civil defence and a witness said an air strike that targeted a flat in Bureij camp killed another four.

And in Jabalia, an Israeli air strike killed four more Palestinians, civil defence officials said.

They added that a woman and a child were also killed in an air strike north of Gaza City.

Medics reported at least 33 Palestinians wounded in an air strike on a residential area in Beit Lahia and said they were being treated at Al-Awda, Kamal Adwan and Indonesian hospitals.

A 14-year-old boy killed four people, including two students, and wounded nine more when he opened fire at a high school in the US state of Georgia on Wednesday, law enforcement said.

The suspected shooter — also a student at the school — had been brought to the FBI’s attention more than a year ago for threats to commit a school shooting, the agency said.

He was taken into custody after Wednesday’s shooting and will be tried as an adult on murder charges, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.

Two teachers were also among the dead.

After the latest chapter in America’s gun violence crisis — nearly 400 mass shootings this year alone, by one tally — people gathered at a sports field outside Apalachee High School, some forming a circle with their arms linked.

“Our school resource officer engaged him,” county sheriff Jud Smith told reporters, referring to law enforcement officers employed to work at US schools.

“The shooter quickly realized that if he did not give up that it would end with an OIS — an officer-involved shooting. He gave up, got on the ground, and the deputy took him into custody.”

Smith said police did not yet know if the shooter singled out specific people as targets, adding later that the nine wounded were expected to recover.

The two students killed were also 14 years old, authorities said.

‘Still not safe’

After the suspected shooter was brought to the attention of the FBI, the county sheriff’s office interviewed his father and the then 13-year-old suspect, who denied the threats, before flagging the child to school officials for monitoring.

Georgia Bureau of Investigation director Chris Hosey said the shooter used an “AR-platform style weapon” and that authorities were investigating how he brought the gun into the school.

Some in the school initially thought it was just another shooter drill, one student told AFP, referring to the exercises common in US schools.

“Everyone just thought it was a fake drill until my teacher said we didn’t get an email,” Alexsandra Romeo said.

“She got us all in a little corner and everyone was just hugging each other, I had some of my friends crying. Until two police officers came in with their guns and told us that this is not a drill and that we’re still not safe.”

Another student, 17-year-old Stephanie Folgar, described hearing “loud bangs” and panicking students hiding in the bathrooms and closet.

“It’s scary knowing that that could’ve been you,” she said.

One student told local media that he saw blood on the floor and a body as he was led out of the building by authorities.

The shooting occurred near the town of Winder, about 45 miles (70 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta, the state capital.

Earlier, school authorities were reported to have sent a message to parents saying they were enforcing a “hard lockdown after reports of gunfire.”

After the all-clear was given, parents were invited to the school to be reunited with their children, with long lines of vehicles visible outside.

Gun violence ‘epidemic’

School shootings have become a sadly regular occurrence in the United States, where about a third of adults own a firearm and regulations on purchasing even powerful military-style rifles are lax.

Polls show a majority of voters favour stricter controls on the use and purchase of firearms, but the powerful gun ownership lobby is opposed to additional restrictions, and lawmakers have repeatedly failed to act.

US President Joe Biden said he was mourning the dead.

“Students across the country are learning how to duck and cover instead of how to read and write. We cannot continue to accept this as normal,” he said.

Speaking at a campaign event in New Hampshire after the shooting, Vice President Kamala Harris said it was time to end the “epidemic of gun violence.”

Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump said the perpetrator of the shooting was a “sick and deranged monster.”

This year, there have been at least 384 mass shootings — defined as a shooting involving at least four victims, dead or wounded — across the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

At least 11,557 people have been killed in firearms violence in the United States this year, according to the GVA.

Animal rights groups on Wednesday said gunfire killed a beluga whale that rose to fame in Norway after its unusual harness sparked suspicions the creature was trained by Russia as a spy.

The organisations NOAH and One Whale said they had filed a complaint with Norwegian police, asking them to open a “criminal investigation”.

Nicknamed “Hvaldimir” in a pun on the Norwegian word for whale, hval, and its purported ties to Moscow, the white beluga first appeared off the coast in Norway’s far-northern Finnmark region in 2019.

He was found dead on Saturday in a bay on Norway’s southwestern coast. His body was transported on Monday to a local branch of the Norwegian Veterinary Institute for autopsy.

His body was transported on Monday to a local branch of the Norwegian Veterinary Institute for autopsy.

The report is expected “within three weeks”, a spokeswoman for the institute said. “He had multiple bullet wounds around his body,” the head of One Whale, Regina Crosby Haug who said she viewed Hvaldimir’s body on Monday, told AFP.

One Whale was founded to track the beluga, which had become a celebrity in Norway. “The injuries on the whale are alarming and of a nature that cannot rule out a criminal act—it is shocking,” NOAH director Siri Martinsen said in a statement. “Given the suspicion of a criminal act, it is crucial that the police are involved quickly,” she said.

A third organisation which also tracked the whale’s movements, Marine Mind, said it found Hvaldimir’s dead body floating in the water on Saturday around 2:30 p.m. local time. “There was nothing to immediately reveal the cause of death,” director Sebastian Strand told AFP. “We saw markings but it’s too early to say what they were.”

He said marine birds probably caused some of the markings but said there was no explanation for others at this stage. With an estimated age of 15 to 20, Hvaldimir was relatively young for a beluga whale, which can live to between 40 and 60 years of age. When he was found in 2019, Norwegian marine biologists removed a man-made harness with a mount suited for an action camera and the words “Equipment St. Petersburg” printed in English on the plastic clasps.

Norwegian officials said Hvaldimir may have escaped an enclosure and may have been trained by the Russian navy as he appeared to be accustomed to humans. Moscow has never issued any official reaction to speculation that he could be a “Russian spy”.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg and several others were arrested Wednesday after occupying a University of Copenhagen building to call for an academic boycott of Israeli universities, Danish media reported.

Images on the daily Ekstra Bladet website showed the 21-year-old activist, wearing a black-and-white keffiyeh shawl draped over her shoulders, being escorted out of a campus building by police.

Thunberg herself shared images on Instagram of riot police entering a building where the group “Students against the Occupation” were staging a protest.

“I can’t confirm the names of those arrested, but six people have been arrested in connection with the demonstration,” a Copenhagen police spokesman told AFP.

Three of them “are suspected of forcing their way into the building and blocking the entrance”, he said.

The six were released several hours later, the spokesman told AFP, and video footage published by Ekstra Bladet showed Thunberg walking out of the police station.

Students against the Occupation said in an Instagram statement that “while the situation in Palestine only gets worse, the University of Copenhagen continues cooperation with academic institutions in Israel”.

“We are occupying” the university’s “central administration with one demand: academic boycott now.”

Pro-Palestinian protesters have set up encampments at universities around the United States and Europe since last spring to protest against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and occupation of Palestinian territories.

An Indian state, shaken by weeks of protests demanding justice after the rape and murder of a doctor, passed a law on Tuesday that could lead to the execution of rapists.

Protests erupted in West Bengal after the discovery of a 31-year-old doctor’s bloodied body at a state-run hospital in the local capital Kolkata on August 9.

The law, passed by the state assembly but yet to be approved by the president, expresses outrage at the chronic issue of violence against women.

The new West Bengal law is largely symbolic because India’s criminal code applies uniformly across the country. However, presidential approval could make an exception and see it become state law.

The law raises punishment for rape from the current sentence of at least ten years to either life imprisonment or execution.

The doctor’s murder sparked strikes by medics and rallies backed by thousands of ordinary citizens across India, although many doctors have since returned to work.

Protests in West Bengal have since transformed into clashes between rival political party loyalists, including the ruling All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The Hindu-nationalist BJP holds power nationally but sits in opposition in West Bengal. It and the AITC both backed the new state law.

The gruesome nature of the attack has invoked comparisons with the horrific 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in the capital Delhi.

Read more: What is the Kolkata doctor rape case and why are Indians protesting?

NEW DELHI: Insurgents in India’s Manipur state have carried out a deadly attack on security forces, using drones to drop explosives in what police called a “significant escalation” of violence in the restive northeastern region.

A 31-year-old woman was killed, and six people were wounded on Sunday in what police said was an “unprecedented attack” by rebels who used drones to drop the heads of rocket-propelled grenades.

Fighting broke out in Manipur in May 2023 between the predominantly Hindu Meitei majority and the mainly Christian Kuki community, an ethnic conflict that has since killed at least 200 people. Rival militias have set up blockades in parts of the state, which borders war-torn Myanmar.

Longstanding tensions between the two groups revolve around competition for land and public jobs, with rights activists accusing local leaders of exacerbating ethnic divisions for political gain.

“While drone bombs have commonly been used in general warfare, this recent deployment of drones to deploy explosives against security forces and the civilians marks a significant escalation,” Manipur police said in a statement.

The attack outside the state capital Imphal was carried out by “alleged Kuki” rebels, the statement said. Those injured included an eight-year-old girl — the daughter of the woman who was killed — as well three civilians and two police officers.

“The involvement of highly trained professionals, possibly with technical expertise and support, cannot be ruled out,” the police said.