‘He beat us for three hours’ – the stories of asylum seekers trying to make it into Poland

Published

4 years ago

November 12, 2021

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Outside a detention centre in the Polish city of Bialystok, where we know asylum seekers who crossed the border from Belarus are being held, we meet a local mother and son.

They have arrived as visitors. The mother, who only wants to be known as Zofia, is carrying a bag of clothes. She plans to give them to a woman she met two weeks ago living rough in the woods near her home.

The woman was among five asylum seekers from Kurdistan who’d managed to enter Poland from Belarus. They had been hiding out in the forest between the two nations. And they were desperate, barefoot and starving.

Zofia took them into her home.

“What else could I do?” she asks seemingly more to herself than to me. She said she took them in, allowed them to have a bath and gave them dinner. They stayed for three nights.

Zofia said after they rested and regained their strength, they left. They asked her hundreds of times not to call the police. She didn’t.

She said she knew that sooner or later they would get caught.

But she gave them her phone number and the woman she had helped called when she was picked up by the Polish authorities.

Now Zofia is here to see her again, offering compassion to someone in a desperate situation. And she tells me she will continue to visit the woman as she is likely to be in the centre for some time.

Zofia is not alone in Poland in a desire to help some of the thousands attempting, some succeeding, getting into a European Union nation.

Close to the border with Belarus at night, some houses flash green lights as a signal to migrants and asylum seekers that they are welcome.

Aid agencies are doing what they can to assist people who’ve made it to a no man’s land of forest between the two nations, despite the Polish government imposing legal restrictions preventing journalists and humanitarian workers from getting close to the border.

At a centre in the city, we meet asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and other nations who are being offered help making their claims to stay.

All have been through trauma to get here. Many told us they endured days, sometimes weeks, of being pushed between the border guards of different nations. Many allege they were assaulted by multiple authorities.

We meet 29-year-old Thaer Rezk from Homs in Syria. He tells us an extraordinary story of crossing from Belarus into Poland, being beaten and pushed back, being driven to Lithuania and being pushed back again before a Belarusian guard cut the wire fence to Poland letting Thaer and his friends through.

He tells us that they hid in the freezing forest for days and nights, struggling with the injuries inflicted by the beatings they endured. He said he was assaulted by border guards in every nation he ended up in.

He added: “In Belarus, he (the guard) kick me on my chest. I can’t breathe. He kick my friend in face. His eye is gone. He beat us like this”.

In Lithuania, he said: “The commandos are not good. It’s very hard and very bad. He beat us for three hours. Very bad. Beat us. He put electric shock on my neck, on my foot.”

At the same centre, we meet an Iraqi mother, Haneen, who insists we protect her identity. She is pregnant with her fourth child and fled the violence at home with her young family.

They travelled to Belarus and waited at the border before moving towards Poland, having to survive in the freezing forest for days.

She said: “Our situation was really, really difficult. All we had was a little bit of water left in a bottle and I had to share it amongst my children. Me and my husband wouldn’t drink. So nothing would happen to them, so they wouldn’t die”.

She recalled: “After we crossed the fence in Belarus and we entered Poland, we waded through water – which reached up to here (she gestured to her chest) – after that we walked for hours, drenched and surrounded by animals and I don’t know what.

“We kept walking for three days until we reached an area where the police found us and brought us here.”

She is optimistic that her life and that of her children will now be secure in Poland or another EU nation.

But thousands more share that aspiration and the Polish government is taking a hard line at the border. The hopes of all who head in this direction are unlikely to be met.

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Israel to continue with Gaza City offensive despite talks to free Hamas hostages

Published

7 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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Israel to continue with Gaza City offensive despite talks to free Hamas hostages

Israel will resume negotiations with Hamas for the release of all hostages captured during the October 7 attack, Benjamin Netanyahu has said – but its military will continue its Gaza City offensive despite international outcry.

The remarks from Israel’s prime minister are the first since Hamas agreed to a temporary ceasefire proposal.

Talks will also be with a view to ending the war, but Mr Netanyahu said it must be on “terms acceptable to Israel”.

In the meantime, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have begun calling medics and international organisations in northern Gaza to encourage them to evacuate to the south ahead of the expanded operation in Gaza City.

Many of Israel’s closest allies have urged the government to reconsider. Some Israelis fear it could doom the remaining 20 or so living hostages taken by Hamas-led militants in the 7 October 2023 attack which ignited the war.

Israel plans to call up 60,000 reservists and extend the service of 20,000 more.

Speaking to soldiers near Israel’s border with Gaza, Mr Netanyahu said he was still set on approving plans for defeating Hamas and capturing Gaza City.

“At the same time I have issued instructions to begin immediate negotiations for the release of all our hostages and an end to the war on terms acceptable to Israel,” he said.

“These two things – defeating Hamas and releasing all our hostages – go hand in hand,” he added.

The latest ceasefire proposal drawn up by Egypt and Qatar is almost identical to an earlier one that Israel accepted before the talks stalled last month.

The proposal would include the release of some hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, a pullback of Israeli forces and negotiations over a lasting ceasefire.

‘Don’t tell us where to build’

Israeli strikes killed at least 36 Palestinians across Gaza on Thursday, according to local hospitals, including at a tent camp in Deir al-Balah.

Meanwhile, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, was summoned to the Foreign Office in response to a controversial West Bank settlement plan which has been given final approval.

The project, known as the E1 settlement, would effectively cut off the occupied West Bank from East Jerusalem and divide the territory in two.

The UK and 21 international partners have released a statement to condemn the decision “in the strongest terms” calling it “a flagrant breach of international law” and “critically undermining a two-state solution”.

Ms Hotovely gave Sky News her response to the meeting: “I said we wouldn’t tell the British where to build in London. Don’t tell us where to build in Jerusalem, our capital. We see E1 as part of Greater Jerusalem.”

UK warns of ‘horrifying starvation’

The UK has also responded to comments from the head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA that famine in Gaza is “deliberate” and being used as an “instrument of war”.

Minister for the Middle East, Hamish Falconer, has called for a “comprehensive [peace] plan to end this misery and get to a long-term settlement”.

“Israel must immediately and permanently lift all barriers preventing aid reaching the people of Gaza to prevent the horrifying starvation in the Strip continuing,” he added.

Demand for Gaza media access

The Media Freedom Coalition, which includes the UK and 50 other countries, has called on Israel to allow foreign media access into Gaza.

In a joint statement, the coalition, which is a partnership of countries working to defend media freedom, urged Israel to “allow immediate independent foreign media access” and “afford protection for journalists operating in Gaza”.

They said this was in light of the “unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza”.

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Israel maintains pressure on Gaza City as ‘first stages of attack begin’

Published

10 hours ago

August 21, 2025

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Gaza City residents say Israel carried out intense overnight bombardments as it prepares a controversial offensive to take control of the area.

Sixty-thousand reservists are being called up after Benjamin Netanyahu‘s security cabinet approved the plan earlier this month.

UN chief Antonio Guterres has warned of more “death and destruction” if Israel tries to seize the city, while France’s Emmanuel Macron said it would be a “disaster” that would lead to “permanent war”.

Live – UN warns of ‘forcible transfer’ as forces advance on Gaza City

Hundreds of thousands of people could end up being forcibly displaced – a potential war crime, according to the UN’s human rights office.

Gaza’s health ministry said at least 70 people had been killed in Israeli attacks in the past 24 hours, including eight people in a house in the Sabra suburb of Gaza City.

Israel currently controls about 75% of the Gaza Strip, but Prime Minister Netanyahu has said Israel must take Gaza City to “finish the job” and defeat Hamas.

Mr Netanyahu and his ministers are due to meet on Thursday to discuss the plans, according to Israeli media.

Military spokesperson Effie Defrin said earlier that “preliminary operations and the first stages of the attack” had begun – with troops operating on the outskirts of Gaza City.

Israel has said it will order evacuation notices before troops move in but satellite images show thousands of people have already left.

Residents said shelling has intensified in the Sabra and Tuffah neighbourhoods and that those fleeing have gone to coastal shelters or to central and southern parts of the Strip.

The decision to stay or leave is an agonising choice for many.

“We are facing a bitter-bitter situation, to die at home or leave and die somewhere else, as long as this war continues, survival is uncertain,” said father of seven Rabah Abu Elias.

“In the news, they speak about a possible truce, on the ground, we only hear explosions and see deaths. To leave Gaza City or not isn’t an easy decision to make,”

Most of the Israeli reservists being summoned are not expected to be in a frontline combat role and the call-up is set to take a while.

The window could give mediators more time to convince Israel to accept a temporary ceasefire.

Hamas has already agreed to the proposal – envisaging 10 living hostages and 18 bodies being released in return for a 60-day truce and the freedom of about 200 Palestinian prisoners.

Israel hasn’t officially responded, but insists it wants all 50 remaining hostages released at once. Only 20 of them are still believed to be alive.

The war started nearly two years ago when a Hamas terror attack killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped around 250.

More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The figure doesn’t break down how many were Hamas members, but it says women and children make up more than half.

Two more people also died of starvation and malnutrition in the past 24 hours, the ministry said on Thursday, taking the total to 271, including 112 children.

COGAT, the body controlling aid into Gaza, said 250 aid trucks entered on Wednesday, with 154 pallets air-dropped.

World

Police in Kenya begin exhuming shallow graves of suspected cult victims

Published

12 hours ago

August 21, 2025

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Police in Kenya begin exhuming shallow graves of suspected cult victims

Police, pathologists and grave diggers have started the exhumation of 27 shallow graves in Kenya’s Kilifi County.

The remains are believed to be of followers of a deadly cult in Chakama Ranch, a part of the Shakahola Forest.

In 2023, more than 400 mass graves were discovered in the same forest, all members of controversial preacher Paul Mackenzie’s church. They were encouraged to starve themselves to death to get into heaven.

It remains one of the world’s worst cult-related tragedies. Mackenzie is still in jail and faces numerous charges of terrorism, child torture and murder.

The remote forest has again been turned into a crime scene.

Morticians were seen carrying out body bag after body bag, some containing the remains of children believed to have been starved to death.

State pathologist Dr Richard Njoroge said this is just the beginning, as investigators expect to find many more bodies: “Today we managed to exhume six.

“Of the six graves, we found five bodies and then also around that area we found ten different scattered body parts, scattered in different places on the surface.”

Eleven suspects have already been arrested in connection with these deaths and will appear in court on Friday.

Police are investigating links to Mackenzie and members of his Good News International Church.

At the exhumation today, pathologists said they were still working to identify the bodies of those exhumed from Mackenzie’s cult.

“We had 453 at the closure of that exercise, I think, we released around 33 or 34 last time. So, from there are 419 remaining,” Dr Njoroge explained.

Police have encouraged families in the area with missing loved ones to come forward and provide their DNA samples, as efforts to identify the dead continue.

Kenya is grappling with a rise in religious extremism and many churches operating informally.

Parliament passed several preliminary bills aimed at regulating religious organisations last year, but implementation has stalled after resistance from church leaders.