‘He beat us for three hours’ – the stories of asylum seekers trying to make it into Poland
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.
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Humanitarian crisis at Belarus border
“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.
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‘We’re almost dying of cold and hunger’
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 beat us for three hours’
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.
‘Our situation was really, really difficult’
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.
A bystander hailed a hero after he tackled and disarmed one of the gunmen in the Bondi Beach shooting is a shop owner.
The man, named by a relative as 43-year-old Ahmed al Ahmed, was seen in a video running up to the attacker from behind and then grabbing the shotgun from his hands before pointing the weapon back at him.
The footage then showed the terrorist heading towards a bridge where another gunman was located, while the bystander placed the gun beside a tree.
Ahmed al Ahmed (in a white T-shirt) is seen in a video running up to a gunman from behind
Mr Ahmed then wrestles with the attacker
Live updates on Sydney shooting
Mr Ahmed, who was wearing a white T-shirt, was shot twice in the incident and was due to have surgery, his cousin, Mustafa, has revealed.
In a video on 7News, Mr Ahmed appeared to have a bloodied arm and hand, and was helped by other people near the scene in the Australian city.
At least 11 people were killed and 29 others injured in the attack when two gunmen opened fire from a bridge on crowds at a Jewish event around 6pm local time on Sunday evening.
More than 1,000 people had been at the gathering which was celebrating the festival of Hanukkah.
Mr Ahmed manages to get the gun off the terrorist
The bystander then points the weapon at the attacker who moves away towards a bridge
A gunman was killed and another was in a critical condition following the shooting.
One of the suspects was 24-year-old Naveed Akram.
His driver’s licence says he lives in Bonnyrigg, a suburb of Sydney. The identity of the other suspected attacker is not known.
Naveed Akram, 24, was one of the suspects
Mustafa said father-of-two Mr Ahmed, who owns a fruit shop in the Sydney suburb of Sutherland, did not have any experience with guns but was just walking past when he decided to step in.
He told 7News: “He’s in hospital and we don’t know exactly what’s going on inside.
“We do hope he will be fine. He’s a hero, 100%.”
Read more:
What we know about mass shooting
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One of the suspected gunmen has been named as 24-year-old Naveed Akram.
The footage of the bystander’s actions spread quickly on social media as people praised the man for his bravery, saying his actions had potentially saved many lives.
“Australian hero (random civilian) wrestles gun off attacker and disarms him. Some people are brave and then some people are… whatever this is,” one person said on X, sharing the video.
“This Australian man saved countless lives by stripping the gun off one of the terrorists at Bondi beach. HERO,” another said.
Chris Minns, the premier of New South Wales state, where Sydney is located, said it was the “most unbelievable scene I’ve ever seen”.
“A man walking up to a gunman who had fired on the community and single-handedly disarming him, putting his own life at risk to save the lives of countless other people.”
“That man is a genuine hero, and I’ve got no doubt that there are many, many people alive tonight as a result of his bravery,” he added.
The country’s prime minister Anthony Albanese praised the actions of Australians who had “run towards danger in order to help others”.
“These Australians are heroes and their bravery has saved lives,” he told a news conference.
Messages were sweeping across Sydney within minutes of the attack at Bondi Beach.
Parents messaged their children and teenagers, who had been enjoying a late afternoon swim at Bondi.
Witnesses said police were on the scene quickly, and the streets of Sydney’s eastern suburbs were full of police cars and ambulances on their way to Bondi.
Follow live: 11 people killed at event celebrating Hanukkah
When we arrived, there were still dozens of people processing what had happened, and everywhere – shock.
Witnesses told us that when the gunfire started some people took cover in the North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club. Once the threat was over, lifeguards helped the injured and used surfboards to carry them out.
Witnesses tell Sky’s Nicole Johnston of Bondi ‘warzone’
Some people were clearly traumatised and provided graphic detail of witnessing the shooting and seeing people killed in front of them.
A photographer, Danny, was covering the Jewish holiday event.
Read more: What we know so far
He said he “locked eyes” with one of the gunmen, who then fired towards him. Danny said he was grazed by a bullet. He kept filming during the shooting, while taking cover.
Sam, from France, was working at Bondi. He went to the scene of the attack and saw almost a dozen people lying on the ground covered in blood. Sam described it as like a “war zone”.
Rabbi Lei Wolff, from Central Synagogue in Sydney, went to Bondi as soon as he heard about the mass shooting. A dear friend of his, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, was killed in the attack.
Rabbi Wolff has called on people around the world to stand with Australia’s Jewish community against terrorism.
World
Israel says Hamas commander – who was one of the architects of the 7 October 2023 attacks – killed in strike
A senior Hamas commander who was one of the architects of the 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel has been killed in a strike on Gaza City, according to the country’s military.
Raed Saad was targeted in response to an attack by Hamas in which an explosive device injured two soldiers on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a joint statement.
It is the highest-profile killing of a senior Hamas figure since the Gaza ceasefire came into effect in October.
Gaza health authorities said the attack on a car in Gaza City killed five people and wounded at least 25 others, but there has been no confirmation from Hamas or medics that Saed was among the dead.
Raed Saed
Hamas condemned the attack in a statement as a violation of the ceasefire agreement but stopped short of threatening retaliation.
An Israeli military official described Saed as a high-ranked Hamas member who helped establish and advance the group’s weapons production network.
“In recent months, he operated to re-establish Hamas’ capabilities and weapons manufacturing, a blatant violation of the ceasefire,” the official said.
The 10 October ceasefire has enabled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to Gaza City’s ruins after a war that began after Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and seized 251 hostages in an attack on southern Israel.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 70,700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to health officials in Gaza.
Israel has pulled troops back from city positions, and aid flows have increased, but violence has not completely stopped.
Palestinian health authorities say Israeli forces have killed at least 386 people in strikes in Gaza since the truce, while Israel says three of its soldiers have been killed.
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