Turkey-Syria earthquake: Where a boy whose name means lion is just one of thousands of victims of the deadly disaster
Sky News has gained rare access to the warzone that is northwest Syria, now also hit by devastating earthquakes.
Children were found dying and others have been left mutilated after a string of delays by the international community to help the last-remaining opposition area.
The Sky team have visited the area twice, most recently spending another 48 hours inside the rebel-held area where an Islamist militant group is in control, and which was hit most badly by the string of earthquakes and multiple aftershocks and tremors over the last two weeks.
We found a string of babies born prematurely to mothers who were caught up in the earthquakes and whose tiny newborns are now only just clinging onto life with little aid and sparse, antiquated equipment.
We also saw children who are the sole survivors in their families but left with catastrophic injuries and others with life-changing amputations whose futures will never be the same.
There are whole towns and villages now living rough, in tents or with relatives and few, if any, belongings to their name.
And most worryingly, there’s a collective burgeoning anger and despair directed against the international community – particularly the United Nations – who they believe delayed getting help to them and sacrificed their children’s lives.
As aid and rescue teams from all over the world poured into Turkey immediately after the earthquake, in Syria they were left to fend for themselves.
It took more than four days for the first trickle of UN relief to arrive in northwestern Syria.
A doctor checks on a baby at the Shams hospital
It was far too late for many, and these small convoys didn’t bring with them any of the heavy lifting equipment or rescue experts that could have made a difference to those still trapped under the rubble.
We saw a small scrap of a boy called Arsalan – which means “lion” in Arabic – struggling with every breath he gulped to stay alive.
The three-year-old was the only one of his family to survive the huge 7.8 magnitude earthquake which struck the region on 6 February.
The civil defence group called the White Helmets struggled to free him and his family for three days.
Arsalan was the only one of his family to survive the earthquake
One by one they pulled out the family – his mother, his six-year-old sister, and his seven-year-old brother.
All had perished under the rubble.
‘We have no ICU’
Then the White Helmets saw the outline of a man’s body – it was Suleiman, his father.
He was crouched forward as though he’d used his body to shield his tiny son against the force of the earthquake and the rubble which enveloped them.
The volunteers slowly pulled his lifeless body out. This was the last brave act of a father who desperately tried to give his little boy the best chance of survival and sacrificed his own life to do so.
Arsalan’s uncle Izzat Humadi is at his bedside
The White Helmets team could see beneath Suleiman’s body, a child’s arm poking out from the grey, stony tomb. As they scraped the rubble away and gently pulled the toddler free, the child opened his eyes, his eyelashes caked in dust, as he was passed along the human chain of rescuers.
“He’s alive, he’s alive,” the cry went up. “Alhamdulillah [thank God].”
It was a miracle anyone from the family had survived after nearly two days of being buried under the rocks and stones of their home, in wintry conditions with no food, water or specialised equipment to help locate and extract them.
The little boy named after a lion was showing enormous survival instincts way beyond his years. Doctors at the Aquabat Hospital on the Turkish border have been working ever since to save him with little specialised equipment and no proper intensive care unit. Not even their own CT scanner.
“We have no ICU,” Dr Sameeh Qaddour told us.
“Our ICU is his uncle and aunt by his bedside all day and night. We can give him some oxygen and painkillers and we’ve performed numerous operations to try to save his legs which are badly affected by crush syndrome.”
The little boy has had a stomach operation too and his bowels are struggling to work. His massive leg wounds are at constant risk of becoming infected and septicaemia setting in.
Read more:
Turkey earthquake: New tremor ends homeless family’s dream of recovery
Former Newcastle United footballer found dead under rubble in quake-hit Turkey
Anger grows over building standards in wake of deadly disaster
Arsalan and Dr Sameeh Qaddour
The doctor is obviously moved by the boy’s spirit to live and how he’s already defied the odds to come this far. “Logically he should not have survived,” he tells the Sky News team.
“But when I see the video (of his rescue), he survived… logically he must not survive! But he survived the first, maybe he’ll survive the next… this is out of (the hands) and logic of medicine.”
The little boy opens his eyes and is responding to his uncle Izzat Humadi who is talking gently to him. “Come on, Arsalan,” he says to his nephew, “Come on, let’s go. Let’s get out of here.”
He’s willing the toddler with all his might to fight death, and cheat it again.
This little boy – and his siblings – were all born into a war which seems to have no end.
They were born into poverty, in an enclave filled with more than four million people who have run away from the fighting and bombing and shelling by the Syrian leader Bashar al Assad.
They’ve known no other life other than one lived in the shadow of war – and now a natural disaster has wiped out the entire family apart from this toddler.
Street art in Jindiris
‘This is all our responsibility’
Dr Qaddour is emotional as he examines Arsalan.
He’s angry at the lack of help for children like Arsalan and tells us: “Are these children responsible for what Assad is doing? Are they responsible for the borders? Or the international community?
“He’s lost everyone. Every single one of his family. He doesn’t know anything about these politics and he doesn’t care about this and I don’t care about this.
“I want this patient to survive – anyway. I have to give him all the chances. Arsalan survived under the rubble but maybe not survive now – but I have to give him all [the chances] that I can. This is all our responsibility.”
Dr Qaddour is emotional as he examines Arsalan
The tragedy suffered by Arsalan and his family is not even unique in northwest Syria where they’ve all endured nearly 12 years of war, of constant terror and homelessness, of rebuilding their lives over and over again, sleeping in fields, sheltering in tents, finding and building new homes, only to do it all over again a few months or years later.
It is a war which has gone on so long, an entire generation has been born into it and is growing up in it.
It is a life filled with armed checkpoints, constant battles between the armed stakeholders and shifting territorial claims and gains.
It’s a life inured in depravation and the repetitive uncertainty of shells and bombs. Those in northwest Syria are probably the only section of the global community which felt a bit of relief at the start of the war in Ukraine.
The consequences for them are that it has distracted the Russian support for Bashar al Assad and resulted in far fewer attacks against them as the Russian leader directs most of his military resources against the Ukrainians.
Yet Assad’s jets still flew over the area on the day of the first earthquakes and while we were inside Idlib following the second set a fortnight later, there were rockets being fired into the countryside in Idlib.
‘Why didn’t the UN help us?’
Even in less troubled times, the fear can never completely disappear for the beleaguered people of Idlib.
“Perhaps we should thank Bashar al Assad more than the United Nations in this crisis,” the admin manager of the Aquabat Hospital, Salahedin Abdulsalam tells us.
“Bashar al Assad taught us how to manage a crisis… by bombing us, killing our families, destroying everything.
“But the United Nations did nothing the first four or five days (of the earthquake) and our people died under the rubble and they just asked for permission from Bashar al Assad to help us.” It’s a constant refrain from those we talk to.
A nurse with babies at the Shams hospital
“Why didn’t the UN help us when we needed it most?” we keep getting asked.
The neonatal ICU in the Shams Hospital in Sarmada, near the Turkish border is packed with babies born into the world dangerously early as well as others struggling from the long-term denigration of medical facilities because of the war and now the earthquakes.
Dr Munzer al Rammah takes us past little cot after little cot.
“He’s suffering from pneumonia, she is too; he has bronchitis; he has severe dehydration. The main reason is the war,” the doctor tells us.
“Many of these families live in tents and suffer from cold and many more are now living in tents because of the earthquakes so it affects an already bad situation.”
A crying baby at the Shams hospital
‘There is no future for these children’
He takes us to another ward where he shows us the babies caught up in the earthquake.
Two are in adjacent transparent incubator cots. Both were born in the hours after the earthquake as terror and trauma forced their mothers into early labour and expelled them from their bodies a whole month early.
They are fragile and now facing the fight of their short lives to keep breathing and survive in horrendous conditions. They each weigh little more than a litre bottle of water.
They’re pitiful little things. I notice the feeding syringe laying next to one of them called Fatima is almost the same size as her.
She flails around as the nurse, who’s also called Fatima, slowly presses the specialised milk they are feeding her, down the feeding tube which is inserted into her nostril and takes the sustenance straight to her stomach.
A premature baby fights to survive
She’s blinking up at her nursing saviour. Eight times a day she’s fed just 30ml of milk to try to keep her alive.
But even if the nurses and doctors succeed in building up their strength so they can leave hospital and return to their families, the majority will return to cold tents where their relatives are struggling to feed themselves and there are few choices.
“We see them return here over and over again with illnesses and nutritional problems,” nurse Fatima Khalid tells us.
“There is no future for these children with no school, no education, no proper hospital and not enough food.”
She, like so many here, blames the outside world for their lack of empathy, lack of care, and lack of action.
“If they’d helped us (to get rid of Assad) we might not be like this now. If we were able to get rid of Assad who bombed us and destroyed us, maybe it would be better – and now we have the earthquakes but still, we are here. We are alive. We resist death.”
In Jindiris, a town near Afrin in Aleppo Province in northern Syria, we find families putting up plastic sheeting to shelter against the cold, while others huddle in tents erected among the rubble and piles of rocks which used to be their homes.
Elderly ladies sit near rubble in Jindiris
Jindiris is among the worst hit by the earthquakes whose impact rippled with devastating effects across the border with Turkey.
We see many children scavenging amongst the debris for scraps they can sell or use. And whole families sifting through stones with their bare hands trying to find their IDs, phones or just memories of their dead.
No time for the luxury of grief
Majdolin Ahmed lost the youngest of her four children – a 10-year-old boy called Nebi. He was pulled out of the rubble after two days by his relatives. No one came to help them and there was an air of resignation from them.
Few ever help them. Here, it’s each man, woman and child for themselves. The families are excessively tight-knit here – because family is important in their culture but also because all they have are each other.
Few but Majdolin and his immediate family will mourn the death of Nebi. Everyone in Jindiris seems to have lost someone, sometimes multiple family members.
A boy picks through the rubble in Jindiris
There is a stunned and despairing air permeating every devastated street and broken building or packed tent. Grieving is a luxury they don’t have time for. Survival is sucking up much of their emotions and their reserves of energy now.
“I’m just trying to find my phone so I can have photos of my son,” Majdolin tells us. Tears are welling up as she recounts what happened. Nebi was her baby, her youngest and none of them could do anything to save him. In the same town, there are remarkable tales of defying death.
‘I begged them to cut my leg off’
Reema is one of those who defied death. She’s 14 years old and was trapped under the rubble for three days, her right leg pinned down by concrete and a steel pin through her right ankle.
She tells us how she scrambled to escape the earthquake as her home shook, but the ceiling came crashing down on her as she raced to get out. When she came to she was trapped, her leg crushed and a dead body beside her. He was the guest of one of her neighbours. She screamed for help and could hear her mother and siblings outside.
Reema walking after having her leg amputated
They ran to get help from cousins and uncles and called the White Helmets and anyone who’d help try to free her. Their plea for help was answered by two medics. Together with the White Helmets and little equipment, they burrowed through the concrete and created a tunnel through eight metres of it to reach her.
They spent hours trying to chisel her out while also trying to placate her and reassure her.
“Don’t leave me, don’t leave me alone,” Reema kept crying to them. “Please just get me out of here.”
In the end, she was begging them to cut her leg off so she could get out. “I told them to please cut my leg,” she tells us from her hospital bed, “I had to get out”.
So one by one the medics took turns to crawl inside the cavity which was big enough for just one person at a time, and first they administered painkillers, then anaesthesia and then the amputation was carried out – beneath the rubble. “I don’t remember anything from that,” Reema tells us, “Because they anaesthetised me”.
We watch as she walks on her one leg using a walker. If she continues to heal, she hopes to get a prosthesis in about a month. “This is God’s decision,” she says with a smile, “Who am I to complain?”
A family puts up a tent after their home was destroyed in the quake
Her family still haven’t told her that her father died in the earthquake. They want her to get stronger before delivering this terrible news. But life is likely to be tremendously hard for Reema living in a war zone with few facilities.
One of the medics who saved her life takes us to her family’s home. The apartment block they used to live in is a mound of uneven broken concrete slabs and rubble. He is the head of the Ambulance Services in Aleppo and his name is Mohammed al Hussein.
“We managed to get to Reema after 20 hours,” he tells us, “It was a really difficult decision to cut her leg. We didn’t want to and did everything to save her. But if we removed the block on top of her, the whole building was going to collapse on her and kill her. So we ended up amputating her leg in the rubble.”
He goes on: “Reema was lucky because we were able to save her. But what of all the other children around here who have not been saved?
“There’ve been so many other ‘earthquakes’ through the years,” he says.
“With bombings and shellings and attacks from Bashar al Assad but no one helped us or our children. And so many have died. No one did anything for us.”
The destruction in Jindiris
Arsalan loses fight he could never hope to win
A few hours after we leave Idlib, we get word from the doctors that their valiant fight to save the little boy named after a lion, has failed.
Arsalan died around the same time of day the earthquake first struck this region, around 4am in the morning, a little over a fortnight later. The miracle they needed to save him eluded them.
Arsalan died two weeks after the quake
A small group of Canadian doctors is in Idlib trying to prioritise what the area needs when there is so much need here. And they are furious at the lack of swift international help.
“I’m very angry, says Dr Anas al Kassem. “I’ve seen all kinds of injuries and all the crush injuries and it could have saved lives. These are children and it (a quicker response) could have saved their lives… and given them a better outcome”.
“The United Nations should be ashamed of their slow response,” he goes on.
Arsalan couldn’t wait for the response from the outside world. And like so many others, despite fighting so hard, despite defying the odds, despite the tremendous battle by the doctors, he lost a fight he probably could never hope to win. The doctors are now wondering how many more will go the same way.
Alex Crawford reports from Idlib in northwest Syria with cameraman Jake Britton and producers Chris Cunningham and Mahmoud Mosa as well as Guldenay Sonumut based in Turkey.
Two children, aged eight and 10, have been killed in a shooting during mass at a school in Minneapolis.
An attacker opened fire with a rifle through the windows of a church at Annunciation Catholic School and struck a group of children as they sat in pews on Wednesday morning.
The FBI has confirmed the killer has been identified as Robin Westman, a male born as Robert Westman, and is investigating the shooting as an “act of domestic terrorism” and a “hate crime targeting Catholics”.
As it happened: FBI says attack investigated as ‘terrorism’
Robin Westman
The city’s police chief Brian O’Hara said the attacker – armed with a rifle, shotgun, and pistol – approached the side of the church and fired dozens of rounds as mass was celebrated during the first week of term.
He added that 17 other people were injured, including 14 children, two of whom were in a critical condition.
Police believe the suspect, thought to be in his early 20s and acting alone, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Parents and children wait for news after a school shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Pic: AP
Mr O’Hara called the attack in Minnesota a “deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshipping”.
“The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible.”
He also said a wooden plank had been used to barricade some side doors.
Authorities found a smoke bomb but no explosives at the scene, Mr O’Hara said.
Three adults in 80s among those injured
Hennepin Healthcare, the main trauma hospital in Minneapolis, received 11 patients, including nine children – aged six to 14 – and two adults, emergency medicine chair Dr Thomas Wyatt said.
He said four of the patients were taken to operating rooms.
Children’s Minnesota, a paediatric trauma hospital, said in a statement that five children were admitted.
At a later news conference, Mr O’Hara said three adults in their 80s are among those injured in the attack.
He added that Westman had scheduled a manifesto to be released on YouTube, which “appeared to show him at the scene and included some disturbing writings”.
The video has since been taken down with the assistance of the FBI.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
‘So much’ gunfire, witness says
Bill Bienemann, a witness to the shooting, told Sky News it went on “for several minutes – a long time for live gunfire”.
“I know what gunfire sounds like, and I was shocked,” he added. “I said there’s no way that could be gunfire, there was so much of it.
“It seemed like a rifle, it certainly didn’t sound like a handgun, so he must have reloaded several times.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Witness says he heard 30 to 50 shots
The pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade school had an all-school mass scheduled at 8.15am local time on Wednesday morning (2.15pm UK time), according to its website.
Monday was the first day of the school semester.
Pic: AP
Pic: AP
Mayor calls shooting ‘unspeakable act’
At the first news conference, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey said the shooting was an “unspeakable act”.
“Children are dead,” he said. “There are families that have a deceased child. You cannot put into words the gravity, the tragedy, or the absolute pain of this situation.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Mayor confirms children killed in school shooting
Speaking later, and joined by Governor Tim Walz, Mr Frey said that the “Minneapolis family” has stepped up in “thousands of different ways” after the shooting.
“The way that they acted during the severe threat and danger was nothing short of heroic,” he says.
“This is a tragic and horrible event that should never occur.”
He added: “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainise our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Minneapolis mayor calls for action on gun crime
Mr Walz said: “We often come to these and say these are unspeakable tragedies or there are no words for this, there shouldn’t be words for these types of incidents because they shouldn’t happen.”
The school’s headteacher Matt DeBoer added: “To any of our students and families and staff watching right now, I love you. You’re so brave, and I’m so sorry this happened.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Headteacher speaks after US school shooting
Senator: Girl ‘had to watch several of her friends get shot’
Speaking to MSNBC, Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar said she had called one of her longtime employees who had three children in the school during the shooting.
The senator described the call with the mother as “one of the most upsetting things I’ve ever heard”.
“These kids are doing an all-school mass and had to watch several of her friends get shot – one in the back, one in the neck,” Ms Klobuchar added.
“And they all got down under the pews and she – her daughter, of course, was not shot – but her daughter ended up being the one to tell one of the dads of one of the other kids that his daughter had been shot.”
Responding to the reports, US President Donald Trump said on Truth Social: “I have been fully briefed on the tragic shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
“The FBI quickly responded and they are on the scene. The White House will continue to monitor this terrible situation.”
World
UN told Israeli strike on Gaza hospital was ‘premeditated’ – as Sky News uncovers new details about the attack
The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations has condemned Israel’s attack on Nasser Hospital as “a premeditated strike on medics and journalists”.
The envoy’s comments are the latest condemnation of the 25 August attack that killed 22 people, including five journalists. They come as an investigation by Sky News raises new questions about the incident.
The IDF said the strike targeted an “observation camera” used by Hamas to monitor troop movements from the hospital, adding that six of those killed were “terrorists”.
But the camera that the IDF struck was broadcasting a live stream for the news agency Reuters, and the IDF has said that the journalist operating this camera was “not a target”.
The Israeli military has not indicated that any other camera was on the balcony, and the hospital’s director says the only person on the balcony was the Reuters journalist.
Sky News did find evidence that one of the six people named by the IDF was a militant, but we also found evidence that he was killed in a separate incident, not at Nasser Hospital.
Most of those killed died when the IDF launched a second strike on the same stairwell, around eight minutes after the first, as rescue efforts were under way. Video seen by Sky News shows two missiles hitting the hospital in the second strike.
Speaking at the UN Security Council on 27 August, Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour said: “The second strike on Nasser hospital was a premeditated strike on medics and journalists who arrived at the scene after the first strike.
“While the world demands a permanent ceasefire, Israel continues its crimes. Where else is the killing of so many civilians and journalists tolerated?”
Here’s what we know
At around 10am on Monday 25 August, journalist Hossam Al Masri, 49, was operating a Reuters live stream from the top floor of Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younis.
Footage from the livestream shows Hossam filming the busy market outside the hospital, before raising the camera and zooming in on a cloud of black smoke rising in the distance.
At that moment, the feed froze. Reports emerged, starting at 10.09am, of an explosion at the hospital.
Soon, footage showed smoke rising over the building, and a chunk of concrete missing from the exterior stairwell where Hossam had been filming.
Journalists and rescue workers quickly rushed to the site in search of survivors. They found two bodies, including Hossam’s.
At 10.17am, as rescue efforts continued, a second Israeli strike hit the stairwell.
Three loud bangs could be heard at the moment of impact.
Footage from the ground shows at least two projectiles impacting in quick succession, with just milliseconds between them.
An Israeli military official told the Press Association that the strikes were carried out by tanks.
Amael Kotlarski, weapons team manager at defence intelligence company Janes, told Sky News that the shape of the projectile and resulting damage is consistent with powered, precision-guided munitions such as Lahat laser-guided missiles.
These can be fired from tanks or helicopters. “The IDF is known to have stocks of the air-launched version, it is unclear if the gun-launched version were procured,” he says.
“If these Lahats were fired from the ground, then at least two tanks would have been involved, as the interval between the two impacts is far too short.”
Sky News analysis of the footage suggests that the projectiles were fired from the northeast.
Satellite imagery taken approximately five hours after the attack shows six tanks stationed at a fortified base around 2.4km northeast of the hospital, though Sky News is unable to say whether they were involved in the attack.
Why did Israel attack the hospital?
Footage filmed from the ground shows smoke billowing out of the hospital as people flee.
As the smoke cleared, rescue workers returned to the scene. What they saw is too graphic to publish – at least seven bodies scattered throughout the stairwell.
Health officials have since put the total number killed at 22, including a rescue worker, a doctor, three hospital staff and five journalists.
On Tuesday, the IDF said that Israeli troops had targeted a camera “that was positioned by Hamas in the area of the Nasser Hospital [and] that was being used to observe the activity of IDF troops”.
However, Sky News has confirmed that the initial strike hit Reuters cameraman Hossam Al Masri, who was operating a livestream for the international news agency at the time of the attack.
Footage from the aftermath of the first strike shows that it hit the top balcony on the hospital’s exterior stairwell.
Sky News was able to confirm that the livestream recorded by Hossam was taken from this balcony, based on the buildings visible and a wooden beam obstructing the camera’s field of view.
This conclusion is supported by eyewitness testimony, as well as the fact that the feed cut unexpectedly, but without showing any attack on the hospital, and that Al Masri’s death was the first to be reported, at 10.18am.
The IDF said that Al Masri was “not a target” of the strike. It did not specify whether his camera was the same one it believes was positioned and used by Hamas.
The IDF has not suggested that there was any other camera on the balcony.
Speaking to Sky News on Wednesday, the director of Nasser Hospital, Dr Atef Al Hout, said that Hossam “was the only one on that floor in that moment”.
On Monday, Israeli outlet Channel 12 published an undated aerial photograph of a camera, shared by an anonymous military source, which Sky News matched to the same balcony.
The unnamed source pointed to a white towel placed over the camera as evidence that it was being concealed.
An undated aerial photograph showing a camera on the stairwell of Nasser Hospital, Khan Younis. Pic: Channel 12
Medics and journalists at Nasser Hospital told Sky News that towels, such as the one visible in the photo, are used to prevent cameras from overheating, and this specific location is frequently used by media workers.
Reuters had been delivering daily livestreams from the position for several weeks before the attack.
And the video below, uploaded on 10 June, shows multiple journalists using the space to record video or get phone signal.
Among those visible in the video are journalists Mariam Abu Daqqa and Mohammed Salama, who were killed in Monday’s attack.
“This is among the deadliest Israeli attacks on journalists working for international media since the Gaza war began,” the Foreign Press Association said in a statement on Monday, adding the strikes came “with no warning”.
Brian Finucane, who spent a decade advising the US State Department on conflict law, says hospitals are protected from attack under international law.
“Hospitals may lose this protection if they are used to commit acts harmful to the enemy outside of their normal humanitarian function – but only if prior advance warning is given to allow for the termination of such harmful acts,” he says.
Former United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Stephen Rapp told Sky News that “an independent investigation is clearly warranted”.
Sky News asked the IDF whether any advance warning was provided to the hospital, but did not receive a response to this question.
Hamas denied using the camera targeted by the IDF, describing this allegation as “a baseless allegation devoid of any evidence, intended solely to evade legal and moral responsibility for a fully-fledged massacre”.
Who was killed?
In its statement on Tuesday, the IDF said that six of those killed were “terrorists” and part of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Sky News examined social media pages and obituaries for each of these six people.
We found evidence that one of those named, Omar Abu Teim, had been a combatant.
But while obituaries by family and friends of the other five individuals all reference the attack on Nasser Hospital, those for Abu Teim do not.
A neighbour and childhood friend of Abu Teim’s told us he had died while taking part in an attack on a new IDF position east of Khan Younis – not at Nasser Hospital.
Omar Abu Teim’s neighbour told Sky News that he was killed while fighting the IDF east of Khan Younis.
A Hamas-branded obituary identifies Abu Teim as a “hero of the storming of the new site” alongside four others. Sky News has not been able to verify whether Abu Teim was formally part of Hamas or a different militant group.
Ramy Abdu of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor told Sky News his team saw the Abu Teim family searching for their son’s body the day before the hospital strike, adding that the body has still not been recovered.
Abu Teim’s neighbour also said his body has not been recovered, and Gaza’s health ministry told Sky News it had not received his body in any of its hospitals.
The IDF told Sky News it was examining whether Abu Teim was killed in a separate incident.
Hamas has denied that any of its fighters were killed in the attack on Nasser Hospital.
No explanation given for second strike
The Israeli military has not explained the reason for the second strike on the stairwell, which occurred while rescue efforts were under way and caused the greatest number of deaths.
Such ‘double-tap’ strikes carry significant risks for emergency personnel and journalists, who often gather at the scene of attacks.
Sky News asked the IDF who was being targeted in the second strike, but the military did not respond to this question.
Emily Tripp, executive director of conflict monitoring group Airwars, says that double-tap strikes are something they have seen “consistently” throughout the war, although the intensity of the bombardment has made it difficult to confirm timings.
Her team has documented 24 separate double-tap strikes across Gaza since the war began.
At least 190 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The Aid Worker Security Database has also documented 536 killings of aid and rescue workers as of 2 August. This number does not include the 139 reported deaths among workers from Gaza’s Civil Defence rescue agency.
Reuters did not respond to a request for comment.
Additional reporting by Freya Gibson, OSINT producer, and production by Michelle Inez Simon and Celine Al Khaldi.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
A suspect who shot and killed two police officers and seriously injured a third in Australia’s rural south-east has been identified, police said.
A manhunt is underway for Dezi Freeman, 56, who is heavily armed and experienced in wilderness survival skills, Victoria state’s chief commissioner of police Mike Bush told reporters.
The local residents have been urged to stay indoors.
The whereabouts of Freeman’s wife and two children were initially unknown, but Mr Bush said they had visited a police station and spoken to officers late on Tuesday night.
The shooting happened earlier on Tuesday, when 10 armed police officers tried to execute a search warrant at Freeman’s property in Porepunkah, a town of just over 1,000 people located 200 miles north-east of Melbourne.
The suspect killed two officers and injured a third. Pic: Reuters
Porepunkah Primary School in Porepunkah, Victoria, was locked down for several hours. Pic: Reuters
The officers “were met by the offender and they were murdered in cold blood,” the police chief said.
Freeman killed a 59-year-old detective and a 35-year-old senior constable, Mr Bush said. Another detective was shot, but his wounds are not life-threatening.
The armed man fled alone on foot into the nearby forest, where an intensive search for him continued through the night and into Wednesday.
Porepunkah is located 200 miles north-east of Melbourne, Australia.
Mr Bush would not elaborate on the search warrant for Freeman’s property and said it was “too soon to say” if his attack on the officers was ideologically motivated.
But he told reporters that some of the officers who tried to execute the search warrant included members of a unit that investigates sexual offences and child abuse.
Read more on Sky News:
Israel ‘killing a lot of journalists’
Three die in helicopter crash
SpaceX completes spectacular test flight
Australian media widely reported that Freeman expressed so-called sovereign citizen beliefs, referencing a 2021 video from Wangaratta Magistrates’ Court in which he is seen representing himself and unsuccessfully trying to arrest a magistrate and police officers.
Members of self-proclaimed sovereign citizen movements use debunked legal theories to reject government authority.
A manhunt in Australia continues into its second day. Pic: Simon Dallinger/AAP Image/AP
In a 2024 finding from Victoria’s Supreme Court, where Freeman attempted to challenge a lengthy suspension of his driver’s licence, a judge noted that the man had “a history of unpleasant encounters with police officers”.
In his submissions to the court, Freeman referred to the officers as “Nazis” and “terrorist thugs”.
The chief commissioner would not say how much was known of Freeman’s beliefs before the visit to his property.
Porepunkah, famous for its vineyards and beautiful views, is a gateway to Victoria’s alpine tourist region.
On Tuesday, public buildings and the nearby airfield were shut, and the local school, with just over 100 students, was locked down for several hours before children and staff were permitted to leave.
“Be vigilant, keep yourselves safe,” Mr Bush urged residents on Wednesday. “Please don’t go outside if you don’t need to.”
Mr Bush said the suspect’s knowledge of outdoor survival skills posed a “challenge” to authorities.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment11 months agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024