Gaza is on the “precipice of major disease outbreaks”, the World Health Organisation has said
With 800,000 people crammed into overcrowded schools and other “collective centres”, skin infections including scabies are being found, along with jaundice and diarrhoea, the WHO said.
There is one toilet for several hundred people and “open defecation”, regional emergency director Richard Brennan told Sky News.
While the schools were designed to accept displaced people, their populations are six to eight times what they were intended to cater for. Others are living in tents.
Each person has one to three litres of clean water per day, when the accepted minimum in a humanitarian crisis is seven litres, Mr Brennan said.
There are “chest infections, respiratory infections”, while cases of jaundice “give concern for hepatitis”.
He added: “We could be on the precipice of major disease outbreaks. Putting in disease control efforts in these overcrowded, unsanitary contexts is incredibly difficult.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:38
Gaza health workers thanked for ‘heroic efforts’
Of the 36 hospitals in Gaza, 22 are out of action, Mr Brennan said, adding that before the conflict began, 3,500 beds were available. Now, it is down to 1,400.
Advertisement
Many families are subsisting on one meal a day. In addition, colder weather is on the way.
“The next few weeks are going to be very tough indeed,” Mr Brennan added.
Referring to the 31 premature babies evacuated from al Shifa hospital and taken to southern Gaza, Mr Brennan said they were likely to travel on to Egypt in the next day or two, depending on their condition.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:45
Babies evacuated from al-Shifa arrive in Rafah
While Mr Brennan described it as “one of the few good news stories of the war so far”, he added: “We don’t know where any of the parents are, how many of them are orphans.”
Many are very low in weight, they all have serious infections and 11 are classed as in a critical condition.
The WHO is working with authorities to try to trace their parents.
Four more arrests have been made by French police investigating the Louvre museum heist.
Two men and two women from the Parisregion were detained on Tuesday, prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.
Ms Beccuau’s statement did not say what role the quartet are suspected of having played in the robbery. The two men are aged 38 and 39, and the two women are aged 31 and 40.
They are being interrogated by police, who can hold them for questioning for 96 hours.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
2:36
Louvre: How ‘heist of the century’ unfolded
The latest arrests come after investigating magistrates filed preliminary charges against three men and one woman who were arrested last month.
The haul – which included a diamond and emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise, jewels linked to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amelie and Hortense, and Empress Eugenie’s pearl and diamond tiara – has not been recovered.
The heist was pulled off in mere minutes last month – and took place while the Louvre was open to visitors, raising doubts over the credibility of the world’s most-visited museum as a guardian for its priceless works.
On Sunday 19 October, two men used a stolen furniture lift to access the second floor Galerie d’Apollon.
They then cracked open display cases with angle grinders before escaping with their loot and fleeing on the back of two scooters driven by accomplices.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:35
Moment thieves escape Louvre in jewel heist
The Paris prosecutor previously said the robbery appeared to be the work of small-time criminals rather than professional gangsters.
Speaking shortly after the heist, art detective Arthur Brand told Sky News that detectives faced a “race against time” to recover the stolen treasure.
“These crown jewels are so famous, you just cannot sell them,” Mr Brand said. “The only thing they can do is melt the silver and gold down, dismantle the diamonds, try to cut them. That’s the way they will probably disappear forever.
“They [the police] have a week. If they catch the thieves, the stuff might still be there. If it takes longer, the loot is probably gone and dismantled. It’s a race against time.”
Washington woke up this morning to a flurry of developments on Ukraine.
It was the middle of the night in DC when a tweet dropped from Ukraine’s national security advisor, Rustem Umerov.
He said that the US and Ukraine had reached a “common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva.”
He added that Volodymyr Zelenskyy would travel to America “at the earliest suitable date in November to complete final steps and make a deal with President Trump”.
By sunrise in Washington, a US official was using similar but not identical language to frame progress.
The official, speaking anonymously to US media, said that Ukraine had “agreed” to Trump’s peace proposal “with some minor details to be worked out”.
More on Donald Trump
Related Topics:
In parallel, it’s emerged that talks have been taking place in Abu Dhabi. The Americans claim to have met both Russian and Ukrainian officials there, though the Russians have not confirmed attendance.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
8:13
Peace deal ‘agreement’: What we know
“I have nothing to say. We are following the media reports,” Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, told Russian state media.
Trump is due to travel to his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago tonight, where he will remain until Sunday.
We know the plan has been changed from its original form, but it’s clear that Zelenskyy wants to be seen to agree to something quickly – that would go down well with President Trump.
A woman brought in for cremation at a Thai temple was found alive in her coffin.
The 65-year-old had been taken to Wat Rat Prakhong Tham, a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok, after she appeared to stop breathing two days earlier.
Her family had travelled hundreds of miles with her body in the coffin and were preparing for her to be cremated.
However, moments before the service began a shocked temple manager, Pairat Soodthoop, said he heard a faint knock coming from inside the coffin.
Image: Ambulance workers lift the woman in her coffin. Pic: AP
“I was a bit surprised, so I asked them to open the coffin, and everyone was startled,” he said.
“I saw her opening her eyes slightly and knocking on the side of the coffin. She must have been knocking for quite some time.”
The cremation was due to be live-streamed by the temple.
More on Health
Related Topics:
Thairath, the nation’s best-selling newspaper, named the woman in question as Chonthirat Sakulkoo, and said she was brought in by her brother, Mongkol Sakulkoo.
The brother said she had been bedridden for about two years before her health deteriorated further and she became unresponsive, appearing to have stopped breathing, according to Mr Soodthoop
Image: The woman in her coffin. Pic: AP
So, the brother placed her in a coffin and drove her 300 miles (500km) from their home in Phitsanulok province, in the north of the country, to the capital, Bangkok.
The Bangkok Post reported that the woman’s brother had been told by local officials that his sister had died.
The woman had wished to donate her organs to a hospital in the Thai capital, but her brother was turned away as he did not have the relevant paperwork.
Instead, he went to the temple, which offers a free cremation service.
After the woman was discovered alive she was assessed and sent to Bang Yai Hospital, Thairath reported, where she was treated for hypoglycemia, before being released back to her brother.
Image: The woman in her coffin. Pic: AP
Asked how he felt to learn that his sister is still alive, Mr Sakulkoo said he was indifferent, according to the newspaper.
Mr Soodthoop, said the temple would cover her medical expenses.