How Rwanda’s mountain gorillas have prospered in times of peace – and offer us a lesson in tenderness, warmth and welcome
As we drive up the Rwandan highlands to see mountain gorillas in the wild, iconic movie scenes start to come to mind.
The image of King Kong at the summit of the Empire State Building with Ann Darrow in hand and Mighty Joe Young saving a child from the top of a ferris wheel.
As the mist moves down over the valley beyond the edge of the winding mountain-side road, we remember Gorillas In The Mist.
Dian Fossey’s book-turned Academy award-winning film charted her gorilla conservation efforts at Volcanoes National Park – the very park we are driving towards, and one of only three areas in the world where mountain gorillas exist.
Mr Gahinga, the alpha silverback of the Amahora family
In the manicured gardens of the base camp, I sit down with one of the most experienced guides at the park, Dusabimana Patience.
He first saw the gorillas in the wild as a child.
“I thought it was an older man who was there, but then they told me it was a gorilla,” he says.
“I was nearby but not too close because I was scared of them. I was like a hundred metres away.”
Patience has been working at the park for 24 years, his entire adult life.
“It’s like taking you home to visit my family, my own family, my children,” he said.
The mountain gorillas have been thriving
“I know them, they know me, we are attached.”
We trek across farmland with Patience and two other rangers through a rain cloud and up the side of a dormant volcano.
As we walk along the long border wall of hand-stacked volcanic rock, he picks up plastic litter and listens on his radio for the location of the gorilla family we are tracking.
We are about to meet the gorilla family Patience helped habituate in 2002.
They are called “Amahora”, meaning “peace”.
Habituation, Patience told us, “is a process of making them used to humans”.
“It takes a long time – between two and three years for them to accept humans,” he says.
“We did the habituation of this group after genocide and war. We had a dream of having peace.”
The mountain gorilla population is now growing after decades of instability and poaching.
The last recorded poaching incident in Rwanda was in 2002 and the 2018 census found their population had grown to 1,063.
But the peace here is not to be taken for granted.
Rwanda shares the volcanic Virunga Mountain range with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda.
Tensions are escalating as Rwanda stands accused of supporting the M23 rebels destabilising the DRC and threatening their conservation zone, the Virunga National Park.
As we cross through a gap in the stone wall, my adrenaline starts to pump. Will they accept us?
I ask Patience if we should be concerned and he doesn’t give a definitive answer – “just stay close”.
He teaches us the sounds to look out for: a two-tone groan indicates happiness and a coughing sound means we need to back up.
Another distinction is the famous gorilla chest beat.
Rwanda is accused of supporting the M23 rebels destabilising neighbouring DRC
When a silverback beats his chest it is aggressive and we may be told to crouch in submission, but when a child or female beats their chest, it is a sign of glee.
We link up with the rangers tracking the Amahora, who let us know they are nearby.
We are handed black face masks. Humans are a 98% genetic match with mountain gorillas so any infectious illness can be easily passed to them.
The rain stops as we push through the bushes. We hear the patter of a chest beat. My pulse races – do we crouch?
The bushes part and it is the sweet small shape of a young mountain gorilla.
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“She’s happy,” Patience confirms as she beats her chest again. We have been welcomed.
The guides slowly turn the corner and we hear the two-tone groan. They have found the boss. The alpha silverback of the Amahora family.
“This is the King of the Jungle, Mr Gahinga – or I should say his Majesty,” says Patience, visibly awed.
It took more than two years for the family to accept humans
Mr Gahinga definitely looks majestic as he sits on an elevated bush and strips eucalyptus leaves off their stems before bunching up the leaves and taking a huge bite.
He adds bamboo shoots to his mouthful before swallowing.
The groans of happiness keep coming and we can slowly step closer. Mountain gorillas eat around 10-15% of their body weight in vegetation over 12 hours each day.
As mealtime ends, the females of the family gather around.
Some roll around the tops of bushes and stretch their limbs after food. Others come carrying their young babies on their front, like human mothers.
As they approach, Mr Gahinga groans to let them know we are welcomed guests. The scar on his hand points to times guests were not welcome.
Mountain gorillas eat around 10-15% of their body weight in vegetation over 12 hours a day
He has had to physically fight off other silverbacks who have tried to run off with one of his six females.
As we leave, they sit and groom one another. Two females tend to Mr Gahinga and mothers pick leaves out of their babies’ hair.
Another female pats our cameraman, Garwen, on the back as he films his final shots.
Her touch is so human he thinks it is our producer Vauldi telling him to wrap up.
It is an experience of a lifetime.
A lesson in tenderness, warmth and welcome from one of our closest primates.
True to their name, they are blissfully peaceful, but their proximity to the best and worst of humankind means that peace has been precious.
A famine has been declared in Gaza City and the surrounding neighbourhoods.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – a globally recognised system for classifying the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition – has confirmed just four famines since it was established in 2004.
These were in Somalia in 2011, and in Sudan in 2017, 2020, and 2024.
The confirmation of famine in Gaza City is the IPC’s first outside of Africa.
“After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death,” the report said, adding that more than a million other people face a severe level of food insecurity.
Israel Gaza map
Over the next month conditions are also expected to worsen, with the famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, the report said.
Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions while acute malnutrition is projected to continue getting worse rapidly.
Over the next year, the report said at least 132,000 children will suffer from acute malnutrition – double the organisation’s estimates from May 2024.
Israel says no famine in Gaza
Volker Turk, the UN Human Rights chief, said the famine is the direct result of actions taken by the Israeli government.
“It is a war crime to use starvation as method of warfare, and the resulting deaths may also amount to the war crime of wilful killing,” he said.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, has rejected the findings.
Israel’s foreign ministry said there is no famine in Gaza: “Over 100,000 trucks of aid have entered Gaza since the start of the war, and in recent weeks a massive influx of aid has flooded the Strip with staple foods and caused a sharp decline in food prices, which have plummeted in the markets.”
Another UN chief made a desperate plea to Israel’s prime minister to declare a ceasefire in the wake of the famine announcement.
Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said famine could have been prevented in the strip if there hadn’t been a “systematic obstruction” of aid deliveries.
“My ask, my plea, my demand to Prime Minister Netanyahu and anyone who can reach him. Enough. Ceasefire. Open the crossings, north and south, all of them,” he said.
The IPC had previously warned famine was imminent in parts of Gaza, but had stopped short of a formal declaration.
Palestinians struggle to get aid at a community kitchen in Gaza City. Pic: AP
The latest report on Gaza from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says there were almost 13,000 new admissions of children for acute malnutrition recorded in July.
The latest numbers from the Gaza health ministry are 251 dead as a result of famine and malnutrition, including 108 children.
But Israel has previously accused Hamas of inflating these figures, saying that most of the children who died had pre-existing health conditions.
The Ukrainian suspected of coordinating attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines had served in Ukraine’s Secret Service and in the Ukrainian Army’s special forces, Sky News understand.
Serhii K., 49, was arrested in northern Italy on Thursday following the issuance of a European arrest warrant by German prosecutors.
It is not known whether he was still serving at the time of the pipeline attack in 2022 and Ukraine’s government has always denied any involvement in the explosions.
According to sources close to the case, the suspect has been found in a three-star bungalow hotel named La Pescaccia in San Clemente, in the province of Rimini.
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Man arrested over Nord Stream attacks
When military officers from Italy’s Carabinieri investigative and operational units raided his bedroom, he didn’t try to resist the arrest.
The hotel’s employees have been questioned, but no further evidence or any weapons were found, the sources added.
Serhii arrived on Italy’s Adriatic coast earlier this week, and the purpose of his trip was a holiday. He was found with his two children and his wife.
At least one of the four people within his family had a travel ticket issued in Poland. He crossed the Italian border with his car with a Ukrainian license plate last Tuesday.
He was travelling with his passport, and he used his real identity to check into the hotel, triggering an emergency alert on a police server, we have been told.
A satellite image shows gas from the Nord Stream pipeline bubbling up in the Baltic Sea. File pic: Roscosmos via Reuters
After the arrest, he was taken to the Rimini police station before being moved to a prison in Bologna, the regional capital, on Friday.
Deputy Bologna Prosecutor Licia Scagliarini has granted the German judicial authorities’ requests for Serhii’s surrender, but Sky News understands the man told the appeal court that he doesn’t consent to being handed over to Germany.
He also denied the charges and said he was in Ukraine during the Nord Stream sabotage. He added that he is currently in Italy for family reasons.
While leaving the court, he was seen making a typical Ukrainian nationalist ‘trident’ gesture to the reporters.
The next hearing is scheduled for 3 September, when the Bologna appeal court is set to decide whether Serhii will be extradited to Germany or not. He will remain in jail until then.
In Germany, he will face charges of collusion to cause an explosion, anti-constitutional sabotage and the destruction of structures.
German prosecutors believe he was part of a group of people who planted devices on the pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm in September 2022.
Serhii and his accomplices are believed to have set off from Rostock on Germany’s north-eastern coast in a sailing yacht to carry out the attack.
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The explosions severely damaged three pipelines transporting gas from Russia to Europe. It represented a significant escalation in the Ukraine conflict and worsening of the continent’s energy supply crisis.
According to a US intelligence report leaked in 2023, a pro-Ukraine group was behind the attack. Yet, no group has ever claimed responsibility.
Spare pipes for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. File pic: Reuters/Fabian Bimmer
Sky News understands Genoa’s Prosecutor’s Office in northern Italy has requested their colleagues in Bologna to share the information related to Serhii.
Anti-terrorism prosecutors are investigating another alleged sabotage linked to the Russian shadow fleet oil tanker Seajewel, which sank off the port of Savona last February.
On Thursday, they asked an investigative police unit to figure out whether there is a link between that episode and the Nord Stream attacks.
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