‘Famine is worse than war’: The fight for survival in Gaza

Published

1 month ago

April 5, 2024

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In a narrow side street next to the market in Rafah, a group of children form a disorganised queue as a charity worker distributes some watery soup.

As the queue quickly multiplies, the children push, shove and fight with each other for a few spoonfuls of the liquid.

But there is not enough to go around.

“It’s a drop in the ocean,” says Ramzi, a local volunteer who relies on aid agencies for the donations he cooks on a makeshift, wood-fired stove.

After the death of seven aid workers in Israeli airstrikes on Monday evening, World Central Kitchen has suspended their operations. A number of other agencies have followed in their footsteps.

As a consequence, the humanitarian situation in Gaza is expected to deteriorate even further.

World Central Kitchen says it has supplied about 35 million hot meals and established more than 60 community kitchens since October.

Ramzi, for one, says he cannot cope with the number of people – young and old – seeking what sustenance he is able to offer.

“At the beginning, there were 100 to 200 kids,” he said. “Today it is 300. Tomorrow [it will be] 350. The day after 400.

“There is a horrifying increase in the number of kids. Not only kids, but you also find their teachers, doctors, the engineers…

“The volume of people during food distribution hour is unimaginable.”

The weary-looking charity worker is not the only one now worrying about mass starvation.

‘Imminent famine’

A report from a cluster of international organisations known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has outlined a devastating situation – with one half of the population in Gaza looking set to face catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation between now and July.

The situation is particularly worrying in northern Gaza, where the IPC has said famine is imminent. Israel has separated the north from the south using a military corridor with little more than a trickle of aid flowing northwards.

Israel says that it is working to facilitate more humanitarian assistance but argues that it is not responsible for distributing it on the ground.

‘I am not getting any of the aid’

Father of eight Abdul Abdulal told Sky News that he has seen little evidence of any assistance.

“I am not getting any of the aid,” he said. “I am not getting any. Whenever an aid lorry comes, I throw myself on it in order to get something for the children to eat.

“What am I going to do with myself? Dignity has been trampled upon.

“We’ve got to a stage where we can’t afford to buy food for our children.”

A catastrophe documented

The family fled Jabalia, in northern Gaza, in December when their home was destroyed in the fighting.

It is a catastrophe that he documented on his phone.

“Nothing is left in this room, everything melted down,” he said as he thumbed through the images. “See how they threw out all the furniture.”

Some 27 members of Mr Abdulal’s family have been killed and some of his relatives are still buried under the rubble, he told us.

His eldest son, who stayed in northern Gaza with his wife, has not been seen since the beginning of the war.

“I want to know whether he is alive or dead,” Mr Abdulal says. “I think about him all the time.”

An obsession with finding enough food

However, if there is one preoccupation here, one single obsession in this sprawling camp: it is food.

Mr Abdulal’s children looked tired and drained.

When they are able to summon the energy, they look for tins of beans and peas when they are distributed by the aid agencies – or jostle for water when trucks make deliveries to the camp.

It is a humiliating existence for a man who accepts that he is no longer able to feed his children.

“At the end of the day you either live or you die, but famine, being poor, that’s worse than war. It’s a psychological war.”

World

Senegalese families mourning deaths of hundreds of young men trying to reach Europe

Published

49 mins ago

May 15, 2024

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Senegalese families mourning deaths of hundreds of young men trying to reach Europe

In a half-built home off the busy beaches of the fishing town Mbour, relatives and neighbours gather to grieve without a body to bury.

A young woman walks in and greets each of us with a handshake and curtsy.

She turns to kneel at the feet of the man sitting in the centre room and suddenly, her posture collapses as she breaks into deep sobs. She was set to marry his youngest son, Mohamed.

Mohamed was one of at least 50 people who recently died attempting the dangerous Atlantic route from Senegal to the Canary Islands.

Their half-sunken boat was found 60 miles south of the Canary Island El Hierro on 29 April – none of their bodies were found in or around the wreckage.

“It was announced that there were only nine survivors in the Spanish hospital. When the survivors became conscious and they were asked – we knew Mohamed had died,” says his father Oumar.

“I had decided to seal his marriage. That is why his fiancee was sobbing when she arrived – her hope was shattered.”

Three of Mohamed’s older brothers are currently in Spain, struggling to live without residency permits. Oumar says two of them left from Senegal and one from Mauritania to the Canary Islands by boat over the last three years.

The Spanish non-profit organisation Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders) says more than 6,600 migrants died on the Atlantic route last year as a record 55,618 migrants arrived in Spain by boat with most of them landing in the Canary Islands, according to Spain’s Interior Ministry.

Despite the risks, the route is gaining popularity as the land journey to the Mediterranean Sea through North Africa has become increasingly militarised, with Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania in bilateral agreements with the European Union (EU) to stop migration.

In January, 7,270 migrants arrived in the Canary Islands – around the same number of arrivals there were in the first six months of last year.

Caminando Fronteras describes the Atlantic route as the deadliest and busiest migrant passage in the world.

Oumar is pained by the loss, but not shocked that Mohamed left to join his brothers. Life in fishing towns across Senegal has become unbearable.

“When I was younger and deep-sea fishing, I didn’t face the problems we have now of industrial fishing boats and the big nets that they use.

“All of this has destroyed the sea. It is happening right now and here in our area and our sons are aware that there are no resources,” says Oumar.

“This is the reason our sons are taking boats and leaving.”

Illegal and unregulated fishing by large Chinese trawlers and Senegal’s long-standing EU fisheries partnership are at the heart of discontent around the depletion of fish stocks and the devastation of artisanal fishing communities.

Under the current agreement, the EU pays the Senegalese state €2.6m (£2.2m) a year to allow 45 European vessels from Spain and France to fish 10,000 tonnes of tuna and 1,750 tonnes of hake. That is the equivalent of 0.005 euros per tonne of fish.

“The issues with the fishing agreement, which started in the 1970s, is that almost all the areas that it applies to are exploited.

“These fishing agreements are not able to develop in a way to protect the fisheries – a renegotiation in a true way that can benefit these countries should be done,” says Dr Aliou Ba, senior ocean campaign manager for Greenpeace Africa.

Senegal’s new president Bassirou Diomaye Faye has declared he will review fishing deals and licences signed with its partners that include the European Union to guarantee they are structured to benefit the fishing sector.

“This is a very good statement. There have been years of calls for the audit of the Senegalese industrial fleet. He also requested a renegotiation of this fishing agreement,” says Dr Ba.

“It can be a real, fair fishing agreement. This can be a precedent of African countries defending the interest of communities, of the people.”

But an alternate ecosystem of smugglers and young men eager to follow family and friends to Europe may have already been cemented.

On a beach an hour away from the government buildings of Dakar, a fisherman turned smuggler tells us around 200 people in the area died trying to get to the Canary Islands, but demand is higher than ever.

“In Senegal at this moment, we have no time to think too much because we have done so much thinking and don’t have solutions. The only thing we see is to go to Europe.”

World

France prison convoy attack: Inmate on the run after guards killed in ambush

Published

10 hours ago

May 14, 2024

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France prison convoy attack: Inmate on the run after guards killed in ambush

Hundreds of police are hunting armed men who attacked a prison van in France – with a convict reportedly nicknamed “The Fly” escaping.

Two male prison officers were shot dead and three others seriously injured during the ambush on a motorway in Incarville, northwest France, at around 9am.

Eric Dupond-Moretti, France’s justice minister, said one of the officers leaves behind a wife who was five months pregnant, while the other was a 21-year-old father-of-two.

He said two of those injured are in a critical condition after Tuesday’s ambush.

The officers were transporting convict Mohamed Amra, 30, when they came under heavy fire, said the Paris prosecutor’s office.

Footage shows a black car driving into the front of a white van, and later two armed men patrolling near a tollbooth on the A154 motorway.

Several men used two vehicles to target the van – with one later found burnt-out, a police source told French news agency AFP.

Amra had been serving an 18-month sentence for “aggravated thefts” in the suburbs of Evreux, northwest France, according to BFM TV.

The French broadcaster said his nickname is “The Fly”.

Police sources also said Amra was involved in drug dealing, suspected of ordering a murder in Marseille, and had ties to the city’s powerful “Blacks” gang.

He had reportedly appeared before a judge in Rouen on Tuesday morning, accused of attempted homicide.

The attack on the van took place while he was being transported back to prison in Evreux, according to reports in France.

Who is ‘The Fly’?

A prison source told Le Parisien that the escaped inmate had tried to saw the bars off his cell two days ago.

He had reportedly been placed in solitary confinement and his surveillance level raised after the escape attempt.

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said Amra was a “particularly monitored detainee” while in prison.

Gerald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, said “several hundred police officers” had been deployed to “find these criminals”.

French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X: “This morning’s attack, which cost the lives of prison officers, is a shock to us all.

“The Nation stands alongside the families, the injured and their colleagues.

“Everything is being done to find the perpetrators of this crime so that justice can be done in the name of the French people. We will be intractable.”

“Everything, I mean everything, will be done to find the perpetrators of this despicable crime,” added justice minister Eric Dupond-Moretti.

“These are people for whom life weighs nothing. They will be arrested, they will be judged, and they will be punished according to the crime they committed.”

World

Georgia: Protesters and riot police face off outside Tbilisi parliament after divisive ‘foreign agents’ bill passes

Published

13 hours ago

May 14, 2024

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Georgia: Protesters and riot police face off outside Tbilisi parliament after divisive 'foreign agents' bill passes

Protesters have smashed barriers at Georgia’s parliament after it approved a divisive “foreign agents” bill.

Riot police used tear gas and sprayed crowds with water cannon as they entered the grounds of the Georgian parliament in the capital Tbilisi.

Sky’s international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn, who is covering the protests in Tbilisi, said there was a “febrile atmosphere” and a “real sense anger, frustration and massive disappointment” that MPs voted for the bill.

Follow live: Riot police move in on Georgia protesters

The legislation is seen by some as threatening press and civic freedoms and there are concerns it’s modelled on laws used by President Vladimir Putin in neighbouring Russia.

The proposed law would require media and non-governmental organisations and other non-profit groups to register as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” if they receive more than 20% of funding from abroad.

Demonstrations have engulfed Georgia for weeks ahead of the bill’s final reading on Tuesday.

Critics also see it as a threat to the country’s aspirations to join the European Union.

The bill is nearly identical to one that the governing Georgian Dream party was pressured to withdraw last year after street protests.

Opponents have denounced the bill as “the Russian law” because Moscow uses similar legislation to stigmatise independent news media and organisations critical of the Kremlin.

A brawl erupted in the parliament as MPs were debating the bill on Tuesday.

Georgian Dream MP Dimitry Samkharadze was seen charging towards Levan Khabeishvili, the chairman of main opposition party United National Movement, after Mr Khabeishvili accused him of organising mobs to beat up opposition supporters.

‘Absolutely insane’

Former Georgian president Giorgi Margvelashvili called the bill a “joke” and a “replica” of one introduced by Vladimir Putin to “control his own society” in Russia.

He said the Georgian people would “not fall under that mistake” and that protesters were standing “firm, calm, peaceful and for freedom”.

“We will not let them prevail. We will overcome,” he told Sky News.

A protester said it was “absolutely insane that a country like Georgia has accepted this bill as it’s a complete violation for our future”.

The medical student said the bill “makes us more far away from Europe and the rest of the world”, while bringing Georgia closer to the Russian government.

Another protester outside parliament said: “Our government is a Russian government, we don’t want Russia, Russia is never the way, I’m Georgian and therefore I am European.”

One demonstrator said they had been trying to protest “peacefully” but were now “feeling anger, pain and disappointment that again in our history there is a government that goes against our wishes”.

The president of the European Parliament has shown support for the Georgian people in a post on social media.

“Tbilisi, we hear you! We see you!” Roberta Metsola said.

Alex Scrivener, director of the Democratic Security Institute, said there was time for the law to be turned around.

He told Sky News: “The law passing isn’t the end of the vote.

“The president of Georgia who is aligned with the protesters can veto legislation and that buys us time.”

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has said she will veto it but her decision can be overridden by another vote in parliament, controlled by the ruling party and its allies.