Mount Marapi eruption: 12 hikers still missing as Indonesia volcano continues to erupt - The Guardian

Hundreds of Indonesian rescuers have been racing to find a dozen hikers who went missing after a volcano eruption killed 11 people.

The dead hikers were found on Monday near the crater of Mount Marapi on the island of Sumatra, while others were found alive and carried down the mountain in arduous rescue efforts hampered by further eruptions and bad weather.

The volcano spewed an ash tower 3,000 metres (9,800ft) – taller than the volcano itself – into the sky on Sunday.

“This morning we will deploy around 200 personnel, on top of the personnel who are already staying up there. Until now five bodies have been brought down,” Hendri, head of operations at the Padang Search and Rescue Agency, said on Tuesday.

“The volcano is still erupting,” said Hendri, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

He said the 12 hikers remained missing as of Tuesday morning and six dead bodies were still to be evacuated, with five brought down the mountain for identification.

The rescuers would attempt manual evacuations when possible, walking to the top of the volcano and evacuating the victims using stretchers because of ongoing eruptions and poor visibility, Hendri said.

Ahmad Rifandi, the head of Marapi’s monitoring post, told Agence France-Presse Tuesday it had observed five eruptions from midnight to 8am local time. “Marapi is still very much active. We can’t see the height of the column because it’s covered by the cloud,” he said.

Abdul Malik, head of Padang Search and Rescue Agency told reporters on Monday that three hikers found alive on the mountain after the eruption were injured and had been taken to hospital.

The head of Indonesia’s volcanology agency, Hendra Gunawan, said Marapi has been at the second level of a four-tier alert system since 2011, and a three-kilometre exclusion zone had been imposed around its crater.

Relatives were still waiting for updates at an information centre at the base of the mountain. “I will stay here until I hear some news,” said Dasman, father of missing hiker Zakir Habibi, who made a two-hour drive from Padang city to the base of the mountain last night in hope of good news.

“I still hope my son survives,” he said on Monday.

A total of 75 hikers were listed by officials as hiking on the mountain since Saturday, with 49 initially accounted for and some suffering burns and fractures.

The search will carry on for seven days, rescue officials said.

Those killed were severely burned and forensic workers were preparing to identify the dead by dental and fingerprint records, or based on marks on their bodies, said Eka Purnamasari, an official from the West Sumatra police medical unit.

Mount Marapi, which means “Mountain of Fire”, is the most active volcano on Sumatra island.

Indonesia experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide.

The archipelago nation has nearly 130 active volcanoes.

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2023-12-05 04:03:00Z
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Israel asks Palestinians to evacuate, but is any place safe in Gaza? - Al Jazeera English

The Israeli military has ordered the evacuation of Palestinians from southern Gaza as it continues with the bombardment in the area following the collapse of a weeklong truce on Friday. But Palestinians and rights groups question the Israeli decision to step up bombing in the besieged enclave’s south, which was declared a safe zone when the war began about two months ago.

This has left Palestinians in Gaza with virtually nowhere to go.

Here is what we know so far:

How many people were displaced from the north to the south?

More than one million Palestinians have been displaced from northern Gaza since October 13, when the Israeli military ordered people to evacuate to the south on 24 hours’ notice. More than 15,500 Palestinians have been killed and northern Gaza has since been devastated in weeks of indiscriminate bombings.

About 958,000 displaced Palestinians were registered in 99 UNRWA shelters in the centre and south of Gaza, according to the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA; 70 of these centres are in the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis. Another 191,000 were estimated to be in informal collective shelters: 124 public schools, hospitals, wedding halls, offices, and community centres. The rest were hosted by families, added OCHA.

OCHA reported that the UNRWA shelters are now overcrowded and have poor sanitary conditions, which has led to outbreaks of infections and diseases such as Hepatitis A.

What is happening in Khan Younis?

Israel has declared Khan Younis “a dangerous combat zone” after the truce ended, pummeling the besieged enclave’s second-largest city – home to 430,000 people.

On Sunday, Israel’s military designated about 20 percent of Khan Younis for immediate evacuation. The marked area houses 21 shelters and 50,000 internally displaced people, mostly from the north of Gaza, according to OCHA.

Israel ordered the evacuation as it has expanded its bombardment, killing more than 800 Palestinians in Gaza in the past three days. Residents say they have been told to move to Rafah, which has also not been spared.

Khan Younis was a designated safe space before the truce ended and 215,000 displaced Palestinians were sheltering in 34 UNRWA shelters in the city. Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians took shelter in other places provided by the local authorities.

What Israel’s evacuation map tells us

The Israeli army published an online map of the Gaza Strip on Friday, dividing the enclave into more than 600 numbered blocks. It asked Gaza’s civilians to identify the block corresponding with their area of residence and evacuate when ordered.

On Saturday, Israel used the grid system to order evacuation for the first time when military spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted warnings online, urging Palestinians to evacuate from about 20 areas zones in Gaza, with three arrows on a map, all pointing south indicating where people should go.

However, leaflets distributed ordering evacuations are inconsistent with online warnings, which has confused the residents.

Furthermore, several Gaza residents have no reliable way to access the map, with little access to electricity or the internet since the blockade of the 365sq km (141sq miles) strip has resulted in a collapse of telecommunications infrastructure.

The military offensive continues as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday the war will not end until its goal of destroying Hamas was achieved despite international outcry against the staggering number of Palestinian casualties. Nearly 70 Israeli soldiers have been killed during the ground invasion in Gaza.

Israel promised vengeance after the Hamas armed group carried out a surprise attack on October 7 inside Israel, killing up to 1,200 people.

Are there any safe zones in Gaza?

“There are no safe areas,” Lebanon-based Hamas official Osama Hamdan said on Sunday.

The Israeli military said on X on Monday that it was defining “safe areas” for civilians to minimise harm to them. However, Al Jazeera journalists and people on the ground say it is difficult to heed these orders in real time when there is no safe place left in the enclave.

Even shelters are not safe, as of November 23, UNRWA reported that at least 191 displaced Palestinians in shelters were killed and 798 were injured.

An analysis of the casualty figures shows that nearly 80 percent of the people killed in Israeli attacks are civilians.

Israel on Saturday ordered residents of neighbourhoods in the east of Gaza City, including Shujayea, Zeitoun and the Old City, to evacuate to the west.

Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom, told Sky News that al-Mawasi, a narrow coastal Bedouin town towards the south, is a safe zone and is one of the shelters created with aid organisations. When Sky News correspondents visited al-Mawasi to investigate, they found no shelter arrangements such as agency tents or food kitchens.

Some Palestinians are fleeing for the fourth time since the outbreak of violence on October 7.

Rafik al-Rekeb who was displaced from Bani Suheila in Khan Younis, told Al Jazeera: “A safe area should be equipped with all the necessities” such as tents.

“There aren’t any safe areas in Gaza. Am I supposed to sleep with my children in the rain in this designated safe area?” said al-Rekeb.

The UN has called Gaza “a death zone” and “a graveyard for children”, calling for a pause in the fighting. It has struggled to bring in aid due to Israel’s total siege of the enclave. The supply of aid, however, picked up during the one-week truce.

“The people in Gaza are staring into the humanitarian abyss,” former UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness told Al Jazeera.

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2023-12-04 15:24:17Z
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British man injured and German tourist killed in Paris 'terrorist attack' - Evening Standard

The video, in Arabic, was published on Rajabpour-Miyandoa's account on X, formerly Twitter, where his recent posts included references to the Israel-Hamas war, the prosecutor said. Mr Ricard said Rajabpour-Miyandoab was born in 1997 in Neuilly-Sur-Seine, outside Paris, in a family with no religious affiliation. He converted to Islam at the age of 18 and quickly adhered to Islamic extremist ideology, he said.

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2023-12-04 07:03:00Z
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Israel-Hamas war live: Israel claims to have struck 200 ‘terror targets’ within Gaza Strip with hundreds of Palestinians killed - The Guardian

Israel’s military has issued a situational update, in which it claims that “ground troops are continuing to operate in the Gaza Strip in parallel to Israeli air force strikes on approximately 200 Hamas terror targets”.

It writes:

IDF troops struck terror infrastructure located inside a school in Beit Hanoun, from which an attack on the troops was carried out. In the compound were two tunnel shafts, including a booby-trapped one, explosives, and additional weapons.

In addition, an IDF aircraft struck vehicles containing missiles, mortar shells, and weapons, thwarting an imminent attack against IDF soldiers. An additional IDF aircraft struck military infrastructure designated for ambushing the troops with anti-tank missiles.

IDF troops directed an aircraft to strike a cell of terrorists. Following this, a weapons storage facility from which the terrorists exited was struck as well.

Furthermore, overnight the Israeli Navy struck a number of Hamas terror targets, assisting with the reinforcement of ground troops. The Hamas terror targets included observation posts belonging to the Hamas naval forces and terrorist infrastructure at the Gaza harbor. The forces also struck with precise munitions Hamas military compounds.

The claims have not been independently verified.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has issued casualty figures claiming that at least 15,523 Palestinians, including 6,600 children, have been killed by Israeli military action since 7 October, with a further 41,316 injured. It says that at least 6,800 people are missing.

Israel launched its military campaign against Hamas inside the densly populated Gaza Strip after the 7 October surprise Hamas attack inside Israel, which killed about 1,200 people and injured at least 5,600.

It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify casualty counts being issued during the conflict.

A court hearing in the Netherlands which is calling for a halt to the export of fighter jet parts to Israel that could be used in attacks on Gaza has begun.

“The state must immediately stop its delivery of F-35 parts to Israel,” lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld told the court.

She said Dutch customs officials asked the government if it wanted to continue exports after the 7 October attacks by Hamas that triggered the Israel-Hamas war.

“The warning that the fighter jets can contribute to serious breaches of the laws of war does not, for the state outweigh its economic interests and diplomatic reputation,” Associated Press reports she said.

Government lawyer Reimer Veldhuis urged the court’s single judge to reject the injunction, saying that even if it were to uphold the rights lawyers’ legal arguments and ban exports, “the US would deliver these parts to Israel from another place.”

A decision is expected within two weeks.

Israel’s military has again said it has fired into Lebanon at the site of launches it claimed were directed into Israel. It said “a number of launches from Lebanon” had occurred, and that they had fallen in open areas, with no casualties as a result.

Earlier it said that three soldiers had been “slightly injured” by fire from Lebanon at an Israeli military site.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said that Benjamin Netanyahu will eventually be tried as a war criminal over Israel’s ongoing offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Reuters reports that in a speech to a meeting of an Organisation of Islamic cooperation (OIC) committee in Istanbul, the Turkish president said that Gaza is Palestinian land and will always belong to the Palestinians, and again referred to Israel’s prime minister as “the butcher of Gaza”.

Quds News Networks quotes Erdoğan saying:

The butcher of Gaza, Netanyahu, admitted in front of the cameras that his expansionist goals are not limited to Ramallah and Gaza only. Therefore, defending Gaza and Palestine today means at the same time defending Jerusalem, Mecca, Medina, Damascus, Istanbul and other Islamic cities.

Hoda Abdel-Hamid reports from Hebron for Al Jazeera, saying that it was raided overnight by Israeli forces, adding that two Palestinians were killed in Qalqilya.

She writes for the network:

There are questions about the whereabouts of those Palestinians’ bodies, which authorities in Qalqilya said they could not recover. It is assumed that Israel is withholding the bodies. Israeli authorities are holding the bodies of 25 Palestinians killed in raids since 7 October.

During these raids, Israeli authorities have detained more than 3,500 people, bringing the total Palestinians in Israeli jails to more than 7,000. Bear in mind that majority of these people are held without charges.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society has posted to social media a tribute to one of its workers killed by Israel inside Gaza overnight.

It writes:

Martyr Osama Tayeh, 37 years old, was a First Responder with the PRCS in Jabalya, Gaza. He insisted to stay in the northern part, and on providing emergency medical assistance to those who suffered the war’s calamity.

Osama lost his life due to Israeli bombardment in the dawn hours, in front of his home at Al-Falouja. Our colleague Mohammad Abu Rukba who was with him at the house was also injured.

Here are some of the latest pictures sent to us from Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip, showing the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike.

Israel’s military has denied that it is attempting to permanently remove Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. In its latest estimate, the UN’s OCHA said about 1.8 million people in Gaza, roughly 75 percent of the population, had been displaced, many to overcrowded and unsanitary shelters.

AFP reports that, speaking to the media on Monday, spokesperson Jonathan Conricus said:

We are not trying to displace anyone, we are not trying to move anybody from anywhere permanently. We have asked civilians to evacuate the battlefield and we have provided a designated humanitarian zone inside the Gaza Strip. We are perfectly aware that there is limited space and limited access and that is why it is so important to have the buy-in and support of international humanitarian organisations to help with the infrastructure.

Conricus also specifically said that Israel was not trying to force residents of Gaza to flee into Egypt, saying: “We have not tried to have any people evacuate there. Egypt has been very clear about where they stand: they do not want that.”

Israel has been effectively blockading aid agencies from bringing in as much humanitarian aid as they require, with only a limited number of trucks being permitted to pass through Egypt’s Rafah border crossing.

The Israeli military has been attempting to designate small “safe zones” within the Gaza Strip, and instruct people to move there.

However, some members of Israel’s government have suggested in public that Gaza’s population should leave the region. Earlier in November finance minister Bezalel Smotrich backed a call by two members of the Israeli parliament who wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial that western countries should accept Gazan families who expressed a desire to relocate.

“I welcome the initiative of the voluntary emigration of Gaza Arabs to countries around the world,” Smotrich said in a statement. “This is the right humanitarian solution for the residents of Gaza and the entire region.”

Israel’s Arabic-language military spokesperson Avichay Adraee has posted to social media to say that Israel’s forces have been returning fire again over the UN-drawn blue line that divides Israel from Lebanon.

In a post, Adraee said:

During last night, several mortar shells were monitored from Lebanon towards a military site in the area of Shtula, where the attack resulted in three soldiers being slightly injured. Several mortar shells were also monitored a short while ago from Lebanon towards an IDF position in the area of Yiftah, where IDF forces responded by targeting the sources of fire.

Israel and anti-Israeli forces have regularly exchanged fire across the blue line since the Hamas attack in southern Israel on 7 October, although there was also an informal lull in the fighting in Israel’s north while the temporary truce was in place in Gaza.

Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires from Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s military has issued a situational update, in which it claims that “ground troops are continuing to operate in the Gaza Strip in parallel to Israeli air force strikes on approximately 200 Hamas terror targets”.

It writes:

IDF troops struck terror infrastructure located inside a school in Beit Hanoun, from which an attack on the troops was carried out. In the compound were two tunnel shafts, including a booby-trapped one, explosives, and additional weapons.

In addition, an IDF aircraft struck vehicles containing missiles, mortar shells, and weapons, thwarting an imminent attack against IDF soldiers. An additional IDF aircraft struck military infrastructure designated for ambushing the troops with anti-tank missiles.

IDF troops directed an aircraft to strike a cell of terrorists. Following this, a weapons storage facility from which the terrorists exited was struck as well.

Furthermore, overnight the Israeli Navy struck a number of Hamas terror targets, assisting with the reinforcement of ground troops. The Hamas terror targets included observation posts belonging to the Hamas naval forces and terrorist infrastructure at the Gaza harbor. The forces also struck with precise munitions Hamas military compounds.

The claims have not been independently verified.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has issued casualty figures claiming that at least 15,523 Palestinians, including 6,600 children, have been killed by Israeli military action since 7 October, with a further 41,316 injured. It says that at least 6,800 people are missing.

Israel launched its military campaign against Hamas inside the densly populated Gaza Strip after the 7 October surprise Hamas attack inside Israel, which killed about 1,200 people and injured at least 5,600.

It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify casualty counts being issued during the conflict.

Hani Mahmoud has been reporting from Khan Younis in southern Gaza for Al Jazeera. In his latest dispatch, he describes last night as “a very deadly and bloody night for the Palestinians”.

He reports that at least 35 people have been killed and that “the worst of the attacks happened here in central Khan Younis”.

Reporting that a commercial centre was hit, he said:

The centre is located in an area that is supposed to be safe and where hundreds of people have sought refuge in the last two days since the end of the ceasefire. The centre was completely destroyed, burned beyond recognition.

In the eastern side of Khan Younis, the Israeli military has started to advance with tanks and armoured vehicles. A family stranded there was trying to evacuate when their three-story building was shelled by tanks and completely destroyed.

Israel has been declaring some of the missing as dead in captivity, a measure designed to grant anxious relatives some closure, Reuters reports. The news agency writes:

A three-person medical committee has been poring over videos from the 7 October rampage by Hamas-led Palestinian gunmen in southern Israel for signs of lethal injuries among those abducted, and cross-referencing with the testimony of hostages freed during a week-long Gaza truce that ended on Friday.

That can suffice to determine that a hostage has died, even if no doctor has formally pronounced this over his or her body, said Hagar Mizrahi, a health ministry official who heads the panel created in response to a crisis now in its third month.

“Designation of death is never an easy matter, and certainly not in the situation embroiling us,” she told Israel’s Kan radio. Her committee, she said, addresses “the desire of the families of loved ones abducted to Gaza to know as much as possible”.

Of 240 people kidnapped, 108 were freed by Hamas in return for the release by Israel of scores of Palestinian detainees as well as boosted humanitarian aid shipments to Gaza.

Since the truce, Israeli authorities have declared seven civilians and an army colonel as dead in captivity. Israel says 137 hostages remain in Gaza, their condition not always known.

This has not been confirmed by Hamas. It has previously said dozens of hostages were killed in Israeli airstrikes, has threatened to execute hostages itself and suggested that some hostages were in the hands of other armed Palestinian factions.

Hostages have been kept incommunicado despite Israel’s calls on the Red Cross to arrange visits and verify their wellbeing.

Mizrahi said she and her fellow panellists – a forensic pathologist and a physical trauma clinician – have been watching clips shot by the Hamas attackers themselves, mobile phone video by Palestinian spectators and CCTV footage of the hostage-taking “again and again, frame by frame”.

That has allowed them to map out life-threatening wounds and spot any cessation of breathing or other essential reflexes.

Additional considerations have been hostages’ rough handling by captors, the reduced chances of them getting adequate medical care in Gaza and accounts of deaths by former fellow hostages.

Six Thai hostages kidnapped and held for weeks in the Gaza Strip by Hamas will arrive back in the kingdom on Monday, officials have said according to Agence France-Presse. The news agency reports:

Tens of thousands of Thais were working in Israel, mostly in the agricultural sector, when Palestinian militants poured over the border on 7 October, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping roughly 240, according to Israeli authorities.

At least 32 Thais were abducted by Hamas, with Bangkok’s foreign ministry and Thai Muslim groups working to negotiate their release.

On Monday, at about 2pm (0700 GMT), six are expected to land at the capital’s Suvarnabhumi airport following weeks in captivity.

Since their release, the group have been recuperating at a hospital in Israel as authorities made preparations to fly them home.

It follows the return of 17 citizens from Thailand at the end of November, during a temporary truce in which scores of people were released before it expired on 1 December.

A further nine Thais are still among the hostages taken by Palestinian militants during October’s cross-border raid into Israel, according to Bangkok’s foreign ministry.

Thirty-nine Thais have been killed and 19 wounded in the war, with the kingdom evacuating more than 8,500 of its people, according to Thailand’s foreign ministry.

Unicef spokesperson James Elder, in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, has described a “night of utterly relentless bombardments” in a voice note posted to X.

“I cannot stop thinking about the 1.8 million people here in the south,” he said. “I don’t think there was more than a five- or 10-minute period throughout the course of the night, and I really didn’t sleep, where something wasn’t flying overhead or the sky being lit up”.

A 21-year-old Israeli believed to have been kidnapped by Hamas and taken to Gaza on 7 October is dead, Israeli media have reported.

Yonatan Samarno was at the Nova music festival that was attacked in Hamas’s assault and was believed to have been shot, the Jerusalem Post reported. However, though the bodies of two of his friends were found afterwards, his was not with them.

Haaretz reported that he had fled to the nearby kibbutz Be’eri where he was shot and kidnapped.

It was not clear from either report whether his body had since been identified in Israel – many people were not immediately found or identified after the 7 October attack due to severe burns among other things – or whether he had died in Gaza while being held hostage.

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2023-12-04 10:22:00Z
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EU budget dispute threatens €50bn war lifeline for Ukraine - Financial Times

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2023-12-03 21:00:34Z
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British man injured and German tourist killed in Paris 'terrorist attack' - Evening Standard

The video, in Arabic, was published on Rajabpour-Miyandoa's account on X, formerly Twitter, where his recent posts included references to the Israel-Hamas war, the prosecutor said. Mr Ricard said Rajabpour-Miyandoab was born in 1997 in Neuilly-Sur-Seine, outside Paris, in a family with no religious affiliation. He converted to Islam at the age of 18 and quickly adhered to Islamic extremist ideology, he said.

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2023-12-03 23:03:47Z
2664692444

Three US commercial vessels in Red Sea reportedly attacked by Yemen drones - The Guardian

Three commercial vessels came under attack in international waters in the southern Red Sea, the US military said Sunday, as Yemen’s Houthi group claimed drone and missile attacks on two Israeli vessels in the area.

“Today there were four attacks against three separate commercial vessels operating in international waters in the Southern Red Sea,” the statement from the US Central Command reads. “We have every reason to believe that these attacks, while launched by the Houthis in Yemen, are fully enabled by Iran.”

The Carney, a US destroyer, responded to distress calls and provided assistance following missile and drone launches from Houthi-controlled territory, according to US Central Command.

Yemen’s Houthi movement said its navy had attacked two Israeli ships, Unity Explorer and Number 9, with an armed drone and a naval missile. A spokesperson for the group’s military said the two ships were targeted after they rejected warnings, without elaborating.

In a broadcast statement, the spokesperson said the attacks were in response to the demands of the Yemeni people and calls from Islamic nations to stand with the Palestinian people.

The US military said the Carney shot down three drones as it helped the commercial vessels. It was not clear if the warship was a target.

It said the attacks were a threat to international commerce.

Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the ships had “no connection to the state of Israel”.

He said: “One ship was significantly damaged and it is in distress and apparently is in danger of sinking and another ship was lightly damaged.”

Yemen’s Houthis, who have the backing of Iran, have launched several missile and drone attacks on Israel since the start of the war in Gaza on 7 October. They are not thought to have inflicted any serious damage.

More recently, the rebel group has stepped up its targeting of commercial vessels sailing in the Red Sea, which lies south of the Suez Canal, a strategic naval route between Europe and Asia and east Africa.

A fortnight ago, the Houthis released dramatic video of masked gunmen seizing the Galaxy Leader, a British-owned and Japanese-operated cargo ship, after landing a helicopter on deck. They group claimed it was owned by Israel but there was no immediate evidence to support this.

A week later, towards the end of November, a US warship, the USS Mason, seized five attackers who had tried to take control of the Central Park, a commercial tanker that had been carrying a cargo of phosphoric acid.

In the incident, two ballistic missiles were fired from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen toward the general location of the two ships, but landed 10 nautical miles away in the Gulf of Aden, the US military said.

On Sunday, maritime security specialists told Reuters that an unnamed bulk carrier ship had been hit by at least two drones in the Red Sea. One company, Ambrey, said another container ship had reportedly suffered damage from a drone attack about 63 miles north-west of the northern Yemeni port of Hodeidah.

Earlier, Britain’s Maritime Trade Operations agency said it had received reports of a drone attack in the Red Sea’s Bab el-Mandab strait, between Yemen, Djibouti and Eriteria. The body called on vessels in the vicinity to exercise caution.

In mid-October, the USS Carney shot down three ground-launched missiles as well as several drones that were fired by Houthi militants, the Pentagon said. At the time, the US said the missiles were “potentially heading towards Israel” as justification for its action.

Reuters contributed to this report

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2023-12-03 18:22:00Z
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