UN estimates 17,000 Gaza children left unaccompanied amid Israel’s war
At least 17,000 children in the Gaza Strip have been left unaccompanied or separated from their families nearly four months into Israel’s assault on the enclave, the United Nations children’s agency estimates. Nearly all children in the strip also require mental health support, UNICEF said on Friday. “Each [child] has a heartbreaking story of loss and grief,” said Jonathan Crickx, UNICEF’s chief of communication for the occupied Palestinian territories. “This [17,000] figure corresponds to 1 percent of the overall displaced population – 1.7 million people,” he told a media briefing via video-link from Jerusalem, saying the number was an estimation as it is near impossible to verify information under current conditions. Each one “is a child who is coming to terms with a horrible new reality”, he added. Crickx said that tracing who the unaccompanied children were was proving “extremely difficult”, as they were sometimes brought to a hospital wounded or in shock, and “they simply can’t even say their names”. He said that during conflicts, it was common for extended families to take care of children who lost their parents. However, in Gaza, “due to the sheer lack of food, water or shelter, extended families are themselves distressed and face challenges to immediately take care of another child as they themselves are struggling to cater for their own children and family”, said Crickx. Broadly, UNICEF terms separated children as those who are without their parents, while unaccompanied children are those who are separated and also without other relatives. ‘Almost all children’ need mental health support Crickx also said the mental health of children in Gaza was being severely affected by the offensive, and that a million children in the Gaza Strip require mental health support. Children in Gaza “present symptoms like extremely high levels of persistent anxiety, loss of appetite, they can’t sleep, they have emotional outbursts or panic every time they hear the bombings,” he explained. Before the assault erupted, UNICEF estimated that more than 500,000 children in Gaza needed mental health and psycho-social support. Now, it believes that “almost all children are in need” of such help. “That’s more than one million children,” Crickx said. According to the Palestinian health ministry, Israeli attacks have killed more than 27,100 people in Gaza since the war began on October 7, around 11,500 of them children. More than 66,200 others have been wounded amid a severe lack of medical supplies and functioning healthcare facilities. Thousands more are missing and are under the rubble. Here is a list of the names we know from the more than 11,500 Palestinian children killed during Israel’s continuing war on Gaza ⤵️ Know their names: https://t.co/l9T4EJlRKT pic.twitter.com/vaLsXK7r6P — Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) February 2, 2024 With Israeli ground troops encircling most of northern, central, and eastern Gaza, families have been forced to flee their homes several times since the war began. Many are now crammed in the southern Rafah governorate, which Israel has said is its next target of attack. Many who fled their homes have been shot at and arrested. Those who make it to the south often have no contact with their relatives or caregivers in other parts of the enclave, especially during times of communication blackouts. “Children don’t have anything to do with this conflict. Yet they are suffering like no child should ever suffer,” said Crickx. “No child should ever be exposed to the level of violence seen on October 7 – or to the level of violence that we have witnessed since then.” He called for a ceasefire so that UNICEF could conduct a proper count of children who are unaccompanied or separated, trace relatives, and deliver mental health support. Adblock test (Why?)
‘Trapped in this hell’: How one El Salvador town transformed under Bukele
Puerto el Triunfo, El Salvador – The day the military swept through Puerto el Triunfo is etched into Rosa’s memory like a painful scar. Rosa, who asked to use pseudonyms for her and her family, was born and raised in the small fishing town, surrounded by the emerald green mangroves of El Salvador’s southern coast. On a spring night in April 2022, she drifted off to sleep after texting into the early hours with her younger brother, Jorge Antonio, who lived a short walk away. The two had always been close. As children, they would run around hand in hand, sinking their toes into the sandy beach not far from their family home. Now, as adults, they were dreaming up plans to move abroad. A sudden phone call jolted Rosa awake that night, though. Her parents were on the other end of the line, frantic. “At four in the morning, the soldiers were raiding each house in the area,” said Rosa. They had come pounding on the door of her family home, where Jorge Antonio, his son Santiago and their parents lived. The soldiers were searching for gang members. But as Rosa’s parents would later tell her, they quickly focused their attention on Jorge Antonio, a single parent and a public-sector employee. “They searched the house but didn’t find anything suspicious. They checked his body for tattoos — but my brother doesn’t have any,” Rosa said. The soldiers decided to arrest him anyway. Jorge Antonio was dragged away with other local men accused of gang involvement. The last time Rosa saw him, he was kneeling in handcuffs on the street outside the local police station. Ordinarily well-dressed, he was still wearing the pyjamas he had gone to bed in. He would be one of the thousands of Salvadorans swept up in mass arrests since President Nayib Bukele took office. President Nayib Bukele has overseen a nationwide gang crackdown in El Salvador, raising human rights concerns [File: Jose Cabezas/Reuters] On Sunday, Bukele is seeking a second term, as Salvadorans head to the polls to vote in the country’s general election. But while Bukele enjoys widespread support, residents like Rosa have seen their communities transformed by his crackdown on crime — and not always for the better. For years, Puerto El Triunfo, a town of 16,000 people, was terrorised by gangs. They demanded extortion fees from businesses, recruited children as members, and made the people who disobeyed them disappear. Rosa still remembers a time when screams and explosions of bullets pierced the stillness of the night. “There were shootouts. They’d hit women. You couldn’t enter [other parts of town] if you were from a different neighbourhood. They’d kill you,” Rosa told Al Jazeera. Under Bukele, the gangs have now gone, Rosa explained. But so too have cherished community members: fishermen, barbers, a former mayor and even the motorcycle-taxi driver who dressed up as the town’s Santa Claus, giving children presents each year. The town is quieter than it once was. Gang members with tattooed faces and weapons have been replaced by men with uniforms and guns — and the authority to do as they please, Rosa said. She described it as a new kind of nightmare, even more terrifying than before. “Recently, the soldiers dragged away some old, sick people who could barely walk — good, humble people who had worked hard all their lives,” Rosa said. Her uncle, cousin, and many friends have also been arrested in the military raids, not to mention Jorge Antonio. “Those of us that are ‘free’ live with pain and anguish every day not knowing anything of those detained,” she explained despondently. “I’m trapped in this hell. All of us here are.” Police line up suspected members of the 18th Street Gang in Puerto el Triunfo, El Salvador, in 2017 [File: Jose Cabezas/Reuters] The crackdown began in March 2022, following a spike in gang violence that left 87 people dead in a single weekend. In response, Bukele announced a nationwide state of emergency, suspending certain civil liberties in order to rapidly tamp down the violence. The decision sent military troops cascading into every corner of the country. Those with criminal records and bodies covered in tattoos, a common characteristic of gang members, were rounded up. But critics say many innocent people were also detained, with little recourse to appeal their arrests. By the end of 2023, more than 75,000 people accused of gang affiliations had been absorbed into the prison system, around 1 percent of the total population. But the Salvadoran group Socorro Jurídico Humanitario (SJH) — also known as Humanitarian Legal Aid — estimates that about 20,000 of those imprisoned are innocent. Ingrid Escobar, the director of SJH, explained that judicial reforms introduced under Bukele’s state of emergency have eroded the right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence. “They don’t listen to the call from human rights groups to look at the cases of thousands of innocent people who don’t have tattoos or criminal records but are paying a sentence they do not owe,” she told Al Jazeera. Bukele supporters defend the restrictions under the state of emergency as a necessary part of tackling deeply entrenched crime. Ingrid Escobar, the director of Socorro Jurídico Humanitario, meets with families who say their loved ones have been unjustly arrested [Catherine Ellis/Al Jazeera] Once the most dangerous country in Latin America, El Salvador has seen its murder rate plunge from more than 106 murders per 100,000 people in 2015 to a rate of 2.4 in 2023, according to government figures. Critics, however, point out that the numbers were already falling before Bukele came to power in 2019. They also question whether Bukele’s “mano dura” — or “iron fist” — policies are sustainable. “Mass incarceration and the isolation of gang leaders in maximum security prisons never serve to debilitate gangs in the long term,” said Sonja Wolf, a researcher at Mexico’s National Council of Humanities, Science and Technology (CONAHCYT) and author of the book Mano Dura: The Politics
Can South Africa’s genocide case at the ICJ stop Israel?
South Africa’s ambassador to the US talks to Marc Lamont Hill about the implications of the case and the court’s ruling. Last week, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered provisional measures in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. The ruling states that Israel must prevent and punish incitement of genocidal acts and allow civilians access to humanitarian aid. The decision comes after nearly four months of war in Gaza, which has killed more than 26,000 people and caused a major humanitarian crisis. While the interim ruling on South Africa’s case has been hailed as a legal win for Palestinians and their supporters, many are questioning what practical implications this will have on the war and for the people of Gaza. Will South Africa’s case help change the course of the conflict? This week on UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill talks to South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, Ndumiso Ntshinga. Adblock test (Why?)
Joe Biden’s Michigan visit highlights rift with Arab American community
US president seeking re-election likely to have a hard time winning key state because of his support for Israel. A visit by United States President Joe Biden to Michigan has exposed a growing divide with the considerable Arab-American community in the key swing state ahead of November’s general election. Biden sat down with members of the United Auto Workers union on Thursday after they endorsed his re-election bid, but the president’s motorcade had to take side streets in Warren to avoid some two hundred protesters before arriving at its destination. Crowds of Arab Americans had gathered to display their anger at Biden’s unwavering support for Israel even as its war on Gaza has killed more than 27,000 people, mostly women and children, amid international calls for a ceasefire. The protesters in the election battleground state chanted “Genocide Joe has got to go” and waved Palestinian flags, a week after the World Court ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza. “Michigan has a large Arab American and Muslim population who voted overwhelmingly for Biden in the last election,” Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane, reporting from Warren, said. “If he loses even half of their vote, it’s unlikely he can win Michigan – and without Michigan, he has a very narrow path to winning a second term,” she added. At the protest, anger and disappointment were palpable with several demonstrators saying the US president was “lost to us forever”. “There is nothing that will ever make me vote for a genocidal president, ever,” a protester who identified as Hawraa told Al Jazeera. “Not only me, but everybody else. My whole Arab community will never vote for this man.” Salma Hamamy, an activist with Students for Justice in Palestine, said Biden had “entirely abandoned” the Palestinian and Arab communities, as well as “the concept of humanity”. “Just as he abandoned us, we will be abandoning him on election day,” the protester said, citing Biden’s continued support for Israel. Arab Americans will no longer choose between the “lesser of two evils”, between the Democrat and Republican candidates, in the next election, she continued. “We will be voting for people who are deserving of our vote”. ‘No looking back’ Along with Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Michigan was among the so-called blue wall of states that Biden managed to return to the Democrats when he was elected in 2020. Michigan has turned increasingly Democratic in recent years, with the party now controlling all levels of state government for the first time in four decades. Biden is looking to secure the critical 15 electoral votes that the battleground state can bring. But Israel’s war on Gaza has impacted his chances. “There is real anger in the [Arab American] community,” James Zogby, president of the Washington, DC-based Arab American Institute, told Al Jazeera. “Imagine a situation where a sitting president comes to town and people are trying to set up a meeting with him before he comes, and the community says, ‘We don’t want to meet with him,’ and they reject it, and finally the White House has to abandon plans to do it,” Zogby said, predicting that a loss in Michigan would mean a Biden defeat in November. Democratic strategists are hoping the potential of another Donald Trump presidency will be enough to change the community’s minds – but Khalid Turaani, who helped launch the Abandon Biden movement, said that would not work. “Because Joe Biden is president, we don’t believe that the Israelis are bombing a little bit less. So when we have Trump, I don’t believe they’re just going to bomb a little bit more just because Trump is president,” he told Al Jazeera. “We need a ceasefire.” Adblock test (Why?)
‘Love of my life’: Shot dead, waiting for her husband in the West Bank
Bahaa Masalmeh was planning to shower his young wife with gifts on her upcoming 21st birthday, which he had been planning for several weeks. But on January 15, Ahed, a mother of a six-month-old baby daughter, was shot and killed by Israeli forces during a raid into the town of Dura near Hebron in the southern West Bank. She was inside her brother-in-law’s house at the time, watching for her husband’s arrival at a window. The couple had only been married for 15 months, but Masalmeh said his wife had left him with his best memories and that she had given him the “best days” of his life. Ahed was a keen learner, loved by “everyone”, he said – her cheerful soul and thirst for life were contagious. “She was the love of my life,” he told Al Jazeera. “She was the epitome of everything good in life.” Now, he has been left to raise their daughter, Ayloul, without her. Masalmeh stands in front of a poster with a picture of his wife, Ahed, following her funeral [Mosab Shawer/Al Jazeera] Masalmeh had dropped Ahed off at his brother Shadi’s house that morning to prepare for another family celebration. There, she met up with her husband’s other siblings and father to help get the house ready for Shadi’s marriage. Her last words to her husband were: “Don’t I look as pretty as a full moon.” ‘In a dream’ A few hours later, Masalmeh returned bearing food for everyone. He saw Ahed peek out of the second-storey window gesturing in her usual humorous way at him to hurry up because she was hungry. Just seconds later, however, Masalmeh heard some young men in the neighbourhood calling out to him, warning that Israeli soldiers had entered the area and were approaching Shadi’s house. “All I could hear then were the sounds of live fire and bombs,” Masalmeh said. “I ran upstairs and my sisters were screaming and wailing. I then saw Ahed on the floor in a pool of her own blood.” Masalmeh thought he was “in a dream”, and, for a moment, thought Ahed was pulling “one of her pranks”. But she had just been shot in the head with two bullets. “I approached Ahed, and the first thing I saw were her eyes looking at me. She was smiling,” he said. Meanwhile, his father attempted to call for an ambulance. Masalmeh wanted to run for help but he could not leave the house because of the Israeli soldiers stationed right outside. Eventually, Ahed bled to death. Palestinian officials in the West Bank and in Gaza have also accused Israeli forces of often preventing ambulances and medics from evacuating the sick and wounded in time. Tahani Masalmeh, 25, was with Ahed on January 15 when she was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers and bled to death [Mosab Shawer/Al Jazeera] Tahani Masalmeh, Bahaa’s sister, was with Ahed the moment she was shot. “No words can describe what happened to us,” the 25-year-old told Al Jazeera. Before the incident, she said, her sister-in-law had suddenly – and strangely for her – brought up the topic of “death and parting”. “Ahed told me that I should protect her daughter, Ayloul, and always keep her in my sight as if she was my own child. This was even before there was an incursion,” Tahani said. “I was surprised by her words, and thought she was joking, just like she always does.” Tahani said she vividly recalls Ahed bleeding out for some “50 minutes” before she took her final breath. Sumoud, 30, walks at the front of her sister’s shrouded body during the funeral procession [Mosab Shawer/Al Jazeera] ‘Big dreams’ Ahed’s sister, Sumoud, 30, who lives in Ramallah, said she was shocked to hear that her sister had been killed. “The journey from Ramallah to Hebron would usually take two hours. But after the war on Gaza, and with the crackdown on Palestinians at the checkpoints, it took me six hours to reach Ahed,” she told Al Jazeera. Sumoud described her younger sister as “her first baby”, and was adamant she would make it to her funeral procession. The Israeli army has been intensifying its raids on towns and villages in the occupied West Bank. Ahed is survived by her husband and six-month-old baby Ayloul [Mosab Shawer/Al Jazeera] Hundreds of people have been killed in the West Bank since October 7. More than 6,330 people have been arrested, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society. Ahed had “big dreams”, her husband Masalmeh said. The university student was planning on studying primary education after she graduated, planning to juggle her role as a mother to a small child. The couple had just opened a small business online together, and he was going to help with the deliveries. “She told me we would be successful and grow our business. All I wanted to do was support her in any way she needed,” Masalmeh said. Masalmeh sees a lot of Ahed in his daughter, he said, especially in the way she laughs, smiles and plays. “I plan on fulfilling Ahed’s dreams for Ayloul,” he said. “She will grow up and become a doctor, the best doctor in the world.” Adblock test (Why?)
What has Northern Ireland’s DUP agreed with the UK over EU trade?
Following two years of political paralysis, Northern Ireland’s devolved assembly is set to return to full working order after a new agreement on trade between the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the UK government was ratified by the House of Commons on Thursday. The Protestant DUP – Northern Ireland’s largest pro-UK party – collapsed the nationalist-unionist power-sharing government in February 2022 in protest at trading arrangements made in the wake of the United Kingdom’s official withdrawal from the European Union. This week, the leader of the ultra-conservative DUP, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, welcomed the new agreement, which, he said, would safeguard Northern Ireland’s place in the UK’s internal market. Ever since the assembly first sat in 1998, when three decades of conflict between Protestant loyalists and Catholic republican paramilitaries in Northern Ireland largely came to an end under the Good Friday Agreement, unionists (those who wished to remain in the UK) have dominated the Belfast-based legislature. However, when the devolved government is restored, Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Fein will become the first Irish nationalist to assume the role of Northern Ireland’s first minister following her party’s success in the May 2022 assembly elections. Sinn Fein’s Conor Murphy and Michelle O’Neill address the media outside the Grand Central Hotel on January 31, 2024, in Belfast, United Kingdom following a meeting at which the DUP agreed to return to Stormont after the UK government signed up to a further deal on post-Brexit trade arrangements [Charles McQuillan/Getty Images] Why did the DUP dissolve the assembly in 2022? Prior to the UK’s withdrawal from the EU in January 2020 – a process also known as Brexit – trade between the UK and its neighbouring EU member state, the Republic of Ireland, which shares a land border with Northern Ireland, was seamless. But when the UK ceased to be part of the Brussels-based European bloc, a new arrangement had to be reached. The first post-Brexit trade deal agreed between the UK and the EU in January 2021, the Northern Ireland Protocol, aimed to permit trade to continue between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It introduced checks on goods arriving into Northern Ireland from Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) at Northern Irish ports rather than at the border with the Irish Republic. This also included checks on goods which were destined to remain in Northern Ireland. The ardently pro-British DUP, which itself supported the UK’s decision to leave the EU, contended that such an agreement effectively placed a border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, prompting the party to suspend its involvement with the assembly. A later UK-EU deal, known as the Windsor Framework, which built on the Northern Ireland Protocol, was agreed in 2023, but this did not satisfy the DUP either. What’s in the latest trade deal? The DUP’s new deal with the British government includes an end to routine checks on goods arriving from Great Britain that are destined to remain in Northern Ireland. This, together with other amendments, has paved the way for the DUP’s return – and a potential recommencement of the devolved government within days. The British government has also pledged a 3.3-billion-pound ($4.2bn) financial package for Northern Ireland on the resumption of the assembly. But while Donaldson claimed that the new agreement removed the Irish Sea border, not everyone in his party has been convinced by the new deal. Sammy Wilson, a House of Commons DUP parliamentarian, complained that, unlike England, Scotland and Wales, Northern Ireland had still not completely severed itself from the EU. “Despite the gains that my party leader and deputy party leader have made in these negotiations, the fact remains that in Northern Ireland there are still EU-manned border posts being built which will create a border within our own country,” he claimed. What impact has the lack of a functioning government had on Northern Ireland? Without a working government, the job of running Northern Ireland’s day-to-day affairs has fallen to civil servants. John Garry, a professor of political behaviour at Queen’s University Belfast, told Al Jazeera, “Decision-making has been difficult because civil servants do not have a political mandate to make important economic decisions that affect service provision.” Indeed, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has painted a bleak picture of the state of Northern Ireland’s healthcare system. “Northern Ireland’s health crisis has worsened considerably over the past two years,” reported the BMJ on January 31. “Waiting lists are at an all time high – the worst anywhere in the UK or Ireland – while many GP surgeries are teetering on the brink.” Could Irish unification happen under a republican first minister? Twenty-six years after the end of the conflict in Northern Ireland – known as the Troubles – the UK’s smallest constituent nation remains divided between those agitating for unification with the Irish Republic and those wishing to remain part of the UK. In May 2022, elections for the Northern Irish assembly saw Irish republican party Sinn Fein secure the most seats for the first time, pushing the DUP into second place and reviving talk of a poll on Irish unity. Under the 1998 Belfast Agreement, which brought the assembly into being, Irish nationalists and pro-British unionists are required to share power, with the roles of first and deputy first minister decided on the basis of electoral mandates. Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Fein’s president, said earlier this week that Irish unification — essentially Northern Ireland merging with the Republic of Ireland — was now within “touching distance”. But despite the elevation of Sinn Fein’s vice president, Michelle O’Neill, to first minister, nationalists in Northern Ireland are still some way off from being able to win over a majority of Northern Ireland’s voting public in favour of a united Ireland. “The latest research, as published in recent weeks in The Irish Times, indicates that there is not a majority in Northern Ireland in favour of Irish unification,” said Garry. In that research, it was found
Argentina police battle protesters opposed to ‘omnibus’ reform bill
Police in Argentina have fired rubber bullets to disperse protesters gathered outside Congress in Buenos Aires as lawmakers debated newly elected President Javier Milei’s sweeping economic, social and political reform package. Opposition legislators stormed out of the building at one point to observe and denounce the police action, but later went back inside to take their seats and the debate resumed until past midnight. Local media reported three people injured and several arrests. The Buenos Aires press union reported at least a dozen journalists were hit by rubber bullets, including one in the face. It all unfolded on the second day of what is expected to be a marathon debate on Milei’s so-called omnibus reform bill. The 53-year-old political outsider – a libertarian and self-described anarcho-capitalist – won a resounding election victory last October on a wave of fury over decades of economic crises marked by debt, rampant money printing, inflation and fiscal deficit. Milei began his term by devaluing the peso by more than 50 percent, cutting state subsidies for fuel and transport, reducing the number of ministries by half, and scrapping hundreds of rules so as to deregulate the economy. His substantial reform package touches on all areas of public and private life, from privatisations to cultural issues, the penal code, divorce and the status of football clubs. But many Argentinians are already up in arms and staged a strike less than two months into his term. “Milei promises his austerity measures and reforms will bring down soaring inflation in Argentina and jumpstart the economy,” Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo, reporting from Thursday’s protest, sad. She noted, however, that the unrest showed “how difficult the months ahead will be and how the president is willing to confront those who dare oppose him”. Adblock test (Why?)
Dozens of Rohingya refugees flee Malaysian immigration detention centre
Police blame riot after 115 Rohingya and 16 other people from Myanmar escaped the facility on Thursday night. Malaysia is searching for dozens of Rohingya refugees and other people from Myanmar after they escaped from a temporary immigration detention centre in the country’s north. One man was killed after 131 men escaped from the Bidor facility in the northern state of Perak on Thursday night, the Immigration Department said in a statement. Perak police said the man had been hit by a car when he tried to cross the main north-south highway, and that the men fled following a riot at the camp. Some 115 of the men were Rohingya and the remaining 16 of other Myanmar ethnicities. Immigration Department director-general Ruslin Jusoh said 375 police, soldiers and reservist volunteers had been deployed to look for them. Malaysia is a popular destination for the mostly Muslim ethnic Rohingya, hundreds of thousands of whom fled Myanmar for neighbouring Bangladesh in 2017 after a brutal military crackdown that is now the subject of a genocide investigation at the International Court of Justice. Many have sought to escape the grim conditions in Myanmar and the Bangladesh refugee camps by making dangerous journeys by boat to Southeast Asia. Some 569 died or went missing at sea last year, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said last month. People from Myanmar made up 88 percent of the 185,300 people registered with the UNHCR as refugees and asylum-seekers in Malaysia at the end of 2023. Some 107,670 of those registered with the agency are Rohingya who were stripped of their citizenship by a military government in the 1980s. Other people from Myanmar have sought sanctuary in Malaysia amid a deepening civil war since the military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi three years ago. Malaysia has no system to process applications for asylum, and refugees are considered undocumented migrants. Most live a precarious existence, at risk of arrest as “illegal migrants” or exploitation in low-paid jobs that Malaysians do not want. The immigration department has accelerated a crackdown on undocumented migrants in recent months, reporting regular raids, but the UNHCR has not been allowed to visit immigration detention centres to verify the status of refugees for a number of years. In April 2022, more than 500 Rohingya refugees, including children, fled a temporary detention centre in Penang state and six were killed trying to cross the highway. That incident was also blamed on a riot. Adblock test (Why?)
At least two dead, hundreds injured in Kenya gas explosion
Incident took place in the Embakasi district of Nairobi late on Thursday night and firefighters were still trying to douse the flames at dawn. At least two people have been killed and hundreds injured after a gas explosion triggered a massive fire in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. The fire broke out on Thursday night in the Embakasi neighbourhood, government spokesman Isaac Maigua Mwaura said on social media platform X. “One Lorry [truck] of an unknown registration number that was loaded with gas exploded, igniting a huge ball of fire that spread widely,” he wrote, adding that vehicles, businesses and residential homes had been consumed by the flames. “A good number of residents [were] still inside as it was late at night,” he said. Wesley Kimeto, commander in charge of police in Embakasi, was quoted saying on The Standard newspaper’s X account that at least two people had been confirmed dead in the incident. The Kenyan Red Cross said it had taken some 271 people to health facilities around the capital and 27 were treated on site. Firefighters were still working to bring the fire under control at about 6:30am local time (03:30 GMT), according to the AFP news agency, and large columns of black smoke were seen rising into the air on the outskirts of the city. Adblock test (Why?)
Carmakers at risk of using Uighur forced labour in China, HRW says
Taipei, Taiwan – Top carmakers, including General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen, Tesla and BYD are at a high risk of using aluminium produced by forced labour in China’s Xinjiang province, a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found. China is the world’s largest car manufacturer as well as the largest producer of aluminium, which is used in tyres, windshield wipers, electric vehicle (EV) batteries and other automotive parts. As much as one-fifth of China’s aluminium is produced by smelters in Xinjiang, where human rights groups believe more than one million ethnic minority Muslims have been subjected to internment and other abuses including forced labour and forced sterilisation. HRW said in its report that carmakers are doing little to track their supply chains in China, and, in some cases, have succumbed to Chinese government pressure to apply weaker sourcing standards at their Chinese joint ventures than in their global operations. “Most companies have done too little to map their supply chains for aluminium parts and identify and address potential links to Xinjiang,” the rights group said in its 99-page report released on Thursday. “Confronted with an opaque aluminium industry and the threat of Chinese government reprisals for investigating links to Xinjiang, carmakers in many cases remain unaware of the extent of their exposure to forced labour. Consumers should as a result have little confidence that they are purchasing and driving vehicles free from links to abuses in Xinjiang.” China has been accused of carrying out an aggressive programme of forced assimilation against Uighurs and other ethnic minority Muslims for more than a decade, leading to the internment of more than a million people in what Beijing has described as “vocational training centres”. China has denied committing human rights violations in the region and insisted its programmes targeting ethnic minority Muslims have reduced radicalisation and terrorism. China has been accused of carrying out an aggressive programme of forced assimilation against Uighurs and other ethnic minority Muslims in Xinjiang [File: Thomas Peter/Reuters] In its report, HRW said “credible evidence”, including Chinese state media articles, company reports and government statements, indicates that aluminium producers in Xinjiang are participating in government-backed labour transfer programmes. While countries including the United States have banned products made in Xinjiang, materials like aluminium can be difficult to trace, the New York-based rights group said. Xinjiang aluminium often takes the form of ingots, which can be melted down with other materials to make aluminium alloy, easily concealing its provenance. Michael Dunne, CEO of Dunne Insights and an expert on China’s automotive industry, said that mapping supply chains in China can be an extremely difficult task. “Supply chains for automakers in China are somewhere on the spectrum between exceptionally byzantine and an iron-clad black box,” Dunne told Al Jazeera. “It’s like counting to infinity – you might make progress but you’ll never get there.” HRW said car manufacturers should do more to map their supply chains or put pressure on their joint partners in China to do the same. HRW said Volkswagen said in response to inquiries that the carmaker has “no transparency about the supplier relationships” with its joint-venture partners in China. HRW said General Motors, Toyota and BYD did not respond to inquiries, but General Motors noted in its annual report the difficulty of tracing their Chinese supply chain. Tesla, which does not operate with a joint venture, said it had “in several cases” mapped its supply chain back to the mining level and not found evidence of forced labour but did not specify further, according to HRW. The five carmakers did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment. Duncan Jepsen, a supply chain expert and UK-trained solicitor, said tracing supply chains is an issue of cost and will on the part of manufacturers. “For an NGO, it may be difficult to track a supply chain in China. In other places in China, for a large, well-capitalised car manufacturer with no financial resources … I think the answer is it’s expensive, maybe. But it’s not that hard,” Jepsen told Al Jazeera. “And that’s really the crux of the problem … It’s challenging and difficult and almost impossible if you want to spend nothing on it,” he added. China’s huge market also gives it leverage over carmakers. On top of being the world’s largest vehicle manufacturer, China is also the largest market for vehicle sales – with 23.5 million vehicles sold in 2022 compared with 13.6 million in the US, according to HRW. “That’s the catch-22 they’ve got is that it’s not a country that they particularly want to leave,” Jepsen said. “So if they want their market penetration, it’s going to be a big strategic decision of how auto manufacturers handle this. And it’s going to be interesting to watch.” Adblock test (Why?)