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Israeli restrictions on the entry of heavy machinery are crippling Gaza City’s efforts to clear debris and rebuild critical infrastructure, the city’s mayor says, as tens of thousands of tonnes of unexploded Israeli bombs threaten lives across the Gaza Strip.

In a Sunday news conference, Mayor Yahya al-Sarraj said Gaza City requires at least 250 heavy vehicles and 1,000 tonnes of cement to maintain water networks and construct wells.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from az-Zawayda in Gaza, said only six trucks had entered the territory.

At least 9,000 Palestinians remain buried under the rubble. But the new equipment is being prioritised for recovering the remains of Israeli captives, rather than assisting Palestinians in locating their loved ones still trapped beneath rubble.

“Palestinians say they know there won’t be any developments in the ceasefire until the bodies of all the Israeli captives are returned,” Khoudary said.

Footage circulating on social media showed Red Cross vehicles arriving after meetings with Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, to guide them to the location of an Israeli captive in southern Rafah.

An Israeli government spokesperson said that to search for captives’ remains, the Red Cross and Egyptian teams have been permitted beyond the ceasefire’s “yellow line”, which allows Israel to retain control over 58 percent of the besieged enclave.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman, said Israel spent two weeks insisting that Hamas knew the locations of all the captives’ bodies.

“Two weeks into that, Israel has now allowed Egyptian teams and heavy machinery to enter the Gaza Strip to assist in the mammoth task of removing debris, of trying to get to the tunnels or underneath the homes or structures that the captives were held in and killed in,” she said.

Odeh added that Hamas had been unable to access a tunnel for two weeks due to the damage caused by Israeli bombing. “That change of policy is coming without explanation from Israel,” she said, noting that the Red Cross and Hamas have also been allowed to help locate potential burial sites under the rubble.

Netanyahu: ‘We control Gaza’

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to reassert political authority at home, saying that Israel controls which foreign forces may operate in Gaza.

“We control our own security, and we have made clear to international forces that Israel will decide which forces are unacceptable to us – and that is how we act and will continue to act,” he said. “This is, of course, accepted by the United States, as its most senior representatives expressed in recent days.”

Odeh explained that Netanyahu’s statements are intended to reassure the far-right base in Israel, which thinks he’s no longer calling the shots.

Those currently overseeing the ceasefire do not appear to be Israeli soldiers or army leadership, she explained, with Washington “requesting that Israel notify it ahead of time of any attack that Israel might be planning to conduct inside Gaza”.

Odeh noted that Israel’s insistence on controlling which foreign actors operate in Gaza – combined with the limited access for reconstruction – underscores a broader strategy to maintain political support at home.

Unexploded bombs a threat

Reconstruction in Gaza faces further obstacles from unexploded ordnance. Nicholas Torbet, Middle East director at HALO Trust in the United Kingdom, said Gaza is “essentially one giant city” where every part has been struck by explosives.

“Some munitions are designed to linger, but what we’re concerned about in Gaza is ordnance that is expected to explode upon impact but hasn’t,” he told Al Jazeera.

Torbet said clearing explosives is slowing the reconstruction process. His teams plan to work directly within communities to safely remove bombs rather than marking off large areas indefinitely. “The best way to dispose of a bomb is to use a small amount of explosives to blow it up,” he explained.

Torbet added that the necessary equipment is relatively simple and can be transported in small vehicles or by hand, and progress is beginning to take place.

The scale of explosives dropped by Israel has left Gaza littered with deadly remnants.

Mahmoud Basal, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence, told Al Jazeera that Israel dropped at least 200,000 tonnes of explosives on the territory, with roughly 70,000 tonnes failing to detonate.

Children have been particularly affected, often mistaking bombs for toys. Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili reported the case of seven-year-old Yahya Shorbasi and his sister Nabila, who were playing outside when they found what appeared to be a toy.

“They found a regular children’s toy – just an ordinary one. The girl was holding it. Then the boy took it and started tapping it with a coin. Suddenly, we heard the sound of an explosion. It went off in their hands,” their mother Latifa Shorbasi told Al Jazeera.

Yahya’s right arm had to be amputated, while Nabila remains in intensive care.

Dr Harriet, an emergency doctor at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, described the situation as “a public health catastrophe waiting to unfold”. She said children are being injured by items that look harmless – toys, cans, or debris – but are actually live explosives.

United Nations Mine Action Service head Luke David Irving said 328 people have already been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance since October 2023.

Tens of thousands of tonnes of bombs, including landmines, mortar rounds, and large bombs capable of flattening concrete buildings, remain buried across Gaza. Basal said clearing the explosives could take years and require millions of dollars.

For Palestinians, the situation is a race against time. Al Jazeera’s Khoudary said civilians are pressing for faster progress: “They want reconstruction, they want freedom of movement, and they want to see and feel that the ceasefire is going to make it.”

UK High Court ruled against Eritrean man in case that tested new ‘one in, one out’ migration scheme.

An Eritrean man who has been fighting to stay in the United Kingdom is set to be deported to France after losing a High Court bid to have his removal temporarily blocked.

The 25-year-old Eritrean man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, crossed the English Channel in August and was originally due to be removed on Wednesday under a “one in, one out” pilot scheme agreed between the UK and France in July.

But London’s High Court granted him an interim injunction on Tuesday, preventing his removal, pending a full hearing of his trafficking claim.

The man told the court he fled Eritrea in 2019 because of forced conscription before ultimately making his way to France. In France, he went to Dunkirk, on the English Channel, where he stayed in an encampment known as “the jungle” for about three weeks before travelling to the UK.

The UK’s Home Office opposed the bid to temporarily block the man’s removal and, at a hearing on Thursday, the High Court agreed, saying there was “no serious issue to be tried in this case”.

The judge, Clive Sheldon, said the man gave inconsistent accounts of his allegations of trafficking.

“It was open to [the Home Office] to conclude that his credibility was severely damaged and his account of trafficking could not reasonably be believed,” the judge said.

The man is set to be deported to France on Friday at 6:15am local time (05:15 GMT).

UK puts new plan into action

As the court was ruling against the Eritrean man, the UK interior ministry, the Home Office, was actively testing out its new scheme, deporting a man from India to France. The man, who arrived in the UK on a small boat in August, was sent to France on Thursday on a commercial flight.

This deportation was the first under the partnership between the UK and France, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying it provided “proof of concept” that the deal works.

“We need to ramp that up at scale, which was always envisaged under the scheme,” Starmer told reporters at a news conference alongside US President Donald Trump.

Under the “one in, one out” plan between the UK and France, people arriving in the UK would be returned to France, while the UK would accept an equal number of recognised asylum seekers with family ties in the UK.

Downing Street has defended the plan, calling it a “fair and balanced” system designed to reduce irregular migration.

UK charities have condemned the scheme.

The “cruel policy targeting people who come here to seek safety” was a “grim attempt … to appease the racist far-right,” Griff Ferris, of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, told the news agency AFP.

Anti-immigrant sentiment on the rise

While Starmer has made stopping small boat crossings central to his government’s agenda, anti-immigrant sentiment has continued to rise in the UK.

Up to 150,000 people marched through central London over the weekend in a protest organised by far-right activist Tommy Robinson. Four police officers were seriously injured during the protest, with a glass bottle appearing to have smashed against a police horse at one point.

Tens of thousands of migrants have arrived annually on UK shores in recent years. At least 23 people have died so far this year, according to an AFP tally based on official French data.

Sept. 16 (UPI) — City authorities in Minneapolis on Tuesday cleared a homeless encampment located on private land after a mass shooting at the site left multiple people injured.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and other city officials announced the move during a press conference, saying the camp located on the city’s south side was unsafe and unsanitary, attracting drug trafficking and violence. The camp’s demolition comes a day after a shooting at the site that left seven people severely injured. It was the second mass shooting that occurred on the city’s south side and part of a particularly violent summer for Minneapolis.

The camp’s closure comes as cities across the United States have struggled with encampments as they’ve seen soaring housing prices and homeless populations. But Frey insisted the camp and others like it are not a solution to homelessness and are unsafe.

“They are not safe for the people living at the encampment, for the people going to the encampment to buy and or sell drugs, they are not safe for the surrounding community,” he said.

Roughly 75 people lived at the camp and have been offered shelter and other services, city officials said. A video of the camp’s clearing by KTSP shows a crew dismantling structures and loading debris into a garbage truck.

The camp had become a public health nuisance with people living among drug paraphernalia, garbage, spoiled food and human waste, said Enrique Velasquez, the city’s director of regulatory services. He said the property’s owner, Hamoudi Sabri, had been repeatedly cited.

Sabri said in a statement to the Minnesota Star Tribune that his encampment was a response to what he called was city leader’s neglect to the area.

“Instead of emergency response, the pattern has been abandonment – and repeated displacement that leaves people more vulnerable to violence,” he said.

Frey said addressing the camp was “particularly difficult” because of the city’s fraught relationship with Sabri and that he was expecting both sides to go to court over the camp’s closing.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Retired politician and billionaire businessman was accused of violating Thailand’s strict laws on insults to Thai royalty.

A court in Thailand has dismissed a high-profile case against the country’s former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra over allegations he violated the country’s strict laws on royal insults, the Reuters news agency reports.

Thaksin’s lawyer told Reuters that the court dropped the case on Friday and cleared his client of violating Thailand’s lese-majeste laws that criminalise almost all criticism of the country’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn.

The court has yet to publicly announce its decision.

This is a breaking news story. More to follow shortly.

Syria’s government says it has cleared Bedouin fighters from the predominantly Druze city of Suwayda and declared a halt to the deadly clashes there, hours after deploying security forces to the restive southern region.

The announcement on Saturday came after Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa ordered a new ceasefire between Bedouin and Druze groups, following a separate United States-brokered deal to avert further Israeli military intervention in the clashes.

Shortly before the government’s claim, there were reports of machinegun fire in the city of Suwayda as well as mortar shelling in nearby villages.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Nour al-Din Baba, a spokesman for the Syrian Ministry of Interior, said in a statement carried by the official Sana news agency that the fighting ended “following intensive efforts” to implement the ceasefire agreement and the deployment of government forces in the northern and western areas of Suwayda province.

He said the city of Suwayda has now been “cleared of all tribal fighters, and clashes within the city’s neighbourhoods have been brought to a halt”.

Israeli intervention

The fighting broke out last week when the abduction of a Druze truck driver on a public highway set off a series of revenge attacks and resulted in tribal fighters from all over the country streaming into Suwayda in support of the Bedouin community there.

The clashes drew in Syrian government troops, too.

Israel also intervened in the conflict on Wednesday, carrying out heavy air attacks on Suwayda and Syria’s capital, Damascus, claiming it was to protect the Druze community after leaders of the minority group accused government forces of abuses against them.

At least 260 people have been killed in the fighting, and 1,700 others have been wounded, according to the Syrian Ministry of Health. Other groups, however, put the figure at more than 900 victims.

More than 87,000 people have also been displaced.

The fighting is the latest challenge to al-Sharaa’s government, which took over after toppling President Bashar al-Assad in December.

Al-Sharaa, in a televised statement on Saturday, called on all parties to lay down arms and help the government restore peace.

“While we thank the [Bedouin] clans for their heroic stance, we call on them to adhere to the ceasefire and follow the orders of the state,” he said. “All should understand this moment requires unity and full cooperation, so we can overcome these challenges and preserve our country from foreign interference and internal sedition.”

He condemned Israel’s intervention in the unrest, saying it “pushed the country into a dangerous phase that threatened its stability”.

After the president’s call, Bedouin groups confirmed leaving the city of Suwayda.

“Following consultations with all members of Suwayda’s clans and tribes, we have decided to adhere to the ceasefire, prioritise reason and restraint, and allow the state’s authorised institutions the space to carry out their responsibilities in restoring security and stability,” they said in a statement.

“Therefore, we declare that all our fighters have been withdrawn from the city of Suwayda,” they added.

Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, reporting from Damascus said the Druze, too, seemed to have accepted the truce.

“Hikmat Al Hajri, a prominent spiritual leader, has called for all Bedouin fighters to be escorted safely out of Suwayda. Security forces from the interior ministry have been deployed to help separate rival groups, and oversee the implementation of the ceasefire. But there are still reports of ongoing fighting in the city, with some Druze leaders voicing strong opposition to the cessation of hostilities,” he said.

Vall added that while “there is hope” of an end to the hostilities, “there is also doubt that this conflict is over”.

World welcomes truce

Jordan, meanwhile, has hosted talks with Syria and the US on efforts to consolidate the ceasefire in Suwayda.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, his Syrian counterpart Asaad al-Shibani and the US special envoy for Syria, Thomas Barak, “discussed the situation in Syria and efforts to consolidate the ceasefire reached around Suwayda Governorate to prevent bloodshed and preserve the safety of civilians”, according to a readout by the Jordanian government.

The three officials agreed on “practical steps” to support the ceasefire, including the release of detainees held by all parties, Syrian security force deployments and community reconciliation efforts.

Safadi also welcomed the Syrian government’s “commitment to holding accountable all those responsible for violations against Syrian citizens” in the Suwayda area, the statement said.

Countries around the world have also called for the truce to be upheld.

The United Kingdom’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, said in a post on X that he was horrified by the violence in southern Syria and that “a sustainable ceasefire is vital”.

France’s Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs stressed the need for “Syrian authorities to ensure the safety and rights of all segments of the Syrian people”, and called for investigations into abuses against civilians in Suwayda.

Japan also expressed concern over the violence, including the Israeli strikes, and called for the ceasefire to be implemented swiftly.

It added that it “strongly urges all parties concerned to exercise maximum restraint, preserve Syria’s territorial integrity and national unity, and respect its independence and sovereignty”.