conflict

Moscow ‘strongly condemns’ attack on airport in the capital, Niamey, where 20 rebels were killed, and four soldiers were wounded.

Russian soldiers helped repel an attack claimed by the ISIL (ISIS) armed group on Niger’s main airport in the capital, Niamey, last week, according to Moscow’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“The attack was repelled through the joint efforts of the Russian Ministry of Defence’s African Corps and the Nigerien armed forces,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

Niger’s governing military earlier said that “Russian partners” had helped to fend off the rare assault on the capital, which saw 20 attackers, including a French national, killed and four army soldiers wounded.

At least 11 fighters were also captured, Niger’s state television reported.

“Moscow strongly condemns this latest extremist attack,” the Foreign Ministry added in the statement, according to Russia’s state TASS news agency.

“A similar attack took place in September 2024 on the international airport in the capital of Mali. According to available information, external forces providing instructor and technical support are involved,” the ministry said, according to TASS.

Niger’s military chief, Abdourahamane Tchiani, visited the Russian military base in Niamey to express “personal gratitude for a high-level of professionalism” by Russian forces in defending the airport, the ministry added.

ISIL claimed responsibility for the “surprise and coordinated attack” on the airbase at the Diori Hamani international airport near Niamey on the night of January 28.

A video published online through the ISIL-affiliated media Amaq showed several dozen attackers with assault rifles firing near an aircraft hangar and setting ablaze one plane before leaving on motorbikes.

Ulf Laessing, the head of the Sahel programme at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told The Associated Press news agency that the sophistication and boldness of the attack, including the possible use of drones by the attackers, suggest that the assailants may have had inside help.

Previous successful attacks in the region appear to have increased the group’s confidence, leading them to target more sensitive and strategically important sites, Laessing said.

Niger’s military had initially accused Benin, France and the Ivory Coast of sponsoring the attack on the airport, which also houses a military base. The military, however, did not provide evidence to substantiate its claim.

Ivory Coast’s Foreign Ministry denied the allegation and summoned Niger’s ambassador to relay its protest. Benin also denied the claim, describing it as “not very credible”.

France has yet to comment.

Niger is a former colony of France, which maintained a military presence in the country until 2023.

Russia rarely comments on its military activity in the Sahel region, where Moscow has been increasing its influence in recent years.

Facing isolation since its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has tried to build new military and political partnerships across Africa.

Apart from Niger, Russian troops or military instructors have been reported to be deployed in Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, the Central African Republic and Libya.

Russia’s African Corps has taken over from the Wagner mercenary force across the continent. According to Moscow, the corps helps ” fighting terrorists” and is “strengthening regional stability” in the Sahel.

Niger’s authorities have been fighting the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) and the ISIL affiliate in the Sahel (EIS) for the past decade.

These are the key developments from day 1,440 of Russia’s war on Ukraine

Here is where things stand on Tuesday, February 2:

Fighting

• The ‍Ukrainian ‍capital, Kyiv, came under attack early on ⁠Tuesday morning from ​Russian missiles, ‍Tymur Tkachenko, head of the city’s ‍military administration, ⁠said on the Telegram messaging app.
• Tkachenko said several apartment ​buildings ‌and an educational establishment had been damaged. Reuters news agency ‌witnesses reported ‌loud explosions ⁠in the city.

• A father and a son have been killed, and two children and their mother were wounded after Russia struck an area in the front line of the Donetsk region, according to regional authorities.

• A coal mining site in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region was attacked for the second time in 24 hours, according to the private energy producer DTEK. There were no immediate reports on casualties or damage to infrastructure.

Diplomacy and politics

• Russia has largely observed a ceasefire on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Monday, as Kyiv prepared for the next round of trilateral talks with the US and Russia, expected to begin on Wednesday.

• In a separate post on social media, Zelenskyy added that a recent “de-escalation” with Russia – an apparent reference to a brief ceasefire in attacks on energy facilities – was helping to build trust in the negotiations.

• Zelenskyy said in separate remarks that it was realistic to achieve a dignified and lasting peace, in advance of the next round of peace talks with Russian and US officials in the United Arab Emirates. He added that a deal on US security guarantees for Ukraine post-war is now “complete”.

• US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, will travel to Abu Dhabi for the talks with Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday and Thursday, a White House official said.

• Russia would regard the deployment of any foreign military forces or infrastructure in Ukraine as foreign intervention and treat those forces as legitimate targets, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow said, citing Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

• Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said that a proposal by European powers to deploy NATO-member troops in Ukraine as part of a proposed security guarantee and peace deal was unacceptable for Russia.
• German authorities detained at least five people suspected of operating a network that exported goods to Russian defence companies, contravening EU sanctions imposed after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, federal prosecutors announced.

Sport

• FIFA President Gianni Infantino said he supports the reinstatement of Russia in the football federation and called for an end to the country’s four-year exclusion from international tournaments, including the World Cup in Qatar and the qualifying matches for the 2026 World Cup.
• Sport federations that claim sport is separate from politics should not include armed conflicts in that definition, because “war is a crime, not politics”, Ukrainian Minister of Sports Matvii Bidnyi said in an interview with the AFP news agency in advance of the Winter Olympics.

Energy

• Indian oil refiners will need a wind-down period to complete Russian oil deals before imports from that country can be halted, Reuters reported after Trump announced a trade agreement with India that included a halt to oil purchases from Russia.

• Ukraine’s electricity imports jumped by 40 percent in January 2026 compared with December 2025, hitting a record 894 gigawatt hours amid constant Russian attacks on the Ukrainian energy system, which have left millions of people without power and heating, Reuters reported, citing analysts.

• The EU’s decision last week to ban Russian gas imports was “100 percent legally sound”, the bloc’s energy commissioner, Dan Jorgensen, told reporters in Portugal’s capital, Lisbon, adding it would prevent Russia from weaponising energy amid its war on Ukraine.

Khan Younis, Gaza – The headlines read that Israel has finally reopened the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, allowing injured Palestinians desperate for medical aid to leave.

However, the reality is that on the first day of the opening, on Monday, Israel only allowed five patients to exit Gaza via the crossing, forcing hundreds, if not thousands, of others to wait.

Mohammed Abu Mostafa is one of the lucky five. The 17-year-old travelled on Monday with his mother, Randa, to southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, and then on to Rafah, which has been closed by Israel for two years as it waged its genocidal war on Gaza, killing more than 70,000 Palestinians.

Randa told Al Jazeera that she had received a phone call on Monday morning informing her that Mohammed had been included in the first list of wounded patients scheduled to travel, and that they were instructed to head immediately to the Red Crescent Hospital in Khan Younis.

The reopening of Rafah, Gaza’s only land crossing that does not go through Israel, has been much touted as evidence of the progress of the second phase of the United States-backed Gaza “ceasefire” deal.

But events on Monday revealed a different reality, marked by strict security restrictions, complex procedures, and limited numbers being allowed to cross, falling far short of expectations and the scale of Gaza’s accumulated humanitarian needs.

Each of the five patients being allowed to leave was accompanied by two people as per Israeli orders, bringing the total number of travellers to 15, according to information provided to Gaza’s health authorities.

Mohammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Gaza’s al-Shifa Medical Complex, told Al Jazeera that this was the only group that departed, despite prior plans with the World Health Organization (WHO) – the body overseeing coordination between Egypt and Israel – for the departure of 50 patients daily.

Egyptian official sources have told Al Jazeera that 50 Palestinians were also permitted to return to Gaza via the Rafah crossing, though no information is yet available on whether they have actually reached the Palestinian side.

Ismail al-Thawabta, the director of Gaza’s Government Media Office, highlighted just how low these numbers are compared with the approximately 22,000 people needing to leave Gaza for treatment abroad. Meanwhile, about 80,000 Palestinians who left Gaza during the war want to return, he said.

Eye injury

Mohammed was injured in an Israeli air attack a year and a half ago, near where his family had been displaced in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, Randa said. He sustained a direct injury to his eye, severely affecting his optic nerve and ability to see.

“My son has been suffering immensely since his injury. Day after day, his condition kept worsening, and there is no treatment available for him in Gaza,” Randa said, while waiting in the hospital courtyard alongside other patients and their relatives.

Despite her joy at finally being able to accompany her son on his journey, Randa feels a sense of anguish at having to leave four of her six children behind, as she was only permitted to take one child as a second companion.

“What matters to me now is that my son regains his sight and can see again with his own eyes. That is my only concern at the moment,” Randa said.

“I also hope to return to Gaza soon after my son recovers, that the blockade will be lifted, and that all patients will be able to travel, just like my son.”

Israeli restrictions

In the Red Crescent Hospital courtyard, dozens of patients on travel waiting lists expressed frustration over the first-day restrictions at Rafah.

Several patients, including those with amputations, gathered at the hospital, hoping to be permitted to travel to Egypt for treatment.

Despite patients and their families arriving early in the morning with high hopes, Israeli authorities refused to permit more than five patients to leave, leading to widespread dissatisfaction with the complex mechanisms accompanying the crossing’s partial reopening.

The multi-stage security procedure of Palestinians moving through the Rafah crossing begins with the preparation of daily lists of candidates for travel, which are then referred to the Israeli side for pre-travel security screening.

No one is allowed to pass through the crossing or enter it without explicit Israeli approval. The European Union Border Assistance Mission deployed to Rafah is limited to monitoring the process and verifying identities.

Arrivals in Gaza, after initial identity verification at the crossing under European supervision, are subject to additional inspection procedures at checkpoints located in areas under Israeli military control.

Raed al-Nims, the Gaza Red Crescent’s head of media, told Al Jazeera that the organisation was still waiting for updates regarding the transfer of more patients for treatment through the crossing.

He added that a group of patients was successfully transferred to Israel on Monday through the Kerem Abu Salem crossing, in coordination with the WHO.

Desperate need

Ibrahim Abu Thuraya was also one of the five patients allowed to leave Gaza on Monday.

Ibrahim was injured in the early months of the war, sustaining wounds that led to the amputation of his left hand and an injury to his left eye, where shrapnel is still embedded.

“Day after day, my eye condition is deteriorating, and I feel severe pain, especially since the shrapnel is lodged behind it and there are no medical capabilities in Gaza to deal with it,” he said from Khan Younis, before he travelled to Rafah. “Doctors told me that I need to travel abroad.”

Ibrahim was informed on Monday morning by the WHO and Gaza’s Ministry of Health that he had been approved for travel. He will be accompanied by his wife, Samar, and their son.

“I have suffered greatly for two full years just to be able to leave for treatment, and there are thousands of wounded like me,” he said. “I hope the crossing will be opened permanently.”

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has finally reopened after months of closure as a result of Israel’s devastating war on the Gaza Strip.

Hopes were running high that the freedom of movement would ease the dire humanitarian crisis created by this war.

But Israel has set strict conditions on who can leave the Strip and who can enter.

Now, only a small number of people are allowed to move in both directions – mainly for medical evacuations.

But much-needed humanitarian aid and construction materials are still barred from entering the Strip, which is in ruins.

Will this reopening ease the suffering of Palestinians after two years of war?

Presenter: Maleen Saeed

Guests:

Hussein Haridy – Former Egyptian assistant foreign minister

Mosab Nasser – CEO of FAJR Global, an organisation that provides medical care, surgical missions and emergency evacuations

Akiva Eldar – Political analyst and contributor to Haaretz newspaper

Name of Israeli military facility at Gaza crossing with Egypt linked to Zionist anthem and pro-settler NGO, signalling a shift, analysts say. from security control to West Bank-style land grab and dehumanisation of Palestinians.

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has reopened partially for a few Palestinians after an 18-month closure in tandem with an added restriction to control the movement of returnees. The Israeli army has set up a checkpoint called Regavim in an area under its control outside the crossing for those entering Gaza from Egypt.

As the first trickle of humanity passed through the gates on Monday, official Israeli military documents gave it a name that indicates the facility is no longer being treated as a border crossing but as an operation for population control.

In an official statement published on its website on Sunday, the Israeli army announced the completion of what it called the “Regavim Inspection Nekez”.

While the Israeli military frames this technical language as routine, analysts told Al Jazeera that the choice of the words “Regavim” and “Nekez” indicates Israel’s long-term intentions.

Al Jazeera spoke to Israeli affairs experts who argued that these terms reveal a dual strategy: invoking Zionist nostalgia to claim the land while using engineering terms to dehumanise the Palestinian people.

Historical code: ‘Clod after clod’

For analyst Mohannad Mustafa, the name Regavim is not random; it is a deliberate ideological trigger intended to resonate with the Israeli government’s far-right base.

“In Hebrew, Regavim means ‘clods of earth’ or patches of arable land,” Mustafa explained. “But it is not just a word. It is a trigger for the Zionist collective memory of land redemption.”

The term is inextricably linked to the Zionist children’s song and poem Dunam Po Ve Dunam Sham (A Dunam Here, a Dunam There) by Joshua Friedman, which was an anthem for the early settlement movement. The lyrics celebrate the acquisition of land: “Dunam here and dunam there/Clod after clod (Regev ahar regev)/Thus we shall redeem the land of the people.”

“By officially naming the Rafah corridor Regavim, the army is sending a subliminal message,” Mustafa said. “They are framing their presence in Gaza not as a temporary security mission but as a form of ‘redeeming the land’ identical to the ideology of the early pioneers.”

Political code: The ‘West Bank model’

Beyond the historical nostalgia, the name has a direct line to the present-day architects of Israel’s annexation policies: the Regavim Movement.

This far-right NGO, cofounded in 2006 by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has been the primary force behind the expansion of Israeli control in the occupied West Bank. A 2023 investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz detailed how the organisation essentially became the “intelligence officer” for the state, using drones and field data to map and demolish Palestinian structures in Area C, the 61 percent of the occupied West Bank under full Israeli control.

Mustafa argued that applying this name to the Rafah crossing signals the transfer of the “civil administration” model from the West Bank to Gaza.

“It suggests that Gaza is no longer a separate entity but a territory to be managed with the same tools used to prevent Palestinian statehood in Judea and Samaria,” Mustafa said, using the Israeli terms for the West Bank.

Operational code: A ‘political brand’ and a ‘drain’

Analyst Ihab Jabareen takes the name Regavim a step further. He argued it has evolved beyond its linguistic meaning into a modern “political brand” for the settlement right and is being used to normalise a long-term Israeli presence.

However, Jabareen said the use of the term Nekez in the Israeli military statement portends even more danger.

“While Regavim operates as a political brand, Nekez reveals the cold, engineering mindset of the military,” Jabareen told Al Jazeera. “A Nekez is a drainage point. It is a hydraulic term used for managing sewage, floodwaters or irrigation – not for processing human beings.”

Jabareen argued that describing a human border crossing as a “drain” reflects three chilling assumptions now formalised in military doctrine:

1. Dehumanisation: “The Palestinian is no longer a citizen. They are a ‘fluid mass’ or a ‘flow’ that must be regulated to prevent overflow,” Jabareen said.
2. The end of negotiations: “You do not negotiate with a drain. Rafah is no longer a political border subject to sovereignty. It is an engineering problem to be managed.
3. Infrastructure, not a border: “Security is now being managed like a sewage system – purely technical, devoid of rights.”

“This is colder and more dangerous than standard settlement rhetoric,” Jabareen warned. “It converts the political issue of Gaza into a permanent technical function.”

A formula for ‘quiet control’

Both analysts agreed that the official adoption of these two terms points to a reality that is neither a full withdrawal nor declared annexation.

“It is a formula for ‘quiet control’,” Jabareen explained. “Israel doesn’t need to declare immediate settlement to control the territory. By treating the land as ‘Regavim’ (soil to be held) and the people as a ‘Nekez’ (a flow to be filtered), they are establishing a long-term reality where Gaza is an administered space, never an independent entity.”

Mustafa concurred: “The name ‘Regavim’ tells the settlers: ‘We have returned to the land.’ And the official designation ‘Nekez’ tells the security establishment: ‘We have the valve to turn the human flow on or off at will.’”

The long-awaited re-opening of Gaza’s Rafah crossing has been deemed too late for many seeking treatments, in life-or-death conditions. Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary spoke to a mother who had lost her sick child while waiting for the crossing to open.

Medical charity has been barred for not providing Israeli authorities with personal details of its staff in the enclave.

Israel says it will terminate the humanitarian operations in Gaza of Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, after it failed to provide a list of its Palestinian staff, further depriving Palestinians in the besieged enclave of life-saving assistance.

In December, Israel announced it would prevent 37 aid organisations, including MSF, from working in Gaza from March 1 for failing to submit detailed information about their Palestinian employees, drawing widespread condemnation from NGOs and the United Nations.

“The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism is moving to terminate the activities of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the Gaza Strip,” the ministry said on Sunday.

The decision followed “MSF’s failure to submit lists of local employees, a requirement applicable to all humanitarian organisations operating in the region”, it added.

The ministry had earlier alleged that two MSF employees had links with Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which the charity has denied.

On Sunday, the ministry said MSF had committed in early January to sharing the staff list as required by the Israeli authorities but ultimately refrained, citing concerns for staff safety and a lack of assurances over how the information would be used.

“Subsequently, MSF announced it does not intend to proceed with the registration process at all, contradicting its previous statements and the binding protocol,” the ministry added, saying, “MSF will cease its operations and depart the Gaza Strip by February 28.”

Israel’s decision to terminate MSF’s operations in Gaza “is an extension of Israel’s systematic weaponisation and instrumentalisation of aid”, James Smith, an emergency physician based in London, told Al Jazeera.

“Israel has systematically targeted the Palestinian healthcare system, killing more than 1,700 Palestinian healthcare workers,” thereby “creating a profound dependency on international organisations”, Smith said.

MSF said 15 of its employees have been killed over the course of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, which began on October 7, 2023.

MSF has long been a key provider of medical and humanitarian aid in the enclave, particularly since the war began.

The charity said it currently provides at least 20 percent of hospital beds in the territory and operates about 20 health centres.

In 2025 alone, it carried out more than 800,000 medical consultations and more than 10,000 infant deliveries. It also provides drinking water.

Aid groups warned that without international support provided by organisations such as MSF, critical services such as emergency care, maternal healthcare and paediatric treatment could collapse entirely in Gaza, leaving hundreds of thousands of residents without basic medical care.

Gaza City – With what remains of her wounded forearms, Nebal al-Hessi scrolls on her phone to follow news updates on the reopening of the Rafah land crossing from her family’s tent in an-Nazla, Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip.

Nebal’s hands were amputated in an Israeli artillery attack on the home where she had taken shelter with her husband and her daughter in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, on October 7, 2024.

More than a year later, the 25-year-old mother is one of thousands of wounded people placing their hopes on the reopening of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt as they seek access to adequate medical treatment outside the besieged Palestinian territory.

“It’s been a year and five months since I got injured … Every day, I think about tomorrow, that I might travel, but I don’t know,” Nebal tells Al Jazeera in a quiet voice.

Recalling the attack, Nebal says she was sitting on her bed holding her baby daughter Rita, trying to communicate with her family in northern Gaza, when the shell hit suddenly.

“I was trying to catch an internet signal to call my family … my daughter was in my lap… suddenly the shell hit. Then there was dust; I don’t remember anything else,” Nebal says.

“It was the shell fragments that amputated my hands,” she recounts.

‘Life is completely paralysed’

Nebal was taken to the hospital with severe injuries, including complete amputation of both upper limbs up to the elbows, internal bleeding, and a leg injury. She underwent two abdominal surgeries.

She spent about 40 days in the hospital before beginning a new stage of suffering in displacement tents, without the most basic long-term care.

Today, Nebal, an English translation graduate and mother to two-year-old Rita, relies almost entirely on her family for the simplest daily tasks.

“I can’t eat or drink on my own … even getting dressed, my mother, sister, and sister-in-law mainly help me,” she says sorrowfully.

“Even going to the bathroom requires help. I need things in front of me because I cannot bring them myself.”

Nebal talks about the pain of motherhood left suspended, as her daughter grows up before her eyes without her being able to hold her or care for her.

“My little daughter wants me to change her, feed her, give her milk, hold her in my arms like other mothers… she asks me, and I can’t,” Nebal says with sorrow.

“My life is completely paralysed.”

Doctors tell Nebal that she urgently needs to travel to continue treatment and have prosthetic limbs fitted, emphasising that she needs advanced prosthetics to regain a degree of independence, not just cosmetic appearance.

“Doctors tell me that I need a state or an institution to adopt my case so I can gradually return to living my normal life,” she adds.

With Palestinian authorities announcing arrangements to open the Rafah crossing today for batches of wounded people and medical patients, Nebal, like many others, lives in a state of anticipation mixed with fear.

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, thousands of wounded still require specialised treatment unavailable inside the Strip, while the scheduling of names depends on medical lists and complex approvals, amid the absence of a clear timetable or publicly announced priority criteria.

Nebal says she received repeated calls over the past months from medical organisations informing her that she would be among the first on the travel lists.

“They contacted me more than once, told me to prepare… they gave me hope,” she adds. “But this time, no one has contacted me yet.”

Today, Nebal fears her case might be overlooked again, or that the crossing’s opening could be merely a formality, disregarding the urgent needs of patients like her.

“I die a little every day because of my current situation … not figuratively. I’ve been like this for a year and four months, and my daughter is growing up in front of me while I am helpless,” she says.

Uncertain future

Nada Arhouma, a 16-year-old girl whose life has been completely altered by a single injury, is also hoping the crossing opens as soon as possible.

Nada, who was displaced with her family from Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza amid Israel’s two-year genocidal war on Gaza, was hit in the face by shrapnel while inside a displacement tent in Sheikh Radwan, Gaza City.

The incident caused the complete loss of one eye, in addition to fractures in her facial bones, orbital damage, and severe tissue tearing.

Her father, Abdul Rahman Arhouma, 49, says that her health deteriorated over time despite treatment attempts in Gaza.

“She entered the ICU at al-Shifa Hospital, then was transferred to Nasser Hospital. She stayed there for about two and a half months. They tried multiple times to graft her eye, but each operation failed, and the disfigurement worsened,” he says.

According to her father, Nada underwent three surgical attempts using tissue from her hand and other facial areas, but all failed, further complicating her medical and psychological condition.

“My daughter bleeds from her eye every day, and she has pus and discharge,” he says. “I am standing helpless, unable to do anything.”

Today, Nada needs constant assistance to walk and suffers from persistent dizziness and balance weakness. Her vision in the healthy eye is also affected.

“Even going to the bathroom, my sisters help me. I can’t walk alone,” Nada tells Al Jazeera in a soft voice.

Nada has an official medical referral and urgently needs to travel for reconstructive surgery and the implantation of a prosthetic eye. But her ability to get the treatments remains uncertain pending the reopening of Rafah – as is the case for other patients and wounded individuals.

“Since I’ve been in the hospital, I hear every week: next week the crossing will open. Honestly, I feel they are lying. I’m not optimistic,” Nada says.

Her father told Al Jazeera that the continuing wait for the Rafah crossing to reopen was “disappointing”.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t understand anything. All the reports came from Israeli sources, and it seemed Rafah looked like a gate for prisoners, not for travel,” he says.

“Our situation is difficult, and it’s clear we face a long wait to secure my daughter’s right to treatment.”

Pilot reopening

Sunday was the first pilot reopening day at Rafah, amid ambiguity and a lack of clarity about the mechanism, particularly regarding the number of patients and wounded who would be allowed to travel.

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, thousands of patients and wounded people require urgent medical transfers outside the Strip, amid the collapse of the healthcare system and lack of resources.

The World Health Organization has repeatedly confirmed that Gaza’s health system is “on the brink of collapse”, and that delays in travelling for critical cases threaten their lives.

Meanwhile, Israel has said it will only allow those whose names it has approved in advance to cross, without any clear announcement on daily numbers or approved criteria, leaving families of patients in constant anticipation and frustration.

For Nada’s family, this “experimental opening” means little so far.

“We can’t plan, neither to stay nor to leave,” her father says. “The decision is not in our hands. One lives in a whirlpool, unable to decide what happens. Even the Ministry of Health has not disclosed anything.”

‘Devastating’ struggle to access treatment

Raed Hamad, 52 and a father of four, is also desperate to leave Gaza in order to seek treatments and medication that are not available in the war-ravaged territory.

Hamad was undergoing kidney cancer treatment a year before the war started. He underwent kidney removal after tumour detection to prevent its spread. But the outbreak of the war in October 2023 halted his treatment protocol, significantly affecting his health.

Hamad lives in the remains of his destroyed home in Khan Younis, amid the devastation left by the war, under deteriorating humanitarian conditions.

He describes his current struggle to access treatment during the war, alongside other cancer patients he meets in the hospital’s oncology department, as “devastating.”

“The war has made it almost impossible to obtain medicines and medical supplies. Cancer treatments and known treatment protocols are unavailable,” he says.

“Food, its nature, and the harsh crises we’ve endured during the war—all of this has greatly affected my health.”

Raed’s weight dropped from 92kg (203lb) to 65kg (143lb) due to complications from the disease, lack of treatment, and malnutrition.

“I continue my treatment whenever I can at my own expense,” he says. “Every time I go to the hospital, I cannot find my treatment and see that capabilities in Gaza are extremely limited. My immunity is low, and every day I face new hardships.

“I need to complete my protocol, undergo nuclear scans, and obtain some essential medications to continue my treatment.”

Israeli occupation authorities have intensified their campaign of forced displacement across the occupied West Bank, issuing expulsion orders to an entire Bedouin community east of Ramallah and escalating demolition policies in occupied East Jerusalem.

The measures come amid a surge in settler violence targeting educational institutions in the Jordan Valley and residential homes in Qalqilya, further shrinking the living space for Palestinians under military occupation.

‘Zone of expulsion’

On Sunday morning, Israeli forces raided the Abu Najeh al-Kaabneh Bedouin community in al-Mughayyir village, east of Ramallah.

Local sources confirmed to the Wafa news agency that soldiers delivered a military order requiring the community’s 40 residents to dismantle their homes and leave the area within 48 hours. The army declared the site a “closed military zone”, a tactic frequently used to clear Palestinian land for settlement expansion.

During the raid, Israeli troops arrested three foreign solidarity activists attempting to document the eviction order.

The expulsion order is part of a widening campaign of ethnic cleansing in the region. It follows the complete displacement of the Shallal al-Auja community north of Jericho, which concluded on Saturday. After years of systematic harassment, the last three families of the community were forced to leave, marking the erasure of a presence that once included 120 families.

Al-Aqsa provocations

In occupied East Jerusalem, Israel’s municipal policies of urban restriction continued to displace Palestinians.

On Sunday, Yasser Maher Dana, a Palestinian resident of the Jabal Mukaber neighbourhood, was coerced into demolishing his 100-square-metre (1,076-square-foot) home. The structure, located in the al-Salaa district, housed four family members.

Israeli authorities routinely force Palestinians in East Jerusalem to execute their own demolition orders to avoid paying exorbitant fees charged by municipal crews and forces if they carry out the destruction themselves. These demolitions are justified by a lack of building permits, which rights groups say are nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain in the city.

Simultaneously, in Silwan, south of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the municipality issued a demolition order for a residential room belonging to the al-Taweel family, granting them a 10-day deadline. This follows notices issued three days before demolishing two homes belonging to brothers in the Wadi Qaddum neighbourhood.

Tensions also rose at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, stormed by dozens of Israeli settlers under heavy police protection. According to the Jerusalem governorate, the incursion included a provocative “wedding blessing” ritual performed by settlers for a bride in the courtyards, a violation of the site’s status quo.

Settlers attack schools and homes

In the northern Jordan Valley, Israeli settlers, backed by the military, disrupted the school day at the al-Maleh School.

Azmi Balawneh, the director of education in Tubas, reported that settlers blocked teachers from reaching the school, which serves children from the vulnerable Bedouin communities of al-Hadidiya, Makhoul, and Samra.

This harassment coincides with the establishment of a new illegal settlement outpost in the al-Maleh area just a week ago. In the nearby Khirbet Samra, settlers erected a new tent on Sunday morning to seize more pastoral land.

Meanwhile, in the village of Faraata, east of Qalqilya, settlers from the illegal “Havat Gilad” outpost attacked the home of Hijazi Yamin.

Yamin told Wafa that settlers pelted his house and unleashed an attack dog on his family, trapping his wife and seven children inside.

“We live in a constant state of insecurity,” Yamin said, noting this was the second attack in a week. “I am afraid to leave my wife and children alone or let them go to school.”

Military raids and closures

Israeli forces conducted multiple raids across the West Bank on Sunday, arresting at least four Palestinians. In Hebron, two brothers were arrested following a raid on their family home. More arrests were reported in the village of Duma, south of Nablus, and in the town of al-Ubeidiya, east of Bethlehem.

In the northern city of Jenin, military vehicles stormed the city centre and the Jabel Abu Dhuhair neighbourhood. During the incursion, troops deliberately destroyed street vendors’ carts at the Cinema Roundabout, targeting the local economy.

Movement restrictions also tightened significantly. For the second consecutive day, the Israeli army closed the main entrance to Turmus Aya, north of Ramallah, and blocked the Atara military checkpoint since the early morning hours, severing connections between northern and central West Bank cities. According to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, Israel now operates 916 military checkpoints and gates throughout the West Bank.

Ali Larijani says efforts to get a framework for negotiations are advancing, as a US naval deployment in the Gulf fuels concerns.

Iran’s top security official has said progress is being made towards negotiations with the United States, even as the Iranian foreign minister again accused Washington of raising tensions between the two countries.

Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said in a social media post on Saturday that, “unlike the artificial media war atmosphere, the formation of a structure for negotiations is progressing”.

Larijani’s post did not provide further details about the purported framework for talks.

Tensions have been rising between Iran and the US for weeks amid US President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to attack the country over a crackdown on recent antigovernment protests, and his push to curtail the Iranian nuclear programme.

The Trump administration has also deployed a naval “armada” to Iran, led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, escalating fears of a possible military confrontation.

Senior Iranian leaders have said they are open to negotiations with Washington, but only once Trump stops threatening to attack the country.

Earlier this week, Trump said the US vessels being sent to Iran were ready to use “violence, if necessary” if Iran refused to sit down for talks on its nuclear programme.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) also warned Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Friday over its plans to hold a two-day naval exercise in the Strait of Hormuz, a Gulf maritime passage that is critical to global trade.

“Any unsafe and unprofessional behavior near US forces, regional partners or commercial vessels increases risks of collision, escalation, and destabilization,” CENTCOM said in a statement.

Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi hit back on Saturday, saying in a social media post that the US military, operating off Iran’s shores, “is now attempting to dictate how our Powerful Armed Forces should conduct target practice on their own turf”.

“CENTCOM is also requesting ‘professionalism’ from a national military the U.S. Government has listed as a ‘terrorist organization’, all while recognizing the right of that same ‘terrorist organization’ to conduct military drills!” Araghchi wrote.

The US designated the IRGC, an elite branch of the Iranian military, as a “terrorist” organisation in 2019, during Trump’s first term in office.

Araghchi added, “The presence of outside forces in our region has always caused the exact opposite of what is declared: promoting escalation instead of de-escalation”.

Reporting from the Iranian capital, Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi said the situation remains “quite fragile and delicate” amid the US military buildup in the region.

Still, he said that Saturday’s statement by Larijani, the Iranian security official, about progress being made on efforts to hold negotiations was a “positive” sign.

“Diplomatic [efforts] are [on]going,” Asadi said, noting that senior Iranian officials have held talks with allies in recent days amid a push to prevent a confrontation between Washington and Tehran.

The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani met with Larajani in Tehran on Saturday to discuss “efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region”.

Sheikh Mohammed reiterated Qatar’s “support for all efforts aimed at reducing tensions and achieving peaceful solutions that enhance security and stability in the region”, the ministry said of the talks in a statement.

“He also stressed the need for concerted efforts to spare the peoples of the region the consequences of escalation and to continue coordination with brotherly and friendly countries to address differences through diplomatic means,” the statement added.

The attack comes amid fears of a return to conflict following clashes between government troops and Tigrayan forces.

One person has been killed and another injured in drone strikes in Ethiopia’s ‍northern Tigray ‍region, a senior Tigrayan official and a humanitarian worker said, in another sign of renewed conflict between regional and federal forces.

The Tigrayan official on Saturday said the drone strikes hit two Isuzu trucks near Enticho and Gendebta, two places in Tigray about 20km (12 miles) apart.

The official said the Ethiopian National Defence Force launched the strikes, but ​did not provide evidence.

A local humanitarian worker confirmed the strikes had happened. Both asked not to be named, the Reuters news agency reported.

It was not immediately clear what the trucks were carrying.

TPLF-affiliated news outlet Dimtsi Weyane posted pictures on Facebook that ‌it said showed the trucks damaged in the strikes. It said the trucks were transporting food ‌and cooking items.

Pro-government activists posting on ⁠social media said the trucks were carrying weapons.

Ethiopia’s national army fought fighters from the Tigray People’s ⁠Liberation Front (TPLF) for two years until late 2022, in a war ​researchers say killed hundreds of thousands through direct violence, the ‍collapse of healthcare and famine.

Fighting broke out between regional and national forces in Tsemlet in the disputed territory of western Tigray earlier this week, an area claimed by forces from the neighbouring Amhara region.

Tension has been brewing over the presence of troops from Amhara and the neighbouring country of Eritrea in Tigray, violating a peace deal in November 2022 that ended the war.

Last year, the head of Tigray’s interim administration established by Addis Ababa was forced to flee Mekele, the regional capital, amid growing divisions within the TPLF, which controlled all of Ethiopia before being displaced by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

Addis Ababa accuses the group of forging ties with neighbouring Eritrea and “actively preparing to wage war against Ethiopia”.

Earlier this week, national carrier Ethiopian Airlines cancelled flights to Tigray, where residents rushed to try to withdraw cash from banks.

The Tigray ‌war ended in 2022, but disagreements have continued over a range of issues, including contested territories in western ‍Tigray, and the delayed disarmament of Tigray forces.

The province is also suffering the effects of United States President Donald Trump’s funding cuts to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) last year, which was once Ethiopia’s largest source of humanitarian aid.

Humanitarian organisations say up to 80 percent of the population is in need of emergency support, and funding shortfalls are placing a strain on the health system.

The African Union’s chairperson, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, on Friday urged all parties to “exercise maximum restraint” and “resolve all outstanding issues through constructive dialogue”.

He emphasised the importance of preserving the “hard-won gains achieved under the AU-led Permanent Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (COHA)” signed in Pretoria in 2022.

Israel says it will reopen the Rafah crossing on Sunday after nearly two years — but only for restricted, tightly controlled movement of people. Humanitarian aid remains barred. Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reports from Rafah as Israel retains full security control.

Kurmin Wali, Nigeria – Like most Sundays in Kurmin Wali, the morning of January 18 began with early preparations for church and, later on, shopping at the weekly market.

But by 9:30am, it became clear to residents of the village in the Kajuru local government area of Nigeria’s Kaduna State that this Sunday would not be a normal one.

Gunmen known locally as bandits arrived in the village in numbers, armed with AK47 rifles.

They broke down doors and ordered people out of their homes and the village’s three churches.

They blocked the village exits before taking people and marching dozens into the forest at gunpoint.

Some captives were taken from church, while others were forcibly kidnapped as gunmen moved from house to house.

In one house, more than 30 members of an extended family were abducted.

Jummai Idris, a relative of the family that was taken, remains inconsolable.

She was home the day of the attack and did not go out.

“When I heard shouting, I took two children and we hid behind a house. That was how they [the bandits] missed us,” she told Al Jazeera.

“But I heard every shout, every cry and footstep as they picked up people from our house and surrounding houses,” she added, between sobs.

With tears streaming down her face, Idris recounts how she kept calling out the names of her missing family members – men, women and children.

Her house sits on the edge of the village, close to a bandits’ crossing point.

“I don’t know what they are doing to them now. I don’t know if they’ve eaten or not,” she said.

A total of 177 people were abducted that day. Eleven escaped their captors, but about a quarter of Kurmin Wali’s population remains captive.

Initially, state officials denied the attack had taken place.

In the immediate aftermath, Kaduna’s police commissioner called reports a “falsehood peddled by conflict entrepreneurs”.

Finally, two days later, Nigeria’s national police spokesman, Benjamin Hundeyin, admitted an “abduction” had indeed occurred on Sunday. He said police had launched security operations with the aim of “locating and safely rescuing the victims and restoring calm to the area”.

Uba Sani, Kaduna state’s governor, added that more than just rescuing the abductees, the government was committed to ensuring “that we establish permanent protection for them”.

There has been a police presence in Kurmin Wali since then. But it is not enough to reassure villagers.

Locals say the police are not there to protect the village, but merely to compile the names of victims they for days denied existed.

At the premises of Haske Cherubim and Seraphim Movement Church, the largest church in the village, days after the attack, a rust-coloured door lay on the floor, pulled off its hinges. Inside the mud-brick building, the site was chaotic.

Plastic chairs overturned in panic were strewn around the room – just as the kidnappers had left them.

‘Only the recklessly bold can stay’

The church building was where the captors brought everyone before marching them into the forest surrounding the village.

Residents said the gunmen divided themselves into different groups, targeting homes and churches in the village.

Maigirma Shekarau was among those taken before he managed to escape.

“They tied us, beat us up, before arriving us into the bush. We trekked a long distance before taking a break,” he said of his journey with his captors.

Shekarau, a father of five, was holding his three-year-old daughter when he and others were taken.

“When we reached an abandoned village, I ducked inside a room with my little daughter when the attackers weren’t looking. I closed the door and waited. After what seemed like eternity, and sure they were gone, I opened the door and walked back home, avoiding the bush path,” he said, now back in the village.

But on returning home, his heart sank. He and his three-year-old were the only ones who made it home. The rest of the family is still held by the kidnappers.

Standing in a parched field of long dried grass, Shekarau says the village no longer feels like home.

The village chief was also taken, but managed to escape. He now presides over a community hopeful for the return of the missing – but too scared to stay.

“Everyone is on edge. People are confused and don’t know what to do. Some haven’t eaten. There are entire families that are missing,” said Ishaku Danazumi, the village chief.

Danazumi says the kidnappers regularly visit and loot the village grain stores and the villagers’ possessions, including mobile phones.

Two days after the attack, residents said the bandits rode through their village again.

On that day, the community also received a ransom demand.

“They accused us of taking 10 motorcycles they hid in the bush to evade soldiers who operated here the week before,” Danazumi said. “But we didn’t see those bikes.”

The chief said the captors told him the return of the 10 bikes was a precondition for the return of his people.

But deep inside, he knows, more demands will follow.

In the village, residents wait in their thatch and mud-brick houses, hoping for their loved ones to return.

But because of fear and the tense situation, many are leaving the farming community.

“Anyone thinking about remaining in this village needs to reconsider,” said Panchan Madami, a resident who also survived the attack.

“Only the recklessly bold can stay with the current state of security here.”

Villagers said that before the January 18 attack, 21 people kidnapped by the bandits were returned to them after a ransom was paid. But just two days later, a quarter of the village was taken.

“It will be stupid to stay here, hoping things will be OK,” added Madami.

The government says it will establish a military post to protect the community from further attacks. But that is not comforting enough for Idris, who has also made up her mind to leave.

“I’m not coming back here,” she said, gathering her belongings to leave the village where she grew up and married. “I just hope the rest of my family gets back.”

President Donald Trump says he is speaking to Iran’s leadership amid a significant US military build-up in the Middle East, as regional leaders push for diplomacy to avoid a new conflict.

White House “Border Czar” Tom Homan said federal immigration agents will conduct “targeted” rather than sweeping operations in Minnesota going forward. Homan is replacing controversial “commander at large” Gregory Bovino as head of operations in the state.

Emmy-winning Owda points to changes in TikTok’s US ownership, remarks from Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to explain ban.

Award-winning Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda has said she has been permanently banned from TikTok, days after the social media platform was acquired by new investors in the United States.

Owda, an Emmy Award-winning journalist and contributor to Al Jazeera’s AJ+ from Gaza, shared a video on her Instagram and X accounts on Wednesday, telling her followers that her TikTok account had been banned.

“TikTok deleted my account. I had 1.4 million followers there, and I have been building that platform for four years,” Owda said in the video filmed from Gaza.

“I expected that it will be restricted, like every time, not banned forever,” she added.

Al Jazeera sent a query to TikTok inquiring about Owda’s account and is waiting for a reply.

Hours after Owda shared her video, an account that appeared to have the same username was still visible on TikTok with a message that said: “Posts that some may find uncomfortable are unavailable.”

The last post visible on that account was from September 20, 2025, nearly three weeks before a ceasefire was reached in Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

In her video on Wednesday, Owda pointed to recent remarks from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as Adam Presser, the new CEO of TikTok’s US arm, as a possible explanation for the ban.

Netanyahu met with pro-Israel influencers in New York in September last year, telling them that he hoped the “purchase” of TikTok “goes through”.

“We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield in which we engage, and the most important ones are social media,” Netanyahu, who is a war crimes suspect, said at the time.

“The most important purchase that is going on right now is … TikTok,” Netanyahu added. “TikTok, number one, number one, and I hope it goes through, because it can be consequential,” he said.

TikTok announced last week that a deal to establish a separate version of the platform in the US had been completed, with the new entity controlled by investment firms, many of which are American companies, including several linked to US President Donald Trump.

Owda also shared an undated video of Adam Presser, the new CEO of TikTok’s US arm.

In the video, Presser speaks about changes made at TikTok, where he previously worked as head of operations in the US, saying that “the use of the term Zionist as a proxy for a protected attribute” had been designated “as hate speech”.

“There’s no finish line to moderating hate speech, identifying hateful trends, trying to keep the platform safe,” Presser said.

Zionism is a nationalist ideology that emerged in the late 1800s in Europe, calling for the creation of a Jewish state.

Owda’s social media presence grew from posting daily videos in which she greeted her audience, saying, “It’s Bisan From Gaza – and I’m still alive.”

She made a documentary of the same name with Al Jazeera’s AJ+, which was awarded an Emmy in the Outstanding Hard News Feature Story category in 2024.

Her video on Wednesday came as Israel’s top court again postponed making a decision on whether foreign journalists should be allowed to enter and report on Gaza independently of the Israeli military.

Despite the ongoing ceasefire, an Israeli attack last week killed three Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 207 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, with the “vast majority” killed by Israeli forces.

A Los Angeles County judge ruled Wednesday that a corruption case against L.A. City Councilman Curren Price can move forward to trial, ensuring the misconduct scandal will hang over the veteran politician’s final year in office.

L.A. County Superior Court Judge Shelly Torrealba determined that prosecutors had provided enough evidence to move forward on four counts of voting on matters in which Price had a conflict of interest, four counts of embezzlement and four counts of perjury.

Price, who is set to leave the City Council after reaching his term limit at the end of the year, declined to comment after the hearing.

The councilman, who has represented South L.A. for more than a decade, was charged in June 2023. Prosecutors allege Price repeatedly voted to approve sales of land to developers or funding for agencies who had done business with his wife, Del Richardson, and her consulting company. Some of the votes involved funding and grants for the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the city housing authority.

Price, 75, is also accused of perjury for failing to include Richardson’s income on disclosure forms and embezzlement for including her on his city health insurance plan before they were legally married. He is due back in court in March, Torrealba said.

Richardson was named as a “suspect” in the district attorney’s office’s initial investigation in 2022, according to documents made public last year, but she was never charged with a crime. She has been among a group of Price’s supporters who have been in court for the past week. The two wore matching burgundy suits during Wednesday’s hearing.

Much of the weeklong proceeding centered around whether Price knew of potential conflicts of interest before casting votes, or intended to hide his financial stakes in them from the public. Delphi Smith, a former staffer for the councilman, and Price’s deputy chief of staff Maritza Alcaraz took the stand to explain the process they used to flag problematic council votes for Price and insisted they made their best efforts to highlight agenda items linked to vendors or agencies who had worked with Richardson.

“If the Councilman voted on something that was a potential conflict, he did so without knowing,” Alcaraz testified Wednesday.

L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Casey Higgins, however, said Price is ultimately responsible for disclosing conflicts of interest and argued blaming his subordinates was not a defense to corruption charges.

“It’s not only hiding. It’s trying to create a wall around himself, to create this plausible deniability,” Higgins said. “It’s this ostrich with his head in the sand approach.”

Higgins said Alcaraz and Smith were “trying to jump in front of the bus” and that it was impossible to believe that Price had no knowledge of the conflicts. The dealings allegedly took place between 2019 and 2021 — after a 2019 Times investigation revealed he voted on decisions involving at least 10 companies in the same years they were listed as providing at least $10,000 in income to Richardson’s firm.

Price’s defense attorney, Michael Schafler, has argued there is no evidence that Price knew of the conflicts, and claimed payments to Richardson had no influence on Price’s voting decisions. All of the votes referenced in the criminal complaint passed with overwhelming support, and Price’s vote made no difference in the final result.

“There’s been no evidence presented that Mr. Price acted with any wrongful intent. No testimony from any witness … who said Mr. Price acted with willful intent,” Schafler said Wednesday. “I’ve never seen a public corruption case like that in my life.”

There were enormous sums of money on the line in each vote referenced in the criminal complaint. Richardson took in more than a half-million from October 2019 to June 2020 from the city housing authority before Price voted in favor of millions in grant funding for the agency, according to an amended complaint filed against Price last year.

Prosecutors also alleged Price wrote a motion to give $30 million to the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority during a time frame when Richardson was paid upward of $200,000 by the agency.

After Torrealba’s ruling, Schafler said he was “disappointed” but thought the evidence presented over the past week revealed that “the prosecution’s case has a lot of gaps, a lot of holes, it’s based largely on speculation.”

Some of Price’s City Council colleagues have said Price’s alleged crimes were tantamount to paperwork errors, and should have been handled by the city’s Ethics Commission.

While questioning former employees of Price and Richardson, Higgins sought to paint a more nefarious picture. He repeatedly scrutinized the way that Price’s staff and a former employee of Del Richardson & Associates compiled a list of the firm’s projects that could represent conflicts and communicated about them.

Much of the conflict information was placed on a flash drive and given to Smith in person by Martisa Garcia, an employee of Richardson, Higgins said. Updates to the file were then made over the phone, and not discussed via e-mail, according to Higgins. When Smith and Alcaraz discussed votes in which Price might have to recuse himself, they did so on personal phones rather than city-issued devices, according to evidence Higgins put forth.

Higgins suggested Price’s staff was trying to hide the conflicts of interest.

“Was the thumb drive used to avoid public records requests?” Higgins asked Alcaraz, who curtly replied “No.”

Generally speaking, California Public Records Act requests for an elected official’s communications will only capture what is contained on government devices, not personal phones or e-mails. A spokeswoman for Price, Angelina Valenica, said there was no “intent to avoid PRA requirements” on the part of Price’s staff.

“The Councilmember was not involved in the handling, transport or storage of this information,” she said. “He relied on and trusted his staff to handle the matter appropriately and to seek guidance as necessary.”

While it’s unlikely Price will stand trial before his term runs out, the case could loom large over the race to replace him. A field of seven candidates is running for his council seat, including Price’s deputy chief of staff, Jose Ugarte, who has faced allegations that he failed to disclose consulting income that are similar to the basis of the perjury charges against his boss.

Chris Martin, a candidate and civil rights attorney with Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, said Wednesday that if the allegations are true, Price and his staff need to step down.

“It’s a serious breach of public trust. It’s important that we have leaders in the 9th District who will walk with integrity,” Martin said. “It also seems like he’s got a major issue with his staff enabling him. They should all resign.”

These are the key developments from day 1,435 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Thursday, January 29:

Fighting

• The death toll from a Russian attack on a passenger train in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Tuesday rose to six, after the remains of several bodies were recovered from the wreckage, the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office said on the Telegram messaging app.
• At least six people were injured in a Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, the head of the regional military administration, Ivan Fedorov, said on Telegram.
• Russian forces attacked several locations across Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, killing a 46-year-old man and injuring at least two other people, the head of the regional military administration, Oleksandr Hanzha, said on Facebook.
• One person was killed in a Ukrainian attack on the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka in Russia’s Belgorod region, the regional emergencies task force reported, according to the country’s TASS state news agency.
• A Ukrainian drone attack killed one person in the city of Enerhodar, in a Russian-occupied area of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, Russia’s locally appointed official Yevhen Balitsky said, according to TASS.
• Fedorov has ruled out installing anti-drone netting as a mode of defence, saying that “there are more effective ways to combat Russian attacks”, Ukraine’s Ukrinform news agency reported.

Military aid

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that France will deliver more “French aircraft, missiles for air defence systems, and aerial bombs” to Ukraine this year, following a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Regional security

• Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at an event in Paris that a 2035 target for rearming Europe “would be too late”.
• “I think rearming ourselves now is the most important thing,” Frederiksen said. “Because when you look at intelligence, nuclear weapons, and so on, we depend on the US,” she added.

• Switzerland plans to inject an additional 31 billion Swiss francs ($40.4bn) into military spending starting from 2028 by increasing sales taxes for a decade.
• “The world has become more volatile and insecure, and the international order based on international law is under strain,” the Swiss government said, noting that other European countries have also been increasing their defence spending.

Politics and diplomacy

• Vladislav Maslennikov, a top European Affairs official at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told TASS that restoring relations with the European Union will only be possible if European countries “cease their sanctions policy”, stop “pump[ing] weapons into the Kyiv regime, and sabotag[ing] the peace process around Ukraine.”

• President Macron said at an event in Paris that European countries must focus on asserting their “sovereignty, on our contribution to Arctic security, on the fight against foreign interference and disinformation, and on the fight against global warming”.
• “France will continue to defend these principles in accordance with the United Nations Charter,” said Macron, who has turned down an invitation for France to join Trump’s Board of Peace, which some critics say is an attempt to replace the United Nations.

Peace talks

• United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that negotiations over Ukraine’s Donetsk region, which is part of the Donbas region that is now 90 percent occupied by Russian forces, are “still a bridge we have to cross” in talks between Russia and Ukraine.
• “It’s still a gap, but at least we’ve been able to narrow down the issue set to one central one, and it will probably be a very difficult one,” Rubio said.

Energy

• Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that 639 apartment buildings in Kyiv remain without heat, with temperatures forecast to drop to -23 degrees Celsius (-9.4 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight this week.

Tehran, Iran – The Iranian government is putting into place contingency plans for basic governance as the threat of another war with the United States and Israel looms large.

President Masoud Pezeshkian gathered governors of Iran’s border provinces as well as his economy minister in Tehran on Tuesday to delegate some responsibilities to the governors if a war breaks out, state media reported. A working group was also formed, tasked with ensuring the increased flow of essential goods, particularly food.

The governors have been given authority to import goods without using foreign currency, engage in bartering and allow sailors to bring in products under simplified customs rules, according to the government-run IRNA news agency.

“In addition to importing essential goods, governors now have the authority to bring in all goods that are directly linked with the livelihoods of the people and the needs of the market in order to balance the market and prevent hoarding,” Pezeshkian was quoted as saying at the meeting.

“Through enforcing this policy, a considerable part of the pressures resulting from the cruel sanctions are neutralised,” he said in reference to harsh restrictions imposed by the US as well as United Nations sanctions reimposed in September, which the Iranian government blames for the economic crisis the country is going through.

But while the government resorts to focusing on the basics, nearly all of Iran’s 90 million people and all sectors of the country’s beleaguered economy continue to suffer from an unprecedented internet shutdown.

The digital blackout was imposed by the theocratic state on January 8 as nationwide protests reached a boiling point, followed by the killings of thousands of Iranians.

The intranet set up to offer some basic services during the state-imposed shutdown is slow and has failed to shore up online businesses. Traditional shops are also struggling to bring in customers.

Economic trouble persists

Amid a large deployment of armed security personnel, most shops are now open in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar – where the protests against the poor economic conditions started on December 28 – and other downtown business districts.

But a shopkeeper at the Grand Bazaar told Al Jazeera that business activity is a fraction of what it was several weeks ago.

“There’s not much life and energy in the markets these days,” he said on the condition of anonymity. “The worst thing is that everything is still so unpredictable. You can see that in the currency rate too.”

Iran’s rial has been in freefall after markets partially reopened this week, degrading trust in the national currency.

The rial hit a new all-time low of about 1.6 million per US dollar on Wednesday. Each greenback had changed hands for about 700,000 rials a year ago and about 900,000 in mid-2025.

However, Central Bank of Iran chief Abdolnasser Hemmati said at the meeting with the governors in Tehran that the currency market was “following its natural course”.

He said $2.25bn worth of foreign currency deals have in recent weeks been registered in a state-run market set up to manage imports and exports, which he described as an “acceptable and considerable figure”.

The comments from Hemmati – who was also the Central Bank chief from 2018 to 2021 and was impeached as economy minister in March – immediately drew fire from the ultraconservative Keyhan newspaper, whose editor-in-chief is directly appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

The newspaper said his comments run counter to the reality in the tumultuous currency market as well as Hemmati’s promises of price stability for essential goods when he re-emerged as the Central Bank governor last month.

While dealing with foreign pressure, Pezeshkian’s government has also been hounded by hardliners at home who have demanded immediate changes to his relatively moderate cabinet.

The infighting became so serious that the supreme leader publicly intervened, telling lawmakers in parliament and other officials during a speech last week that they are “forbidden” from “insulting” the president at a time when the country must focus on providing essential goods to the people.

Subsidy scheme

For his part, Pezeshkian has kept his rhetoric focused solely on “combating corruption” through an initiative that has eliminated a subsidised currency rate used for imports of certain goods, including food.

Pezeshkian’s government argued the subsidised allocated currency was being misused by state-linked organisations. The scheme was supposed to deliver cheaper imported food, but that has not been the case.

The money freed up by the initiative has been distributed as electronic coupons among Iranians to buy food from select stores at prices set by the government.

But each citizen will get only 10 million rials per month for four months. That figure amounted to just over $7 when it was announced during the protests early this month, but it is now worth closer to $6 as the fall of the national currency further erodes purchasing power.

To add insult to injury, the announcement of the subsidy scheme contributed to an abrupt tripling or quadrupling of prices for some essential goods, including cooking oil and eggs. Iran’s annual inflation rate remains untamed at nearly 50 percent and has been on a rising trajectory in recent months.

The top two state-run carmakers, which hold a large monopoly in Iran’s auto industry, have also been positioning themselves for yet another price hike as the end of the Iranian calendar year approaches in March.

One of the firms, Iran Khodro, said on Tuesday that it would increase prices by up to 60 percent while local media reported that the other, Saipa, was expected to follow suit. The government has reportedly intervened to delay or slow the price hikes.

TEDPIX, the main index of the Tehran Stock Exchange, continued its recent decline on Wednesday, losing 30,000 points to stand at 3,980,000. The index was at an all-time high of 4,500,000 last week, having made gains in early January.

Fears of a US attack on Iran are again heightened after Donald Trump demanded Tehran submit to his demands or face an attack “like with Venezuela.”

While diplomatic circles welcome the recovery of the last Israeli captive’s remains in Gaza and the imminent partial reopening of the enclave’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt, a quieter, darker reality is taking shape on the ground.

According to comments by retired Israeli General Amir Avivi, who still advises the military, Israel has cleared land in Rafah, an area in the southern Gaza Strip that it had already flattened in more than two years of its genocidal war, to construct an enormous facility to entrench its military control and presence in Gaza for the long term.

Speaking to the Reuters news agency on Tuesday, Avivi described the project as a “big, organised camp” capable of holding hundreds of thousands of people, stating it would be equipped with “ID checks, including facial recognition”, to track every Palestinian entering or leaving.

Corroborating Avivi’s claims, exclusive analysis by Al Jazeera’s Digital Investigations Team confirms that ground preparations for this project are already well under way.

Satellite imagery captured from December 2 through Monday reveals extensive clearing operations in western Rafah. The analysis identifies an area of about 1.3sq km (half a square mile) that has undergone systematic levelling.

According to the investigation, the operations went beyond mere debris removal and involved the flattening of land previously devastated by Israeli air strikes.

The cleared zone is located adjacent to two Israeli military posts, suggesting the new camp will be under direct and immediate military supervision. The satellite evidence aligns with reports that the facility is to act as a controlled “holding pen” rather than a humanitarian shelter.

The trap of return

To analysts in Gaza, no humanitarian intent is behind this projected high-tech infrastructure, which they say is in fact a trap for Palestinians.

“What they are building is, in reality, a human-sorting mechanism reminiscent of Nazi-era selection points,” Wissam Afifa, a Gaza-based political analyst, told Al Jazeera. “It is a tool for racial filtering and a continuation of the genocide by other means.”

The reopening of the Rafah crossing, tentatively scheduled for Thursday, according to The Jerusalem Post, comes with strict Israeli conditions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted on full “security control”.

For Palestinians hoping to return to Gaza, this means submitting to what Afifa describes as “human sorting stations”.

“This mechanism is designed to deter return,” Afifa said. “Palestinians will face interrogation, humiliation and the risk of arrest at these Israeli-run checkpoints just to go home.”

By leveraging facial recognition technology confirmed by Avivi, Israel is creating a high-risk ordeal for returnees, he said. Afifa argued it will force many Palestinians to choose exile over the risk of the “sorting station”, serving Israel’s longstanding goal of depopulating the Strip.

Permanent occupation within the ‘yellow line’

The Rafah camp is just one piece of a larger puzzle. Israel in effect occupies all of Gaza with a physical military presence in 58 percent of the Gaza Strip. Its forces directly occupy an area within the “yellow line”, a self-proclaimed Israeli military buffer zone established by an October ceasefire.

“We are witnessing the re-engineering of Gaza’s geography and demography,” Afifa said. “About 70 percent of the Strip is now under direct Israeli military management.”

This assessment of a permanent foothold is reinforced by Netanyahu’s own remarks to the Knesset on Monday. By declaring that “the next phase is demilitarisation”, or disarming Hamas, rather than reconstruction, Netanyahu signalled that the military occupation has no end date.

“The talk of ‘reconstruction’ starting in Rafah under Israeli security specifications suggests they are building a permanent security infrastructure, not a sovereign Palestinian state,” Afifa added.

A ‘show’ of peace

For the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza, the hope that the return of the last Israeli captive would bring relief has turned into frustration.

“There is a deep sense of betrayal,” Afifa said. “The world celebrated the release of one Israeli body as a triumph while two million Palestinians remain hostages in their own land.”

Afifa warned that the international silence regarding these “sorting stations” risks normalising them. If the Rafah model succeeds, it would transform Gaza from a besieged territory into a high-tech prison where the simple act of travel becomes a tool of subjugation, he said.

“Israel is behaving as if it is staying forever,” Afifa concluded. “And the world is watching the show of peace while the prison walls are being reinforced.”

Most European countries have either turned down their invitations to join United States President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” for overseeing the reconstruction of Gaza – or politely suggested they are “considering” it, citing concerns.

From within the European Union, only Hungary and Bulgaria have accepted. That is a better track record of unity than the one displayed in 2003, when then-US President George W Bush called on member states to join his invasion of Iraq.

Spain, Britain, Poland, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia said “yes”.

France turned the invitation down on the grounds that Trump’s board “goes beyond the framework of Gaza and raises serious questions, in particular with respect to the principles and structure of the United Nations, which cannot be called into question”.

Trump pointedly did not invite Denmark, a close US ally, following a diplomatic fracas in which he had threatened to seize Greenland, a Danish territory, by force.

The US leader signed the charter for his Board of Peace on January 22 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, calling it “one of the most consequential bodies ever created”.

It has come across to many of the countries invited to join it as perhaps too consequential – an attempt to supplant the United Nations, whose mandate the board is meant to be fulfilling.

Although Trump said he believed the UN should continue to exist, his recent threats suggest that he would not respect the UN Charter, which forbids the violation of borders.

That impression was strengthened by the fact that he invited Russia to the board, amid its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

‘Trump needs a big win ahead of midterms’

“Trump is thinking about the interior of the US. Things aren’t going well. He needs a big win ahead of the November midterms,” said Angelos Syrigos, a professor of international law at Panteion University in Athens.

The US president has spent his first year in office looking for foreign policy triumphs he can sell at home, said Syrigos, citing the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the bombing of Iran and his efforts to end the Ukraine war.

Trump has invited board members to contribute $1bn each for a lifetime membership, but has not spelled out how the money will be spent.

His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is a member of the executive board.

“How will this thing function? Will Trump and his son-in-law administer it?” asked Syrigos.

Catherine Fieschi, a political scientist and fellow at the European University Institute, believed there was a more ambitious geopolitical goal as well.

“It’s as though Trump were gathering very deliberately middle powers … to defang the potential that these powers have of working independently and making deals,” she said.

Much like Bush’s 2003 “coalition of the willing” against Iraq, Trump’s initiative has cobbled together an ensemble of countries whose common traits are difficult to discern, ranging from Vietnam and Mongolia to Turkiye and Belarus.

Fieschi believed Trump was trying to corral middle powers in order to forestall other forms of multilateralism, a pathway to power that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney outlined in his speech at Davos, which so offended Trump.

“In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: [to] compete with each other for favour, or to combine to create a third path with impact,” Carney had said, encouraging countries to build “different coalitions for different issues” and to draw on “the power of legitimacy, integrity and rules”.

He decried the “rupture in the world order … and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints”.

After the speech, Trump soon rescinded Canada’s invitation.

Countering agglomerations of power and legitimacy was Trump’s goal, Fieschi believed.

“Here you bind them into an organisation that in some ways offers a framework with Trump in it and the US in it, and implies constraints,” said Fieschi. “It’s not so much benign multilateralism as stopping the middle powers getting on with their hedging and with their capacity to have any kind of autonomy, strategic and otherwise.”

At the same time, she said, Trump was suggesting that the Board of Peace “might give them more power than they have right now in the UN”.

“Trump thinks this is like a golf club and therefore he’s going to charge a membership fee,” Fieschi said.

“If it was a reconstruction fee [for Gaza], I don’t think people would necessarily baulk at that,” she noted, adding that the fee smacked of “crass oligarchic motivation”.

The Board of Peace is called into existence by last November’s UN Security Council Resolution 2803 to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza.

It is defined as “a transitional administration” meant to exist only “until such time as the Palestinian Authority (PA) has satisfactorily completed its reform program … and [can] effectively take back control of Gaza.”

Trump’s charter for the board makes no mention of Gaza, nor of the board’s limited lifespan. Instead, it broadens the board’s mandate to “areas affected or threatened by conflict”, and says it “shall dissolve at such time as the Chairman considers necessary or appropriate”.

China, which has presented itself as a harbinger of multipolarity and a challenger of the US-led world order, rejected the invitation.

“No matter how the international landscape may evolve, China will stay firmly committed to safeguarding the international system with the UN at its core,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun last week.

The UN itself appears to be offended by Trump’s scheme.

“The UN Security Council stands alone in its Charter-mandated authority to act on behalf of all Member States on matters of peace and security,” wrote UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on social media on Monday, January 26.

“No other body or ad-hoc coalition can legally require all Member States to comply with decisions on peace and security,” he wrote.

Guterres was calling for a reform that would strengthen the legitimacy of the UN Security Council by better reflecting the balance of power in the world as it is, 81 years after the body was formed. But his statement can also be read as a veiled criticism of Trump’s version of the Board of Peace.

Transparency and governance are problematic, too.

Trump is appointing himself chairman of the board, with power to overrule all members. He gets to appoint the board’s executive, and makes financial transparency optional, saying the board “may authorise the establishment of accounts as necessary.”