deadly

Torrential downpours cause deadly mudslides in southern Peru, while more than 300 districts across the country declare states of emergency.

Peruvian authorities say they have recovered the bodies of a father and son who died in a mudslide triggered by heavy rains, which have battered the country’s southern regions of Ica and Arequipa, affecting an estimated 5,500 homes and forcing many people to evacuate.

Authorities in Arequipa have called on the country’s interim president to declare a state of emergency in the region as the governor announced that multiple shelters were being opened to house those fleeing the floods.

Peru’s Council of Ministers said on Monday that more than 700 districts nationwide have been declared in emergency status.

In Cayma, Arequipa, a vehicle was seen semi-buried under mud, and homes teetered on the verge of collapse after flash floods swept away the earth and destroyed roadways, the Reuters news agency reported.

According to the Associated Press news agency, the bodies of a father and son were recovered after being swept away by a landslide.

The recovery came a day after 15 people were killed when a military helicopter crashed while providing rescue services during the flooding.

Rescue teams found the wreckage of the helicopter in the Chala district, officials said. Seven children were among the 11 passengers and four crew members who died, according to the AFP news agency.

Torrential downpours have caused widespread damage across southern Peru, affecting about 5,500 homes and forcing many residents to evacuate.

Images shared by Peruvian media showed streets torn up in the affected areas and vehicles buried deep in the mud slides as rescue workers attempted to clear streets using mechanical earth movers.

The El Niño Costero (coastal) climate phenomenon has been the cause of the recent weeks of heavy rain in Peru, weather forecasters report, and is expected to strengthen slightly next month, threatening more heavy rain.

While El Niño is a natural cycle that has existed for millennia, scientists increasingly link its severity to climate change. Rising global temperatures provide a warmer “baseline” for the ocean, making it easier for these extreme heating events to reach record-breaking thresholds and increasing the atmosphere’s capacity to hold the moisture that fuels torrential rain and catastrophic flooding.

Tripoli, Lebanon – Hossam Hazrouni points underneath a concrete staircase to the exposed foundation of the building where he lives.

“Inside, there, look,” the 65-year-old says. “The interior pillars are all broken. It’s covered in water. Everything inside is wet.”

A few metres away lies a pile of smashed concrete blocks and twisted metal. It is the rubble of a building that collapsed on February 8, killing at least 15 people.

In Tripoli, collapsed buildings are fast becoming common. This is the fourth building to collapse this winter alone. Today, hundreds of buildings are at risk of collapse due to a lethal combination of ageing infrastructure, unregulated construction, Lebanon’s 2019 economic crisis, the 2023 earthquake that fractured much of the local infrastructure’s foundation, and a relatively heavy rain season.

Locals like Hazrouni are afraid their buildings will be next.

“They told us that you should evacuate and you shouldn’t stay, but how are we supposed to leave when we are in a bad situation?” he asked, raising his palms to the sky. “Where are we supposed to go?”

Collapsing structures

In the 1950s, Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city and the largest in the country’s north, was a hub for trade and shipping in the region. But in the intervening years, its status has fallen to become one of the poorest cities on the Mediterranean Sea.

It is also a city of massive disparity. Multiple billionaires live in Tripoli, including the former Prime Minister Najib Mikati and former Minister of Finance Mohammad Safadi, while about 45 percent of the city’s population lives in poverty, according to a 2024 World Bank report.

Over the years, most of Tripoli’s middle- and upper-class residents have moved to the southern edge of the city, leaving behind its impoverished classes to inhabit the decaying old city. Many of the poor know their concrete buildings are ageing and in poor condition, but have little means to fix them.

“The first problem is that the structures are old,” Fayssal al-Baccar, an engineer, told Al Jazeera from a restaurant in southern Tripoli. Al-Baccar is also the founder of the Tripoli Emergency Fund, a private initiative started in response to the collapsing building issue that has been fundraising to help the city.

“The lifespan of concrete is between 50 to 80 years,” al-Baccar explained, and in many of the buildings in central Tripoli, that lifespan is coming to an end. On a sheet of white paper with a blue pen, he drew a model of a building’s foundation.

“Through time, the pH [level] of the concrete will become more and more acidic,” he said, sketching lines around the base of his drawn wall. “Then it will corrode the steel – the steel will self-destruct – and the building will collapse.”

The issue has been exacerbated by a few incidents in particular. When a 2023 earthquake devastated northern Syria and southern Turkiye, it was widely felt in Tripoli as well. Local officials say that it damaged much of the infrastructural foundations of older buildings, many of which have had irregular or unregulated floors added to them, making them weaker. The area has also suffered from neglect and a lack of infrastructure for years, even before the 2019 economic and banking crisis.

Lastly, there is the issue of water damage. This year, Lebanon has received more rainfall than in the last couple of years. And in the days leading up to the collapsed building on February 8, it rained multiple times. “Water is infiltrating into the concrete and is also making the steel worse,” al-Baccar said.

That is why al-Baccar has recruited whom he described as some of the city’s “best and most successful” to help fill governmental gaps.

One of those people is Sarah al-Charif, the Tripoli Emergency Fund’s spokesperson and fundraising committee member. She is also the Lebanon director for Ruwwad Al Tanmeya, a nonprofit focused on youth and disenfranchised communities, and was appointed vice president of Tripoli’s Port Authority last year.

“You’re talking about areas where most, if not all, of the buildings are old and dilapidated, some of which are actually on the verge of collapse,” al-Charif said from her office at Ruwwad Al Tanmeya’s office in Bab al-Tabbaneh, less than a kilometre (0.62 miles) away from where the building collapsed on February 8.

“The fact that the problem is so big reflects decades of accumulated neglect by a state that hasn’t fulfilled its obligations towards this city,” she said.

Al-Charif said she doesn’t hold the current government – which took office a year ago – responsible, but that historically, “people who were in positions of power didn’t do anything, they weren’t fulfilling their duties”.

“There’s also a part that falls on the landlord, a part that falls on the tenant, and a part that falls on the merchants who are the builders. Maybe they’re using substandard materials,” she said. “So everyone has to take their share of the responsibility.”

Historical neglect

Standing on the street, Wissam Kafrouni, 70, points to the top floor of a building just a few doors down from the structure that collapsed on February 8. A crack runs zig-zagging down the building’s side, in the pattern of descending stairs. His nephew rents the top-floor apartment, he says, but the landlord is claiming that repairs are the responsibility of the tenant.

Locals in this neighbourhood say that many officials have visited the site in recent days, including Prime Minister Nawaf Salam. They also say that they’ve been told for years that the local municipality has plans to fix the infrastructure, but that little has come about from it.

The local government has known about the issue for years, but until now, little has been done. Deputy Mayor Khaled Kabbara is part of a new municipal government elected in 2025.

“The issue of cracked buildings is a very old issue in the city of Tripoli, and unfortunately, it has not been dealt with in previous periods,” he told Al Jazeera from Tripoli’s municipality headquarters. But this new municipal government that was elected in 2025, he said, has “raised its voice”.

Kabbara also said that Tripoli has been historically ignored by Beirut “since independence” in the 1940s, but that the current government was working with the local government to find solutions.

“Honestly, this is the first time that we feel that someone is listening and there is someone who is working with us,” he said.

A group of engineers are currently inspecting buildings around the city to decide if damaged buildings can be repaired or must be evacuated and demolished. Evacuation warnings have been issued for 114 buildings, though that number is expected to rise substantially.

Families that evacuate should receive a one-year shelter allowance to secure alternative housing. Religious institutions have opened their doors to evacuees, while Turkiye has also promised to donate about 100 prefabricated houses.

A call centre has also been set up for residents to report suspected issues with their buildings. The hotline has so far received reports on approximately 650 different buildings, Kabbara said.

One of the buildings previously reported to the call centre was the building that collapsed on February 8. Locals had heard a creaking sound coming from the building.

Kabbara acknowledged that the report was received and that the residents were afraid. However, he said, the engineers had not inspected it before it collapsed because nothing in the report indicated it needed an urgent inspection.

What comes next?

Back in Bab al-Tabbaneh, numerous locals expressed frustration and fear. They said many officials and associations have visited the site, but few have delivered on promises to help them.

“We’ve been told there is a plan to fix the infrastructure since the Siniora government,” Samir Rajab, 56, said, referring to Fouad Siniora, the prime minister of Lebanon from 2005 to 2009. “But nothing happens.”

Next to the destroyed building site, Mustapha al-Abed, 54, repaired a broken washing machine out of a small workshop. He said his work was not very fruitful lately, as poverty forced many in this area with broken appliances to wash their laundry by hand.

He looked over at the site where the building had gone down just days earlier. “The problem is not here any more. These people are already dead,” he said. He then pointed across the street to a bustling neighbourhood, where people were doing their Ramadan shopping.

“The problem is all the other buildings.”

A deadly exchange of drone strikes has killed one person in Ukraine and one in Russia and cast doubts on the prospects of a ceasefire before another round of negotiations to end the war next week.

News of the deaths comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio signalled hurdles to reaching an agreement in Geneva as the conflict is about to enter its fifth year.

Zelenskyy told world leaders at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday while he hopes “substantive” progress will be reached during the trilateral meeting next week, it often feels like the two sides “are talking about different things” in negotiations. 

“The Americans often return to the topic of concessions, and too often those concessions are discussed only in the context of Ukraine, not Russia,” Zelenskyy said.

Rubio said it’s unclear if Moscow truly wants to make a peace deal.

“We don’t know if the Russians are serious about ending the war,” he said before the same Munich event. “We’re going to continue to test it.”

Among the most contentious issues in the negotiations is Russia’s demand for a full withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the remaining parts of Ukraine’s eastern region of Donetsk that it still controls.

Ukraine has rejected a unilateral pullback and wants Western security guarantees to deter Russia from relaunching its invasion if a ceasefire is reached.

Rubio did not attend a Ukraine-focused meeting with European and NATO leaders held on the sidelines of the first day of the Munich conference on Friday, citing scheduling issues.

In Munich on Saturday, Zelenskyy insisted Russia should not get away with its attack on Ukraine. He said he hoped the United States would stay involved in the peace negotiations and European countries would deepen their involvement.

Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel told Al Jazeera while US President Donald Trump should be credited with moving talks forward, he should put more pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin instead of Zelenskyy.

“Putin has shown no goodwill to come to the table and make a serious deal. The Ukrainians are ready,” van Weel said.

Last week, Zelenskyy said the US had given the warring parties a June deadline to reach a deal, although Trump’s previous ultimatums have not resulted in a breakthrough.

Two previous rounds of trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi, led by US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, reportedly focused on military issues such as a possible buffer zone and ceasefire monitoring.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, according to many estimates, making the war Europe’s deadliest since World War II.

Russia ⁠is ⁠suffering “crazy losses” in Ukraine with about 65,000 soldiers killed on the battlefield ⁠over the last two months, NATO ⁠Secretary-General Mark Rutte told the conference.

Separately, ‌Rutte told a media roundtable the NATO alliance is strong enough that Russia would not ⁠currently try to attack it. “We ⁠will win every fight with Russia if they ⁠attack us now, and we ⁠have to ⁠make sure in two, four, six years that same ‌is still the case.”

Among the latest casualties was an elderly woman killed on Saturday when a Russian drone hit a residential building in the Black Sea port city of Odesa, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.

On Wednesday, Russian strikes also killed three children, including two-year-old twins and their father in the northeastern region of Kharkiv.

In January alone, Russia launched more than 6,000 drone attacks against Ukraine, according to Zelenskyy. But he added Ukraine will soon produce enough interceptors to make Russia’s Iran-made Shahed drones “meaningless”.

He also told the Munich conference that every power plant in Ukraine has been damaged in Russian attacks.

In Russia, a civilian was killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on a car in the border region of Bryansk, Governor Alexander Bogomaz said.

The attacks came a day after a Ukrainian missile strike on the Russian city of Belgorod near the border with Ukraine killed two people and wounded five, according to Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.

Gladkov earlier said the attack also caused serious damage to energy facilities and electricity, heating and water supplies were cut off. Three apartment buildings in the city sustained damage, he said.

Ukrainian member of parliament Oleksiy Goncharenko, meanwhile, accused Moscow of launching “energy terror” with attacks on electricity facilities in the heart of winter.

“I can’t call it any other way because when it is minus 20 Celsius in Kyiv and you don’t have heating, you don’t have electricity in your apartment, you’re just freezing and that is awful,” Goncharenko told Al Jazeera in Munich.

“I think it’s time for the United States to put real pressure on Russia. Yes, they are at the table, but it’s time to put real pressure to make them have real negotiations, because what we have today is not real negotiations.”

United Nations human rights chief also decries ‘preventable human rights catastrophe’ in Sudan’s el-Fasher.

Fatal drone strikes on civilians persist in Sudan’s Kordofan, as the central region has emerged as the latest front line in Sudan’s nearly three-year conflict, the United Nations has said.

Addressing the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk painted a grim picture of the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has plunged the country into widespread bloodshed and humanitarian catastrophe.

“We can only expect worse to come” unless decisive steps are taken by the international community to stop the fighting, Turk said, emphasising that inaction would lead to even greater horrors.

Turk also highlighted harrowing survivor testimonies from el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, which fell to RSF forces in October following an 18-month siege. He described accounts of atrocity crimes committed by the paramilitary after it overran the city, including mass killings and other grave violations targeting civilians.

“Responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies squarely with the [RSF] and their allies and supporters,” he said

As Sudan’s devastating civil war expands beyond the western Darfur region into the central Kordofan areas, Turk cautioned that the shift in fighting is likely to bring even more severe violations against civilians, expressing deep concern over the potential for additional grave abuses, specifically highlighting the increasing use of “advanced drone weaponry systems” by both warring parties.

“In the last two weeks, the SAF and allied Joint Forces broke the sieges on Kadugli and Dilling,” Turk said. “But drone strikes by both sides continue, resulting in dozens of civilian deaths and injuries.”

Turk’s office has documented more than 90 civilian deaths and 142 injuries caused by drone strikes carried ⁠out by both the RSF and the armed forces from late January to February 6, he said.

Among those incidents were three strikes on health facilities in South Kordofan that killed 31 people last week, according to the World Health Organization.

On February 7, a drone attack carried out by the RSF hit a vehicle transporting displaced families in central Sudan, killing at least 24 people, including eight children, the Sudan Doctors Network said.

The latest attacks follow a series of drone attacks on humanitarian aid convoys and fuel trucks across North Kordofan.

The UN human rights chief said he has witnessed the destruction caused by RSF attacks on Sudan’s Merowe Dam and its hydroelectric power station.

“Repeated drone strikes have disrupted power and water supplies to huge numbers of people, with a serious impact on healthcare,” he said.

Riyadh condemns RSF’s ‘criminal’ attacks in Kordofan, blames foreign fighters and weapons for fuelling Sudan’s three-year conflict.

Saudi Arabia has reaffirmed its support for Sudan’s territorial unity and integrity, denouncing “criminal attacks” by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in North and South Kordofan states that have killed dozens of people, including women and children.

In a statement on Saturday, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned “foreign interference” by “some parties” in Sudan, including the “continued influx of illegal weapons, mercenaries and foreign fighters” for the continuation of the nearly three-year-old war.

The statement did not specify the parties, though.

It came a day after the Sudan Doctors Network, a humanitarian group, said a drone attack by the RSF on a vehicle transporting displaced families in North Kordofan killed at least 24 people, including eight children.

The attack followed a series of drone raids on humanitarian aid convoys and fuel trucks across North Kordofan, including an assault on a World Food Programme convoy on Friday that killed at least one person.

Fighting between the RSF and Sudan’s army has intensified across Kordofan in recent months following the fall of el-Fasher to the paramilitary group in October. The nearly three-year-long conflict has killed an estimated 40,000 people and pushed more than 21 million — almost half of Sudan’s population — into acute food shortages.

The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Saturday the deadly RSF attacks “are completely unjustifiable and constitute flagrant violations of all humanitarian norms and relevant international agreements”.

The ministry demanded that “RSF immediately cease these violations and adhere to its moral and humanitarian obligation to ensure the delivery of relief aid to those in need in accordance with international humanitarian law” and a ceasefire deal agreed by the warring parties in Jeddah in 2023.

It added that “some parties” were fuelling the conflict by sending in weapons and fighters, despite “these parties’ claim of supporting a political solution” in Sudan.

The statement comes amid allegations by the Sudanese government that the United Arab Emirates has been arming and funding the RSF. Sudan filed a case against the UAE at the International Court of Justice last year, accusing it of “complicity in genocide” committed by the RSF against the Masalit community in West Darfur state.

The UAE has denied the allegations.

Separately, Saudi Arabia has also accused the UAE of backing the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) in Yemen. The STC, initially part of the Saudi-backed internationally recognised government of Yemen, launched a major offensive last December in the country’s Hadramout and al-Mahra provinces, seeking to establish a separate state.

The offensive resulted in a split in Yemen’s internationally-backed government, and prompted Saudi Arabia to launch deadly raids targeting the STC.

The UAE pulled out its troops from Yemen following the Saudi allegation, saying it supports Saudi Arabia’s security.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE were members of the Arab military coalition, formed to confront the Houthis, who took full control of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, in 2015.

Lahore, Pakistan – As funerals were held on Saturday for more than 30 people killed in a suicide bombing at a mosque in Islamabad, analysts warned the attack could be part of a broader attempt to inflame sectarian tensions in the country.

A suicide bomber struck the Khadija Tul Kubra Mosque, a Shia place of worship, in the Tarlai Kalan area of southeastern Islamabad during Friday prayers.

In a statement, the Islamabad administration said 169 people were transferred to hospitals after rescue teams reached the site.

Hours later, a splinter faction of the ISIL (ISIS) group in Pakistan claimed responsibility on its Telegram channel, releasing an image it said showed the attacker holding a gun, his face covered and eyes blurred.

Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said mosque security guards tried to intercept the suspect, who opened fire before detonating explosives among worshippers. He alleged the attacker had been travelling to and from Afghanistan.

Security officials on Saturday told Al Jazeera that several key arrests had been made, including close family members of the suicide bomber in Peshawar and Karachi. They did not clarify whether there was evidence of their involvement in the plot.

Capital under fire?

Islamabad had seen a relative lull in violence in past years, but things have changed in recent months. The bombing marked the second major attack in the federal capital since a suicide blast targeted a district court in November last year.

Abdul Sayed, a Sweden-based analyst on conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan, said ISIL’s Pakistan branch, referred to as ISPP, claimed responsibility for what appears to be its deadliest operation in the country since its formation in May 2019.

“Since its formation, ISPP has carried out approximately 100 attacks, more than two-thirds of which occurred in Balochistan. These attacks include three suicide bombings targeting Afghan Taliban members, police, and security forces in Balochistan,” Sayed, founder of the Oxus Watch research platform, told Al Jazeera.

Pakistan has witnessed a steady rise in violence from fighters over the past three years. Data released by the Pak Institute of Peace Studies for 2025 recorded 699 attacks nationwide, a 34 percent increase compared with the previous year.

Islamabad has repeatedly accused the Afghan Taliban, who returned to power in August 2021 following the withdrawal of United States forces, of providing a haven to armed groups that launch attacks inside Pakistan from Afghan soil.

The Afghan Taliban condemned Friday’s mosque bombing and have consistently denied sheltering anti-Pakistan fighters.

In October, this very issue ignited the deadliest border clashes between the two sides in years, which killed dozens of people and led to evacuations on both sides.

A United Nations report last year stated that the Afghan Taliban provides support to the Pakistan Taliban, or TTP, which has carried out multiple attacks across Pakistan.

The report also said the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) has ties with both the TTP and ISIL’s affiliate in Khorasan Province (ISKP), indicating a convergence of groups with distinct but intersecting agendas.

Just days ago, Pakistan’s military concluded a weeklong security operation in the restive southwestern Balochistan province, claiming the deaths of 216 fighters in targeted offensives.

A military statement on Thursday said it followed the province-wide attacks by the separatist BLA carried out to “destabilise the peace of Balochistan”.

Fahad Nabeel, who heads the Islamabad-based consultancy Geopolitical Insights, said Pakistan is likely to maintain its hardened stance towards Kabul, citing what he described as Afghanistan’s failure to act against anti-Pakistan fighter groups.

He added that officials would probably share preliminary findings of the investigation and point to a possible Afghan link.

“The upward trajectory of terrorist attacks witnessed last year is expected to continue this year. Serious efforts need to be made to identify networks of facilitators based in and around major urban centres, who are facilitating militant groups to carry out terrorist attacks,” Nabeel told Al Jazeera.

Sectarian fault lines

Manzar Zaidi, a Lahore-based security analyst, cautioned against equating the latest bombing with the district court attack last year.

“The last year’s attack was essentially a target on a state institution, whereas this one was plainly sectarian in nature, something that has certainly gone done in the recent times, and that is why I will urge caution against a knee-jerk reaction to conflate the two incidents,” he told Al Jazeera.

Shia make up more than 20 percent of Pakistan’s population of about 250 million. The country has experienced periodic bouts of sectarian violence, particularly in Kurram district in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan.

Regional tensions have added to domestic anxieties.

Zaidi said armed groups in the region backed by Iran remain alert amid “the simmering geopolitical tensions”.

“For Pakistan, it really has to keep a close eye on how things develop in Kurram region, where things can get out of control and there could be a fallout. The region currently has an uneasy peace; that can easily be instabilised,” he said.

Kurram, a tribal district bordering Afghanistan, has a roughly equal Sunni and Shia population. It has long been a flashpoint for sectarian clashes and witnessed prolonged fighting last year.

Nabeel said a timely conclusion to the investigation could shape the government’s response and help prevent the attack from becoming a trigger for wider sectarian unrest.

“However, the possibility of low-intensity sectarian targeting in different parts of the country is likely,” he warned.

Sayed added that an examination of Pakistani nationals who joined ISIL and affiliated groups shows that many came from anti-Shia Sunni armed organisations.

“The role of these sectarian elements is therefore an important factor in understanding such attacks. Moreover, such attacks appear significant in facilitating further recruitment of anti-Shia Sunni extremists within Pakistan, thereby contributing to IS efforts to strengthen its networks in the country,” he said.

A Congolese miner told Al Jazeera he saw his friends around him die as the mine they were working in collapsed in heavy rains, trapping dozens underground for hours. Rescuers pulled Grace Barata alive from the mud the following day.