Israel’s military has stepped up attacks on Gaza City as part of its expanded operations aimed at seizing the last major population centre in the enclave, forcing tens of thousands of starving Palestinians to flee again.
The Gaza City neighbourhoods of Zeitoun, Sabra, Remal and Tuffah have particularly borne the brunt of the Israeli bombardments in recent days as a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Israel’s plans to forcibly displace Palestinians to southern Gaza would increase their suffering.
Thousands of families have fled Zeitoun, where days of continuous strikes have left the neighbourhood devastated. At least seven people were killed on Sunday when an Israeli air strike hit al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.
Also on Sunday, the Israeli military said tents and equipment to erect shelters will be provided to the Palestinians who have been displaced multiple times in 22 months of war, which has been called an act of genocide by multiple rights organisations.
Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said artillery fire and air raids have forced many from their homes.
“The Zeitoun neighbourhood is a very densely populated area, home to many families, including those who have been sheltering there. Residents were surprised when the artillery shelling and the intensive air raids started. Some people stayed. Others started moving. As the violence escalated, many were forced to evacuate – hungry, devastated and displaced yet again, leaving behind everything they had,” Khoudary said.
‘New wave of genocide’
Israel last week announced plans to push deeper into Gaza City and remove its residents to the south, a move that has drawn international condemnation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, said civilians would be moved to “safe zones” even though these areas have also been repeatedly bombed.
Nearly 90 percent of the 2.4 million Palestinians in Gaza remain displaced, and an overwhelming number of them are now facing starvation. At least seven more Palestinians died of starvation in Gaza in 24 hours, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said on Sunday, raising the war’s hunger-related death toll to 258, including 110 children, as a result of Israel’s ongoing siege of the enclave.
On Sunday, Israel killed nearly at least 57 Palestinians, 38 of them aid seekers, taking the total number of Palestinians killed since the war began in October 2023 to nearly 62,000.
Hamas denounced Israel’s plan to set up tents in the south as a cover for mass displacement.
The group said in a statement that the measure amounted to a “new wave of genocide and displacement” and described it as a “blatant deception intended to cover up a brutal crime that the occupation forces prepare to execute”.
There was an atmosphere of despair in Gaza after Israel’s latest forced displacement order, Maram Humaid, Al Jazeera’s online correspondent from Gaza, posted on X.
“There are no words to describe how people in Gaza feel right now. Fear, helplessness, and pain fill everyone as they face a new wave of displacement and an Israeli ground operation,” she posted.
“Family and friends’ WhatsApp groups are full of silent screams and sorrow. God knows people have suffered enough. Our minds are almost paralysed from thinking.”
A view from a Jordanian military aircraft shows the Gaza Strip as its crew prepares to conduct a humanitarian aid airdrop on August 17, 2025 [Alaa Al Sukhni/Reuters]
Displaced and desperate Palestinians are scrambling for scraps of food as they face more bombardment from Israeli forces.
The UN says one in five children in Gaza is malnourished as tens of thousands rely on charity kitchens, whose small portions of food can be their only meal of the day.
“I came at 6am to the charity kitchen to get food for my children, and if I don’t get any now, I have to come back in the evening for another chance,” said Zeinab Nabahan, displaced from the Jabalia refugee camp, told Al Jazeera.
“My children are starving on small amounts of lentils or rice. My children haven’t had bread or any breakfast. They’ve been waiting for me to leave with whatever I can get from the charity kitchen.”
Another resident, Tayseer Naim, told Al Jazeera that “had it not been for God and charity kitchens”, he would not have survived. “We come here at 8am and suffer to get lentils or rice. We suffer a lot, and we leave at midday and walk for about a kilometre.”
‘Man-made famine’
On Sunday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) warned that Gaza is facing a “man-made famine” and urged a return to a UN-led distribution system.
“We are very, very close to losing our collective humanity,” Juliette Touma, the agency’s communications director, said in a post on X.
She said the crisis had been fuelled by “deliberate attempts to replace the UN-coordinated humanitarian system through the politically motivated ‘GHF’.”
She warned the alternative system promoted by Israel and the United States “brings dehumanisation, chaos, and death” and stressed: “We must return to a unified, UN-led coordination and distribution system based on international humanitarian law. The abomination must end.”
The World Food Programme (WFP) says despite its teams “doing everything” to deliver food assistance in Gaza, current supplies only meet 47 percent of the intended target.
According to the UN agency, around 500,000 people are now on the “brink of famine”, and that only a ceasefire would allow food assistance to be scaled up to the required levels.
The Government Media Office in Gaza said Israel was deliberately starving Palestinians by blocking essential goods, including baby formula, nutritional supplements, meat, fish, dairy products, and frozen fruits and vegetables.
In a statement on Telegram, it said Israel was carrying out “a systematic policy of engineered starvation and slow killing against more than 2.4 million people in Gaza, including more than 1.2 million Palestinian children, in a complete crime of genocide”.
It warned that more than 40,000 infants face severe malnutrition while at least 100,000 other children and patients are in a similar condition.
Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network in Gaza City, told Al Jazeera that aid workers were struggling to respond as resources collapse.
“We are trying to do our best. We are … part of this social fabric. We are linked to the people here, and we are staying with them while Israel threatens to apply its plans to forcibly evacuate Gaza City and destroy the rest of Gaza. There are 1.1 million people here, most of them elderly, women, children and people with disabilities,” Shawa said.
He said workers continued to provide limited meals, medical care and education but warned that “the humanitarian system is collapsing” as Israel strikes aid facilities and restricts supplies.
Mumbai, India – A move by India’s top election body, the Election Commission of India (ECI), to re-scrutinise nearly 80 million voters’ documents in a bid to weed out “foreign illegal immigrants” has prompted widespread fears of mass disenfranchisement and deportations in the world’s largest democracy.
On June 24, the ECI announced that each of the nearly 80 million voters – equivalent to the entire population of the United Kingdom – in the eastern Indian state of Bihar will need to re-register as voters by July 26.
Those unable to do so will lose their right to vote and will be reported as “suspected foreign nationals”, as per the ECI directive and could even face jail or deportation. The state’s legislative elections are expected to be held in October or November.
Critics say the move is a backdoor route to implement the controversial National Register of Citizens (NRC) that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has proposed in the past as a way to identify “illegal immigrants” and deport them.
The move comes at a time when thousands of largely Bengali-speaking Muslims have been rounded up, and many of them have been deported from India as alleged Bangladeshi immigrants in the last few weeks.
Al Jazeera sent questions to the ECI about the move, but the commission has not responded, despite reminder emails.
Patna District Magistrate Thiyagarajan S M talks to voters holding the forms they are required to submit to the Electoral Commission to confirm their right to vote, in Patna, Bihar, on June 29, 2025 [Santosh Kumar/Hindustan Times via Getty Images]
What is the controversy about?
Bihar is India’s poorest state in terms of per capita income (PDF), and more than one-third of its population falls under the Indian government’s threshold of poverty.
But as the country’s third-most populous state, it is also one of India’s most politically important battlegrounds. Since 2005, Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been in power in Bihar in alliance with a regional party, the Janata Dal (United) (JDU), for the most part, apart from short periods of rule by opposition-led alliances.
Coming ahead of state elections, the election monitor’s move has led to confusion, panic and a scramble for documents among some of the country’s poorest communities in rural Bihar, say critics.
Opposition politicians as well as civil society groups have argued that wide portions of Bihar’s population will not be able to provide citizenship documents within the short window they have to justify their right to vote, and would be left disenfranchised.
India’s principal opposition party, the Indian National Congress, along with its Bihar alliance partner, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), called for a shutdown of Bihar on Wednesday, with Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi leading the protests in Bihar’s capital, Patna.
A clutch of petitioners, including opposition leaders and civil society groups, have approached India’s Supreme Court asking for the exercise to be scrapped. The court is expected to hear these petitions on Thursday.
The ruling BJP has been alleging a massive influx of Muslim immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh and Myanmar and has backed the ECI’s move. In fact, it has demanded that the move be replicated across the country. Al Jazeera reached out to BJP’s chief spokesperson and media in-charge, Anil Baluni, through text and email for the party’s comments. He has not responded yet.
But political observers and election transparency experts caution that the move carries deep implications for the future of Indian democracy and the rights of voters.
Bihar Congress President Rajesh Ram, AICC Media and Publicity Chairman Pawan Khera and AICC Bihar Incharge Krishna Allavaru address the media during a briefing on the issue of the Bihar voter list revision at Indira Bhawan on July 3, 2025 in New Delhi, India [Sonu Mehta/Hindustan Times via Getty Images]
What is the Election Commission’s justification for the move?
The ECI’s June 24 announcement said that the exercise was meant to ensure that “no ineligible voter is included in the roll”, and cited reasons like rapid urbanisation, frequent migration, new voters, dead voters and “the inclusion of foreign illegal immigrants” in the list as reasons.
The last such full revision was carried out in 2003, but since then, electoral rolls have been regularly updated and cleaned, including last year before the national elections.
According to the ECI, those voters who were on the 2003 voter list have to only re-submit voter registration forms, while those who were added later, depending on when they were added, would have to submit proof of their date of birth as well as place of birth as well, along with proofs of one or both their parents.
Of the 79.6 million-odd voters in Bihar, the ECI has estimated that only 29 million voters would have to verify their credentials. But independent estimates suggest this number could be upwards of 47 million.
The exercise involves ECI officials first going door-to-door and distributing enumeration forms to each registered voter. The voters are then expected to produce documents, attach these documents and submit them along with the forms to election officials, all this by July 26. The draft new electoral roll will be published on August 1, and those who have been left out will get a month more to object.
Jagdeep Chhokar, from the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), a 25-year-old nonprofit that has been working towards electoral reforms, said the ECI’s choice to scrutinise all new voters added since 2003 casts a shadow on all the elections that the state has seen since then.
“Is the ECI saying that there has been a huge scam in Bihar’s voter list since 2003? Is it saying that everyone who got elected from Bihar in these 22 years is not valid, then?” asked Chhokar.
What is the criticism of this exercise?
First, the timeline: to reach out to nearly 80 million at least twice, within a month, is a herculean task in itself. The ECI has appointed nearly 100,000 officers and roped in nearly 400,000 volunteers for the task.
Second, despite the mammoth nature of the exercise and its implications, the ECI did not hold any public consultations on the subject before announcing the move in a written order on June 24, a move decried by experts.
“That such a big decision was taken and brought out in such a secretive way, without consultation, raises questions around the ECI’s partiality,” said Pushpendra, a former professor and dean at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, who is based in Bihar and who did not wish to give his full name.
Third, experts warn that millions of legitimate voters in Bihar will struggle to provide the documents that the ECI has asked them to furnish.
The election authority has ruled that it will not accept the Aadhar card, a unique identity document issued by the Indian government, nor the voter identity card issued by the ECI itself, which has historically sufficed as the document people need to show to vote.
Instead, it has asked voters to submit from a range of 11 listed documents – from birth certificates to passports, to forest rights certificates or education certificates issued by the state.
But Bihar has the lowest literacy rate (PDF) in the country, at just 62 percent against the national average of 73 percent. A 2023 survey by the Bihar government showed that just 14.71 percent of Bihar’s population had cleared grade 10 in school, thus rendering education certificates – one of the documents voters could show – out of the reach for most of the population.
Similarly, government data shows that Bihar also has one of the lowest birth registration rates in the country, with 25 percent of births not being registered. That means birth certificates are out of reach for a quarter of the population.
Pushpendra, the academic, said that it was the state’s failure to ensure that people have the documentation it seeks of legitimate citizens. “You cannot punish people if the state lacks capacity to distribute these documents,” he said.
Fourth, the ECI’s timing has also been criticised by many: The state sees its annual monsoon season between June and October, and routinely sees devastating floods as a result of the rains. State government data show two-thirds of Bihar is flood-prone, and the annual damage due to Bihar’s floods accounts for 30-40 percent of the total flood damage in India. Last year, more than 4.5 million people were affected by the worst floods that Bihar experienced in decades.
“It’s these flood-prone areas that are the most deficient in proper documentation because they routinely suffer from devastating floods that wash away entire villages,” said Pushpendra.
Finally, the ECI’s exercise signals a fundamental shift in the way it seeks to enrol voters, said ADR’s Chhokar.
“At no point in the country’s 70 years has the voting eligibility criterion changed – voters were always supposed to provide their date of birth,” Chhokar said. “This exercise changes this criterion to say that voters now have to also provide their location of birth.”
Patna District Magistrate Thiyagarajan S M talks to local people during the distribution of ‘enumeration forms’, which voters must submit to the Electoral Commission to confirm their right to vote, in Patna, Bihar on June 29, 2025 [Santosh Kumar/Hindustan Times via Getty Images]
What’s the political significance of this move?
Even though the ECI is an autonomous body, its targeting of undocumented immigrants mirrors the BJP’s rhetoric on the issue, experts have pointed out.
Ever since it lost its parliamentary majority last year and was forced to enter a coalition, Prime Minister Modi’s BJP has alleged that a large-scale influx of Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi immigrants into India has altered India’s demographics. India’s Border Security Force (BSF), responsible for guarding India’s borders against such undocumented immigration, falls under the Modi government’s Ministry of Home Affairs, led by close Modi aide, Amit Shah.
Party leaders led by Modi himself have made such claims of a massive flood of Rohingya and Bangladeshi immigrants in nearly every regional election since then, be it in Maharashtra, Jharkhand or Delhi.
Last year in December, the party’s leaders met the ECI to submit alleged evidence that Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi citizens had been illegally enrolled as voters. Indian laws permit only Indian citizens to vote.
For the ECI to now accept this contention, without disclosing any evidence it has about noncitizens being enrolled as voters, is driving many suspicious.
“The ECI has not been able to provide any reason for why it thought this revision was needed. They have no data to demonstrate its claims [of undocumented immigrants in voter lists],” said Apoorvanand, a professor at the University of Delhi and political commentator who hails from Bihar and also did not wish to be identified by his full name. “Which is why this has no longer remained a bureaucratic, neutral exercise of a constitutional body. Its politics is very suspicious,” he added.
For its part, the BJP has come out in support of this exercise and has even demanded that it be rolled out in other parts of the country.
Pushpendra, the former TISS dean, said traditionally marginalised communities and religious minorities would be the worst-hit in this voter revision drive, because they are the least likely to hold documents like a passport, educational certificate or birth certificate.
“These communities have, traditionally, always supported the [opposition] RJD and the Congress,” he said.
Simply put, if they can’t vote, it’s an advantage for BJP.
Police officers stand next to men they believe to be undocumented Bangladeshi nationals after they were detained during raids in Ahmedabad, India, on April 26, 2025 [File: Amit Dave/Reuters]
Is this just about the election?
Over the last few months, the Modi government, as well as BJP governments in various states, have intensified efforts to identify undocumented migrants in the country and deport them. In at least eight Indian states, hundreds have been rounded up, detained on charges of being undocumented immigrants.
This drive has focused largely on Bengali-speaking Muslim migrants. Thousands of alleged Bangladeshis have been pushed into Bangladesh at gunpoint by Indian authorities. Authorities have been accused of not following procedure and hurriedly deporting them. Often, even Indian Muslim citizens have been deported in the drive.
For many, this is reminiscent of the Modi government’s plans to create a National Register of Citizens (NRC), which would identify and then deport those found staying without any documents. In December 2019, Home Minister Amit Shah had set 2024 as the deadline for the NRC exercise and insisted that “each and every illegal immigrant will be thrown out” by 2024.
Such a move affects Muslims disproportionately, thanks to India’s amended citizenship laws, which fast-track citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians, while leaving Muslims out of it. The laws, approved in 2019 by the Indian Parliament, were operationalised last year in March by the Modi government, and will help non-Muslims avoid deportation and jail if found to be staying without documents.
In Bihar, Muslims make up 17 percent of the state’s population, and number about 17.6 million across the state.
Apoorvanand, the academic, said the Bihar electoral roll revision was NRC, in effect.
“Ultimately, the ECI is asking citizens to prove their citizenship by furnishing documents,” he said.
Chhokar from ADR, which was the first organisation to petition the Supreme Court asking it to scrap the exercise, said the consequences of the revision would be grim. “You might have an electoral roll in which half the state’s population would be left without a right to vote,” he said.
From Paris to Lisbon, locals and tourists are struggling as a powerful heatwave grips European countries. Temperatures are soaring past 40°C, prompting school closures, tourist attraction restrictions, and warnings about wildfires and climate change.
Damian Homer, 51, was convicted of murder and attempted murder in November 2024 after launching a brutal attack on his partner and her mum while their two young children were at home
Wendy Francis had her rushed to her daughter’s home after learning of Damian’s violent outburst(Image: Facebook)
A quiet spring evening in a Worcester suburb erupted into chaos when police and paramedics swarmed a residential street, responding to a harrowing double stabbing on March 2, 2024.
Inside the house, Damian Homer stood at the door, blood staining his t-shirt. His partner Stacey Hill and her mother Wendy Francis lay injured on the floor – both stabbed in a frenzied attack that left one dead. The horrifying details of the case have been revealed in full in the BBC Two docuseries Murder 24/7.
Homer had launched a violent assault on Stacey and Wendy in a terrifying outburst, even pausing mid-attack to ask Stacey – bleeding and helpless – for a kiss. As she lay critically wounded, Stacey described hearing the “noise the knife made in my mum”.
Wendy was immediately rushed to hospital after sustaining stab wounds(Image: PA)
Wendy, 61, had rushed to the home after her daughter called in fear, having seen the reflection of a knife in Homer’s pocket in their mirrored wardrobe.
When officers arrived, they restrained Homer against the wall. As he was arrested for attempted murder, he claimed: “Stacey went to stab me, then Wendy came in and they both tried to stab me. I had to protect myself… it’s a good job I did otherwise I’d be the one dead.”
Paramedics found Stacey surrounded by blood, urgently asking them to check on her mother and her two children who had been inside the house at the time. Police carried the two young children to safety, telling them: “Keep your eyes tight, tight, tight” as they were taken past the bodies.
While Stacey, 38, was rushed to hospital, Wendy went into cardiac arrest. Despite efforts to save her, she was pronounced dead at 9:18pm on March 2, 2024.
In police interviews the following morning, Homer claimed he loved Stacey and described a domestic argument escalating. He alleged Stacey tried to grab a knife first, which he took and placed in his pocket. Then he claimed Wendy stormed in and jumped on him, prompting him to draw the knife:
“We fell over and the knife went into her. Stacey was shouting, and she went to grab another knife… and came towards me. I launched at her. And she just froze on the spot.”
But his version immediately raised suspicions. He referred to a “second knife” Stacey had supposedly grabbed – yet when police searched the property, no second knife was found.
With Stacey in critical condition and Wendy dead, investigators turned to other sources. The couple’s children – now in the care of relatives – gave troubling accounts. A social worker noted they played with dolls, identifying one as “Daddy… he’s bad”.
One child said: “One of them got blood on Daddy’s T-shirt, and they were screaming. Daddy was in the kitchen, Mummy was lying down on the kitchen floor, and Nanny’s blood was dripping. Dad was throwing the knife he’d got in his hand, and it hit both of them.”
Damian Hill was charged with murder and attempted murder in 2024(Image: Facebook)
Homer’s violent past also began to emerge. His former boss Clair recalled his threatening outburst during a disciplinary meeting: “How fing dare they… if I find out it’s you I’m going to fing hurt you.”
He also had a suspended sentence for assaulting Stacey in 2020.
Detectives reviewed the couple’s mobile phones, uncovering evidence of a deteriorating relationship. On the day of the attack, Stacey had texted her mother: “I’ve had to come upstairs… believe me when I say I’m done.”
In another message to Homer, she wrote: “Find somewhere else to live… you’re lucky I ain’t called the police on you.”
To which he replied: “Lol. Only if you buy me out.” Concerned, Stacey’s aunt phoned emergency services:
“She’s just told me her chap’s got a knife in his pocket. Please get there quick.”
When Stacey was finally able to speak, she gave a harrowing account of that night. After a day out at a garden centre, Homer started drinking and grew increasingly aggressive. She went upstairs to get away, and spotted a knife in his pocket via their mirrored wardrobe:
“I said to my auntie, ‘Call the police, he’s got a knife.’ I called my mum and said, ‘Mum, Damo’s got a knife and I think he’s going to kill me.’”
Stacey tried to leave, but Homer pulled her back and began assaulting her. “He was swinging me around the kitchen and punching me in the head. I heard my mum come through the door and say, ‘Get your hands off my f***ing babbi.’ I breathed a sigh of relief – my hero had come to save me.”
But Homer didn’t stop. Instead, he pulled out the knife.
“We both ended up curled up on the floor… he pulled the knife out of his back pocket and stabbed my mum in the left side of her chest, for ages. All I could hear was the noise the knife made in my mum.”
“I tried to get on my mum to stop any more stab wounds being inflicted. He started panicking and as he did that, he came down to me and asked me for a kiss.”
Stacey, stabbed in the chest with a collapsed lung, was losing consciousness. But her thoughts were still with her mother:
“I kept asking about my mum but I could tell by the look on their face that it was bad news.”
Stacey’s detailed testimony, along with the children’s accounts, forensic evidence, and Ring doorbell footage capturing Wendy’s final moments, left police confident Homer’s story was false. He was charged with murder and attempted murder.
Though he initially claimed self-defence, Homer later pleaded guilty and was sentenced in November 2024 to life imprisonment, with a minimum term of 20 years.
“Everybody loved Damo,” Stacey reflected. “But when you were living with him 24/7, the mask started to come away. The first time he hit me, he said sorry. But there was no point in ever being happy, because I knew it wouldn’t last.”
“The biggest thing for me was losing my mum. But every time I think about giving up, I look at what my mum did for me. She saved my life and I know now what I have to do for my kids. I have to be the mum to them, that she was to me.”
Murder 24/7 is available to stream now on BBC iPlayer.
![An aerial view from a Jordanian military aircraft shows the Gaza Strip, before humanitarian aid is airdropped over it, in Gaza, August 17, 2025. [Alaa Al Sukhni/Reuters]](https://www.occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/2025-08-17T105432Z_1742712988_RC2W8GAWZSN5_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-GAZA-AIRDROP-1755432189.jpg)
