killings

Gaza’s Health Ministry says it also received the remains of 45 Palestinians from Israel through the Red Cross.

Israel has released five Palestinian prisoners as part of a fragile ceasefire deal with Hamas, offering a rare moment of relief for the families in Gaza.

The five men, freed on Monday evening, were taken to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah for medical examinations, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reported from outside the facility.

Relatives gathered at the hospital, some embracing the freed prisoners, while others anxiously sought information about missing family members.

“This is the first time since the ceasefire that Israeli forces have released unknown Palestinian prisoners,” said Khoudary.

Thousands of Palestinians remain imprisoned in Israel, many held without charge under what rights groups call arbitrary detention.

Israel returns remains of Palestinians

Earlier on Monday, Gaza’s Health Ministry said it received the remains of 45 Palestinians from Israel through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), bringing the total number of bodies handed over under the ceasefire agreement to 270.

Forensic teams have identified 78 bodies so far and will continue their examinations “in accordance with approved medical procedures and protocols” before returning the remains to families, the ministry said in a statement on Monday.

Officials previously reported that many of the returned bodies bore evidence of torture and abuse, including bound hands, blindfolds, and facial disfigurement, and were handed back without identification tags.

The handover forms part of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement that took effect on October 10, which includes prisoner and body exchanges mediated by Turkiye, Egypt, and Qatar, with involvement from the United States.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Khoudary said, “Many of the bodies returned show signs of torture.” She added that families of missing Palestinians are still searching for relatives among the dead.

“If these bodies are not identified, they will be buried along with other Palestinians in a mass grave in Deir el-Balah,” she said.

Israeli ceasefire violations

Despite a ceasefire, Israel continues to carry out deadly attacks. A source at Nasser Medical Complex told Al Jazeera Arabic that three Palestinians were killed on Monday by Israeli fire north of Rafah in southern Gaza.

The Israeli army said it launched strikes on southern Gaza, claiming individuals had crossed the “yellow line”, an Israeli-controlled area, in what it called a ceasefire violation.

The Israeli version of events could not be independently verified. It also remains unclear whether the Israeli military was referring to the same attack that killed the three Palestinians.

In Gaza City, a child was among three people wounded by Israeli fire in the city’s east, a source at al-Ahli Arab Hospital told Al Jazeera.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said Israel continues to use quadcopter drones to drop grenades on buildings left partially standing. “Authorities here describe these acts as violations of the ceasefire,” he said.

The Gaza Government Media Office has accused Israel of committing more than 125 ceasefire violations since the truce took effect, warning that continued attacks threaten to reignite full-scale hostilities.

A senior Sudanese diplomat has accused the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of committing war crimes in the country’s North Darfur state, as survivors who escaped the city of el-Fasher recounted mass killings and sexual assault by the paramilitary troops.

Sudan’s ambassador to Egypt, Imadeldin Mustafa Adawi, made the allegations on Sunday as he accused the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of helping the RSF paramilitary group in the ongoing civil war.

The Gulf state denies the claim.

Adawi’s remarks followed an earlier statement by Sudanese Prime Minister Kamil Idris, who told the Swiss newspaper Blick that the RSF should be tried in the international courts.

But Kamil rejected the “illegal” idea of foreign troops being deployed to his country, which has been ravaged by a civil war between the RSF and the Sudanese army since April 2023.

The calls for action come a week after the RSF seized the capital of North Darfur, el-Fasher, after an 18-month siege and starvation campaign, resulting in thousands of reported civilian deaths. The city was the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in the region.

In the days since its capture, survivors have reported mass executions, pillaging, rape and other atrocities, sparking an international outcry.

The Sudanese government said that at least 2,000 people were killed, but witnesses said the real number could be much higher.

Tens of thousands of civilians are still believed to be trapped in the city.

“The government of Sudan is calling on the international community to act immediately and effectively rather than just make statements of condemnation,” Adawi told reporters during a news conference in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

The envoy urged the world to designate the RSF as a “terrorist” organisation, as well as condemn RSF “for committing massacres amounting to genocide” and denounce “its official regional financier and supporter, the United Arab Emirates”.

He also said that Sudan would not take part in talks led by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United States and the UAE to end the conflict if the latter remains part of the negotiations.

“We do not consider them [the UAE] as a mediator and someone reliable on the issue,” Adawi stressed.

Mass killings, sexual assault

The UAE, however, denies allegations that it is supplying the RSF with weapons.

At a forum in Bahrain’s capital, Manama, an Emirati presidential adviser said that the Gulf state wants to help end the war, and acknowledged that regional and international powers could have done more to prevent the conflict in Sudan.

“We all made the mistake, when the two generals who are fighting the civil war today overthrow the civilian government. That was, in my opinion, looking back, a critical mistake,” Anwar Gargash said.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the US, as mediators, have all condemned the mass killings and called for increased humanitarian assistance.

As the world’s worst humanitarian crisis further spirals into chaos, residents who managed to escape el-Fasher recalled their harrowing experience.

Adam Yahya, who fled with four of his children, told Al Jazeera that his wife was killed in an RSF drone strike shortly before el-Fasher fell. He said that he and his children barely had time to mourn before they found themselves on the run from the paramilitary group.

“The streets were full of dead people. We made it to one of the sand barriers set up by the RSF. They were shooting at people, men, women and children, with machineguns. I heard one saying, ‘Kill them all, leave no one alive’,” Yahya recounted.

“We ran back and hid. At night, I slowly crept out with my children and crossed the barrier. We walked to a village, where someone took pity on us and gave us a ride to the camp here.”

Another 45-year-old woman in the displacement camp of Al Dabbah in Sudan’s Northern State told Al Jazeera that RSF fighters sexually assaulted her.

The woman, who only gave her first name, Rasha, said she left her daughters at home when the RSF seized the army headquarters on Sunday and went to look for her sons.

“The RSF asked me where I was going, and I told them I’m looking for my sons. They forced me into a house and started sexually assaulting me. I told them I’m old enough to be their mother. I cried,” she said.

“They then let me go, and I took my daughters and fled, leaving my sons behind. I don’t know where they are now,” she said.

“We just fled and ran past dead bodies till we crossed the barrier and reached a small village outside el-Fasher,” she added.

Aid agencies, meanwhile, said that thousands of people are unaccounted for after fleeing el-Fasher.

Caroline Bouvard, the Sudan country director for Solidarites International, said that only a few hundred more people have turned up in Tawila, the closest town to el-Fasher, in the past few days.

“Those are very small numbers considering the number of people who were stuck in el-Fasher. We keep hearing feedback that people are stuck on the roads and in different villages that are unfortunately still inaccessible due to security reasons,” she said.

Bouvard said there is a “complete blackout” in terms of information coming out of el-Fasher after the RSF takeover, and that aid agencies are getting their information from surrounding areas, where up to 15,000 people are believed to be stuck.

“There’s a strong request for advocacy with the different parties to ensure that humanitarian aid can reach these people or that, at least, we can send in trucks to bring them back to Tawila,” she added.

Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab says satellite images appear to show mass killings in Sudan’s western city of el-Fasher.

The fall of the Sudanese city of el-Fasher to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has resulted in mass killings by the group, according to an analysis of satellite imagery viewed by Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL).

The RSF had laid siege to el-Fasher, the capital city of North Darfur in western Sudan, for more than a year and a half. Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan announced the withdrawal of his forces from their last stronghold in the wider Darfur region late on Monday, a day after the paramilitary RSF seized control of the main Sudanese army base in el-Fasher and declared victory there.

The fall of el-Fasher has “resulted in the carpet-bombing of large swaths of the city by Sudan Armed Forces, an unknown number of civilian casualties caused by both sides, and almost 15 months of IPC-5 Famine conditions in areas caused by RSF’s siege of the city”, the HRL report said. The HRL determined this by reviewing satellite imagery and open source and remote sensing data from Monday.

“El-Fasher appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution,” the HRL said.

The RSF has long been accused of targeting non-Arab communities in Darfur, and the HRL, aid groups and experts have previously warned of mass violence and displacement if el-Fasher fell.

HRL’s report showed images containing clusters of objects and ground discolouration that it believes to be evidence of human bodies. The HRL appears to back up other accounts from aid groups that reported chaotic scenes on the ground, including killings, arrests and attacks on hospitals.

“The actions by RSF presented in this report may be consistent with war crimes and crimes against humanity (CAH) and may rise to the level of genocide,” the report said.

The war in Sudan between the RSF and the SAF began on April 15, 2023 and has become the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with tens of thousands killed and more than 12 million people displaced. There are also fears that Sudan could once again split, more than a decade after the creation of South Sudan.

Darfur is an RSF stronghold while the SAF controls the Sudanese capital Khartoum, as well as the north and east of the country. The RSF advance comes shortly after talks last week by the Quad – a bloc of nations comprised of the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates – which laid out a roadmap aimed at ending the war in Sudan.

Sept. 19 (UPI) — The U.K. government will replace its controversial Northern Ireland Legacy and Reconciliation Act of 2023 with new laws to address killings that occurred during The Troubles era.

Representatives of the U.K. and Irish governments on Friday reached agreements on several proposals that are intended to address losses suffered by Irish families, the BBC reported.

Among points of contention is the 2023 Legacy Act that was approved by the U.K. government and provides amnesty for British military veterans for killings that occurred during The Troubles era.

A new commission and a dedicated unit within the Irish police force will investigate killings that occurred during The Troubles era in Northern Ireland to resolve decades-old cases.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Harris called Friday’s agreements a “night and day improvement” over the Legacy Act, The Guardian reported.

Harris is among Irish officials who are to make public the agreements and other proposals to address The Troubles and related killings.

The agreements reached on Friday will not end an active interstate case filed by the Irish government in the wake of the Legacy Act’s approval in 2023.

Some British military leaders criticized the agreements for making elderly veterans vulnerable to potential prosecution.

Meanwhile, Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said the agreements must be “victim-centered” and comply with human rights law to be accepted, according to the BBC.

The Troubles era refers to centuries-old conflicts in Northern Ireland that culminated in a 30-year conflict from the late 1960s until the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, according to the Imperial War Museums.

The agreement ended fighting that pitted the British military and many Protestants in Northern Ireland against the Irish Republican Army, other paramilitary forces and many Irish Catholics, who wanted to establish an independent Irish state.

The Troubles included many bombings and street fighting that caused the deaths of thousands of Irish civilians until the 1998 cease-fire agreement.

The conflict had its roots in the early 17th century, when Protestants from Scotland and northern England first settled in what would become Northern Ireland.

Jessica Carter is tired of being resilient.

After her brother, Richard Ware, 48, was stabbed to death outside a Los Feliz homeless shelter last month, it fell to her to hold their extended family together.

Just eight months prior, another relative — her 36-year-old nephew, Jesse Darjean — was gunned down around the block from his childhood home in Compton. His slaying remains unsolved.

Across L.A. County and around the country, murder rates are falling to lows not seen since the late 1960s. Yet clearance rates — a measure of how often police solve cases — have remained relatively steady. In other words: Even with fewer homicides to investigate, authorities have been unable to bring more murderers to justice. Police data show killings of Black and Latino people are still less likely to be solved than those of white or Asian victims.

Carter’s hometown of Compton is still crawling out from under its reputation as a national epicenter for gang violence. But for all of its continued struggles, violent crime — especially killings — has plummeted. When the gang wars peaked in 1991, there were 87 homicides. Last year, there were 18, including Darjean’s fatal shooting on Oct. 24.

The way Carter sees it, the killers who took her brother and nephew are both getting away with it — but for different reasons. In Darjean’s shooting, there are no known suspects, witnesses or motive. But the man who stabbed Ware is known to authorities. The L.A. County district attorney’s office declined to file charges against him, finding evidence of self-defense, according to a memo released to The Times.

Ware’s sister and other relatives dispute the D.A.’s decision, claiming authorities have failed to fully investigate.

“The system failed him,” Carter said.

In the absence of arrests and charges, Carter and her family have simmered with rage, grief and frustration. With digital footprints, DNA testing and more resources than ever available to police, how is it that the people who took their loved ones are still walking free?

Jessica Carter, right, lights candles on the sidewalk to memorialize her brother, Richard Ware, who was stabbed to death outside a nearby homeless shelter.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

In Darjean’s case, the investigation is led by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, which has patrolled Compton since 2000, when the city disbanded its own Police Department. Leads appear to be scarce. His body was found in the back seat of his car, which had been riddled with bullets. A father of three, he had just gotten home late at night from one of his jobs as a security guard.

To Sherrina Lewis, his mother, it seemed the world was quick to forget and move on. News outlets largely ignored the shooting. Social media sensationalized it. She couldn’t resist reading some of the comments online, speculating about whether her son was killed by someone he knew or because of his race or a gang affiliation.

But, Darjean was no gangster, she says. True, there had been rumors around the neighborhood about escalating conflict between the Cedar Block Pirus, a Black gang, and their Latino rivals. But if anything, Lewis said, her son was targeted in a classic case of wrong place, wrong time.

Jesse Darjean in an undated photo.

(Jessica Carter)

When homicide detectives began knocking on doors for answers, her former neighbors claimed not to have seen anything. For Lewis, it felt like betrayal — many of those neighbors had watched Darjean grow up with their kids.

“Each and every day I have to ask God to lift the hardness in my heart, because I‘m angry,” Lewis said. “They’re not gonna make my son no cold case, I promise you that.”

Lewis nearly lost Darjean once before, at the moment of his birth.

He and his twin brother were born three months early, and doctors warned that Darjean was the less likely of the two to survive. He suffered from respiratory problems, which left him dependent on a breathing machine. The prognosis was bleak.

Casha, left, and her brother Jesse Darjean as babies.

(Jessica Carter)

Doctors asked her for “a name for his death certificate” in case he died en route to a hospital in Long Beach. Picking “Jesse” on the spot was agony, she said. In the end, Darjean was the twin who survived.

Shy as a child, he had grown up to be outgoing and witty, a person who loved to cook soul food and make dance videos with his sister and post them on Instagram. While his siblings all moved away as they got older, Darjean insisted on staying put. Compton was home, through and through, he used to tell his mother. He wasn’t blind to the gang violence, but he came to know a different side of the city, one that represented Black joy and resilience — a side he saw captured in Kendrick Lamar’s music video for the Grammy-winning “Not Like Us.”

When his niece ran for Miss Teen Compton, Darjean advocated on her behalf by taking out a full-page ad in the local newspaper that proclaimed: “Compton is the best city on Earth.”

But Darjean knew the pain of losing loved ones. His friend Montae Talbert was killed late one night in 2011 in a drive-by shooting outside an Inglewood liquor store. Talbert, known as M-Bone, was a member of the rap group Cali Swag District, the group behind the viral rap dance the “Dougie.”

Around the same time, the mother of Darjean’s oldest daughter was gunned down in Compton. A few years later, another uncle, Terry Carter, a businessman who built classic lowrider cars and started a record label with Ice Cube, was struck and killed by a vehicle driven by rap impresario Marion “Suge” Knight.

After Darjean’s funeral, which Lewis said drew more than 1,000 people, she returned to the scene of the shooting: Brazil Street, right off Wilmington Avenue, on a modest block of stucco and wood-frame homes.

With the bravado of an angry, grieving mother, she began going door-to-door in her old neighborhood, seeking answers. She wanted to show anyone who was watching that she wouldn’t be intimidated into silence.

When she confronted one of Darjean’s close childhood friends about what happened, he swore he didn’t know anything. She didn’t believe him.

“He just broke down crying. I can tell it was eating him up,” Lewis said.

The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department did not respond to multiple inquires about Darjean’s case.

Jesse Darjean holds his daughter Jessica. At right is another relative.

(Jessica Carter)

On some level, Lewis understands the hesitancy. Fear of gang retaliation and distrust of law enforcement still hangs over the west Compton neighborhood. After raising her six children there, in 2006 she sold their family home of 50 years and moved to Palmdale because she didn’t want her “kids to become accustomed to death.” For her, she said, the final straw was the discovery of a body “propped up” on her neighbor’s fence.

Like generations of Black women before her, Lewis is faced with enormous pressure to carry their family’s burden. Possessing a superhuman-like will to overcome adversity is celebrated by society with terms such as “Black Girl Magic” and “Strong Black Woman,” said Keisha Bentley-Edwards, an associate professor of medicine at Duke University. But such unrealistic expectations not only strip Black women of their innocence from an early age, but also contribute to higher pregnancy-related death rates and other bad health outcomes, she said.

“A lot of times people expect Black women to take care of it,” Bentley-Edwards said in an interview. Instead of romanticizing the struggle, she said, there should be “tangible support like housing or employment” and other resources.

But experts say safety nets are at risk, particularly after the Trump administration in April terminated roughly $811 million in public safety grants for L.A. and other major cities. As a result, federal funds for victim services programs, which offer counseling and other resources, have been slashed.

Lewis never thought she’d be in a position to need such help.

“The funny thing is, we’re from Compton born and raised, but we were not a statistic until my son was murdered,” she said. “My kids had a two-parent household. We both had jobs. We weren’t doing welfare: I worked every day.”

Months of waiting on an arrest in Darjean’s death led Carter, his aunt, into a “dark place.” She ended up taking a spiritual retreat into the mountains of Nigeria.

She was still working through the feelings of anger and guilt when she learned her brother, Ware, had been fatally stabbed on July 5.

She described the days and weeks that followed as a teary blur. Coming from a family of nurses taught her how to push aside her own grief and forge on, but she was left wondering how much more she could endure.

Ware, who went by Duke, was his family’s unofficial historian, setting out to map out their sprawling Portuguese and Creole roots and scouring the internet for long-lost relatives. He used to brag all the time about his daughter, who had graduated from nursing school and moved back to the L.A. area to work at a pediatric intensive care unit on the Westside. He used to joke that for all of his shortcomings as a father, he had at least gotten one thing right.

In recent months, though, Ware’s life had started to spiral. His diabetes had gotten worse, and a back injury left him unable to continue in his job as a long-haul truck driver. Relatives worried he was hiding a drug addiction from them.

He had adopted a bull mastiff puppy named Nala. She used to follow him everywhere, usually trotting a few steps behind without a leash. Even when he was having trouble making ends meet, he always “spoiled her,” his family said.

For a few months, he lived out of a van one of his sisters bought for him. He then landed at a shelter, a hangar-style structure on the edge of Griffith Park. He and Nala were kicked out after a short time, but he still frequented the area, and it’s where L.A. County authorities said the fight that ended in his killing began.

Prosecutors said in a memo that surveillance video showed Ware and his dog chasing another man into a parking lot across the street from the shelter. The two men, the D.A.’s memo said, had been involved in an ongoing dispute, possibly over a woman.

Friends, family and supporters of Richard Ware gather near the shelter where he was stabbed to death.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

According to the memo, the man said he’d been carrying a knife because of a previous altercation in which Ware ordered his dog to attack. On the day of the stabbing, the man said, Ware had shown up with Nala at the shelter, looking for a confrontation.

After the fight, responding officers found Ware suffering from a deep wound to his chest, Nala with several lacerations and the suspect hiding in a nearby porta-potty. His clothes had been torn off, and he was bleeding profusely from several severe dog bites, the memo said. Prosecutors said witnesses corroborated the man’s story that Ware had been the aggressor, in addition to the video footage.

Ware’s family says that account contradicts what they heard from other residents, who claimed Ware was the one defending himself after the other man attacked him with a vodka bottle. In the meantime, they are working to secure Nala’s release from the pound, where she has been nursing her injuries.

Richard Ware, 48, was stabbed to death on July 5 outside a Los Feliz homeless shelter.

(Jessica Carter)

On July 8, Carter organized a candlelight vigil for her brother outside the shelter where the killing happened. That morning, she said, she cried in the shower before steeling herself so she could run out to a Dollar Tree store to pick up some balloons.

When she got to the vigil, Lewis made her way around, greeting the swarm of relatives holding homemade signs and chanting Ware’s name. After a final prayer, the group released balloons, most of which floated upward with the evening’s lazy breeze. Some, though, got caught in the branches of a large tree nearby.

A smile finally crossed Carter’s face as she pointed up to them. She took it as a sign from Ware, as though he was saying a last goodbye before he departed to heaven.

“He’s trying to hang on,” she said.

Rights group says perpetrators ‘must be held to account’, a year after 24 people killed during cost of living protests.

The Nigerian government has failed to ensure accountability after police used deadly force to disperse mass 2024 demonstrations against soaring living costs, Amnesty International has said on the first anniversary of the protests.

In a statement on Friday, the human rights group said police in Nigeria “bizarrely continue to deny strong allegations of extrajudicial execution, torture and unlawful arrests of the protesters”.

An Amnesty investigation found that at least 24 people were killed when police opened fire on the protests, which erupted in August of last year under the slogan #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria.

Demonstrators took to the streets across the country in anger about soaring fuel prices and inflation, spurred by government reforms aimed at reviving the economy.

“A year on, despite the gravity of these human rights violations, not a single member of the security forces has been prosecuted, as accountability remains elusive for the 24 peaceful protesters killed in Kano, Jigawa, Katsina, Borno, Niger and Kaduna states,” Isa Sanusi, director of Amnesty International Nigeria, said in Friday’s statement.

“Those behind these atrocities must be held to account.”

A spokesman for Nigeria’s Ministry of Justice did not respond to a request for comment from the AFP news agency.

Amnesty said that in all the killings, protesters were shot by police who fired live ammunition “at close range, often at the head or torso, suggesting that officers were shooting to kill”.

“The Nigerian authorities are yet to take appropriate and effective measures to respect, protect, promote and fulfil the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, including by ending the killing, intimidation and harassment of protesters, arbitrary arrests and detention, and mass surveillance, especially in the context of protests,” Sanusi said.

The rights group also condemned what it described as “sham trials” for the hundreds of protesters who were arrested on a variety of alleged offences.

Charges include “‘levy[ing] war against the state in order to intimidate or overawe the president’” as well as “‘using WhatsApp group chats,’ ‘inciting to mutiny,’ “chanting ‘Tinubu must go’, calling on the military to take over government from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu” and “intent to destabilize Nigeria”, according to Amnesty.

Tinubu’s reforms – including floating the naira currency and ending a costly fuel subsidy – have been supported as long overdue by economists, but led to the cost of living to spike in the country.

Though no one has been tried for the deaths, the Nigerian government has been forced at times to step back from its prosecutions of protesters.

In November, dozens of youths, many of them children, appeared in court frail and hungry, sparking outcry over their treatment in jail. Tinubu later ordered their release.

But some trials are still under way for the roughly 700 people arrested.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US nonprofit backed by the US and Israel, was set up earlier this year to provide humanitarian aid in Gaza. Its aid distribution got under way in May, following a prolonged halt in supply deliveries to the enclave. But according to the UN, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed trying to access food at the GHF aid hubs.

Starving and beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza have no choice but to walk several miles to collect much-needed food packages from the four heavily militarised hubs. Palestinian medics and civilians told Al Jazeera that GHF and Israeli troops have routinely opened fire on the aid seekers, killing dozens at a time.

Harrowing accounts have been corroborated by video evidence, whistleblowers and Israeli soldiers, and the killings have fuelled international outcry – including condemnations from heads of state, UN agencies and human rights groups.

Who is responsible for the killings?

Mainly Israeli troops, but mercenaries working for the GHF are also implicated, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which documents atrocities against Palestinians.

Euro-Med also alleges that Israeli forces have enabled Palestinian gangs to loot aid convoys and terrorise civilians.

A retired United States special forces officer, Anthony Aguilar, who was formerly employed by the GHF, recently disclosed some of the brutal treatment Palestinians face at aid sites.

“Without question, I witnessed war crimes by the [Israeli military],” Aguilar told the BBC in an exclusive interview.

How are the Palestinians being killed?

Doctors and survivors in Gaza say that Israel often uses snipers to aim directly at Palestinian aid seekers.

Dr Fadel Naeem said he frequently treats survivors in the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City and that most of the gunshot wounds he sees are to the “head, chest and abdomen”.

He noted that Israel also appears to fire indiscriminately at starving Palestinians, sometimes firing tear gas, explosives or artillery shells at large crowds. These attacks often cause serious burns, as well as flesh and shrapnel wounds.

“There is often severe tissue tearing … and many [of the injured] end up with amputated limbs,” said Dr Naeem.

Other Palestinians sustain fractures and broken bones, typically by being trampled in the mad rush to flee Israeli gunfire or obtain a bag of food aid.

Dr Hassan al-Shaer, who works in al-Shifa Hospital, also says many of the injuries are serious.

“Many of the [injured] victims that come to us also have life-threatening wounds, and they are taken to the operating room immediately,” he told Al Jazeera.

What excuse does Israel give for these killings?

Israel officially denies firing at Palestinians and frequently claims that its troops only fire “warning shots” outside GHF distribution hubs to prevent overcrowding.

The Israeli army also says “chaos” at the sites poses an “immediate threat” to army soldiers.

Yet, according to a news report published by the Israeli daily Haaretz on June 27, Israeli troops pose the real threat.

Many soldiers who served in Gaza admitted that they were “ordered to shoot” directly at Palestinian aid seekers by their superiors.

“Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars,” one soldier told Haaretz.

“It’s a killing field,” he added.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Katz both deny the allegations and claim that they amount to “blood libel” against Israel, meaning they equate it to a false and anti-Semitic accusation that Jewish people murder Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals.

Does medical evidence on the ground support Israel’s official narrative?

No, accounts from doctors in Gaza hospitals and clinics do not support Israel’s claim.

Dr Shaer, from al-Shifa, noted that many of the injured people started coming into the hospital when the GHF began aid distribution in late May.

Injuries are often compounded with illnesses and weak immune systems, effects brought on by starvation in Gaza.

Hakeem Yahiya Mansour, a 30-year-old Palestinian emergency medic in Gaza, added “death always happens” at GHF sites.

“Most of the calls we get are from the surroundings [of the distribution zones],” he told Al Jazeera.

What do the GHF sites look like?

Footage of the sites shows thousands of starving Palestinians crowded onto a strip of land roughly the size of a football field, according to Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF.

Aid seekers are surrounded by guard towers and are often forced to fight for food parcels that are tossed to hungry crowds at poorly arranged and chaotic distribution points.

Tanks are often stationed nearby, and aid seekers can hear the terrifying buzzing of drones above them.

According to satellite imagery obtained by Al Jazeera’s verification unit, Sanad, Palestinians have little space to manoeuvre or receive aid.

Despite the dangers, Palestinians face an impossible choice: die from gunfire or starvation. Many chose to accept the risk and go for aid in the hope of obtaining food for their families and small children.

Mohanad Shaaban said he did not eat for three days, pushing him to head to the GHF site on July 30. He remembers seeing two tanks at the site – one on the right and a second on the left.

“The [Israelis] then opened fire on us,” he recalled solemnly.

“Please tell the world to end this famine,” Shaaban said.

How is the world responding?

Harrowing scenes and images of Palestinians dying of hunger and being killed at GHF aid sites have compelled some of Israel’s allies to issue stern condemnations and ultimatums.

France, Germany and the United Kingdom recently issued a statement urging Israel to scale up life-saving aid.

What’s more, France has taken the symbolic step of recognising a Palestinian state, which the UK also threatened to do, unless Israel ends the “appalling situation” in Gaza and commits to the “two-state” solution. Canada has also said it will recognise a Palestinian state in September.

New Delhi, India – After spending three decades racked with guilt, scared on sleepless nights, and often changing cities, a 48-year-old Dalit man appeared in Karnataka with information about one of the most horrific alleged crimes in India.

Emerging from hiding after 12 years, the man, who once worked as a sanitation worker at the much-revered Dharmasthala temple, told police on July 3 that he was coming forward with “an extremely heavy heart and to recover from an insurmountable sense of guilt”. As a court-protected witness, the man’s identity cannot be revealed under the law.

“I can no longer bear the burden of memories of the murders I witnessed, the continuous death threats to bury the corpses I received,” he said in his statement, reviewed by Al Jazeera, “and the pain of beatings – that if I did not bury those corpses, I would be buried alongside them”.

Now, the whistleblower wants to help in the exhumation of “hundreds of dead bodies” he buried between 1995 and 2014 – many of them women and girls, allegedly murdered after sexual assaults, but also destitute men whose murders he claims to have witnessed.

After days of sustained pressure from activists and public outcry, the Karnataka government – ruled by the opposition Congress party – has created a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the allegations of assault and murder.

So, what did the protected witness reveal in his complaint? Does the temple town have a history of rape and murder? Are more victims coming forward now?

‘Hundreds of bodies’: What’s in the complaint?

Situated on the scenic lower slopes of the Western Ghats, Dharmasthala, an 800-year-old pilgrimage village, is located on the banks of the Nethravathi River in the Belthangady area of the Dakshina Kannada district in Karnataka state, where nearly 2,000 devotees visit daily.

On July 11, the man, fully draped in black clothing with only a transparent strip covering his eyes, appeared at a local court in Belthangady to record his statement.

The complainant, who belongs to the Dalit community – the least privileged and often persecuted group in India’s complex caste hierarchy – joined the temple in 1995 as a sanitation worker.

At the beginning of his employment, he said in the complaint, he noticed dead bodies appearing near the river. “Many female corpses were found without clothes or undergarments. Some corpses showed clear signs of sexual assault and violence; injuries or strangulation marks indicating violence were visible on those bodies,” he noted.

However, instead of reporting this to authorities at the time, the man said he was forced to “dispose of these bodies” after his supervisors beat him up and threatened him, saying, “We will cut you into pieces; we will sacrifice all your family members.”

The supervisors, he claimed, would call him to specific locations where there were dead bodies. “Many times, these bodies were of minor girls. The absence of undergarments, torn clothes, and injuries to their private parts indicated brutal sexual assault on them,” he said. “Some bodies also had acid burn marks.”

The man has told the police and the court that he is ready to undergo any tests, including brain-mapping and a polygraph, and is willing to identify the spots of mass burials. Some sites are likely to be exhumed in the coming days.

In the nearly 20 years he worked at the temple, the man said he “buried dead bodies in several locations throughout the Dharmasthala area”.

Sometimes, as instructed, he burned dead bodies using diesel. “They would instruct me to burn them completely so that no trace would be found. The dead bodies disposed of in this manner numbered in the hundreds,” he said.

Why did he go into hiding?

By 2014, having worked there for 20 years, he said, “The mental torture I was experiencing had become unbearable.”

Then, a girl from his own family was sexually harassed by a person connected to the supervisors at the temple, leading to a realisation that the family needed “to escape from there immediately”. In December 2014, he fled Dharmasthala with his family and informed no one of his whereabouts.

Since then, the family has been living in hiding in a neighbouring state, and changing residences, he said.

“However, I am still living under the burden of guilt that does not subside,” he said. “But my conscience no longer allows me to continue this silence.”

To back his claims, the man recently visited a burial site and exhumed a skeleton; he submitted the skeleton and its photograph during exhumation to the police and the court via his lawyers.

Today, the actual number of dead bodies is not what matters to the former sanitation worker, a person closely associated with the case told Al Jazeera. They requested anonymity to speak.

“Even if it was just two or three women, and not hundreds, their lives matter,” they said, reflecting on why the whistleblower came forward. “If there is a chance at justice, their bodies getting proper rituals, we want to take it.”

Did he identify the victims?

No, he did not identify them by name. However, he detailed some of the burials in his statement to the police.

He recalled that in 2010 he was sent to a location about 500 metres (1,640ft) from a petrol pump in Kalleri, nearly 30 kilometres (19 miles) from Dharmasthala. There, he found the body of a teenage girl.

“Her age could be estimated between 12 to 15 years. She was wearing a school uniform shirt. However, her skirt and undergarments were missing. Her body showed clear signs of sexual assault. There were strangulation marks on her neck,” he noted in his statement. “They instructed me to dig a pit and bury her along with her school bag. That scene remains disturbing to this day.”

He detailed another “disturbing incident” of burying a woman’s body in her 20s. “Her face had been burned with acid. That body was covered with a newspaper. Instead of burying her body, the supervisors instructed me to collect her footwear and all her belongings and burn them with her,” he recalled.

Have similar crimes been linked to Dharmasthala in the past?

Yes. There have been repeated protests over the years regarding the discovery of bodies of rape-and-murder victims in and around Dharmasthala, dating back to the 1980s.

These protests have been sporadic but persistent, often led by local groups, families and political organisations.

In 1987, marches were organised in the town to protest the rape and murder of 17-year-old Padmalata. The demonstrations exposed alleged cover-ups by influential figures but were reportedly quashed through intimidation and legal pressure.

The town saw protests flare again in 2012 with the “Justice for Sowjanya” movement, after another teenager was raped and murdered. That case remains unsolved.

Over the decades, families and local political groups have held demonstrations and submitted memorandums to authorities, linking cases such as the 2003 disappearance of medical student Ananya Bhat to larger allegations of mass graves and unnatural deaths.

S Balan, a senior lawyer in the Karnataka High Court and a human rights activist, told Al Jazeera that the killings and mysterious disappearances in Dharmasthala date back to 1979.

“The souls of young girls are crying for justice; hundreds of girls who disappeared were abducted, were raped, and were killed,” Balan told Al Jazeera. “India has never seen this gravity of offence in its republic after independence.”

Balan also met the Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah last Wednesday with a delegation of lawyers, urging him to form the SIT to probe the alleged mass rapes and murders.

“The chief minister was serious about it. He told us that he will talk to the police and do [what’s needed],” said Balan.

How have the temple authorities reacted?

The administration of the Dharmasthala temple has long been controlled by the powerful Heggade family, with Veerendra Heggade serving as the 21st Dharmadhikari, or hereditary head, since 1968.

Heggade, a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian award, is a member of the parliament’s upper house. He was nominated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2022.

His family wields significant influence in the region, overseeing a wide network of institutions.

In 2012, the family came under public scrutiny following the rape and murder of 17-year-old Sowjanya, a resident of Dharmasthala. Her body was discovered in a wooded area bearing signs of sexual assault and brutal violence. Sowjanya’s family has consistently alleged that the perpetrators had ties to the temple’s leadership.

In a statement shared on Sunday, July 20, the temple authorities expressed support for a “fair and transparent” investigation and expressed hope that the investigation would uncover the truth.

K Parshwanath Jain, the official spokesperson for Sri Kshetra Dharmasthala, said the whistleblower’s complaint has “triggered widespread public debate and confusion across the country”.

“In light of public demand for accountability, we understand that the state government has handed over the case to a Special Investigation Team,” he said. “Truth and belief form the foundation of a society’s ethics and values. We sincerely hope and strongly urge the SIT to conduct a thorough and impartial investigation and bring the true facts to light.”

Have the families of missing people come forward?

Yes. Sujatha Bhat, the mother of Ananya Bhat, who disappeared in 2003, has responded publicly to the whistleblower’s shocking revelations about alleged mass burials in Dharmasthala.

The 60-year-old retired CBI stenographer said she has lived in fear for more than two decades but was motivated by media reports of the worker’s testimony and the discovery of skeletal remains. She filed a new complaint with the police last Tuesday.

Bhat said she believes her daughter may have been among the many women who faced abuse and met a violent end, only to be buried without a trace.

She recalled that she was discouraged from pursuing the case further. “They told us to stop asking questions,” she reportedly said, emphasising the climate of fear and silence that surrounded Dharmasthala for decades.

Speaking with reporters after filing the complaint, Bhat appealed: “Please find my daughter’s skeletal remains and allow me to perform the funeral rites with honour.”

She said she wants to “give peace to Ananya’s soul, and let me spend my final days in peace”.

The United Nations human rights office has said it recorded at least 613 killings of Palestinians both at controversial aid points run by the Israeli- and United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and near humanitarian convoys.

“This is a figure as of June 27. Since then … there have been further incidents,” Ravina Shamdasani, the spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), told reporters in Geneva on Friday.

The OHCHR said 509 of the 613 people were killed near GHF distribution points. The Gaza Health Ministry has put the number of deaths at more than 650 and those wounded as exceeding 4,000.

The GHF began distributing limited food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of deliveries which the UN says is neither impartial nor neutral, as killings continue around the organisation’s sites, which rights groups have slammed as “human slaughterhouses”.

Mahmoud Basal, a civil defence spokesperson in Gaza, said they “recorded evidence of civilians being deliberately killed by the Israeli military”.

“More than 600 Palestinian civilians were killed at these centres,” he said. “Some were shot by Israeli snipers, others were killed by drone attacks, air strikes or shootings targeting families seeking aid.”

‘I lost everything’

A mother, whose son was killed while trying to get food, told Al Jazeera that she “lost everything” after his death.

“My son was a provider, I depended totally on him,” she said, adding: “He was the pillar and foundation of our life.”

The woman called the GHF’s aid distribution centres “death traps”.

“We are forced to go there out of desperation for food; we go there out of hunger,” she said.

“Instead of coming back carrying a bag of flour, people themselves are being carried back as bodies,” she added.

The World Health Organization said on Friday that Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis is operating as “one massive trauma ward” due to an influx of patients injured around GHF sites.

Referring to medical staff at the hospital, Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, told reporters in Geneva: “They’ve seen already for weeks, daily injuries … (the) majority coming from the so-called safe non-UN food distribution sites.”

Peeperkorn said health workers at Nasser Hospital and testimonies from family members and friends of those wounded confirmed that the victims had been trying to access aid at sites run by the GHF.

He recounted the harrowing cases of a 13-year-old boy shot in the head, as well as a 21-year-old with a bullet lodged in his neck which rendered him paraplegic.

According to the UN, only 16 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain partially operational, their collective capacity merely above 1,800 beds – entirely insufficient for the overwhelming medical needs.

The Israeli army has targeted the health institutions and medical workers in the besieged enclave since the beginning of its war on Gaza in October 2023.

“The health sector is being systematically dismantled,” Peeperkorn said on Thursday in a separate statement, citing shortages of medical supplies, equipment, and personnel.

GHF condemned

The UN, humanitarian organisations and other NGOs have repeatedly slammed the GHF for its handling of aid distribution and the attacks around its distribution sites.

More than 130 humanitarian organisations, including Oxfam, Save the Children and Amnesty International, on Tuesday demanded the immediate closure of the GHF, accusing it of facilitating attacks on starving Palestinians.

The NGOs said Israeli forces and armed groups “routinely” open fire on civilians attempting to access food.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which was carrying out aid distribution for decades before the GHF, has called for investigations into the killings and wounding of Palestinians trying to access food through GHF.

UNRWA noted that while it operated about 400 sites across the territory, GHF has set up only four “mega-sites”, three in the south and one in central Gaza – none in the north, where conditions are most severe.

The GHF has denied that incidents surrounding people killed or wounded at its sites have occurred involving its contractors, without providing any evidence, rejecting an Associated Press investigation that said some of its United States staff fired indiscriminately at Palestinians.

A recent report from Israeli outlet Haaretz detailed Israeli troops, in their words, confirming that Israeli soldiers have deliberately shot at unarmed Palestinians seeking aid in Gaza after being “ordered” to do so by their commanders.

Medical sources have told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces killed 27 Palestinians in Gaza since dawn on Friday.

In Khan Younis, the Israeli military killed at least 15 Palestinians following a series of deadly attacks on makeshift tents in the al-Mawasi coastal area, which was once classified as a so-called humanitarian safe zone by Israel. Attacks there have been relentless.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry, while displacing most of the population of more than two million multiple times, triggering widespread hunger and leaving much of the territory in ruins.

The war began after Hamas-led fighters crossed into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 captives back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Hundreds of people in Gaza have been shot dead while going to collect desperately needed food from Israeli- and US-backed aid hubs, according to officials in the Strip.

Start Here with Sandra Gathmann explains what’s been happening.

This episode features:

Amy Low | Medical Team Lead, Doctors Without Borders (MSF)

Kazem Abu Khalaf | Palestine Spokesperson, UNICEF

Nebal Farsakh | Spokesperson, Palestine Red Crescent Society

This doctor in Gaza has tried to save children torn to shreds by Israeli bombs and bullets at GHF aid sites. Speaking to Al Jazeera, she asked how the world can stand by and let the killing of starving people continue?

Israeli soldiers have killed dozens of Palestinians and wounded hundreds as they sought aid in Gaza, according to Palestinian officials.

The soldiers fired at the crowds on Tuesday morning as they gathered along the main eastern road in the southern city of Khan Younis. It was the latest in a string of killings since the Israel- and United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) launched operations to distribute food in the enclave three weeks ago.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that at least 51 civilians were killed. However, the death toll is expected to rise as many of the injured are in a critical condition, according to medics at Nasser Hospital, where the casualties were being treated.

Gaza Civil Defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal added that more than 200 people were injured although reports concerning the number of casualties varied.

“Israeli drones fired at the citizens. Some minutes later, Israeli tanks fired several shells at the citizens, which led to a large number of martyrs and wounded,” the spokesman said, noting that the crowd had assembled in the hope of receiving flour.

Israel did not immediately comment on the incident.

‘Shredded to pieces’

Survivors described horrific scenes.

“Dozens of civilians, including children, were killed, and no one could help or save lives,” survivor Saeed Abu Liba, 38, told Al Jazeera.

Yousef Nofal, who called the event a “massacre”, said he saw many people lying motionless and bleeding on the ground. The soldiers continued to fire on people as they fled, he said.

“I survived by a miracle,” said Mohammed Abu Qeshfa, who mentioned both heavy gunfire and tank shelling.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balal in central Gaza, quoted medical sources at Nasser Hospital as saying many victims were “unidentifiable” because they had been “shredded to pieces” in the attack.

The incident on Tuesday is the latest in a string of killings around GHF food distribution centres.

The private organisation began distributing aid at the end of May after Israel partially lifted an almost three-month blockade of food and other essential items that has put Gaza’s 2.3 million people at risk of famine.

The United Nations and other major humanitarian groups have refused to work with the GHF, saying it cannot meet the level of need in Gaza and it breaks humanitarian principles by giving Israel control over aid access.

After previous shootings, which have been a near-daily occurrence since the aid centres opened, the military has said its soldiers had fired warning shots at what it called suspects approaching their positions although it did not say whether those shots struck anyone.

The death toll of more than 50 people made Tuesday the deadliest day around the GHF sites so far. Previously, that record was set on Monday, when 38 people were killed, mostly in the Rafah area south of Khan Younis.

Reports indicated more than 300 people have been killed and more than 2,000 wounded while trying to collect aid from the GHF.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has hit out at Israel over the killings of Palestinians near the aid delivery points.

“I urge immediate, impartial investigations into deadly attacks on desperate civilians to reach food distribution centres,” he said on Monday.