kills

Church mourners die on Kenya’s Nairobi-Mombasa Highway weeks after another crash killed 17 people.

A bus carrying mourners has collided with a truck on a major highway in southeastern Kenya, killing at least 24 people, police say.

The crash happened in the Kanga area near Mtito Andei, on the road linking the capital, Nairobi, to the coastal city of Mombasa, at about 7:45am (04:45 GMT) on Sunday, October 25.

Another 24 people were injured, hospital officials said.

The deaths came just over three weeks after another crash on the highway killed 17 people, prompting fresh government promises to improve road safety.

The bus belonged to Power of the Word Church International in Mombasa and was taking passengers home from their pastor’s funeral in western Kenya.

They had stopped for breakfast shortly before the collision, according to one survivor.

The other vehicle was a truck transporting cement.

Violet Mwandonyi, who survived the crash, told the Associated Press on Sunday that she remembered passengers crying out for passing motorists to help.

She said she did not know what had happened to her two children, who had been travelling on the bus.

The cause of the crash remains under investigation.

Makueni County Commissioner Abdullahi Khalif, the government’s senior administrator in the area, told Kenyan newspaper The Standard that the bus driver had tried to overtake several vehicles before colliding with an oncoming truck.

Kenya’s National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) also identified dangerous overtaking as a possible cause. Another survivor said the truck struck the bus from behind.

On October 3, a crash involving several vehicles killed 17 people, most of them Catholic pilgrims travelling to a prayer site, near Salama on the same highway.

Police said a truck driver had tried to overtake another truck before the collision.

The NTSA had identified that stretch of road as an area with a history of crashes.

President William Ruto offered condolences on Sunday and ordered inspections of vehicles used for public transport.

Transport Minister Davis Chirchir said the government would step up enforcement against speeding and unsafe overtaking, improve dangerous sections of road and strengthen training and checks for commercial drivers.

In a statement on Sunday, Chirchir said the government would work with police, local authorities and lawmakers on the measures, including closer oversight of buses and heavy goods vehicles.

“We cannot continue treating road safety as business as usual,” he said, calling for stronger action to reduce deaths.

Figures from the NTSA, reported by Kenyan media, show that 5,009 people died in road crashes in 2025, with 2,150 deaths recorded in the first half of 2026.

The authority estimates that about 20,000 crashes occur across Kenya each year.

Following Sunday’s collision, it called for road crashes to be declared a national disaster.

The alligator was “removed as a danger to the public” and “dispatched” by trappers, he said.

“Always be aware of your surroundings, always be safe. Local wildlife – respect it, keep your distance,” Mason said. “It looks like it’s docile, it looks like your Florida emblem, but it can be dangerous.”

After attacking the man on shoreline, the alligator then dragged him into the water, the FWC said, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

The attack is the second alligator death in Florida this year, after a 31-year-old woman was killed in June while swimming with her friends near Orlando.

Alligators are a common site in many parts of Florida, particularly in and around lakes, rivers, and grassy areas.

Between 1948 and 2025, there were 32 fatal alligator attacks in the state, out of 500 total incidents, according to the FWC.

The BBC has reached out to the FWC for more information.

The woman’s young daughter was rescued from a large fire inside the apartment caused by the attack.

An Israeli air strike on an apartment block in Gaza has killed a woman and wounded two other people, hospital officials said.

Reem Asaad Awad, 33, was killed in the attack early on Wednesday in the Al-Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City, the Turkish state news agency Anadolu reported, quoting a source at Al Shifa hospital.

The source said the strike caused extensive destruction to the targeted apartment and nearby buildings.

The daughter of the woman who was killed was rescued from a large fire that broke out after the attack.

Israel says it is investigating the strike and claims it targeted a member of Hamas, without providing evidence.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili said the strike happened at 4am (01:00 GMT).

Israel has killed 1,501 Palestinians in Gaza since it agreed a “ceasefire” with the Palestinian group Hamas last October. The truce was part of a wider United States-backed proposal to end Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza.

Talks aimed at advancing to the second phase of the US plan, which includes the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the disarmament of Hamas, have stalled.

The agreement states that 600 trucks of humanitarian aid are to be allowed into Gaza each day, but Israeli authorities have continued to impose severe restrictions on supplies entering the enclave, and reconstruction of the war-shattered territory has not begun.

Russian air attacks have killed at least six people in Ukraine and caused power cuts in parts of the capital Kyiv, days after United States President Donald Trump announced an “energy ceasefire” in the more-than four year war.

The ⁠Russian Defence Ministry said on Wednesday that its forces had carried out a “massive” strike ‌against communications and energy infrastructure facilities ⁠in Ukraine, the Interfax ⁠news ⁠agency reported.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko urged people to remain in shelters.

“Energy facilities in Kyiv and the surrounding region have come under a massive ballistic missile strike. There are power disruptions in the capital,” he wrote on Telegram.

DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy provider, said the attack had caused emergency power cuts in several urban districts of Kyiv.

A Russian strike on a multistorey building in the capital’s Desnianskyi district killed two people, while another attack in Golosiivsky district killed one, Ukraine’s state emergency service said.

The Ukrainian military also reported that two people were killed and six wounded in Russian attacks on the Dnipropetrovsk region. Another person was killed in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region.

Further Russian missile attacks were reported in the Kharkiv and Zhytomyr regions, while other strikes hit Sumy and Chernigiv.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian attacks on Kyiv had come without Ukraine receiving advance warning from its Western allies.

“A Russian ballistic missile attack on Kyiv. Once again, no early warning from our partners,” he wrote on Facebook. “This is absolutely unjust: when they are destroying our infrastructure, and Ukraine is not even receiving early warnings about ballistic missile launches.”

The president said Ukraine detected the missiles only as they neared Kyiv.

He also accused Russia of violating the “energy ceasefire” Trump announced on Sunday.

“A targeted Russian ballistic missile strike specifically against energy infrastructure – the very infrastructure covered by the ceasefire announced by the American President,” he wrote on X.

“The strike was entirely deliberate and demonstrative in its scale – Russia has never before shown such ostentatious disrespect toward the United States.”

Russia also reported Ukrainian drone strikes overnight. The governor of Russia’s Saratov region, Roman Busargin, said a Ukrainian drone strike had killed one person in the city of Balakovo.

Busargin said all ⁠infrastructure ⁠facilities were operating as usual. Balakovo is home ⁠to a data centre of Russia’s ⁠top lender Sberbank, a ⁠nuclear power ⁠plant and a hydropower station, whose dam spans ‌the Volga River, among other facilities.

Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin said air defence forces had downed nearly 500 drones flying towards the Russian capital overnight. Russian authorities said about 160 more were brought down over the Rostov region, while others targeted Moscow.

Russia’s military later put the number of downed Ukrainian drones overnight at 902, of which 180 were shot down near the capital Moscow.

Islamic Relief calls for international action as Gaza endures deadly Israeli attacks and worsening humanitarian conditions.

Israeli attacks have killed or wounded a Palestinian in Gaza every 90 minutes on average since the ceasefire was announced in October last year, the aid group Islamic Relief says.

Islamic Relief, a United Kingdom-based charity, said on Thursday that at least 1,454 Palestinians were killed and more than 5,000 wounded over the year. At least 320 of those killed were children, close to one a day.

Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that 1,471 Palestinians have been killed and 5,189 wounded since the ceasefire, including four killed and 28 wounded in the past 24 hours.

Israel has killed at least 74,254 people since October 2023, the ministry added.

On Thursday, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian southeast of Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, and an Israeli air strike on a house in central Khan Younis wounded several people, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

In the occupied West Bank, a 13-year-old boy was shot in the foot during an Israeli raid on Yamoun, west of Jenin, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

Islamic Relief said Israel has used the so-called Yellow Line, which marks the area under Israeli military control, to push Palestinians out of 65 percent of Gaza, crowding its nearly 2.1 million people into the remaining 35 percent.

According to the report, an Islamic Relief aid worker in Gaza whose name is withheld for their safety said: “There is no ceasefire in reality. They target displacement camps and crowded areas, so there is still a lot of fear.”

Israel continues to block shelter materials, fuel and medical supplies, the group said.

About 82 percent of Gaza’s structures are damaged or destroyed, more than half of health services have shut down and more than 20,000 severely ill patients are denied permission to leave for treatment.

The charity urged world leaders to increase pressure to protect civilians and uphold international law.

“A ceasefire in name only cannot be an excuse for international inaction,” it said.

The latest attack brings the death toll from US military boat strikes to at least 235 from 70 maritime strikes across the region.

The United States has conducted another strike on an alleged drug trafficking boat in the Caribbean, killing four, according to the US military.

US Southern Command said late Sunday that it struck alleged drug traffickers operating along “established narco-trafficking routes” in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, following its standard reporting pattern for military operations of suspected cartels across the multinational maritime zones.

The latest attack brings the death toll from US military boat strikes to at least 235 deaths across 70 attacks, since the administration of US President Donald Trump first launched its counter-narcoterrorism campaign, termed Operation Southern Spear, in September of last year.

At the time, Trump characterised the fight against cartels in Latin America as an active “armed conflict” while defending the strikes as a necessary escalation to curb illicit drug trafficking and reduce fatal US overdoses.

The move comes as United Nations experts warn that the strikes violate international law and could amount to crimes against humanity.

Despite releasing footage on X showing the explosion that destroyed the moving vessel, the US military has offered no evidence that the targeted boat was ferrying drugs.

The Trump administration has been actively seeking regional security agreements across Latin America to expand joint military operations against what it has designated as criminal cartels.  The deals come under the US-led Shield of the Americas coalition, launched in March. The president has pledged the undertaking will use “unmatched military might” to dismantle drug cartels while simultaneously countering Chinese economic influence in the Western Hemisphere.

During a visit to Panama in August, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras had agreed to joint counter-crime military operations on their soil, a statement Guatemala quickly disputed to clarify its sovereignty and boundaries within the 19-member alliance.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

No warning given before Israeli deadly strike hit Rimal area, one of Gaza City’s most densely populated neighborhoods.

An Israeli air attack on a residential apartment in western Gaza City has killed at least five people and severely wounded at least six others, according to medical staff at al-Shifa Hospital.

The strike hit the al-Asala building in the Remal neighbourhood early on Saturday without prior warning, according to Al Jazeera’s Hani al-Shaer, reporting from Khan Younis.

Remal is one of Gaza City’s most crowded residential areas, home to thousands of displaced people sheltering in makeshift camps across the neighbourhood.

Al-Shaer said the attack came in the middle of the night, when residents were asleep.

“We heard fighter jets getting louder, then three strikes followed, hitting the apartment and killing those inside,” he said.

The strike penetrated the targeted apartment and tore through the floors below, causing further destruction throughout the multi-storey building.

Fires burned for at least an hour before Palestinian Civil Defence crews managed to put them out.

Al-Shaer described the scene as “horrific”, with people buried under the rubble as they slept.

Civil defence crews were still searching the site for missing people and bodies, he said, as Israeli drones continued flying over the area and fighter jets were heard flying low across the Strip.

Al-Shifa Hospital said the dead included four women, among them an elderly Christian woman and her daughter.

The six wounded were taken to al-Shifa Hospital for treatment.

Gaza’s health toll mounts, with 1,439 dead and 5,052 injured since the ceasefire began in October 2025.

An Israeli drone strike has killed a Palestinian man and wounded several others in southern Gaza while settlers shot dead another Palestinian man near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

The body of Tamer al-Hamayda, 42, and three wounded people were brought to Nasser Medical Complex on Thursday after the strike hit a tent sheltering displaced Palestinians in the al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Younis on the southern coast of the Gaza Strip.

Another Palestinian succumbed to wounds sustained in an earlier Israeli drone strike on Tuesday that targeted a gathering of Palestinians in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, according to medical personnel in Nasser Medical Complex.

Israeli forces also carried out a large-scale demolition operation targeting buildings east of Gaza City’s al-Tuffah neighbourhood.

The Gaza Health Ministry reported eight new deaths and 26 wounded over the past 24 hours, putting the toll since the “ceasefire” took effect in October 2025 at 1,439 killed and 5,052 wounded, with 834 bodies recovered from the rubble.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 74,040 Palestinians and wounded 175,168 since October 2023, the ministry said.

Occupied West Bank pogroms

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers shot dead a Palestinian man and wounded another during a raid on the village of Yasuf, north of Ramallah, on Thursday.

51-year-old Mashhour Yassin was shot dead by settler gunfire, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

Describing the attack, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Israeli forces had detained an ambulance, seizing its key and throwing it aside, “in a crime that reflects clear coordination between the settlers and occupation forces.”

It said the killing “falls within the framework of a serious and continuous escalation in organised settler crimes,” saying Israel gives free rein to settler “terrorism against our people in the service of settlement, annexation, forced displacement and ethnic cleansing plans.”

Yasuf Mayor Jumaa Abdel Fattah told the AFP news agency that dozens of Israeli settlers armed with sticks and firearms had attacked the village, which lies between four Israeli settlements.

“Yassin was at his doorstep when the settlers attacked the village homes. He went out to defend his house,” Abdel Fattah said, adding that Yassin’s nephew was also wounded in the attack.

Abdel Fattah said the settlers had come from Havat Anton, an illegal Israeli settlement established in July that has previously attacked the village’s residents.

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have reported a surge in settler pogrom attacks in recent months.

More than 500,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements considered illegal under international law.

According to the UN, at least 1,112 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the territory since October 2023, including at least 37 killed by settlers.