The long-awaited re-opening of Gaza’s Rafah crossing has been deemed too late for many seeking treatments, in life-or-death conditions. Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary spoke to a mother who had lost her sick child while waiting for the crossing to open.
Published On 2 Feb 20262 Feb 2026
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France won the Six Nations last year, with their sole defeat against England at Allianz Stadium.
Captain Antoine Dupont ruptured cruciate ligaments in his knee in round four against Ireland but Fabien Galthie’s side got over the line without their talisman.
The scrum-half is back and will want to remind the rugby world of what he can do on the biggest stage, but they are without prop Uini Atonio, who was forced to retire with a heart problem.
“I tried to get a good part of the injury off and spend it with my family and friends, so I can do other things and come back with more mental freshness,” Dupont told BBC Radio 5 Live.
Galthie showed that no player is safe in his squad by leaving out France’s all-time top try-scorer Damian Penaud, number eight Gregory Alldritt and veteran centre Gael Fickou.
Will that bold call pay off? The fixtures could aid their chances, with games against Ireland and England at home meaning Les Bleus have a strong chance of retaining their title.
“France have threats all over the park. How they differ from any other team in the Six Nations would be the fact that if they lose five of their top players, it doesn’t matter,” La Rochelle head coach Ronan O’Gara told BBC Sport.
“France have a mentality of there is very little between certain players in certain positions – with the exception being Dupont.”
The executions are part of broader crackdown by Beijing on centres across Southeast Asia, which are built on an industrial scale and hunt scam victims across the globe, as well as running kidnapping, prostitution and drugs rackets.
Published On 2 Feb 20262 Feb 2026
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China has executed four people found guilty of causing six Chinese citizens’ deaths and running scam and gambling operations out of Myanmar worth more than $4bn.
The Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court in southern China announced the executions on Monday morning in a statement. However, the timing of the executions was not clear.
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The executions of 11 other people convicted of running scam centres in Myanmar had been announced last week.
The Shenzhen court sentenced five people accused of running a network of scam centres and casinos to death in November. One of the defendants, group leader Bai Suocheng, died of illness before the sentence was carried out.
The group had established industrial parks in Myanmar’s Kokang region bordering China, from where they allegedly ran gambling and telecom scam operations involving abductions, extortion, forced prostitution, and drug manufacturing and trafficking.
They defrauded victims of more than 29 billion yuan ($4.2bn) and caused the deaths of six Chinese citizens and injuries to others, the court said.
Their crimes “were exceptionally heinous, with particularly serious circumstances and consequences, posing a tremendous threat to society”, the court’s statement said.
The defendants appealed the verdict, but the Guangdong Provincial High People’s Court dismissed their applications, it added.
The executions are part of a broader crackdown by Beijing on scam operations in Southeast Asia, where scam parks have become an industrial-scale business, especially in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.
A mix of trafficked and willing labour has carried out digital scams on victims around the world, including thousands of Chinese citizens.
Authorities in the region face growing international pressure from China, the United States and other nations to address the proliferation of crime.
Experts say most of the centres are run by Chinese-led crime syndicates working with Myanmar armed groups, taking advantage of the country’s instability amid the ongoing war.
Myanmar’s military government has long been accused of turning a blind eye, but it has trumpeted a crackdown over the last year after being lobbied by key military backer China, experts say.
In October, more than 2,000 people were arrested in a raid on KK Park, an infamous scam centre on Myanmar’s border with Thailand.
However, some raids mounted by the government have been part of a propaganda effort, according to monitors, choreographed to vent pressure from Beijing without denting profits that enrich the military’s militia allies.
The Londoner confirmed her status as one of the pop world’s biggest breakout stars in LA on Sunday.
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Beirut, Lebanon – Before Israel’s war on Lebanon, Ali (full name withheld for safety reasons) lived in Haddatha, a village in the Bint Jbeil district in the south, about 12km (7.5 miles) from the border with Israel, surrounded by nature where agriculture was intrinsic to life.
Then came Israel’s “hellfire”.
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At least nine people were killed and some 3,000 injured, including the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, when thousands of pagers exploded, nearly simultaneously, overwhelming hospitals on September 17, 2024.
Six days later, Israel escalated its attacks across the south, killing nearly 600 people, in what was the country’s deadliest day since the country’s ruinous civil war ended in 1990, and displacing more than one million people.
“Our house was destroyed,” he told Al Jazeera. Ali took refuge in a town about 20km (12.5 miles) north of Haddatha, called Burj Qalaway.
But more than a year later, he is yet to return home despite a ceasefire. He is one of tens of thousands who are still displaced from their homes around Lebanon and who say that what little they have received in support from the Lebanese state or Hezbollah is not enough to rebuild their lives or homes destroyed during the war.
On November 27, 2024, a ceasefire came into effect between Hezbollah and Israel. The agreement brought to an end more than a year of cross-border attacks and a two-month-long Israeli intensification that killed thousands in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and devastated civilian infrastructure.
Under the ceasefire, cross-border attacks were supposed to stop, Hezbollah was to withdraw north of the Litani River, which runs across south Lebanon, and Israel was to withdraw troops that had invaded south Lebanon in October.
Israel, however, never stopped attacking. Its army still occupies five points in southern Lebanon, and during the ceasefire, it razed several villages to the ground.
An estimated 1.2 million people, more than a quarter of the Lebanese population, had been displaced during the war. On the morning of November 27, hundreds of thousands of people streamed south to their villages to return home. But tens of thousands more have been left behind and are still unable to go home.
“The south is not safe,” Ali said. “I am afraid that I might be walking somewhere and a raid will attack a car next to me.”
Israeli attacks continue across the south and the Bekaa Valley in the east on a near-daily basis, with the Lebanese government counting more than 2,000 Israeli violations of the 2024 ceasefire deal in the last three months of 2025.
Ali is not alone. The International Organization for Migration estimates that more than 64,000 people are still internally displaced in Lebanon, according to figures compiled in October 2025.
Some of the 64,000 cannot return to their homes along the border region with Israel. Israeli soldiers still hold five points on Lebanese territory, managing large swaths of south Lebanon through violence and technology: using drones, air raids, shelling or gunfire. Since the ceasefire, Israel has killed more than 330 people in Lebanon, including at least 127 civilians.
Melina*, from Odaisseh, a village on the southern border, lived most of her life in Nabatieh. During the war, she was displaced to Sidon, a southern city about 44km (27 miles) south of Beirut.
“I haven’t been able to visit my village,” she told Al Jazeera. “Psychologically, I can’t bear to see our house, which was completely destroyed, and the entire village was razed to the ground.”
“The security situation remains extremely dangerous,” she said. “You could be shot at by the Israeli side at any moment, and it’s unsafe to travel without a Lebanese army escort.”
Ali runs a market in Burj Qalaway, but he says the income is not enough to rebuild his home. There are also other concerns. Israel has attacked reconstruction equipment in southern Lebanon, drawing criticism from human rights groups.
“Amid the ceasefire, Israeli forces have carried out attacks that unlawfully target reconstruction-related equipment and facilities,” Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a December 2025 report. “After reducing many of Lebanon’s southern border towns to rubble, the Israeli military is now making it much more difficult for tens of thousands of residents to rebuild their destroyed homes and return to their towns.”
Some Lebanese also fear a renewed Israeli offensive similar to the one in 2024.
On July 30, 2024, at about 7:40pm, Ramez* was sitting in his bedroom at home in Haret Hreik, a neighbourhood in Beirut’s southern suburbs referred to locally as Dahiyeh, an area often targeted in the past by Israel for the Hezbollah presence there.
His cats were roaming around the room, and he was busy on his phone when he heard loud explosions.
The war had been raging in the south, but attacks on Beirut and its suburbs were not yet as common. “I heard more than nine bangs,” Ramez said. He ran out of his bedroom to help his family evacuate. He left his door open, he said, so his cats could escape. While telling his mother to grab her things, he heard the loudest bang.
“The whole neighbouring building just collapsed and fell on us,” he said. Israel had just levelled the building next to his, killing Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah commander.
“I couldn’t see 2cm in front of me because of the fog and the dust.”
Ramez’s family escaped unscathed, though their house was badly damaged and his sister’s car was destroyed. His cats also survived. He found them the next day.
“I always wondered how people just go through something like this and just move on, saying, OK, Alhamdulillah, everyone is alive,” he says, though, “at that point I kind of understood it”.
Since the end of the war, he has been able to return to his family home in Haret Hreik. But his family had to pay for most of the reconstruction themselves, with little help from the government or any group.
They registered with the government for assistance but said they received only a one-time payment of 30 million Lebanese pounds (a little more than $330).
Hezbollah also sent engineers to assess the damage. In December 2024, the Reuters news agency reported that Hezbollah would pay about $77m and rent to families affected by war. Some locals said payments from the group helped a bit, but others said it had stopped paying nonmembers or tried to undervalue their losses.
“They were very stingy with payments,” Ramez said. “They tried to make us accept low payments, but my mom stood her ground and said it is enough.”
Other people who were displaced by the war told Al Jazeera that the aid provided by the state and Hezbollah was very limited.
Reports are mixed over Hezbollah’s financial capability, and it is difficult to determine how badly they have been hit financially after the group’s political and military leadership was devastated by 2024’s war and suffered several Israeli assassinations, including their longtime charismatic leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
The fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria also dealt Hezbollah a serious blow, disrupting the land route to its main benefactor, Iran – itself now reeling from deadly protests and bracing for a possible US attack. The group is under immense pressure from the Lebanese government to disarm, with the United States and Israel applying pressure.
Further compounding the crisis is the fact that Lebanon is now almost seven years into one of the worst economic crises in more than 150 years, according to the World Bank. This has hit locals hard, with many having their bank accounts frozen and the currency devaluing by more than 90 percent.
This has left many of the displaced feeling abandoned and unsure of how to continue.
There were violent Israeli air raids in the south on Saturday, which continued on Sunday. In the meantime, people like Ali have to continue figuring out ways to survive as their displacement carries on well past the one-year mark.
“We love life, but the situation is not good. Wars break your back,” Ali said. “War is the most terrible thing in the world.”
*Real names withheld for safety reasons.
Joao Sousa contributed to this report.
Real Madrid earn a hard-fought football victory over their local rivals to move to within one point of league leaders Barcelona.
Published On 1 Feb 20261 Feb 2026
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Kylian Mbappe stayed calm to roll home a 100th-minute penalty and grab Real Madrid a 2-1 win over nine-man Rayo Vallecano in a spicy La Liga football derby on Sunday.
Los Blancos cut Barcelona’s lead back to one point at the top of the table a day after the Spanish champions beat Elche.
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Vinicius Junior scored early on for Madrid after Jude Bellingham limped off with an apparent hamstring injury.
Jorge de Frutos pulled Rayo level early in the second half as Madrid fans showed their anger at their team. But after Rayo’s Pathe Ciss was issued a red card, Mbappe netted from the spot at the death.
Pep Chavarria was also sent off for 17th-placed Rayo, who took a shaky Madrid to the wire before falling short.
After the hosts’ midweek defeat at Benfica, which forced them into the Champions League playoff round, the Santiago Bernabeu crowd was in an unforgiving mood.
Mbappe and Madrid coach Alvaro Arbeloa had begged fans to support the team, but, just as they did two weeks ago against Levante, they whistled at their own players.
Former Barcelona winger Ilias Akhomach fired narrowly wide early on, and the atmosphere would have been further soured had his effort crept inside Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois’ post.
Los Blancos suffered an early setback as England international Bellingham pulled up holding the back of his thigh, going off in agony.
Vinicius fired the hosts ahead in the 15th minute, showing tidy footwork just inside the area before firing high over Augusto Batalla and into the net.
Arda Guler came close to getting a second, with Batalla saving his effort and Vinicius turning the rebound wide.
Los Blancos were in charge, but though they took the lead, their fans were not appeased, and whistled the team in at the break.
Four minutes into the second half, Rayo pulled level. Alvaro Garcia nodded a cross down for de Frutos, a former Madrid youth player, to reach and drill home.
The visitors should have taken the lead after an hour, when Andrei Ratiu ran through on goal with only Courtois to beat. But the Belgian stopper made a superb save to deny him.
Mbappe came centimetres away from putting Madrid in front when Batalla rushed out of his goal, with the French forward knocking the ball around him but then hitting the bar from distance.
Rayo made life harder for themselves when midfielder Ciss was sent off for an ugly foul on Madrid’s Dani Ceballos.
Eduardo Camavinga headed against the post as Arbeloa’s side turned the screw, before nine minutes of stoppage time were added on.
With the clock ticking down, Madrid were awarded a penalty when Nobel Mendy clumsily fouled Brahim Diaz, and La Liga’s top scorer Mbappe dispatched the ball to snatch three points for his side.
Rayo finished the match with nine men after Chavarria was shown a second yellow card for shoving Rodrygo Goes.
These are the key developments from day 1,439 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Published On 2 Feb 20262 Feb 2026
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Here is where things stand on Monday, February 1:
According to the Daily Telegraph, Lord Mandelson is set to be summoned to US Congress to give evidence about his links to Epstein. Sources close to the House Oversight Committee, which the paper says has “spearheaded” the release of the Epstein files, say they are “poised to issue” Lord Mandelson with a demand to testify in Washington DC. The committee cannot compel testimony from foreigners, as the paper notes.
DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,
Right-wing candidate from the governing PPSO leads presidential race with 53.01 percent of the vote, early results show.
Published On 2 Feb 20262 Feb 2026
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The right-wing law-and-order candidate, Laura Fernandez, has taken a commanding lead in Costa Rica’s presidential election, according to early results.
With ballots from 31 percent of polling stations counted late on Sunday, Fernandez, of the governing Sovereign People Party (PPSO), had 53.01 percent of the vote, the results showed.
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Alvaro Ramos of the centre-left National Liberation Party was in second place with 30.05 percent, while former First Lady Claudia Dobles was in third place with 3.9 percent.
Fernandez needs at least 40 percent to win the election outright and avoid a run-off on April 5.
The 39-year-old politician is the handpicked successor of incumbent President Rodrigo Chaves, and campaigned on continuing his tough security policies.
The historically peaceful Central American nation’s crime surge in recent years could be a deciding factor for many voters. Some fault Chaves’s presidency for failing to bring the rates down, but many see his confrontational style as the best chance for Costa Rica to tame the violence.
Fernandez was previously Chaves’s minister of national planning and economic policy and, more recently, his minister of the presidency.
Costa Ricans also voted for the 57-seat National Assembly. Chaves’s party is expected to make gains, but perhaps not achieve the supermajority he and Fernandez have called for, which would allow their party to choose Supreme Court magistrates, for example.
Twenty contenders were seeking the presidency, but no candidate other than Fernandez and Ramos reached 5 percent in the preliminary and partial results.
The Puerto Rican star gets political, as he’s tipped to win the main prize, album of the year.
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Medical charity has been barred for not providing Israeli authorities with personal details of its staff in the enclave.
Published On 1 Feb 20261 Feb 2026
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Israel says it will terminate the humanitarian operations in Gaza of Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, after it failed to provide a list of its Palestinian staff, further depriving Palestinians in the besieged enclave of life-saving assistance.
In December, Israel announced it would prevent 37 aid organisations, including MSF, from working in Gaza from March 1 for failing to submit detailed information about their Palestinian employees, drawing widespread condemnation from NGOs and the United Nations.
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“The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism is moving to terminate the activities of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the Gaza Strip,” the ministry said on Sunday.
The decision followed “MSF’s failure to submit lists of local employees, a requirement applicable to all humanitarian organisations operating in the region”, it added.
The ministry had earlier alleged that two MSF employees had links with Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which the charity has denied.
On Sunday, the ministry said MSF had committed in early January to sharing the staff list as required by the Israeli authorities but ultimately refrained, citing concerns for staff safety and a lack of assurances over how the information would be used.
“Subsequently, MSF announced it does not intend to proceed with the registration process at all, contradicting its previous statements and the binding protocol,” the ministry added, saying, “MSF will cease its operations and depart the Gaza Strip by February 28.”
Israel’s decision to terminate MSF’s operations in Gaza “is an extension of Israel’s systematic weaponisation and instrumentalisation of aid”, James Smith, an emergency physician based in London, told Al Jazeera.
“Israel has systematically targeted the Palestinian healthcare system, killing more than 1,700 Palestinian healthcare workers,” thereby “creating a profound dependency on international organisations”, Smith said.
MSF said 15 of its employees have been killed over the course of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, which began on October 7, 2023.
MSF has long been a key provider of medical and humanitarian aid in the enclave, particularly since the war began.
The charity said it currently provides at least 20 percent of hospital beds in the territory and operates about 20 health centres.
In 2025 alone, it carried out more than 800,000 medical consultations and more than 10,000 infant deliveries. It also provides drinking water.
Aid groups warned that without international support provided by organisations such as MSF, critical services such as emergency care, maternal healthcare and paediatric treatment could collapse entirely in Gaza, leaving hundreds of thousands of residents without basic medical care.
The latest victim succumbing to injuries was an 18-year-old Swiss national.
Published On 1 Feb 20261 Feb 2026
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A teenager injured in the fire that engulfed a Swiss Alpine bar during New Year celebrations has died in hospital, according to Swiss authorities, increasing the death toll of one of the worst disasters in the country’s modern history to 41.
Saturday’s death was announced a month after the inferno at the ski resort of Crans-Montana. Another 115 were injured, most of whom remain in various hospitals.
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“An 18-year-old Swiss national died at a hospital in Zurich on January 31,” the Wallis canton’s public prosecutor Beatrice Pilloud said in a brief statement.
“The death toll from the fire at Le Constellation bar on January 1, 2026 has now risen to 41.”
Pilloud said no further information would be released at this stage by her office, which is investigating the incident.
Those killed in the disaster were aged 14 to 39, but the majority were teenagers. Only four were aged over 24.
Among the dead are 23 Swiss nationals, including one French-Swiss dual national, and 18 foreigners.
Public prosecutors believe the fire started when revellers raised champagne bottles with sparklers attached too close to sound insulation foam on the ceiling of the bar’s basement.
Authorities are looking into whether the foam conformed to regulations and whether the candles were permitted for use in the bar. They say fire safety inspections had not been carried out since 2019.
Swiss prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the owners – French couple Jacques and Jessica Moretti – on suspicion of negligent homicide, negligent bodily harm and causing a fire by negligence.
The court of compulsory measures in the southwestern Valais region on January 12 ordered three months of pretrial detention for Jacques Moretti, but on January 23 ordered his release on bail.
The Crans-Montana municipality’s current head of public safety and a former Crans-Montana fire safety officer are also under criminal investigation.
Following the fire, seriously wounded patients were airlifted to various hospitals and specialist burns units throughout Switzerland and four other European countries.
Switzerland’s Federal Office for Civil Protection told the AFP news agency on Friday that at its last count, as of Monday, 44 patients were being treated abroad.
The Wallis health ministry told AFP that 37 patients were still in Swiss hospitals, as of Monday.
The picture is constantly changing, with patients moving between hospitals for different stages of their treatment, and some patients being readmitted. Some remain in intensive care.
The fire has tested relations with neighbouring Italy, which lost nationals in the blaze and has protested the release on bail of the bar’s owner.
Swiss authorities earlier this week said they would grant the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office access to evidence gathered.
The pilot comes before Gaza residents begin to pass through the crossing on Monday, Israeli authorities say.
Israel says it has partially reopened the critical Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt in a limited capacity.
Israel announced on Sunday that the crossing had reopened in a trial. Meanwhile, COGAT, the Israeli military agency that controls aid to Gaza, said in a statement that the crossing was actively being prepared for fuller operation, adding that residents of Gaza would begin to pass through it on Monday.
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“In accordance with the ceasefire agreement and a directive of the political echelon, the Rafah Crossing was opened today for the limited passage of residents only,” COGAT said.
The Israeli army said it has completed a complex that will serve as a screening facility for Palestinians passing in and out of Gaza through the Rafah crossing, which will be open for the movement of some people on Monday.
Rafah has been largely shut since it was seized by Israel in May 2024, amid the country’s two-year genocidal war on Gaza.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, said the crossing’s reopening was an “uncomfortable dynamic”.
“Palestinians want to leave, but at the same time, they’re worried they won’t be able to come back,” he said. “People said the purpose for them departing would strictly be for medical evacuation or continuing their education, and they want to come back later on.”
Ismail al-Thawabta, the director of Gaza’s Government Media Office, told Al Jazeera that about 80,000 Palestinians who left Gaza during Israel’s war are seeking to return.
An estimated 22,000 wounded and sick people are also “in dire need” to leave Gaza for treatment abroad, he added.
An Israeli drone attack on Sunday killed one person in the northwest of Rafah city in southern Gaza, according to a source at the Nasser Medical Complex.
Palestinian media outlets confirmed the death of Khaled Hammad Ahmed Dahleez, 63, in the Al-Shakoush area.
Meanwhile, in central Gaza, an Israeli drone attack killed a Palestinian in the Wadi Gaza area.
The attacks came after at least 31 people were killed on Saturday in multiple Israeli air raids on northern and southern Gaza.
Israeli forces have killed at least 511 Palestinians, and wounded 1,405, since the start of the US-backed “ceasefire” on October 10.
The Israeli government dealt another blow to the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, announcing on Sunday that it will terminate the humanitarian operations of Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, in the besieged Palestinian territory after it failed to provide a list of its Palestinian staff.
The decision followed “MSF’s failure to submit lists of local employees, a requirement applicable to all humanitarian organisations operating in the region”, Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism said.
In December, Israel announced it would prevent 37 aid organisations, including MSF, from working in Gaza from March 1 for failing to submit detailed information about their Palestinian employees, drawing widespread condemnation from NGOs and the United Nations.
Israel’s decision to terminate MSF’s operations in Gaza “is an extension of Israel’s systematic weaponisation and instrumentalisation of aid”, James Smith, an emergency doctor based in London, told Al Jazeera.
“Israel has systematically targeted the Palestinian healthcare system, killing more than 1,700 Palestinian healthcare workers”, thereby “creating a profound dependency on international organisations”, Smith said.