toll

50,000 frontline staff to receive a jab for a different Ebola strain, with 20,000 enrolled in a one-year clinical trial.

Health workers in parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have begun to receive a vaccine that many hope will provide a level of protection against the Ebola virus.

The vaccine rollout started on Saturday in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province in the northeastern DRC. Ituri is the epicentre of the fastest-growing outbreak of Ebola in history.

The provincial governor, Major-General Gaby Kasongo Mulumba, said health workers there “are particularly exposed and deeply involved in the response”.

The operation, backed by the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, will also target North Kivu, where cases have been rising sharply, health authorities said.

Some 50,000 health and other frontline workers will be injected with the Ervebo vaccine, which was developed for use against the more common Zaire strain.

Its effectiveness against the current Ebola strain caused by the Bundibugyo virus will be monitored in 20,000 recipients for up to one year.

Clinical trials are ongoing to find a licensed vaccine for the latest outbreak, which has no licensed vaccine or proven treatment.

“We don’t know to what degree it might be effective against the Bundibugyo strain,” Steve Ahuka, a Congolese official who is part of the health task force against the Ebola outbreak, said.

Dr Jeannot Elua said at a health facility in Bunia the vaccine was “beneficial”.

“We healthcare workers don’t really have a choice. We are going to receive it,” he told the Associated Press news agency. “Some people here had already received the previous vaccine. I received it myself, because it was mandatory.”

WHO experts have said that early data on the Ervebo vaccine, notably from animal trials, suggested it could offer some protection in the current outbreak.

The virus has killed at least 3,639 and infected some 7,541 people since May. Some 1,823 people have recovered, according to the latest figures from local authorities.

The WHO said in August that 70,000 doses of Ervebo were approved for use in the DRC.

The vaccine is being used under a compassionate-use programme, which allows a medical product to be used in a serious disease situation even though it has not been specifically approved for that particular use.

While WHO officials have cited “encouraging signs” that transmission may be slowing, MSF warned on Friday that there is no clear evidence the epidemic is coming under control.

CORON, Philippines: The bodies of passengers killed in a ferry fire off the Philippines arrived at a port near the resort town of Coron, Palawan on Saturday morning, as the country’s coast guard warned the death toll of 35 would grow.

AFP watched tents being set up to accept 30 bodies brought from the M/V June Aster, which ran aground near the tourist hotspot after a fire erupted Wednesday evening and tore through the vessel “in seconds”.

Coast guard spokeswoman Noemie Cayabyab told a Saturday press conference the remains would be turned over to police forensic investigators for “proper disposition and identification” before allowing local authorities to inform family members.

“Currently, we are focused on the retrieval, and after that we will proceed with the investigation,” she said, confirming the bodies had been found in the ship’s economy accommodation area.

Police investigators were seen arriving at the port shortly after the press conference ended.

Asked how many bodies remained aboard the ship, she said authorities would provide an update later in the day.

Cayabyab told AFP on Friday evening that the first transfer had been capped at 30 bodies due to the capacity of the patrol vessel transporting them and that additional cadavers remained on the ferry.

Five others had been confirmed dead in the immediate wake of the fire.

Photos released by the coast guard showed rows of body bags being placed into a small ship alongside men in hazmat suits.

Thirty passengers and 13 crew have so far been rescued, while 54 people remain unaccounted for.

On Friday, Cayabyab had told a radio station the fire had begun in the cargo hold, then tore through the ship within seconds.

“From the time that they heard the loud explosion, the appearance of smoke, and then fire. It spread very quickly,” she said of survivors’ accounts.

“Everything happened in seconds,” she said, adding that those who made it off the ship had not even had time to put on life jackets.

‘Lost hope’

Myra Cabilan told AFP she had flown to Coron to find her missing brother, 40-year-old Rammel Gonzaga, who had taken the ferry from Manila on a business trip with his brother-in-law.

“His wife had just given birth a month ago. He was so happy he was given a daughter,” Cabilan said, fighting back tears.

“At dawn, I still believed he survived. But he’s still missing. I have lost hope.”

Hundreds of people desperate for news about the incident have taken to leaving comments on the Facebook page of a local mayor, searching for relatives, friends and even a dog.

The ferry’s manifest listed 134 crew and passengers, but two had not boarded, according to the coast guard. The ferry was also carrying goods, an electric vehicle, a pickup truck, and motorcycles.

The archipelago nation of 116 million has a long history of disasters involving the inter-island ferries that ply its seas.

Many rely on cheap and poorly regulated boats and ships for transport between the country’s more than 7,000 islands, despite regular accidents.

In January, a triple-decker ferry carrying more than 340 people sank off the southern Philippines, killing at least 52 people.

The M/V Trisha Kerstin 3 sank along nearly the same route where 31 people died in 2023 after a fire broke out aboard the Lady Mary Joy 3 ferry.

On Thursday, the company that owns the M/V June Aster, Atienza Interisland Ferries Inc, said it was fully cooperating with the investigation.

United States President Donald Trump has threatened more attacks on Iran, warning that Washington could hit Iran “anytime we want”, as the death toll from the latest US strikes climbed to 18, with at least 108 others wounded.

Trump’s threat on Wednesday came after the US and Iran exchanged their biggest barrage since July. The US military struck cities and areas along Iran’s southern coast, near the blockaded Strait of Hormuz, including a wedding party in the city of Kuhestak.

Iran retaliated with attacks on US bases across the Middle East, including Bahrain, Iraq and Jordan.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said, “We hit them very hard last night” and that the strikes “took out all of the new equipment that they tried to build along the Strait of Hormuz”.

“It was a very heavy attack last night. And we’re prepared to do another one. And anytime we want,” he said.

Iranian officials said at least 18 people were killed in the US strikes.

The victims included two children, according to Mohammad-Reza Zafarghandi, Iran’s health minister. One of them was a four-year-old who was killed in the strike on the wedding party in Kuhestak in Sirik county.

At least four people were killed in that strike.

Esmaeil Baghaei, the spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, described the Kuhestak attack as a “war crime” and hit back at US claims that it does not target civilians.

“The reality is so horrifying that even American propaganda has never dared make the claim [the US military] is making today. Sirik is not a story. The civilians are real. The victims are real”, Baghaei wrote on X.

Iranian media said the funeral for the four Kuhestak victims will be held on Thursday.

‘Uncomfortable strategic position’

The six-month war has led to a spike in oil prices, roiled the global economy and posed increasing political problems for Trump’s Republican Party ahead of November midterm elections in the US.

Only 31 percent of Americans approve of the war, while some 63 percent disapprove, according to a poll by the Reuters news agency and the Ipsos polling firm in August. Voters are particularly unhappy about high gas prices. Since the fighting resumed this weekend, the price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, has climbed to about $95, up more than 30 percent from the start of the war.

Trump’s approval rating has also fallen from 40 percent to 33 percent since the conflict began, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.

On Wednesday, Trump said he did not think the renewed military campaign ⁠would last long. He also reiterated his position that the upcoming elections were not a factor in his Iran strategy.

“Number one, I’m not running. My party is running, and I’m going to help my party,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “But I think my party respects the fact that we’re not allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

Iran has denied seeking a nuclear weapon.

Tariq Khan, a retired Pakistani lieutenant-general and former commander of the Pakistan Army’s Frontier Corps, said the US “now finds itself in an increasingly uncomfortable strategic position in the Iran war”.

“The US has not succeeded in restoring the maritime environment that existed before the war, and is now expending military resources to deal with a problem the war itself helped create,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The strait was a free-flowing international waterway carrying roughly one-fifth of the world’s traded oil before the war. Tehran shut the waterway in response to the US and Israeli strikes on February 18 that began the war. Despite repeated US claims that the strait remains open, only a handful of vessels now pass through each day, and Iran continues to target ships attempting the crossing.

On Wednesday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said two oil tankers had struck mines and were disabled while attempting an unauthorised transit. Separately, Saudi shipping firm Bahri reported that two Filipino sailors were killed in an attack on their vessel earlier in the week.

Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA), which Tehran set up to police the Strait of Hormuz, added 11 more ships to its blacklist for alleged “noncompliance” this week, on top of the 45 blacklisted last week. The PGSA said the vessels will face fines, seizures or confiscation unless they submit required documentation to Iran before attempting to cross the strait.

Strait of Hormuz

At the same time, the US has intensified an economic isolation campaign against Iran, threatening to slap countries that ‌trade with Tehran with massive sanctions, while also maintaining its own blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump on Wednesday continued to insist that Washington was in control of the strait, saying US forces were helping bring “lots of boats out every day with millions of barrels of oil”.

“We are, for the most part, doing it without trouble. Every once in a while they shoot a drone, and we knock it down. We have control, very strong control,” he said.

On Tuesday, he had claimed the US Navy was helping escort some 30 ships out of the strait every day. Before the war, some 130 ships transited the waterway daily.

Khan, the former Pakistani general, said Iran understands it cannot defeat the US conventionally and is seeking to make the war costly for Trump.

“If Trump escalates, Iran can portray America as being drawn deeper into another Middle Eastern war; if he restrains himself, Tehran can claim that American military superiority cannot compel Iran to surrender,” he said.

“Iran does not need a battlefield victory; it needs to remain standing, keep the economic disruption alive, and make the war politically costly for the US. Tehran has to make American victory increasingly unaffordable – militarily, economically and electorally.”

Nepal’s rescue teams, aided by Chinese and Indian experts, are racing to save more than 900 workers believed to be trapped underground at hydropower projects hit by devastating flash floods.

Nepali officials said on Monday that the focus was on reaching the workers in about a dozen hydropower project tunnels blocked by mud and rock debris.

The unprecedented deluge of ice, rock, mud and debris on the Nepal-Tibet border on Wednesday – caused by a glacier collapse – has killed 903 people with 4,247 missing in Nepal, its disaster authority said.

The flood also wreaked havoc across the border in China’s Tibet region, where at least 16 people died and 546 are missing, said Chinese authorities.

‘Big challenge’

Pictures and videos shared by rescue teams in Nepal showed earth-moving equipment digging and shovelling mud and rocks under lights in the dark of the night as workers watched. Soldiers used torchlights in a big pit they had created to look for space to get into one tunnel.

“A large amount of debris has been deposited and that is posing us a big challenge to open the tunnels,” Nepal army spokesperson, Raja Ram Basnet, told the Reuters news agency.

“Our main focus is on opening the tunnels.”

Hundreds of bodies, many unidentified, have been buried in shallow graves as they began decomposing in the humid weather after being swept down the mountains by the torrent.

At a hospital in the capital of Kathmandu, morgues have reached capacity and families are flocking to other hospitals in hopes of finding missing loved ones, reported Al Jazeera’s Minelle Fernandez.

In addition to the 933 missing hydropower workers, some 500 workers from the Truck and Container Association are also missing, said Fernandez.

The Red Cross has estimated that more than 90,000 people are likely to have been affected by the disaster, which China has linked to the effects of climate change.

Prime Minister Balendra Shah said the flood was an “unprecedented and devastating natural disaster” and it remained challenging to compile a complete assessment of the damage.

“Despite the adverse weather, difficult terrain and continuing risks, we are moving forward with determination to save the lives of our citizens,” he said in a Facebook post late on Sunday, adding that nearly 21,000 security personnel were involved in rescue operations, besides civilian workers and volunteers.

While accessibility has been restored on many roads and highways, almost “40 kilometres of roads have been absolutely swept away”, Al Jazeera’s Fernandez said.

“So there are challenges on the ground in getting this aid to communities, but the authorities, as well as the agencies and their networks are working their way through it.”

China sends experts, aid

China’s state-run CCTV said the government has mobilised more than 2,100 rescue workers and allocated at least 220 million yuan ($33mn) to support relief efforts. Equipment and supplies have been airdropped to frontline rescuers, while Chinese soldiers used life-detection equipment to look for the missing.

Beijing said 261 foreign nationals from 23 countries were unaccounted for in Tibet.

“President Xi Jinping, according to state media, has called for all out efforts to rescue those missing in the mudslide, and this is the second time that the president has made such a call,” said Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu, reporting from Beijing.

“So this seems to be the Chinese leader’s effort to call on people, not only to continue their efforts, but redouble their efforts even as things are looking grimmer and grimmer.”

China has sent nine tunnel rescue experts to Nepal and shared satellite information with Nepalese authorities, said Yu.

Although Nepal has said it does not need foreign help in general search and rescue efforts, it has accepted help from giant neighbours India and China for their expertise in tunnel rescue.

Rescue operations have been suspended several times since Friday because of bad weather and concerns that a lake, formed across the Nepal-China border by the disaster, could trigger new flooding after it began overflowing into Nepal’s rivers.

The weather was good on Monday and rescue work continued to pick up pace, said Narendra Pariyar, the district administrator of Rasuwa, one of the two hard-hit districts.

Specialised search-and-rescue teams join recovery operations in Nepal and China as floodwaters and severe weather hamper search efforts.

At least 797 people have been killed and 3,048 others remain missing after a glacier collapsed in the Himalayas, sending water and debris tearing through several villages.

Nepal announced an updated death toll of 781 on Sunday, with 2,502 people missing, including 592 foreign nationals. In China, state broadcaster CCTV reported 16 deaths and 546 people missing, including 261 foreigners.

The disaster occurred on Wednesday when part of a glacier at an altitude of roughly 5,200 metres (17,000 feet) collapsed, plunging around 1,200m (3,900ft) and gathering rock and debris before slamming into the Lende River.

Rescue operations have been suspended repeatedly since Friday due to poor weather and fears of fresh flooding. The disaster created a lake across the border between Nepal and China that has begun overflowing into Nepal’s Lhende and Trishuli Rivers.

More than 100 workers are also believed to be trapped inside several hydropower tunnels.

Burials start

Authorities in Nepal began burying some of the victims on Sunday after taking DNA samples to allow for future identification. Many bodies were carried away by the floodwaters, leaving families unable to locate and identify their relatives. Mass burials for hundreds of unidentified victims are taking place in Nepal’s scenic Chitwan district, known for its forests and rivers.

According to the Red Cross, about 90,000 people in Nepal are likely affected by the disaster.

Specialised teams from India, China, and South Korea have joined the search-and-rescue efforts. Malaysia is also deploying its Special Malaysia Disaster Assistance Search and Rescue Team (SMART) and contributing $1m in recovery assistance.

International funding has begun to arrive, with the European Union promising $2.3m on Friday. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has allocated more than $1m and launched an emergency appeal for $31m.