Interview: High-tech collaboration a "flagship" of Sino-French relations, says Airbus China CFO

(Xinhua) 

 May 03, 2024

Celebrating the significant milestone of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and France, Olivier Malet, CFO of Airbus China, said that bilateral economic and trade cooperation, alongside cultural exchanges, is burgeoning between the two countries.

BEIJING, May 1 (Xinhua) -- Cooperation between China and Airbus serves as a "flagship" of the Sino-French relationship, said the chief financial officer (CFO) of Airbus China.

"(China and Airbus) have found good common ground together ... and this cooperation is really a flagship of the Sino-French relationship. We expect that the Chinese market will keep growing and believe in the huge potential in China," Olivier Malet, CFO of Airbus China, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"As a partner of China for nearly 40 years, Airbus wants to stay and take part in this growth of aviation," said Malet.

Growth and evolution have defined Airbus's history in China since 1994, when the company first established an official presence in the country. Fourteen years later, in 2008, Airbus opened its first assembly line outside Europe in China's northern city of Tianjin.

Airbus is currently promoting the A320 series aircraft's second final assembly line project. "We recently launched the second assembly line in Tianjin," he said.

"This second assembly line is a sign of the strong relationship between France and China, and it demonstrates that we are quite satisfied with the ecosystem and setup we have established here," emphasized the CFO.

"We believe these aircraft will be very suitable for the Chinese market."

Noting that aerospace manufacturing demands stringent quality and reliability requirements, Malet said that "Airbus produced 'made in China' is the same as one made in Toulouse, in Hamburg, in Mobile of the United States ... And for me, that is very important."

Today, Airbus China has more than 200 local suppliers under an increasingly sophisticated supply chain ecosystem. The inclusion of Chinese elements in Airbus aircraft is growing. This deep cooperation benefits enterprises and contributes to the high-level development of the Chinese aviation industry.

Malet said that addressing climate change and achieving sustainable development are shared global challenges and common goals between China and France, adding that Airbus aims to pioneer sustainable aerospace.

"We want to work with China on flying greener," he said.

With China being Airbus's "largest single market," Malet believes that China's continuous advancement of high-level opening-up and ongoing improvement of the business environment will bring confidence and opportunities to global enterprises, including Airbus China.

Celebrating the significant milestone of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and France, he said that bilateral economic and trade cooperation, alongside cultural exchanges, is burgeoning between the two countries.

"In recent years, France and China have worked closely on topics like trade, aviation and culture," said Malet. "We feel very honored to be part of it and to contribute to this high-quality relationship."

(Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Liu Ning)

China's home appliance giant Haier inaugurates industrial park in Egypt


Source: Xinhua

Editor: huaxia

2024-05-03 



Laborers work on an air-conditioner production line at a factory of the Haier Egypt Ecological Park in the 10th of Ramadan City, Sharqia Province, Egypt, on May 1, 2024. China's home appliance giant Haier inaugurated Thursday its first industrial park in Egypt in 10th of Ramadan, a city northeast of Cairo. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)

CAIRO, May 2 (Xinhua) -- China's home appliance giant Haier inaugurated Thursday its first industrial park in Egypt in 10th of Ramadan, a city northeast of Cairo.

Haier Smart Home Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of the Haier Group, invests 135 million U.S. dollars to build the Haier Egypt Ecological Park.

Once fully built, it will cover an area of 200,000 square meters with an annual planned production capacity of more than 1.5 million units of home appliances.

Song Yujun, a vice president at Haier Smart Home overseeing its ecosystem platform, said at the opening ceremony that the park, at its planned capacity, will not only meet Egypt's market demands but can be export-ready to neighboring markets.

Trial production is in the swing in the first phase of the industrial park with air-conditioners, televisions and washing machines rolling off the line, Haier Egypt General Manager Ahmed Mossad El Gendi told Xinhua during a media tour at the plant.

Gendi noted the park will create 3,000 local jobs and have 40-65 percent of its spare parts localized once the project's second phase is completed. ■



Laborers work on an air-conditioner production line at a factory of the Haier Egypt Ecological Park in the 10th of Ramadan City, Sharqia Province, Egypt, on May 1, 2024. China's home appliance giant Haier inaugurated Thursday its first industrial park in Egypt in 10th of Ramadan, a city northeast of Cairo. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)



Laborers work at a factory of the Haier Egypt Ecological Park in the 10th of Ramadan City, Sharqia Province, Egypt, on May 1, 2024. China's home appliance giant Haier inaugurated Thursday its first industrial park in Egypt in 10th of Ramadan, a city northeast of Cairo. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)



Laborers work at a factory of the Haier Egypt Ecological Park in the 10th of Ramadan City, Sharqia Province, Egypt, on May 1, 2024. China's home appliance giant Haier inaugurated Thursday its first industrial park in Egypt in 10th of Ramadan, a city northeast of Cairo. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)



Laborers work on an air-conditioner production line at a factory of the Haier Egypt Ecological Park in the 10th of Ramadan City, Sharqia Province, Egypt, on May 1, 2024. China's home appliance giant Haier inaugurated Thursday its first industrial park in Egypt in 10th of Ramadan, a city northeast of Cairo. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)



Unfinished air-conditioners are seen on a production line at a factory of the Haier Egypt Ecological Park in the 10th of Ramadan City, Sharqia Province, Egypt, on May 1, 2024. China's home appliance giant Haier inaugurated Thursday its first industrial park in Egypt in 10th of Ramadan, a city northeast of Cairo. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)

WAR CRIME

Attack on ICRC convoy in Sudan's South Darfur kills two drivers, injures three

03 May 2024 - 11:10BY TALA RAMADAN AND ENAS ALASHRAY

More than a year of war between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has driven at least 8.5 million people from their homes. Fighting tore through the capital and has unleashed waves of ethnically-driven violence in the western region of Darfur.
Image: Thierry Gouegnon/REUTERS/ File photo

An attack by gunmen on a humanitarian convoy of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Sudan's South Darfur killed two drivers and injured three other staff on Thursday, the ICRC said in a statement.

The team was on its way back from Layba to assess the humanitarian situation of communities affected by armed violence in the region when the incident occurred, the ICRC said.

More than a year of war between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has driven at least 8.5 million people from their homes. Fighting tore through the capital and has unleashed waves of ethnically-driven violence in the western region of Darfur.

The ICRC did not say who was to blame for the deaths and called for the immediate protection of all civilians, including humanitarian workers and medical personnel.

“Reports today of the deaths of two ICRC staff members and the injury of three staff members in South Darfur is further evidence of this war's horrific cost. These dedicated employees became victims of the violence and suffering they were working to mitigate,” US Special Envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello, said on X on Friday.

Reuters

Forced to work as maids in Saudi Arabia, Cambodians beg to be repatriated

The women say they have been denied food and medicine while awaiting help from their embassy.

By RFA Khmer
2024.05.02

Dozens of Cambodian women trafficked to work as maids in Saudi Arabia are demanding their embassy arrange for their return home, seen here in an image posted on a Cambodian government telegram page, April 30, 2024.

Cambodia Government Spokesperson Unit

Dozens of Cambodian women trafficked to work as maids in Saudi Arabia are demanding that their embassy arrange for them to return home, saying that since authorities rescued them nearly two weeks ago, they have lacked access to adequate food and their health is rapidly deteriorating.

On April 18, Cambodia’s Ministry of Labor confirmed that 78 Cambodian migrant workers had been tricked into working in Saudi Arabia, but have now been rescued and placed in hotel rooms under the care of the Cambodian Embassy.

The ministry said 51 of the women are in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, 15 in the capital Riyadh, and 12 in Dammam, on the coast of the Persian Gulf.

The Ministries of Labor and Foreign Affairs, along with the Cambodian Embassy, claimed to be purchasing flights for the victims to return to Cambodia, promising to return 29 on April 19, 27 on April 20, and the final 22 on April 21.

However, on April 27, RFA Khmer received videos from several of the victims in which they claimed to remain stranded in Saudi Arabia.

In the videos, the women call for help from former Prime Minister Hun Sen, his wife Bun Rany, and their son Prime Minister Hun Manet.

They said the companies that brought them to Saudi Arabia had “violated their contracts,” leaving them mired in legal issues surrounding their salaries and basic rights. They claim several of them were subjected to physical abuse by the households where they worked, including being denied food and sleep.

They singled out Saudi firm BAB, which places workers from Cambodia-based company Fatina Manpower, for allegedly threatening them and accusing them of working illegally in the country. Some of the victims said they were unable to leave the country because BAB had refused to terminate their contracts.

The women told RFA that since their rescue, some of them had been “confined” to their hotel rooms “without proper access to food,” and said they were appealing for help because they could “no longer wait for the government” to send them home.

According to Cambodia’s Ministry of Labor, nearly 1.4 million people were provided with employment opportunities to work abroad in 2023, more than 93% of which are in Thailand, while the remainder are in South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia.

Stranded in Saudi Arabia

RFA contacted one of the women, Thaing Sokyee, who said she had been forced to work as a maid in multiple homes each day without being provided enough food to eat before she was rescued, and is now suffering from health issues.

“I’ve called on the [labor] ministry and the embassy to find prompt solutions for us so that we may return to Cambodia,” she said. “We’ve faced mounting difficulties; our bodies have deteriorated as we were forced to work without food.”

Doeun Pheap, another victim who said she is sick as a result of her working conditions, told RFA that she has been confined to her room since her rescue and has not been permitted by embassy staff to go outside to purchase medicine.

She said the staff told her to wait for the government to send her home and that she was advised to record a video clip “saying that my health condition is getting better and that I have been provided with enough food to eat.”

“I still hurt all over my body – I’m able to stand up, but my waist and my back still hurt,” she said, adding that embassy staff had provided her with “rice, but not food.”

“I didn’t do it [record the video] because I was too hungry and exhausted; I couldn’t bear doing anything.”

Other victims claimed that Uk Sarun, Cambodia’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, had “threatened to abandon us if we continue to publicly call for help.”

Trafficking designation

On Monday, Ambassador Uk Sarun confirmed to RFA Khmer that only 16 of the 78 women had been returned home so far. He said that some of the women had faced a shortage of food due to the ongoing holy month of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast during the day and only eat at night.

He did not address claims by victims that he had threatened to withhold assistance if they continued to speak out about their situation.

The Khmer Times reported last week that 29 of the 78 had been safely repatriated as of April 19, while the rest were awaiting documentation to leave, but provided no attribution for the numbers.

The report said that the embassy was providing the victims with food and accommodation and cited Cambodian Ministry of Labor spokesman Katta Orn as saying that the ministry was conducting an investigation into the employment scam.

RFA spoke with Bun Chenda, a Cambodia-based anti-human trafficking officer for labor rights group CENTRAL, who said the women had been “exploited” when they were sent to Saudi Arabia without proper compliance with labor contracts.

“We are not sure if the government is treating their cases as human trafficking,” he said. “If they are being rescued as human trafficking victims, intervention would likely be easier and they wouldn’t be subject to legal action by a Saudi Arabian company.”

Translated by Yun, Samean. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

‘Constant terror’ in Rafah as Gazans brace for Israeli invasion

AFP
April 27, 2024

Displaced Palestinian children line up to receive food in Rafah - Copyright AFP -

Palestinians in Rafah told AFP Saturday they were living in “constant terror” as Israel vows to push ahead with its planned assault on the south Gaza city flooded with displaced civilians.

Most of Gaza’s population is sheltering in Rafah at the very south of the territory after fleeing Israeli bombardment elsewhere.

The Israeli army insists it will carry out a ground assault to eliminate Hamas militants, despite an international outcry and concern for the roughly 1.5 million Palestinians sheltering in Rafah, many in tents.

“We live in constant terror and fear of repeated displacement and invasion,” said Nidaa Safi, 30, who fled Israeli strikes in the north and came to Rafah with her husband and children.

“We think about it all day long,” she said.

Even before Israeli forces begin the expected assault, they have been carrying out devastating air strikes.

An overnight strike on a house in Rafah killed a four-month-old baby, her mother, father, and two brothers, relatives and neighbours told AFP.

Hospital officials in Rafah said more than a dozen people were killed during the night.

“Every day we hear news about a Rafah invasion and that it’s a certain fact, on top of the bombardments we witness and hear,” Safi said. “Fear is controlling us, we don’t know how to think anymore.”

Her family has now decided to leave for Deir al-Balah, in centre of the Gaza Strip. Safi said they hoped to “flee Rafah before they kill us.”

– ‘Nowhere safe’ –

Others are unable to bear the thought of being uprooted again.

Samah Deeb, 32, has decided to wait before leaving.

“The thought of displacement again makes me extremely terrified, because I’ve fled so many times,” she said.

Before travelling to Rafah, she had already left home and taken shelter at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

“Just the thought of having to work on another tent and transfer all of our belongings and the new expenses it will cost is unbearable,” she said. “There is nowhere else safe, and nowhere else after Rafah to go.”

Deeb said she was monitoring the news closely.

“At any moment they tell us to evacuate Rafah, we will leave like the rest of the people but we pray to God they won’t invade Rafah and force us to relive the suffering of displacement,” she said.

Qasim Abu Nahl, a 40-year-old from Gaza City, said he had already been displaced four times.

“Moving from one place to another has been incredibly hard for us,” he said.

“We spent nearly two weeks enduring heavy bombardment, shells, and smoke bombs” at the city’s Al-Rantisi Hospital before fleeing to Nuseirat in the centre of Gaza “with nothing but the clothes on our backs,” he said.

He said he fled bombing in Nuseirat and went to the southern city Khan Yunis, which “became overcrowded and increasingly dangerous” before he arrived in Rafah.

“We don’t know if we’ll be safe tomorrow or not,” he said. “Every day brings new unsettling news about Rafah.”

Resident Noor al-Farah, 56, has been packing clothes, food and firewood with her husband and children in preparation.

“I am mentally exhausted from the worrying news and waiting for the unknown,” she said.

She has been unable to find anywhere outside Rafah for her family to stay, and said she was afraid of snakes in displacement camps.

– ‘New death’ –

Gazans living in Rafah’s camps have also had to contend with unbearable temperatures as a heatwave takes hold.

Intisar Ramadan Ghaban said life inside a hot tent in fear of an Israeli invasion was like a “new death.”

The 61-year-old said she had already been displaced from Gaza City and Nuseirat refugee camp before reaching Rafah.

“Invasion of Rafah is what we fear the most,” she said. “We fear the day will come when they tell us to get out, but until then we don’t know where we’ll go.

“Will they give us a warning in advance? Or will we leave urgently without knowing what’s going on, carrying only ourselves without anything else? Or will it be under heavy bombardment?

“We have no idea,” she said.

Chamber of Propaganda Horrors

by Media Lens / April 27th, 2024

Tourists visiting Spanish cities like Córdoba, Toledo and Sevilla have the option of whiling away an hour or so at a ‘Museum of the Inquisition’, sometimes known as a ‘Gallery of Torture’. For around three euros, visitors can view an exotic range of devices used to impale, immolate, strangle and dismember human beings in the name of God.

It’s tempting to reassure ourselves that these are relics of a far-distant past, horrors that could never happen now. But did the Dark Ages ever really end? Noam Chomsky commented:

‘Part of the tragedy of the Palestinians is that they have essentially no international support. For a good reason – they don’t have wealth, they don’t have power. So they don’t have rights. It’s the way the world works – your rights correspond to your power and your wealth.’

It is indeed the way the world works. It is also the way the medieval world worked. UK Foreign Secretary, Lord David Cameron (Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton), recently passed judgment on the war in Ukraine at a Washington press conference:

‘It is extremely good value for money… Almost half of Russia’s pre-war military equipment has been destroyed without the loss of a single American life. This is an investment in the United States’ security.’

According even to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, 31,000 Ukrainians have been killed in the conflict. US officials estimate 70,000 dead, while Russia claims to have killed 444,000. Are these deaths ‘good value for money’?

And what about the 50,000 Russians estimated by the BBC to have died? Do they matter? After all, European civilisation is supposed to be founded on Christ’s teaching that we should love, not just our ‘neighbour’ but our ‘enemy’. On Britain’s Channel 5, BBC stalwart Jeremy Vine offered a different view to Bill, a caller from Manchester:

‘Bill, Bill, the brutal reality is, if you put on a uniform for Putin and you go and fight his war, you probably deserve to die, don’t you?’

Elsewhere, the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, commented after Iran retaliated to Israel’s bombing of an Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing 16 people, including two senior Iranian generals:

‘The attacks on Israel by Iran this weekend were wrong. They risked civilian lives and they escalated the already dangerous tensions in the region. I pray for the peace and security of Israel’s people at this time and I appeal to all parties both for restraint and to act for peace and mutual security.’ (Our emphasis)

If Christ had done political commentary, he would have declared both the Iranian and Israeli attacks wrong, and he would have prayed ‘for the peace and security’ of the peoples of Israel and Iran, and also Palestine.

Cameron responded on the same issue:

‘[It was] a reckless and dangerous thing for Iran to have done, and I think the whole world can see. All these countries that have somehow wondered, well, you know, what is the true nature of Iran? It’s there in black and white.”

He was immediately asked: ‘What would Britain do if a hostile nation flattened one of our consulates?’

Cameron’s tragicomic response:

‘Well, we would take, you know, we would take very strong action.’

Naturally, ‘we’ would do the same or worse, but it’s a grim sign of Iran’s ‘true nature’ when ‘they’ do it. The ‘Evil’ have no right even to defend themselves when attacked by the ‘Good’. Standard medieval thinking.

‘Murderous’ And ‘Brutal’ – Tilting The Language

In idle moments, we sometimes fantasise about opening our own Media Lens Chamber of Propaganda Horrors, a Hall of Media Infamy. It would be a cavernous space packed with examples of devices used to strangle and dismember Truth.

A special section would be reserved for the sage effusions of BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner, who wrote recently of Israel:

‘It responded to the murderous Hamas-led attacks of 7 October… and then spent the next six months battering the Gaza Strip.’

The Hamas attack was ‘murderous’, then, with Israel administering a mere ‘battering’ with its attack that has caused at least 30 times the loss of life. A ‘battering’ is generally bruising but not necessarily fatal. The term is certainly not synonymous with genocide. Is this biased use of language accidental, or systemic?

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) commented on their careful study of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal:

‘Looking at all attributions, 77% of the time when the word “brutal” was used to describe an actor in the conflict, it referred to Palestinians and their actions. This was 73% of the time at the Times, 78% at the Post and 87% at the Journal. Only 23% of the time was “brutal” used to describe Israel’s actions…’

The Intercept reported on a leaked memo which revealed that the New York Times had ‘instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land’. The Intercept added:

‘The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.’

The memo was written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies. A Times newsroom source, who requested anonymity ‘for fear of reprisal’, said:

‘I think it’s the kind of thing that looks professional and logical if you have no knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But if you do know, it will be clear how apologetic it is to Israel.’

Our Chamber of Propaganda Horrors might feature this barely believable sentence from a BBC report by Lucy Williamson, which reads like something from the film ‘Dr. Strangelove’:

‘If you wanted to map the path to a healthy, functioning Palestinian government, you probably wouldn’t start from here.’

Probably wouldn’t start from where? From the middle of a six-months genocide, with two million civilians starving, with children literally starving to death, with tens of thousands of children murdered, with Gaza in ruins? It is hard to imagine a more ethically or intellectually tone-deaf observation. The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen added to the sense of surreality:

‘The decision not to veto the Ramadan ceasefire resolution is also an attempt by the Americans to push back at accusations that they have enabled Israel’s actions.’

Is it an ‘accusation’ that the US has supplied billions of dollars of missiles and bombs without which Israel could not conduct its genocide? Is there any conceivable way the US could ever ‘push back at’ that unarguable fact? The Guardian described how the US has worked hard to avoid Congressional oversight:

‘The US is reported to have made more than 100 weapons sales to Israel, including thousands of bombs, since the start of the war in Gaza, but the deliveries escaped congressional oversight because each transaction was under the dollar amount requiring approval.

‘The Biden administration… has kept up a quiet but substantial flow of munitions to help replace the tens of thousands of bombs Israel has dropped on the tiny coastal strip, making it one of the most intense bombing campaigns in military history.’

These hidden sales are in addition to the $320m in precision bomb kits sold in November and 14,000 tank shells costing $106m and $147.5m of fuses and other components needed to make 155mm artillery shells in December.

In response to the latest news of a massive additional supply of arms to Israel, Edward Snowden posted on X:

‘ok but you’re definitely gonna hold off on sending like fifteen billion dollars’ worth of weapons to the guys that keep getting caught filling mass graves with kids until an independent international investigation is completed, right?

‘…right?’

Because we no longer live in the Dark Ages, right?

Waiting For The Hiroshima Bombing Scene

People are generally not tortured on the rack in Western societies, but are we really any less callous?

Christopher Nolan’s film ‘Oppenheimer’ has been lauded to the skies. It earned 13 nominations at the Academy Awards, winning seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. It also won five Golden Globe Awards.

And yet the film is a moral disgrace. It focuses on the life of physicist Robert J. Oppenheimer, and particularly, of course, on his key role in developing the first atomic weapons. The direct results of his efforts were the dropping of nuclear fireballs on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan that killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people.

These were the first acts of nuclear terrorism, by far the greatest single acts of terrorism the world has ever seen. Although the moral doubts haunting the ‘Manhattan Project’ then and since feature strongly in the film, a portrayal of the hideous impact of Oppenheimer’s invention on civilians is almost completely absent. This single, dignified comment from an elderly Japanese viewer reported by the Guardian says it all:

‘“I was waiting for the Hiroshima bombing scene to appear, but it never did,” said Mimaki, 82.’

Although the BBC sought out the opinion of cinemagoers in Hiroshima, ‘only meters away’ from where the bomb exploded, the film’s shocking moral failure was not mentioned.

On reflection, our museum might be better called, The Museum Of Media Madness. Thus, the BBC reported on the refusal of event organisers, The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), to ban Israel from the Eurovision Song Contest. The EBU opined:

‘We firmly believe that the Eurovision Song Contest is a platform that should always transcend politics, promote togetherness and bring audiences together across the world.’

The BBC claims to be obsessed with reporting ‘both sides of the story’, but it conveniently forgot to mention that Russia has been banned from the song contest since 2022 for a reason that did not ‘transcend politics’ – its invasion of Ukraine.

Martin Österdahl, EBU’s executive supervisor for Eurovision, was asked to explain the contradiction. He responded that the two situations were ‘completely different’. True enough – Israel’s crimes in Gaza are much worse even than Russia’s crimes in Ukraine. Österdahl’s casual brush off:

‘We are not the arena to solve a Middle East conflict.’

Media and political voices seeking to challenge the reigning brutality are not burned alive, but they are buried alive in high security prisons like Julian Assange, beaten up on the street like George Galloway, and forced into exile like Edward Snowden. Dissidents may not be pelted with rotten fruit and vegetables in the stocks, but they are pelted with relentless media attacks intended to discredit them.

In the Guardian, John Crace greeted the news that Galloway had returned to parliament, with a piece titled:

‘The Ego has landed: George Galloway basks in his swearing in as MP’

Crace wrote:

‘Wherever he goes, his giant ego is there before him. Like most narcissists, the only fool for whom he makes allowances – for whom he has a total blindspot – is himself.’

He added:

‘… there is a lot about Galloway to dislike. His self-importance is breathtaking. Most MPs suffer from an excess of self-regard, but George is off the scale. It has never crossed his mind that he is not right about everything.’

Before Galloway’s victory, a Guardian news piece commented:

‘“A total, total disaster”: Galloway and Danczuk line up for Rochdale push – Two former Labour MPs are back to haunt the party in what has been called “the most radioactive byelection in living memory”’

As we have discussed many times, this is the required view, not just of Galloway, but of all dissidents challenging the status quo – they (and we) are all toxic ‘narcissists’. Thus, the BBC observed of Galloway, a ‘political maverick’:

‘To his critics and opponents, he is a dangerous egotist, someone who arouses division.’

What percentage of Tory and Labour MPs under (and including) Sunak and Starmer are not dangerous egotists? Are the thousands of MPs who, decade after decade, line up to vote for US-UK resource wars of aggression of first resort, for action to exacerbate climate collapse, not dangerous egotists?  Of course they are, but they are not labelled that way. The only egotism perceived as ‘dangerous’ by our state-corporate media system is one that threatens biocidal, genocidal and suicidal state-corporate narcissism.

We have to travel far from the ‘mainstream’ to read a more balanced view of Galloway. Former British ambassador Craig Murray commented:

‘I have known George Galloway my entire adult life, although we largely lost touch in the middle bit while I was off diplomating. I know George too well to mistake him for Jesus Christ, but he has been on the right side against appalling wars which the entire political class has cheer-led. His natural gifts of mellifluence and loquacity are unsurpassed, with an added talent for punchy phrase making.

‘… But outwith the public gaze George is humorous, kind and self-aware. He has been deeply involved in politics his entire life, and is a great believer in the democratic process as the ultimate way by which the working classes will ultimately take control of the means of production. He is a very old-fashioned and courteous form of socialist.’

We strongly disagree with Galloway’s views on fossil fuel production and climate change – in fact, he blocked us on X for robustly but politely challenging him on these issues. Nevertheless, it is clear to us that Murray’s view of Galloway is far more reasonable.

Neon-Lit Dark Age

In ‘Brave New World Revisited’, Aldous Huxley wrote:

‘The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him, the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free.’ (Huxley, ‘Brave New World Revisited’, archive.org, 1958, p.109)

This is certainly true of corporate journalists. Borrowing illiberally from authentically dissident media, a recurring Guardian appeal asks readers to support its heroic defence of Truth. The declared enemy:

‘Teams of lawyers from the rich and powerful trying to stop us publishing stories they don’t want you to see.

‘Lobby groups with opaque funding who are determined to undermine facts about the climate emergency and other established science.

‘Authoritarian states with no regard for the freedom of the press.

‘Bad actors spreading disinformation online to undermine democracy.

‘But we have something powerful on our side.

‘We’ve got you.

‘The Guardian is funded by its readers and the only person who decides what we publish is our editor.’

They have indeed ‘got you’, many of you, and not in a good way. The real threat to truth in our time, quite obviously, is the fact that profit-maximising, ad-dependent corporate media like the Guardian cannot and will not report the truth of a world dominated by giant corporations. The declared aspiration is a sham, a form of niche marketing exploiting the gullible.

The truth is that ‘mainstream’ media and politics are now captured in a way that is beyond anything we have previously seen. All around the world, political choices have been carefully fixed and filtered to ensure ordinary people are unable to challenge the endless wars, the determination to prioritise profits over climate action at any cost. The job of the corporate media system is to pretend the choices are real, to ensure the walls of the prison remain invisible.

The only hope in this neon-lit Dark Age is genuinely independent media – the blogs and websites that are now being filtered, shadow-banned, buried and marginalised like never before.

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Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. The most recent Media Lens book, Propaganda Blitz by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2018 by Pluto Press. Read other articles by Media Lens, or visit Media Lens's website.

Nigerian airstrike killed 33 villagers during Eid, witnesses say


FRIDAY APRIL 19 2024

Security forces patrol as people wait for the arrival of the rescued schoolgirls in Jangebe, Zamfara State, Nigeria 

An airstrike on a village in Nigeria's northwestern Zamfara State killed at least 33 people last week, four residents and a traditional leader said, after a military operation targeting armed kidnapping gangs and their hideouts.

The incident, on April 10, is the latest in a pattern of deadly aerial assaults by the military that have killed civilians and were the subject of a special Reuters report last year.

The military said on Thursday the airstrikes had eliminated armed gangs, known locally as bandits, in several locations in Zamfara, including Maradun local government area.

But Lawali Ango, the traditional head of Dogon Daji village in Maradun, told Reuters there were no bandits in his area of mainly Muslim Zamfara.

Ango said he was away from his village on April 10, preparing for Eid prayers marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan at around 0700 GMT when he saw aircraft passing. This was followed by loud explosions.

When he tried to contact his village, the calls did not go through, and he and a group of men raced back home on motorbikes.

"Arriving at the scene, I saw children, men and women ... were killed and trapped inside the collapsed buildings that were hit by a bomb," Ango said by phone, adding that 33 people had been killed.

"They (the military) are saying the bandits escaped and sought hideouts in our village. I swear there is nothing like this, I can go anywhere and confirm this to the world."

Nigerian Defence Headquarters Spokesperson Major General Edward Buba denied civilians had been killed or targeted and said airstrikes were carried out only after careful intelligence and surveillance.

"Accordingly, the strikes were conducted on terrorist(s) and not civilians," Buba said in a text message. He provided no death toll.
Roar of jets and loud blasts

Surajo Abubakar, a farmer, said he heard the roar of jets in the sky just in the morning, followed by blasts.

He lost two wives and five children, he said.

Read: Gunmen kill 46 farmers in north central Nigeria

"I lost seven people in my family, and in all about 33 dead bodies were counted," Abubakar said.

Abu Waziri, who lives next to Dogon Daji, said he went to investigate after hearing loud explosions and was shocked by what he saw.

He said he saw victims' remains on the ground and added: "We managed to be patient and put the body parts together and prayed for them and buried them."

Two other residents also said civilians were killed.

Beyond the war zone in the northeast, the military has been called on to tackle the growing threat in Nigeria's northwest and central region posed by armed criminal gangs that spray villages with bullets and carry out mass kidnappings.

'We broke into IDF, hold quarter of a million documents,' hacker group Anonymous claims

Pro-Palestinian hackers allege that after penetrating the Justice Ministry, they now possess 20 gigabytes of data, including nearly a quarter-million documents related to the Israeli military.

By DR. ITAY GAL

APRIL 19, 2024

JPOST

 

The masked face of international hacker Anonymous

(photo credit: WIKIMEDIA)

The hacker organization Anonymous issued a statement on Friday stating that it has hacked into the IDF and will reportedly showcase purported military documents. It also claims control over 20 gigabytes of data, encompassing over 233,000 documents, including PDFs, Word files, PowerPoint presentations, and more.

The hackers' accompanying video displays excerpts from PowerPoint presentations featuring IDF personnel, with slides bearing logos of General Staff departments. The authenticity of the documents in the video remains uncertain.

According to IDF security assessments, the likelihood of an actual breach is minimal, suggesting a possible "psychological warfare" tactic by the hackers. The IDF's computer system is tightly secured and classified at various levels. If a breach did occur, it's improbable that access extended directly to IDF computers; instead, files may have been obtained from civilian computers, potentially breaching regulations.

Claiming to hack the Justice Ministry

Earlier this month, an anonymous source claimed to have hacked the Justice Ministry, acquiring 8 million files totaling 300 gigabytes, including personal details of listed individuals. Some of the hackers, operating under the Anonymous banner since 2003, reiterated their vow to "destroy the Zionists."

At the start of the month, the national cyber array warned of an anticipated uptick in attacks following the end of Ramadan and escalating incitement against Israel and its online presence. Concerns include potential website breaches, digital system infiltrations (including smart homes), leaks of classified documents, exposure of personal data, deployment of tracking software, and intrusion attempts.

Picture of Anonymous hacker from social media‏ (credit: SOCIAL MEDIA)

The Israeli public was urged to avoid clicking on suspicious links and to report any indications of cyberattacks.

My father refused to bow to Kais Saied's tyranny in Tunisia

Weighing in on Tunisia's authoritarian slide under Kais Saied, Yusra Ghannouchi reflects on the first anniversary of her father Rached Ghannouchi's arrest.



Yusra Ghannouchi
19 Apr, 2024

Tunisians remain committed to defending democracy and the hard-won freedoms of the revolution, writes Yusra Ghannouchi 

[photo credit: Getty Images]

Exactly a year ago, my father Rached Ghannouchi, the speaker of Tunisia's elected parliament, was arrested at our home in Tunis, just as he was sitting down to break the Ramadan fast.

The rule of law had already been eroded over the preceding year and a half since President Kais Saied's coup on July 25, 2021, when he unilaterally dissolved parliament, dismissed the government and gave himself near-absolute powers.

After then suspending most of the constitution and ruling by decree, all that remained for Saied to do was to crush the opposition parties that refused to stand by while he dismantled Tunisia's hard-won freedoms and democratic institutions.

"After a decade of democracy in which Tunisians enjoyed unprecedented levels of freedom, we had hopes that the era of arbitrary detentions and political trials was behind us"

The authoritarian backsliding that Tunisians have witnessed since Saied's coup followed a familiar path laid by autocrats in other countries: a new constitution with unchecked executive powers approved in a dubious referendum; draconian new laws restricting freedom of speech; the takeover of the judiciary for use against political rivals; and targeting any critics and opponents with travel bans, house arrest and imprisonment.

My father was summoned countless times for interrogation on fabricated charges following Saied's takeover. Every time that he was interrogated, often for more than ten hours at a time, we anxiously waited, breathing a sigh of relief when he eventually walked out free, with a victory sign, the judges having found no evidence for the various preposterous allegations.

But after a year and a half of trying to hijack the judiciary, dismissing judges who refused to follow his orders, Tunisia's new dictator was able to get the arrest and verdict that he wanted.

After more than 100 security agents surrounded our family home on the evening of April 17, the 27th night of Ramadan, my father was taken to an unknown location and denied access to a lawyer for 48 hours.

Since then, he has remained in prison, and two sentences have been issued against him on trumped-up charges —first, of "incitement" and "conspiring against the security of the state," and then of accepting foreign funding — that violates the most basic requirements of the right to a fair trial. Now 82, he faces three more years in prison.

This isn't my father's first such ordeal. Last week, when another Eid passed with my father still in prison, I remembered the other ten times that my father spent Eid in jail in the 1980s, in different prisons under different Tunisian dictators.

One of the tragedies of Tunisia's authoritarian regression under Saied is having to relive past cycles of repression. After a decade of democracy in which Tunisians enjoyed unprecedented levels of freedom, we had hopes that the era of arbitrary detentions and political trials was behind us. Now, we find ourselves back to the same climate of fear, impunity and injustice.

But like other democracy activists around the world, Tunisians know that the struggle against dictatorship is a long one. We take heart and strength from seeing the determination of individuals and movements fighting for human dignity and justice under other authoritarian regimes. We also follow, with horror, the images of the ongoing massacres in Gaza and the rest of Palestine. It feels as if the world has never been more filled with injustice, in many forms.

"Following Saied's coup, my father took heart in the early signs of resistance to this new authoritarianism"

In a time of such pain and despair, I miss my father's ever-calm and reassuring voice, and his unwavering optimism, whatever the situation and challenges. I know that he would have shed many tears at the sight of so much loss and pain, but he would have refused to give in to hopelessness. He would rejoice at the global wave of solidarity with the Palestinian cause and see it as confirmation of his belief in a shared humanity and the universal recognition of the right to freedom and justice.

Unlike dictators throughout the region, he would have remained committed to the validity and necessity of universal rights and laws, having spent his life defending and promoting human rights not as a foreign import, but as shared human achievements that are not only compatible with, but required by, his understanding of Islam.

He would have reiterated his firm conviction that freedom and democracy are necessary for our region, just as they are necessary for justice for Palestinians, and that dictatorship could never be a route to liberation, rather the contrary.

As the complicity of dictatorships in the region with Israel's genocide in Gaza exposes the inextricable link between occupation and dictatorship, he would have argued that the struggle for freedom, which has been my father's lifelong quest, is part and parcel of the struggle for the liberation of Palestine.

Despite the many setbacks in Tunisia and across the Arab world, the same desire for dignity, justice and freedom that sparked the Tunisian revolution and the other uprisings of the Arab Spring remains and cannot be fully repressed. Hope can still defy despair, with the belief that the accumulated sacrifices of so many will give birth to a brighter future.

The coup against Tunisia's democracy by Saied and his enablers may reveal how fragile democratic gains are. But Tunisians have remained steadfast in defending the ideals of our revolution against dictatorship.

Following Saied's coup, my father took heart in the early signs of resistance to this new authoritarianism from an increasing number of political parties, judges, lawyers, journalists and civil society organisations.

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Saied may have been acting like Tunisians autocrats before him, but he also soon faced more organised opposition than both Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Habib Bourguiba had. My father saw this as a "fruit of the post-revolution decade" and a sign that once people "tasted freedom," it would be difficult to force them to return to living under dictatorship.

To adopt my father's optimism, his imprisonment and that of so many other political prisoners from across the Tunisian political spectrum are proof of their refusal to bow down to tyranny. Tunisians are determined to achieve their freedom, once again.

Yusra Ghannouchi is the daughter of Rached Ghannouchi, the co-founder and leader of Ennahda, Tunisia’s largest political party.

This article originally appeared in Dawn's 'Democracy in Exile' journal. Read the original here.

Laborers and street vendors in Mali find no respite as deadly heat wave surges through West Africa

Street vendors in Mali’s capital of Bamako peddle water sachets, ubiquitous for this part of West Africa during the hottest months

ByBABA AHMED Associated Press and CARLOS MUREITHI Associated Press
April 19, 2024, 


BAMAKO, Mali -- Street vendors in Mali's capital of Bamako peddle water sachets, ubiquitous for this part of West Africa during the hottest months. This year, an unprecedented heat wave has led to a surge in deaths, experts say, warning of more scorching weather ahead as effects of climate change roil the continent.

The heat wave began in late March, as many in this Muslim majority country observed the holy Islamic month of Ramadan with dawn-to-dusk fasting.

On Thursday, temperatures in Bamako reached 44 degrees Celsius (111 Fahrenheit) and weather forecasts say it's not letting up anytime soon.

The city's Gabriel-Touré Hospital reported 102 deaths in the first four days of the month, compared to 130 deaths in all of April last year. It's unknown how many of the fatalities were due to the extreme weather as such data cannot be made public under the regulations imposed by the country's military rulers.

Cheikh A Traoré, Mali’s general director for health, said significantly more elderly people have died during this period although there were no statistics available due to the measures.

Mali has experienced two coups since 2020, leading a wave of political instability that has swept across West and Central Africa in recent years. Along with its political troubles, the country is also in the grip of a worsening insurgency by militants linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

The Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre says that a lack of data in Mali and other West Africa countries affected by this month's heat wave makes it impossible to know how many heat-related deaths there were but estimated that the death toll was likely in the hundreds if not thousands.

The heat is also endangering already vulnerable children in Mali — 1 million under the age of 5 were at risk of acute malnutrition at the end of 2023 due to protracted violence, internal displacement, and restricted access to humanitarian aid, according to the World Food Program.

Professor Boubacar Togo, head of pediatrics at Gabriel-Touré, told The Associated Press that the hospital has had six cases of meningitis in children in the last week, an unusually high number. He also added that there were many illnesses with diarrhea as a leading symptom. Togo did not elaborate or offer specific data.

To protect children from the worst of the heat, Mali's military rulers have shortened the school day, to end before 1 p.m. instead of at 5.30 p.m. during the heat wave. But on the streets of Bamako, workers say they have no choice but to go out and brave the extreme heat.


“Either I work and risk my health or I stop working for the most of the day and I earn nothing,” said 25-year-old driver Amadou Coulibaly, who offers rides on his motorbike for a small fee.

With the political instability, many foreign investors are leaving Mali. Rolling power cuts and fuel shortages have forced companies to shut doors, exacerbating an already dire economic situation.


Despite the heat, 30-year-old welder Somaila Traoré worked in his shop alongside a dozen employees, urging them to work faster.

“We’ve got to finish the job before the power cuts,” he said.

An analysis published Thursday by the World Weather Attribution — an international team of scientists looking at how human-induced climate change impacts extreme weather — said the latest heat wave in the Sahel, a region in Africa south of the Sahara that suffers from periodic droughts, is more than just a Malian record-breaker.

“Our study found that the extreme temperatures across the region simply wouldn’t have been possible without human-caused warming,” said Clair Barnes, the lead author and a researcher at Imperial College London.

The researchers say climate change has made maximum temperatures in Burkina Faso and Mali hotter by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) — something that may not have happened “if humans had not warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels.”

With sustained warming temperatures, the trend would continue, with similar events likely once every 20 years, the study said.

“This result is a warning for both the region and the world," Barnes said. "Extreme heat can be incredibly dangerous and will become more of a threat as the world continues to warm.”

___

Mureithi reported from Nairobi.

Thousands of Palestinians attempt to return home to northern Gaza, but face Israeli fire

Mohammad Al-Sawalhi, Abeer Salman, Kareem Khadder and Zeena Saifi, CNN
Sun, April 14, 2024 at 2:03 PM MDT·5 min read

Thousands of Palestinians, including men, women, children and elderly, attempted to return to their homes in northern Gaza on Sunday when they came under Israeli fire.

Video filmed by a CNN stringer shows the once-perilous coastal road of Al Rasheed filled with families walking with their belongings, some riding bicycles, donkey carts and pick-up trucks, smiling and snapping photographs.

“I’m going to Gaza City. It’s enough. We need to go back to our homes and lands. We are tired of displacement… we heard people saying we can go back, but no one official told us. We’ll leave it to God,” Majd El-Aqqad said.

Videos began circulating online Sunday morning showing people heading to the north for the first time in such large numbers. Some people told CNN they heard the Israeli military was allowing women and children to move back up. Others said their relatives were allowed to cross over.

In response to a question from CNN, the IDF said the reports were false.

“The northern Gaza Strip continues to be an active war zone and return to the area is not currently permitted,” IDF said.

In the video shot for CNN, an elderly woman named Um Mohammad walks along the road carrying a heavy bag on her head and two others in her arms, attempting to reach her home.

She cries and prays for God to protect them.

“I don’t know anything about my house. It’s our home and our land. The Israelis displaced us and humiliated us,” she said.

“We are tired here. We have been displaced for 191 days,” Malak Abu Nada, a woman from Jabalya, told CNN.

Majd El-Aqqad said she is returning to Gaza City. "We need to go back to our homes and lands. We are tired of displacement," she said. - CNN

Many of the people who attempted to head north had been displaced to Rafah, where Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been threatening to launch an offensive that the UN said would lead to a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

The Gaza Ministry of Health reported on Sunday that the toll in the Gaza Strip since October 7 has risen to 33,729 dead and 76,371 people injured.

CNN cannot independently verify these numbers.

A young boy named Omar Al-Dahdouh carried a bag of flour on his shoulder, holding his younger sibling’s hand and sobbing as he walked.

“I am going home. I have been displaced for six months. We live in a tent because our house was struck,” he said.

“I am not afraid. If I must die, I will die, but I don’t want to live this anymore. I want to go home, I’m tired. My siblings need to live,” he continued.

Ahmad Ramadan told CNN he had tried to cross to the north but was turned back by Israeli soldiers because he was a man.

“We heard the road was open to Gaza City, so we thought we’d go. When they saw men with us, they started shooting at us. We are tired and humiliated,” Um Awni Al-Jarousha told CNN.

Footage shows people turning around, heading back south with the sound of drones and planes buzzing overhead. Missiles can be seen in the distance while people run in panic.

“We reached all the way to the checkpoint until we saw Israeli tanks. We headed back because they fired towards us. We didn’t see anyone make it to the other side. We risked our children’s lives to cross, but apparently it was all a lie,” one woman said.

Um Mohammad (center) walks along the road carrying a heavy bag on her head and two others in her arms as she walks towards northern Gaza on April 14, 2024. - Ramadan Abed/Reuters

Video shows several people with what appear to be gunshot wounds. One man is seen carrying another man who has blood streaming along his face from a head injury.

Another man is seen carrying a 5-year-old girl named Sally Abu Laila, who is bleeding from her head and surrounded by people trying to help.

Her mother Sabreen told CNN her daughter was in her arms when Israeli soldiers shot at her. They had attempted to cross into the north with Sabreen’s husband, but the soldiers turned him back, leaving her and her four children to face the journey alone.

The moment she tried to pass through, two young men squeezed in between her and other women waiting in line at the checkpoint. That’s when Israeli soldiers fired at them, she said.

Chaos then ensued, with Sabreen describing people trampling over each other as they tried to escape the gunshots.

“I tried to put my daughter on the ground to walk, but she couldn’t move. I saw my hands covered in blood. I called on her, ‘Sally! Sally! Sally!’, but she didn’t answer… I didn’t know my daughter was injured… she is my only girl, and my heart broke,” Sabreen told CNN.

Eventually, she said, she managed to get to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, where her daughter is undergoing treatment. She told CNN she is still in intensive care.

Graphic footage shot for CNN shows Sally crying out in pain, blood on her body with a wound on her head and arm as she gets treated by two doctors.

CNN has reached out to the IDF for comment on reports that its soldiers fired shots at civilians trying to head up north, but has not received a response.


On April 14, thousands of Palestinians attempted to return to northern Gaza as the IDF warn that the area is still a “dangerous combat zone.”

Gaza refugees traveling home 'turned back'

Mark Moran
Sun, April 14, 2024 

Displaced Palestinians attend a special morning prayer to start the Eid al-Fitr festival, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, at a school-turned-shelter in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on Wednesday, April 10, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza. 

Photo by Ismael Mohamad/UPI


April 14 (UPI) -- Thousands of Palestinians, including men, women, children, and elderly people, reportedly came under fire Sunday while returning to their homes in northern Gaza, many of them displaced since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7th, 2023, prompting the latest chapter of the decades-long war.

"I am going home. I have been displaced for six months. We live in a tent because our house was struck," a young boy named Omar Al-Dahdouh said, while traversing the coastal road of Al Rasheed, carrying a bag of flour on his shoulder, and holding his younger sibling's hand, sobbing as he walked.

"I am not afraid. If I must die, I will die, but I don't want to live this anymore. I want to go home, I'm tired. My siblings need to live," he continued.

CNN video show families walking with their belongings, some riding bicycles, donkey carts and pick-up trucks, smiling and snapping photographs.

"I'm going to Gaza City. It's enough. We need to go back to our homes and lands. We are tired of displacement... we heard people saying we can go back, but no one official told us. We'll leave it to God," Majd El-Aqqad said.

Displaced Palestinians attend a special morning prayer to start the Eid al-Fitr festival, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, at a make shift shelter in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on Wednesday, April 10, 2024. Photo by Ismael Mohamad/UPI

This is the first time war regfugees have began headingback to Gaza in sich large numbers. Some of the travelers said tney heard the Israeli military was allowing women and children to return, and others said their relatives were allowed to cross over.

The Istaeli Defense Force said the reports were false.

"The northern Gaza Strip continues to be an active war zone and return to the area is not currently permitted," IDF said.

In the video shot for CNN, an elderly woman named Um Mohammad walks along Al Rasheed carrying a heavy bag on her head and two others in her arms, trying to return home.

She cried and praed for God to protect them.

"I don't know anything about my house. It's our home and our land. The Israelis displaced us and humiliated us," she said.

"We are tired here. We have been displaced for 191 days," Malak Abu Nada, a woman from Jabalya, told CNN.

Many of the people who attempted to head north had been gone to Rafah, where Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been threatening to launch an offensive that the UN said would lead to a "humanitarian catastrophe."

The Gaza Ministry of Health reported on Sunday that the toll in the Gaza Strip since October 7 has risen to 33,729 dead and 76,371 people injured.

Ahmad Ramadan told CNN he had tried to travel north on Al Rasheed but was turned back by Israeli soldiers because he is a man.

"We heard the road was open to Gaza City, so we thought we'd go," Um Awni Al-Jarousha told CNN. "When they saw men with us, they started shooting at us. We are tired and humiliated."

CNN video shows people turning around, heading south with the sound of drones and planes overhead. Missiles are seen in the distance while people run in panic.

"We reached all the way to the checkpoint until we saw Israeli tanks. We headed back because they fired towards us. We didn't see anyone make it to the other side. We risked our children's lives to cross, but apparently it was all a lie," one woman said.