Global Pulse

分类： world

  • Israel kills nine Palestinians in overnight Gaza bombardment

    Israel kills nine Palestinians in overnight Gaza bombardment

    A new wave of Israeli pre-dawn air strikes across Gaza City left at least nine Palestinians dead on Thursday, adding to a mounting civilian death toll as Israel expands its military operation and repeatedly violates a U.S.-brokered October ceasefire agreement. The attacks, which struck four separate residential apartment units in western and southern Gaza while most local residents were still asleep, wiped out an entire family in one targeted strike. Among the fatalities were five members of the Lubbad household: a father, mother, and their three young children. Only 10-year-old Hala Lubbad escaped the destruction of her home, walking away with only minor injuries from the collapse of the building.

    Palestinian Civil Defence crews, who raced to the strike sites immediately after the attacks, described the aftermath as unprecedentedly catastrophic. “The scenes at the locations are difficult and horrifying,” the organization said in an official statement following the search and recovery operation. One of the targeted apartments caught fire moments after impact, trapping residents inside and slowing rescue efforts. Emergency workers pulled survivors and the remains of victims from piles of shattered concrete and twisted rebar, confronting harrowing conditions throughout the operation. Local Palestinian media outlets have confirmed that at least 15 additional people were injured in the strikes, many of them critically.

    Thursday’s bombardment is part of a sharp escalation of Israeli military activity across the Gaza Strip that began earlier this month, breaking the relative lull in fighting that followed the October ceasefire deal. Data from Gaza’s Ministry of Health shows that Israeli forces have killed 119 Palestinians since the start of May, marking the highest single-month death toll recorded since November of last year. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has confirmed that the Israeli military is actively expanding its territorial control across Gaza, with ground forces already holding approximately 60 percent of the enclave and pushing toward a goal of seizing 70 percent of the territory by the end of the ongoing operation.

    Parallel to the military expansion, Israeli forces have continued two policies that have deepened the humanitarian catastrophe facing Gaza’s 2.2 million residents: mass home demolitions in occupied areas and crippling restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid. The near-total blockade on critical supplies has pushed the enclave into a renewed, acute crisis marked by widespread food insecurity and extreme shortages of life-saving medical supplies. This week, Gaza’s Health Ministry issued an urgent warning that more than 4,000 Palestinians undergoing cancer treatment are at immediate risk of death due to the complete lack of chemotherapy drugs, radiation supplies, and other essential medications. Shortages of fuel, which power Gaza’s only power grid and emergency generators, have forced most hospitals to scale back or suspend critical services. Dialysis units, neonatal intensive care incubators, general intensive care wards, and medical testing laboratories are all at imminent risk of full shutdown across the enclave.

    Gaza’s Government Media Office has documented more than 3,000 separate violations of the October ceasefire by Israeli military forces since the agreement went into effect. Palestinian health officials confirm that at least 936 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2,900 wounded in Israeli attacks across Gaza during the ceasefire period. Since the start of Israel’s full-scale military campaign in October 2023, the Palestinian Ministry of Health records that nearly 73,000 Palestinians have been killed, with an additional 170,000 wounded. Thousands more people remain unaccounted for, trapped and presumed dead under the rubble of thousands of destroyed homes and public buildings across the enclave.

  • ‘Blood gold’: how gangs took control of Venezuela’s mines

    ‘Blood gold’: how gangs took control of Venezuela’s mines

    When Venezuela opened its massive untapped mineral reserves to private international investment in April 2025, global markets reacted with optimism, marking another step in the country’s post-regime shift following the January ousting of long-ruling leftist leader Nicolas Maduro. What the market excitement overlooks, however, is a deep-rooted security and governance crisis: heavily armed criminal groups have controlled the bulk of the nation’s mining sector for more than a decade, creating a major barrier to legitimate economic development.\n\nVenezuela, already famous for holding the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves, sits on an extraordinary wealth of other critical commodities. The South American nation holds abundant deposits of gold, diamonds, bauxite, and coltan—a mineral critical to modern electronics and defense manufacturing, classified as a strategic critical resource by Western governments—alongside key rare earth elements. Most mining activity is concentrated in the 112,000-square-kilometer Orinoco Mining Arc in eastern Venezuela, with additional mining operations spread across the southern states of Amazonas and Bolivar.\n\nResearcher Lisseth Boon, author of *Oro malandro* (Bandit Gold), an investigative work on Venezuela’s unregulated mining regions, has labeled the country’s illicitly mined gold “blood gold”, a reference to the conflict-fueled “blood diamonds” that funded wars across several African nations. Nearly all active mining operations in Venezuela are under the control of local criminal gangs or Colombian guerrilla groups that operate under the name “sindicatos”, or syndicates, which rule mining territories through a pervasive system of violence and intimidation.\n\n“The syndicates control everything, it’s complicated,” an anonymous local resident from a gang-held territory told AFP, echoing the fear that keeps most locals from speaking out publicly.\n\nSecurity analysts explain that the sindicatos generate massive illicit revenue through systemic extortion of both local residents and mining workers. In many isolated mining regions, the gangs do not just extract profit—they act as de facto government, serving as judge, jury and executioner for local disputes, meting out punishments ranging from brutal beatings to torture for alleged offenses ranging from theft to murder.\n\nYet for some residents in long-neglected mining communities, gang rule has brought a warped form of order. El Dorado, a gritty gold mining town at the center of the Orinoco Mining Arc, is controlled by a notorious gang leader known only by his first name, Fabio—a charismatic figure who has cultivated local support through public charity works, echoing the populist tactics of infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.\n\n“Before, if you found a big gold nugget, other miners could kill you for it…Now everyone refrains from doing bad things,” one El Dorado resident told AFP in an interview in Caracas. The resident outlined the patronage system Fabio has built: “When someone is sick he signs a piece of paper and the person goes to the pharmacy and gets everything they need. He buys medicine for hospitals, renovates football grounds, has roads paved and buys food for residents and teachers.”\n\nUnlike small-scale artisanal miners, who make up a large share of the mining workforce and smuggle most of their output out through neighboring Brazil and Colombia, the syndicates generally avoid direct confrontation with large foreign firms, the resident added, allowing new legitimate operations to operate while the groups focus on extracting and smuggling their own illicit gold production.\n\nA 2025 report from Transparency International’s Venezuelan chapter lays bare the scale of criminal and elite collusion in the sector. The report estimates that armed groups, many with direct links to state authorities, control roughly 20 percent of Venezuela’s annual gold output. Overall, 66 percent of the $5.5 billion in annual revenue generated by Venezuelan mining is controlled by political elites who partner with organized crime through opaque informal public-private “strategic alliances”.\n\n“We don’t know the criteria used (by the state) to select partners, their obligations, the duration of the agreements, level of production, the contracts nor the amount of minerals,” Transparency International said, noting a complete lack of transparency around new mining partnerships. The organization also found that while national gold production has surged over the past decade, government revenue from gold mining has not increased, with nearly all profits flowing to criminal networks and corrupt elites.\n\nThe current criminal takeover of Venezuela’s mines traces back to policy decisions made more than a decade ago, Boon explains. When late socialist leader Hugo Chavez suspended all foreign mining concessions in 2011, it created a governance vacuum that criminal syndicates were quick to exploit.\n\n“There was a vacuum. That’s when the syndicates began to force their way in,” Boon said. Over the past 10 years, the violent battle for control of mining revenues has left dozens dead across Venezuela’s mining regions. One of the deadliest single incidents came in 2016, when 17 miners were shot execution-style and buried in a mass grave in the eastern mining town of Tumeremo, but targeted individual killings are an almost daily occurrence across the region.\n\nBoon accuses successive Venezuelan governments of direct complicity in the lawlessness that has consumed the mining sector. “A criminal system of governance was installed….with tacit accords between the syndicates and the state,” she said.\n\nRegional organized crime think tank Insight Crime has echoed these findings, warning that the syndicates exert “deep control” over vast swathes of mining territory. The organization highlighted the Las Claritas syndicate in Bolivar state, which imposes a mandatory “tax” on all mining activity and extracts protection money – colloquially called “vacunas”, or vaccines, from miners and traders in exchange for allowing them to operate.\n\nBoon argues that the syndicates hold local mining communities in a state of “modern-day slavery”, and that dislodging the criminal groups will require unprecedented, unwavering political will from Venezuela’s new transitional government, a challenge that threatens to derail the country’s hopes of revitalizing its battered economy through new private mining investment.

  • Kushner-backed luxury resort plan sparks protests in Albania

    Kushner-backed luxury resort plan sparks protests in Albania

    For an entire week, continuous demonstrations have occupied the sidewalk directly outside Albania’s prime ministerial office in central Tirana, turning a normally quiet government district into a hub of grassroots activism. While the small Balkan nation is no stranger to political rallies – the main opposition Democratic Party (PD) has staged them so frequently that locals joke they have become an unexpected landmark for visiting tourists – this week’s nightly gatherings are fundamentally different. Unlike the standard partisan protests that dominate Tirana’s streets, these demonstrations target both Prime Minister Edi Rama’s socialist government and a high-profile foreign investor: Jared Kushner, former US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and head of the investment firm Affinity Partners.

    At the heart of public anger lies a massive proposed luxury tourism development earmarked for Albania’s pristine northern Adriatic coast, spanning Sazan Island and a protected wetland site near the coastal city of Vlora in Zvernec. Affinity Partners is set to be one of the lead investors in the project, which Rama has embraced as a transformative opportunity for Albania’s growing tourism economy. But grassroots protesters have rejected the plan outright, and their movement diverges sharply from the country’s established partisan divides. In a break from opposition norms, many demonstrators have carried signs calling not just for Rama’s resignation but also for the imprisonment of Sali Berisha, PD leader who faces separate public corruption charges, making clear the movement is independent of mainstream political factions.

    Adopting a striking pink flamingo as their official emblem, the movement draws inspiration from the 2020s Serbian civic protest movement that used a giant yellow rubber duck as a unifying symbol. For Albanian protesters, the choice is deeply personal: the protected coastal wetlands targeted by the development are a critical habitat for the greater flamingo, a protected species whose survival in the region is already threatened. Beyond wildlife, the development puts dozens of other native plant and animal species that rely on the protected wetland ecosystem at risk, environmental activists argue.

    Protesters have also raised sharp questions about the lack of transparency surrounding the deal, noting that negotiations between Affinity Partners and the Albanian government began as early as 2024 without meaningful public input. Many signs carried at the rallies declare “Albania is not for sale,” reflecting widespread anger over the concession of ecologically sensitive public land to foreign developers. While the Albanian government claims all land involved is privately owned and acquired through fully transparent legal procedures, legacy issues from Albania’s 20th-century political history complicate that narrative. After 45 years of total state nationalisation under Communist rule, the post-1990 privatisation process left overlapping, unresolved property claims across much of the country, leaving open questions about the legitimacy of the land transfer.

    For the mostly young cohort of demonstrators, however, environmental protection remains the core motivating force. Joni Vorpsi, an ecologist with PPNEA-BirdLife Albania, explained that the proposed development is far more expansive than the government has acknowledged. “This is not a small eco-resort – it would be a new tourist city with around 10,000 accommodation rooms,” Vorpsi said. “It would completely destroy that wild, untouched region. We are demanding all construction halts immediately, and all heavy machinery be removed from the protected area.”

    The project has already faced disruption, with police deploying water cannons to disperse demonstrators at one recent rally, escalating tensions between protesters and authorities. Rama has struck a defiant tone in response, appearing openly exasperated by the sustained demonstrations. He has characterised protesters as “well-meaning but misinformed” about the project’s environmental safeguards, arguing that the €4 billion investment would deliver widespread economic benefits, including thousands of new jobs and upgrades to local infrastructure. Going further, Rama has framed the protests as a “hybrid war” driven by economic competition from rival Mediterranean tourism powers, accusing regional actors of sabotaging Albania’s growing tourism sector. That thinly veiled jab at Greece has spilled into public view, with Rama publishing an open rebuke of former Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras over alleged involvement in stoking unrest.

    For Kushner, the backlash is not an unfamiliar experience in the Balkans. Earlier this year, he pulled out of a planned Trump International Hotel development in Belgrade, Serbia, after sustained local opposition and the arrest of a senior government minister on corruption charges linked to the project. Backed by the firm, Kushner’s business partner Asher Abehsera has defended the Albanian project’s integrity, stressing that the development prioritises “responsible stewardship” of the coastal environment. “Our focus remains on responsible stewardship, environmental enhancement, job creation, and creating long-term value for local communities,” Abehsera said, echoing the firm’s public commitment to sustainable development.

    But with protesters dismissing these assurances and vowing to continue demonstrations until the project is scrapped entirely, the pink flamingo emblem is likely to remain a permanent fixture outside the prime minister’s office for the foreseeable future.

  • A Yazidi tells an Australian court she was enslaved and raped in an IS home in Syria

    A Yazidi tells an Australian court she was enslaved and raped in an IS home in Syria

    MELBOURNE, Australia — A disturbing case of alleged wartime enslavement tied to the Islamic State group has opened in an Australian court, with prosecutors laying out graphic accusations of systematic abuse against a 15-year-old Yazidi girl who was held captive in Syria more than six years ago.

    Thirty-one-year-old Zeinab Ahmad appeared at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court this week, filing an application for bail while facing two counts of slavery-related crimes against humanity. Her bail hearing will resume Friday, after police laid out the full scope of the allegations before the court.

    Zeinab and her 53-year-old mother Kawsar Ahmad — also known as Kawsar Abbas — have been held in Australian custody since last month. The pair returned to Australia from a Syrian refugee camp alongside a larger group of Australian women and children with confirmed ties to the Islamic State, after years spent living in territory controlled by the extremist group.

    Detective Senior Constable Mark Clendenning, leading the case for police, told the court that the anonymous Iraqi-born Yazidi complainant, who was a minor when the abuse occurred, laid out years of mistreatment in a formal police statement. According to the statement, Zeinab’s father and Kawsar’s husband, Mohammed Ahmad, purchased the then-teen for $10,000 in 2017 in Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate at the time.

    Clendenning told the court that Kawsar actively participated in purchasing the teen for enslavement — an unusual role for a woman within the extremist group’s hierarchical structure. He added that the entire Ahmad family held elevated status and privileges within the Islamic State that most other supporters did not access, granting them exceptions to the group’s standard internal practices.

    Per the allegations laid out by Clendenning, the victim was brought into the family’s Raqqa home, where the couple lived with their five children, including Zeinab. The victim was assigned to share a bedroom with Zeinab, the court heard. Mohammed explicitly told the victim upon bringing her to the home that he had purchased her for two purposes: repeated sexual assault and unpaid domestic labor, even introducing her to the entire family with that explicit explanation.

    Court documents further detail that Zeinab’s first husband, an Islamic State fighter, was killed in a 2016 drone strike, after which she remarried an Egyptian IS fighter who had lost a limb in combat.

    Police have alleged that Zeinab was present on multiple occasions when her father abused the victim, including one incident where Mohammed beat the captive and dragged her by her hair down two flights of stairs inside the family home. Mohammed beat the victim two to three times every month for the entire duration of her captivity with the Ahmad family, Clendenning said, with all members of the family present during the assaults.

    While Zeinab never physically harmed the victim, the complainant told police that Zeinab repeatedly issued violent threats against her and ordered her to complete endless domestic housework. The victim also stated that Mohammed sexually assaulted her “many times” despite consistent resistance from the captive.

    After 16 months of captivity, Mohammed sold the victim to another IS member for the same $10,000 he had paid to acquire her, justifying the sale by claiming the teen was “bad” and refused to follow his orders. Mohammed is currently incarcerated in an Iraqi prison for his role in Islamic State-linked crimes.

    The case unfolds against the long-documented historical context of the Islamic State’s systematic persecution of the Yazidi people, a small Kurdish-speaking ethno-religious minority primarily concentrated in Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The victim told investigators she was just 15 years old when she was captured as part of the IS’s mass enslavement campaign that trapped more than 6,800 Yazidi women and children. Over five years of captivity, she was traded between 17 different IS members before Kurdish forces liberated her from extremist control in 2019.

    Court records show that three generations of the Ahmad family originally relocated from Melbourne to Syria via Turkey between 2013 and 2014, with Zeinab flying to the conflict zone to join the group with her first husband in 2014.

    In opposing Zeinab’s bail application, Clendenning argued that releasing her from custody would create an unacceptable public safety risk. He noted that Zeinab has married multiple men with ties to the Islamic State, and her current husband, an Egyptian IS fighter, has an unknown current whereabouts. Critically, Clendenning added that Zeinab has never explicitly renounced the Islamic State or stated that she no longer supports the extremist group’s ideology following her surrender to Kurdish forces earlier this year.

    If convicted on both charges of enslavement and the use of an enslaved person, Zeinab faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison for each count.

  • Ukraine accused of killing four in occupied Crimea

    Ukraine accused of killing four in occupied Crimea

    Escalating cross-border strikes have sent fatalities climbing across Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories and mainland Russia, marking a sharp intensification of hostilities three months into the fifth year of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The latest outbreak of violence began with a series of Ukrainian strikes on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, where Russian-installed local authorities confirmed at least four civilian and personnel deaths across two separate attack sites.

    In the regional capital of Simferopol, one strike targeting what local officials described as non-residential infrastructure left three people dead and seven others injured. This incident marks the first recorded fatal Ukrainian attack on Simferopol since Russia illegally occupied and annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, a move ordered directly by Russian President Vladimir Putin. A second attack targeted a commuter train en route to Kerch, killing one additional passenger and wounding three more, according to the Moscow-appointed head of Crimea.

    As of publication, Ukrainian officials have not issued any official comment on the Crimean strikes. This wave of attacks marks the third consecutive day that Ukrainian forces have been accused of targeting transport and infrastructure in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories. In addition to its strikes on occupied Crimea, Kyiv has steadily expanded the scope and frequency of its long-range strikes deep inside Russian territory over recent weeks.

    The most high-profile of these recent strikes came on Wednesday, just hours before the official opening of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russia’s flagship annual economic event designed to draw foreign investment into the country. Once known as the “Russian Davos,” the forum drew high-profile Western political and business delegations before Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that Ukrainian drones struck multiple targets near St. Petersburg, including an oil terminal and a naval facility in Kronstadt, the primary outpost of Russia’s Baltic Fleet. A separate Russian-installed official in occupied Donetsk reported that a drone strike on a passenger bus in the region killed seven civilians the same day.

    Over the four years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukraine has rapidly expanded and developed its domestic defense industry, allowing it to produce enough long-range drones and other precision weapons to regularly strike targets deep inside Russian and Russian-occupied territory. Ukrainian military strategy prioritizes strikes on energy and oil infrastructure, which Kyiv views as critical to sustaining Russia’s war effort. This escalation in Ukrainian long-range strikes has been matched by continued heavy Russian strikes across Ukrainian population centers, which have resulted in consistent civilian casualties. On Monday alone, combined Russian missile and drone strikes across multiple Ukrainian cities killed at least 22 civilian people.

    Moscow has continued to frame its illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea as a permanent territorial acquisition, a claim rejected by the vast majority of the international community and UN member states. Ukraine has repeatedly stated it aims to fully liberate all occupied territories, including Crimea, as a core condition of any lasting peace deal.

  • Missing guide found on Mount Everest after ‘miracle’ self-rescue

    Missing guide found on Mount Everest after ‘miracle’ self-rescue

    In an extraordinary story of survival that has stunned the global mountaineering community, a Nepali climbing guide declared missing and presumed dead on Mount Everest has emerged from six days stranded at lethal altitude, crawling back to base camp in a remarkable self-rescue.

    Dawa Sherpa, an experienced veteran climber also known as Hillary Dawa Sherpa in honor of pioneering mountaineer Edmund Hillary, vanished on May 29 while assisting a Polish climber above Camp 3, at roughly 7,500 meters (24,600 feet) above sea level. At that extreme elevation, atmospheric oxygen levels drop to just a fraction of what is available at sea level, making multi-day survival nearly impossible. By all accounts, the climbing community had prepared for the worst, with most assuming Dawa had become the season’s latest climbing fatality.

    That grim expectation shifted on Thursday, when a crew from the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, tasked with cleaning waste from the mountain’s upper slopes, spotted Dawa moving slowly through the dangerous Khumbu Icefall, steadily descending toward Base Camp. When rescuers reached him, they confirmed he was in overall stable good condition despite his week-long ordeal at high altitude.

    Pemba Sherpa, executive director of 8K Expeditions, the organizing company that led initial search operations, called the survival nothing short of extraordinary. “This is a true self-rescue,” Pemba explained in remarks to reporters. “Dawa managed to survive against all odds for days. It is nothing short of a miracle.”

    The ordeal unfolded as Dawa accompanied a group of climbers descending from Camp 4, the highest campsite positioned just below Everest’s summit. Former British Royal Marine and climber Chris Thrall, who was part of the descending party, recalled that Dawa stopped to rest with his backpack as the group moved lower. When Thrall checked in on him, Dawa insisted he was fine and told the party to continue ahead. “This is nothing new, you know, I’d go ahead, he’d go ahead,” Thrall said in an Instagram tribute he posted Wednesday, when he still believed Dawa had died on the mountain. As Thrall continued down, he stopped to assist a struggling Polish climber, and the two continued their descent together. Dawa never caught up to the group.

    After Dawa failed to arrive at lower camps, 8K Expeditions launched a extensive aerial search of the upper mountain, but crews were unable to locate any trace of the missing guide. Before his discovery, Dawa’s wife told Agence France-Presse she had already conducted last rite prayers for his soul, a devastating step families take when climbers are confirmed lost on the world’s highest peak.

    This 2026 Everest spring climbing season has already made history for two stark reasons: it is the busiest season on record, with more than 1,000 climbers and guides successfully reaching the summit, but it has also recorded five fatalities so far. Three of those who died this season were Nepali workers involved in pre-season route preparation and logistics work on the mountain, according to AFP data. Dawa’s unlikely survival has brought a rare moment of joy and celebration to a climbing community already grappling with multiple losses this year.

  • Gunmen kidnap 7 students from school in northwestern Nigeria

    Gunmen kidnap 7 students from school in northwestern Nigeria

    In northwest Nigeria, a violent incursion by armed gunmen left seven students taken captive after assailants stormed an off-campus residential building, local law enforcement confirmed this week. The attack unfolded in the early hours of Wednesday in the Kaura Namoda district, a region located within Zamfara state — an area that has been torn apart by years of persistent violent conflict. Police spokesperson Yazid Abubakar released an official statement detailing the incident, noting that one of the seven taken managed to break free from the captors and is now under police protection with no reported serious injuries. As of the latest update, authorities have not yet confirmed the exact location where the remaining six kidnapped students were taken by the assailants. However, Abubakar emphasized that comprehensive search and rescue operations are already in motion to recover the hostages and apprehend those responsible for the attack. Zamfara state has long been recognized as a major hotbed for criminal armed gangs that target civilians for kidnapping-to-ransom schemes, a crisis that has spread across much of northern Nigeria in recent years. Most alarmingly, the frequency of student abductions has climbed sharply across the entire nation since 2014. A data compilation conducted by Nigeria’s leading local news organization Premium Times underscores the severity of this national crisis: according to their tally, no fewer than 1,900 students have been kidnapped from 20 separate educational institutions across the country. This wave of student abductions traces its origins back to the 2014 mass kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls from a government secondary school in Chibok, Borno state, an event that drew global outrage and put the issue of mass kidnapping in Nigeria on the international agenda. Security analysts continue to warn that weak border security, widespread access to illegal weaponry, and slow progress on economic development in many northern Nigerian states have created conditions that allow these criminal gangs to operate with relative impunity, even as federal and state authorities continue to deploy additional security resources to curb the violence.

  • Sherpa guide missing for a week on Mount Everest rescued while crawling to base camp

    Sherpa guide missing for a week on Mount Everest rescued while crawling to base camp

    KATMANDU, Nepal — In an extraordinary survival story that has shocked the mountaineering community, a veteran Sherpa mountain guide has been recovered alive from the slopes of Mount Everest seven days after he went missing during the closing days of this year’s record-breaking climbing season, rescue officials confirmed Thursday. A rescue helicopter was transporting the guide to a Kathmandu hospital for urgent evaluation and care Thursday afternoon.

    The guide, 52-year-old Dawa Sherpa, was last spotted on May 29 as he descended the world’s highest peak alongside his Polish climbing client. While the client successfully made it to Everest’s base camp to conclude the expedition, Dawa never arrived. The pair was among the final groups of climbers on the mountain as the 2024 climbing season wrapped up, and the fixed safety routes that support summit attempts were already being taken down, leaving the mountain largely unoccupied for the coming off-season.

    Pemba Sherpa, a representative of 8K Expeditions, the adventure company that was in charge of coordinating the search operation for Dawa, shared that the missing guide was discovered by a mountain cleaning team early Thursday morning. At the time of his discovery, he was slowly crawling down a snow-covered slope in the Khumbu Icefall region, located just above base camp, in one of the most dangerous sections of the entire Everest climbing route.

    Shortly after being spotted, rescuers carried Dawa down to a secure lower elevation at base camp, where he was immediately given food, water, and initial first aid to address his week of exposure to extreme high-altitude conditions. A dedicated rescue helicopter was deployed to the site within hours to airlift him to a specialized hospital in Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital.

    Despite Dawa going missing a full week before his discovery, search operations were delayed in launching, according to local expedition officials. An initial aerial search carried out by helicopter earlier this week had failed to locate the guide, leaving search teams holding out little hope of finding him alive.

    The team that made the life-saving discovery is part of the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, a Nepalese organization that manages Everest climbing infrastructure each season. At the start of every climbing window, the committee installs fixed ladders and safety ropes across the mountain’s icy routes to support climbers; when the season ends, it removes all equipment to minimize environmental impact and cleans up tons of waste left by expeditions each year.

    Dawa hails from Okhaldhunga, a mountain town located south of Everest, and works for Himalayan Traverse, a small adventure outfitter based in Kathmandu. This year’s climbing season on Everest made history as the busiest on record, with more than 1,000 climbers and their guides successfully reaching the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) summit throughout May.

    The 2024 season also got off to a late start: a massive unstable ice block formed on the route just above base camp, requiring two weeks of intensive work to clear before climbing could resume. The first successful recorded ascent of Everest was completed on the same date Dawa was last seen this year — May 29 — in 1953, by New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay.

  • Nepali climber alive after six days missing on Everest

    Nepali climber alive after six days missing on Everest

    In a remarkable story of survival against the harshest conditions on Earth, an experienced Nepali climbing guide who went missing for six days on Mount Everest and was widely presumed dead has crawled back to Base Camp alive, expedition officials confirmed to AFP in an interview on Thursday.

    Hillary Dawa Sherpa, a seasoned high-altitude climber familiar with Everest’s most dangerous terrain, disappeared in the upper reaches of the 8,849-meter world’s highest peak in the early hours of May 30. His unexpected return ended days of fruitless search efforts, when teams had already begun to prepare for the worst outcome.

    Workers from the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC), a local Nepali organization responsible for maintaining climbing routes and clearing accumulated waste from the mountain, made the surprise discovery of Sherpa on Thursday morning just a short distance from Base Camp. “He was crawling down when we found him,” explained Pemba Sherpa of 8K Expeditions, the firm that coordinated the official search and rescue operation for the missing guide. A rescue helicopter has already been deployed to airlift Sherpa to a specialized hospital in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu for urgent medical evaluation.

    British climber Chris Thrall, a former Royal Marine who summited Everest with Sherpa around 5 p.m. on May 29, had shared a heartfelt tribute to the guide on Instagram just one day before his rescue, writing in a post mourning what he believed was Sherpa’s passing. He described Sherpa as an “absolute gentle giant of a man and a true ‘tiger of the mountains’”, echoing the widespread high regard Sherpa holds among the global climbing community.

    Thrall recounted the sequence of events that led to Sherpa going missing as the two climbers began their descent from Camp Four, which sits at roughly 7,950 meters, just below the oxygen-starved zone known to climbers as the “death zone” where the human body cannot sustain itself for long periods. As the pair descended, Sherpa stopped to catch his breath. “He sat down for a rest with his backpack — these guides carry huge loads up and down the mountain,” Thrall recalled. “I turned and I said, ‘Hillary, are you okay, brother?’ He said, ‘Yes, yes, fine Chris, please go, go!’ This is nothing new on the mountain; sometimes climbers pull ahead at their own pace.”

    As Thrall continued downward, he encountered a Polish climber in critical condition: the mountaineer had exhausted his supply of supplementary oxygen, suffered severe frostbite, and was at immediate risk of hypothermia. Thrall faced an agonizing choice, one familiar to climbers who navigate life-or-death decisions high on Everest. The 11-day summit push had already stretched far longer than the typical five-day itinerary, a sign of just how brutal conditions were this season. “Do I go back for Sherpa, who’s probably going to rock up and be fine, as he has done hundreds of times before? Or do I help my fellow climber, who’s got no oxygen, frostbite in his fingers, and obviously you’re never far off hypothermia up there?” he said.

    Thrall chose to stay with the Polish climber, sharing his own oxygen supply as the pair descended slowly to Camp Three. What would normally take just two hours to cover took 11 exhausting hours, a testament to the severe conditions and the strain of the rescue. By the time they reached safety, Thrall knew they had escaped a catastrophic outcome.

    Despite multiple search teams launching missions to locate Sherpa in the days after he disappeared, no trace of him was found until Thursday morning, when he emerged after days of slow, solitary descent down the mountain. This climb was one of the final expeditions of the 2026 spring climbing season, which meant very few other climbers were still on the peak to offer assistance.

    This year’s Everest season has already been marked by tragedy: at least five people — two Indian climbers and three Nepali climbing staff involved in pre-season preparations — have died on the mountain. At the same time, initial counts from Nepali tourism officials show that more than 1,000 climbers have successfully reached the summit this season, making 2026 the busiest climbing season in Everest’s recorded history.

  • Satellite pix said to show Israel’s overt Gaza territorial goals

    Satellite pix said to show Israel’s overt Gaza territorial goals

    Newly released satellite analysis from Al Jazeera has uncovered a significant violation of the 2025 Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement: Israel has been quietly constructing dozens of permanent, heavily fortified military outposts across Gaza’s internal perimeter, rather than withdrawing its forces as required by the U.S.-brokered truce.

    Al Jazeera’s Open Source Unit conducted a full review of satellite data collected through May 2026, confirming that 40 completed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bases have been erected since the October 2025 ceasefire took effect, with one additional outpost still under construction. Independent regional observers warn that this network of permanent infrastructure aligns directly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s publicly stated goal of seizing at least 70% of the besieged Palestinian exclave.

    Unlike temporary forward observation posts, the infrastructure uncovered by satellite imagery forms a systematic, long-term military occupation grid. The outposts are linked by a connected network of earthen berms, deep trenches, and dedicated military access roads, forming a tight encirclement of major Palestinian population centers from multiple directions. This encirclement has already crippled civilian mobility, blocking ordinary Palestinians from accessing their agricultural lands and moving freely between communities, particularly in areas adjacent to Israeli deployment lines. The buildup also accompanies Israel’s ongoing expansion of its so-called “yellow line” security boundary, which has steadily pushed deeper into Gaza territory since the truce was signed.

    The construction directly contravenes the terms of the October 2025 ceasefire, a 21-point framework negotiated under then-U.S. President Donald Trump that required an immediate end to hostilities, unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid, the disarmament of Hamas, and a phased full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Palestinian political analyst Abdullah Aqrabawi notes that the buildup reflects a long-entrenched Israeli security doctrine centered on permanent occupation, territorial expansion, and ongoing control over Palestinian land and life.

    Netanyahu has repeatedly articulated his vision for permanent Israeli control over Gaza since the outbreak of conflict in October 2023. In early 2024, he publicly declared Israel would establish “full security control” over the entire strip. In April 2025, he announced the creation of the Morag Corridor, a new security buffer that cuts Gaza into fragmented sections, explicitly framing the move as a tactic to increase pressure on Hamas. Just last week, he told attendees at a youth military academy that Israeli forces currently control roughly 60% of Gaza. When the crowd chanted demands for full control of 100% of the territory, Netanyahu responded that the government would proceed in stages, with 70% as the immediate next target.

    Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz echoed these expansionist goals last year, stating that IDF forces were “expanding to crush and clean” Gaza while seizing large swaths of territory that would be incorporated into Israel’s national security zones to accommodate future settlements. This language references open plans from far-right members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition and settler movement leaders to ethnically cleanse Gaza’s existing Palestinian population and reestablish Israeli civilian settlements in the enclave — a reversal of the 2005 disengagement under then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, when Israel withdrew all settlers and military forces from Gaza after 38 years of occupation following the 1967 Six-Day War.

    Katz and other senior Israeli officials have framed their displacement plan as a U.S.-backed “voluntary migration” initiative for Gaza’s 2 million-plus Palestinians. Critics, however, universally dismiss the term as a deliberate euphemism for ethnic cleansing, noting that the vast majority of Gaza’s residents are descendants of Palestinians forcibly expelled from their lands during the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, and have no willingness to leave the only home their families have known for generations.

    Even under the formal ceasefire, IDF operations have continued to kill Palestinian civilians at rising rates. Gaza’s Ministry of Health confirmed Wednesday that at least 119 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in May 2026 — the highest monthly death toll recorded this year, including 19 children and 10 women. According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, Israel has violated the ceasefire more than 3,000 times since it took effect last October, leaving more than 900 Palestinians dead and nearly 2,800 injured. Since the start of the current conflict in October 2023, more than 250,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed or wounded, with thousands more still missing and presumed buried under rubble destroyed by Israeli airstrikes and ground operations.

    Wednesday’s satellite report is not the first to expose Israel’s post-ceasefire territorial changes in Gaza. Last week, Al Jazeera published separate satellite analysis showing Israel has systematically erased large sections of southern Gaza, including entire cities, agricultural lands, community infrastructure, and even historic cemeteries, in a campaign researchers described as an effort to “erase geography and memory” of Palestinian presence in the territory. “Satellites photograph the destroyed buildings, but they cannot document the feeling of a human searching for their home to no avail,” said Palestinian journalist Muhannad Qishta. “The hardest thing is not the destruction itself, but the stories buried beneath it.”