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On August 26, a catastrophic glacial outburst flood tore through the high-altitude border region between Nepal and China, wiping out infrastructure, destroying the iconic cross-border Friendship Bridge, and leaving hundreds of people unaccounted for in one of the deadliest natural disasters to hit the Himalayas in recent years. Visual evidence captured through pre- and post-disaster satellite imagery and local CCTV footage has begun to reveal the full scale of the destruction that unfolded in mere minutes.

A few seconds of chilling CCTV footage from Gyirong, the Chinese side of the border crossing, captures the moment disaster struck: what first resembles a dark, foreboding cloud sweeping over the ridgeline behind border buildings rapidly resolves into a churning mass of water, mud, ice, boulders, and rock surging down the valley at deadly speed. The footage is timestamped 10:59:53 local Tibet time, just seven minutes after a glacial collapse triggered the torrent high in the mountains, per Chinese disaster assessments, and less than 10 minutes after Nepal’s immigration system logged its final transaction at the Rasuwagadhi crossing.

In the wake of the surge, large swathes of the border’s built infrastructure simply vanished. Most of the Gyirong border complex was swept clean off the valley floor, while across the international frontier in Nepal’s Rasuwa district, the destruction was equally severe. The Friendship Bridge, the decades-old structural link between the two nations, was torn from its foundations and washed away, alongside Nepal’s entire immigration and customs compound. Timure, the small mountain trading settlement that had grown up around the busy crossing, was left in ruins.

Geographically, this key trans-Himalayan route has long been recognized as a high-risk zone. Ajay Dixit, a leading Kathmandu-based hydrologist, explains that the corridor is a historic travel link between Kathmandu and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, defined by steep gorges, fast-flowing sediment-heavy rivers prone to carrying massive debris downstream, and inherent geological instability that makes flash floods a persistent threat. Today, the crossing remains a vital economic and cultural gateway, traversed daily by Mount Kailash pilgrims, cross-border traders, truck drivers, customs officials, tourists, and local border communities.

In the hours before the flood hit, the crossing was unusually busy. Electronic immigration records from Nepal confirm that 89 foreign and Nepali nationals had cleared exit checks to enter Tibet, while four people had registered for entry into Nepal. That count, however, only captures a fraction of the people present in the border zone. Tika Ram Pokharel, a senior immigration assistant at Rasuwagadhi who was the only office staff member to survive—he had traveled to Kathmandu to take a mandatory work exam that morning—told reporters that between 300 and 400 people were waiting to cross into Tibet, with additional travelers from the Chinese side also in the area.

The full extent of the human toll remains uncertain, weeks after the disaster. India’s foreign ministry confirms that at least 275 Indian nationals are missing across Nepal, with more than 100 of those unaccounted for believed to have been at the Rasuwagadhi crossing when the flood hit. Among the missing are 32 Indian nationals who cleared Nepali exit checks that morning, as well as 77 pilgrims with the Isha Foundation returning from Mount Kailash who were at the Chinese border facility. Four senior Nepali immigration staff, including the head of the Rasuwagadhi office, are also missing; his body was recovered days later far downstream, while the female officer who logged the final immigration transactions remains unaccounted for. Pokharel, who lost 40 to 50 close friends in the disaster, estimates the actual death toll could be far higher than official counts, suggesting between 2,000 and 2,500 people may have been caught in the surge—an estimate that has not been independently verified.

The geologic timeline of the disaster has left many questions about why so many people were trapped. Seismic sensors detected glacial movement above the border just two minutes after the final immigration transaction was logged, at 8:37 a.m. Nepal local time. Researchers confirmed the seismic shift marked the collapse of a section of mountain glacier that triggered the outburst flood. Once travelers cleared Nepali immigration, it took 15 to 20 minutes to walk the 3.5-kilometer stretch from the immigration office at Ghatte Khola Bazar to the Friendship Bridge, meaning most of the 89 people who cleared exit checks that morning would still have been en route when the flood hit. Ghatte Khola itself, which was home to 50 to 60 local houses, hotels, shops, four hydropower facilities, and a bus terminal for Kathmandu-bound travelers, was completely submerged, with floodwaters surging higher than the 100-meter elevation of the immigration office itself.

Personal accounts from families of the missing underscore the suddenness of the disaster. For many pilgrims, the morning began as a routine wait to cross the border. Sudipto Bhattacharya received final updates from his wife Subhrasree Chakraborty, who was traveling with a group of 60 pilgrims: at 7:57 a.m., she sent a photo of her exit stamp, confirming Nepali immigration was complete. At 8:03 a.m., she sent one last message: “We are waiting to enter China.” Communications cut out moments later, and she has not been heard from since.

When Chinese rescue teams reached the devastated Gyirong border area on August 28, they found a landscape of total destruction. “As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but ruins,” one rescuer told Reuters. The disaster comes just 18 months after a separate major flood shut the crossing for nearly six months, which only reopened on January 1 after Chinese engineers constructed a temporary replacement bridge. By June of this year, cross-border traffic had returned to pre-flood levels, with Chinese authorities recording more than 100,000 crossings through Gyirong in the first half of 2026, and Nepali immigration recording 53,742 total arrivals and departures in the 12 months to mid-July.

Beyond the human cost, the disaster has major economic implications for Nepal, which relies heavily on the Rasuwagadhi crossing for trade with China. Posh Kumar Pandey, chairman emeritus of the Kathmandu-based South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics and Environment, notes that Rasuwagadhi is one of Nepal’s only two major land trade ports with China, accounting for roughly one-third of Nepal’s total $2.95 billion in annual trade with its northern neighbor. Up to 70 cargo trucks crossed the border daily, carrying Chinese electronics, machinery, vehicles, clothing, and fruit into Nepal, and the route handles an estimated 80% of all of Nepal’s electric vehicle imports from China.

With both Rasuwagadhi destroyed and Nepal’s second major trade crossing at Tatopani temporarily closed by Chinese authorities due to ongoing landslide risks, Nepal is currently left with no active major land trade routes with China. Pandey warns that the disaster exposes the risks of Nepal’s overreliance on a small number of high-risk border corridors. “We have put all eggs here,” he said. “We need to develop an alternative border port.” He added that Nepal should also reconsider its strategy of concentrating dozens of hydropower projects along the same geologically unstable river system.

For the few survivors like Pokharel, the disaster carries a deeply personal weight. He recalled that after the 2025 flood, his colleagues were acutely aware of the ongoing flood risk, often checking the river at night after feeling seismic vibrations and discussing emergency escape routes uphill if another flood struck. “But my friends could not get that chance,” he said. Search and rescue operations are still ongoing in the region, with Chinese helicopters delivering emergency supplies to cut-off areas and recovery teams working to locate missing persons amid the mud and debris.

On Tuesday, disaster management authorities confirmed that the combined death toll from catastrophic flash flooding triggered by a Himalayan glacial collapse has exceeded 1,000 across Nepal and southern Tibet, China, as rescue crews race against time to reach thousands of missing people trapped in cut-off, disaster-ravaged communities. As of the latest official update from Nepal’s national disaster management agency, the country has recorded 987 confirmed fatalities, with another 3,916 people still unaccounted for – a figure that includes 583 foreign nationals. China’s most recent official update, released Sunday, reported 16 confirmed deaths in the Tibetan region affected by the disaster.

The unprecedented disaster unfolded on August 26, originating high in the Himalayan mountain range in a sequence of catastrophic natural events. The crisis began when a glacial formation experienced a full collapse, sending massive volumes of broken ice, displaced rock, and glacial meltwater surging into lower river valleys, which rapidly triggered powerful downstream flash floods that swept through both Nepalese and Tibetan communities. Researchers analyzing satellite imagery of the disaster site have determined that the collapse was tied to the failure of the bedrock supporting the glacial formation. The force of the resulting massive rockfall was powerful enough to be detected as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event by global monitoring networks.

The enormous surge of water and debris pushed into transboundary rivers that flow through Tibetan and Nepalese valleys, causing water levels to skyrocket in a matter of hours. Floodwaters and debris wiped out entire residential structures, public buildings, highway networks, and bridge crossings, leaving entire regions isolated with no overland access for emergency response. To date, Nepalese authorities confirm that more than 11,814 people have been pulled from danger and evacuated, with emergency teams relying heavily on helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft operations to reach stranded communities after landslides and flooding destroyed most overland routes.

The most urgent priority for rescue teams right now is locating roughly 900 missing workers from 12 damaged hydropower development projects across the affected region. Officials estimate that around 500 of these workers may still be trapped inside flooded project tunnels, cut off from outside contact. Footage released by the Nepalese Army shows rescue teams navigating narrow, debris-clogged tunnels, wading through chest-deep muddy floodwater, and climbing over piles of broken rock and rubble in the search for any surviving trapped workers.

Bimal Sharma, a helicopter pilot who has flown continuous rescue missions since the disaster struck, described the profound scale of destruction to Timure, a remote Nepalese border town near the Tibetan boundary that he has flown to for years. “It felt like I was flying over an entirely different landscape,” Sharma said. The pilot added that while he has had little time to speak at length with the survivors he airlifts to safety, their unspoken grief is impossible to miss. “I can see the pain in their eyes. It’s heartbreaking,” he said.

As rescue operations continue, teams are also working to deliver food, clean water, medical care, and emergency shelter to thousands of survivors who remain in isolated regions with damaged or destroyed transportation infrastructure. The disaster has already drawn attention to the growing risks of glacial hazard events in the Himalayas, a region that has accelerated glacial melt and retreat driven by rising global temperatures.

At the Torkham border crossing, dubbed “Zero Point” between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the air shimmers with 41-degree Celsius heat that hangs heavy over a sprawling makeshift transit camp of tattered tarpaulin and plastic shelters. Here, one chapter of displacement closes for millions of Afghans, and another, far more uncertain, begins. Among the first to step across the frontier this week was 35-year-old Nazia, who had lived her entire life in Pakistan, where she was born to a displaced Afghan family. Minutes after crossing into a country she had never seen, she carried a faint sense of bittersweet relief: “It feels good to be in my own country,” she said, her two young children clinging to her hands as she walked toward Taliban-run registration counters draped in the movement’s black and white flag. But the relief quickly faded. “Many people here don’t even have enough bread to eat,” she sighed. Nazia is far from alone. Nearly her entire extended family—eight sisters and all their children—have been deported to Afghanistan from Pakistan and Iran this year alone, part of the largest cross-border population movement on the planet today.

For decades, millions of Afghans fled decades of conflict, invasion, and political upheaval to seek refuge and work in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. After the Taliban seized control of Kabul in August 2021, that outflow accelerated, swelling the population of Afghan migrants in the two neighboring states to more than 8 million combined. But in recent years, both countries have launched sweeping crackdowns targeting undocumented Afghan migrants, and those operations have expanded far beyond unregistered people to include even Afghans with official refugee documentation, the United Nations and human rights organizations confirm. Pakistan has publicly acknowledged that even holders of longstanding Proof of Registration cards are not exempt from deportation, and there is no sign the expulsions will slow.

By the end of August this year, more than 1 million Afghans had already been forcibly repatriated from Pakistan and Iran, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “In a little under three years, we’ve seen six million people return to Afghanistan—That is the size of an entire small country,” said Charlie Goodlake, UNHCR’s Afghanistan spokesperson, speaking from the baking heat of the border transit camp. “We have never documented a return movement of this scale in recent modern history,” he emphasized.

Many returnees have not set foot on Afghan soil for generations. 60-something Sarwar, who crossed the border just days earlier in a convoy of 40 family members packed into a rickety Pakistani lorry along with all their worldly possessions, left Afghanistan during the 1979 Soviet invasion, and all seven of his brothers were born and raised in Pakistan. “We built a life there over 45 years. It’s heartbreaking to be forced out of the home you knew,” he said. Still, like nearly every other returnee the BBC spoke with at the crossing, he shared a small silver lining: “I’m happy to be free of constant harassment by Pakistan’s police.” Every family interviewed by the BBC reported systemic prejudice and arbitrary harassment at the hands of Pakistani authorities. Pakistan’s government has not responded to formal requests for comment from the BBC, but a foreign ministry spokesperson told a recent Islamabad briefing that the government “undertakes necessary measures to prevent any instance of harassment or maltreatment of Afghan nationals. If such incidents occur, they are sporadic and dealt with fully in accordance with the law.”

The crackdown gained new momentum after a major escalation in cross-border fighting between Pakistan and the Taliban-led Afghan government in October 2024. In February 2025, Human Rights Watch documented widespread human rights abuses including door-to-door raids, late-night warrantless home searches, and arbitrary mass arrests. In Iran, which has hosted more than 4 million undocumented Afghans in recent years, mass deportations accelerated sharply after the 12-day 2025 war between Iran, Israel, and the United States. The New York-based Centre for Human Rights in Iran has accused Iranian authorities of leveraging post-war national security tensions to target Afghan migrants, branding many as potential Israeli spies and detaining hundreds on baseless espionage charges.

Both Pakistan and Iran have defended their deportation campaigns, arguing that it is long past time for Afghans to return to their home country. They claim that a portion of Afghan migrants pose domestic security risks, and that the large migrant population places an unsustainable financial strain on national infrastructure and social services. The UN has long maintained that any repatriation of refugees must follow core humanitarian principles: it must be voluntary, safe, and dignified. For the tens of thousands of Afghans now arriving at the border every month, none of those conditions hold.

Inside the sweltering transit tent at Torkham, 40-year-old Zarina—who crossed with her family just days earlier as part of this year’s 1 million returnees—sits huddled with a group of other anxious women and children. She summed up the precarious future that waits for most arrivals: “We have no money to start a business, no way to earn a living, and we don’t even have a tent to put up to call our own.” When asked if she fears for the future of her daughters, who will be barred from secondary school and university under Taliban edicts, she gestured to the cluster of young girls beside her: “Look at them. Of course I’m worried.”

For some returnees, that worry curdles into outright terror. A former Afghan government security guard, who was first deported from Iran then pushed across the border from Pakistan, spoke to the BBC from a safe house hundreds of kilometers from the border, asking to remain anonymous for his protection. “None of us leave the house anymore. My wife and children are too afraid to even go outside,” he said. He rejected the amnesty the Taliban announced immediately after seizing power in 2021, which promised no retaliation against former government officials, security personnel, and civil servants. “I do not trust their amnesty. So many of my former colleagues have been killed,” he said. He had registered his case with the UN for resettlement to a third safe country, but was deported before his application could be processed.

Widespread systemic financial collapse amplifies every other crisis. Deep global cuts to foreign aid have hit Afghanistan particularly hard, as the Taliban government remains locked out of the global financial system by sweeping US and European sanctions tied to terrorism and human rights abuses. While Pakistan recently announced a temporary 16,000-person exemption from deportation for vulnerable Afghans on humanitarian grounds—a move the UN has welcomed—UN and independent sources estimate that as many as 250,000 Afghans currently living in Pakistan remain at severe risk of harm if deported, including thousands of women and girls who face systematic exclusion from education and public life under Taliban rule.

In Kabul, at the walled, tree-lined foreign ministry compound, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi struck a defiant, optimistic tone when asked about the crisis. “There is no doubt we need international support,” he admitted. “The mass return does create pressure right now, but in the long run, this will benefit both the returnees and Afghanistan.” This marks a shift from the early days of Taliban rule, when some officials downplayed the unfolding humanitarian crisis and claimed divine provision would meet the population’s needs. Today, the UN estimates that 21.9 million Afghans—nearly half the country’s entire population—require life-saving humanitarian assistance this year just to survive. UNICEF warned last week that 1 million Afghan children face life-threatening severe acute malnutrition.

“No country in the world could handle a crisis of this scale on its own,” Goodlake said, while acknowledging that the Taliban government has taken limited steps to accommodate arriving returnees. But he added a key caveat: “We also know that many of the restrictions and edicts the Taliban has put in place, particularly those limiting the rights of women and girls, make it far harder for us to mobilize the international support this crisis demands.”

Muttaqi has repeatedly defended the Taliban’s restrictive gender policies as internal Afghan affairs that do not require international interference. Those policies have left the Taliban diplomatically isolated: five years after seizing power, only Russia has formally recognized the Taliban government. Muttaqi pushed back on that isolation, pointing to deepening economic and diplomatic ties with neighboring powers including China, India, and Central Asian states. When asked about the lack of formal relations with Western nations, he answered with a blunt question of his own: “What have those who refused to engage with us over the past five years achieved?” He answered immediately: “Nothing.”

That same word “nothing” echoes across the Torkham crossing, but in a far grimmer context. Every family arriving at Zero Point carries with them only the few possessions they could pack onto a lorry, and they leave behind the lives they built over decades. For millions, the long-awaited “homecoming” is actually the start of rebuilding everything from scratch—with almost nothing.

The arrest of prominent dual American-Jordanian investigative journalist Ali Younes, orchestrated at the direction of Jordanian General Intelligence Department director Major General Ahmad Husni, has ignited international controversy over press freedom and strained Jordan’s long-standing financial and diplomatic ties with Washington, reporting from Middle East Eye confirms.

Younes, a veteran correspondent who has contributed to major global outlets including Drop Site News, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, CNN, Fox News and the BBC, was taken into custody by Jordanian intelligence officers on August 17 immediately upon his arrival at Queen Alia International Airport in Amman. Following hours of interrogation, authorities ordered him to appear before local prosecutors and imposed an exit bar that prevents him from leaving the country.

Local Jordanian outlet Ammon News, which multiple sources confirm maintains close ties to Jordanian intelligence services, was the first to publicly disclose details of the state’s actions against Younes last week. The outlet framed the arrest as a response to alleged offenses including “attacks on the Jordanian Armed Forces” and the distribution of what it called “misleading information originating from a Jewish source” — referring to Middle East analyst Aaron Magid, author of the article Younes is accused of reposting.

The core charges against the journalist center on a seemingly minor act: his reposting of Magid’s 2023 commentary published in *The American Conservative*, which questioned the justification for decades of large-scale U.S. economic and military aid to Jordan. Over the past 75 years, Jordan has received a total of $33.8 billion in U.S. assistance, with additional billions in scheduled funding locked in through ongoing bilateral agreements with Washington.

Younes’ U.S.-based legal team, led by attorney Abed Ayoub, has forcefully refuted all charges brought against their client. Ayoub emphasized that Younes never launched any attacks against the Jordanian Armed Forces, and has a long record of complying with local laws in every country where he has worked, including Jordan.

In a public statement, Ayoub called the charges “troubling as it is outrageous,” noting that the arrest of a journalist over a social media post shared outside Jordan’s borders raises urgent, serious questions about the state of press freedom in the kingdom. He added that the detention is inconsistent with the close, mutually respectful relationship between King Abdullah II — who is widely respected across U.S. political circles — and the United States.

The case has already stoked significant fears for Younes’ safety, particularly given Jordan’s recent history of violent targeting of journalists. In 2016, Jordanian journalist Nahed Hattar was assassinated by a gunman outside a courthouse shortly after he was detained for reposting a political cartoon that drew conservative backlash. Younes has also faced widespread online death threats and intimidation as part of a coordinated state-aligned media campaign against him.

Multiple U.S. figures have called for immediate action from the Trump administration and Congress to secure Younes’ release, warning that the case puts Jordan on a direct collision course with Washington. Magid, the analyst whose article is at the center of the case, described the detention as deeply disturbing, noting that Younes is a U.S. resident who merely shared an article from an American mainstream media outlet on the social platform X.

“It is imperative that the State Department ensure his safe return to the United States and press Jordan to rescind the exit ban against him,” Magid said, adding that the crackdown directly contradicts public promises King Abdullah has made to protect press freedom. He also criticized the lack of public response from U.S. officials, noting that if Younes is ultimately convicted for simply sharing an article, Washington should reevaluate its multibillion-dollar aid commitment to the Hashemite Kingdom.

Jason Jones, a prominent conservative Republican figure closely aligned with former President Trump and founder of the Vulnerable People Project, went further in his comments to Middle East Eye. Jones argued that the U.S. should issue an explicit ultimatum to Jordan: release Younes and drop all charges immediately, or forfeit U.S. funding.

“Jordan is risking its international standing and billions of dollars in U.S. funding in a grave international incident: the arrest and draconian prosecution of an American citizen,” Jones said. He also pointed to ongoing corruption allegations against Major General Husni, noting that it is surprising Jordan’s government has allowed the intelligence chief to pursue a case that threatens the kingdom’s core financial and diplomatic relationship with the U.S.

When Middle East Eye reached out to the U.S. Embassy in Amman for comment on the case, a spokesperson confirmed the embassy is aware of the detention but declined to share any further information. As of this report, the U.S. State Department has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

KATHMANDU, Nepal — Catastrophic flash flooding and subsequent mudslides along the Nepal-China border have left a devastating trail of destruction, with the confirmed death toll surpassing 950 and thousands more still unaccounted for. As of Monday, Nepalese rescue teams have launched an urgent race against the clock to reach hundreds of construction workers who remain trapped in flooded and mud-buried tunnels at a Himalayan hydropower project.

Disaster response experts emphasize that the first 72 hours after a disaster event are the most critical for saving lives, as survival prospects plummet rapidly without access to basic necessities like clean drinking water. Jennifer Horney, a disaster epidemiologist at the University of Delaware, explained that the outcome for trapped workers will largely depend on whether the hydropower site had pre-established emergency protocols for natural disasters or infrastructure outages.

“If emergency plans were in place, workers would likely have been trained to locate emergency exits, but the extreme force of this flood has packed solid mud across the site, which could block even marked escape routes and make executing pre-planned rescue strategies incredibly difficult,” Horney noted.

A core unanswered question remains: did the tunnels stock emergency supply caches that the trapped workers can access right now. Without clean, safe drinking water, even people with limited physical activity cannot survive longer than roughly three days, Horney added.

Alongside clean water, access to breathable oxygen is another foundational factor for survival. Six days after the flood hit, concerns about suffocation are growing by the hour, though early reports suggest some workers have secured limited oxygen supplies. Jakob Steiner, a Dhaka-based geoscientist from the University of Graz in Austria, pointed out that the tunnels themselves are large enough to accommodate large construction vehicles, which leaves open some air pocket space for trapped people.

“From what we have learned, rescuers have managed to route small amounts of oxygen to some groups of trapped workers, and active extraction efforts are ongoing,” Steiner said. “But this is still a race against time. Beyond oxygen, the trapped workers urgently need food and potable water to hold on.”

Disaster preparedness experts add that there are multiple other factors that will shape survival outcomes beyond access to basic supplies. Thomas Chandler, director of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, noted that the presence of serious injuries among trapped workers and the ability to deliver emergency supplies through temporary access routes are also critical variables. Chandler pointed to a 2023 Himalayan tunnel collapse triggered by a landslide, where 41 Indian workers were successfully rescued after 17 days trapped underground—an outcome made possible by pumping in consistent supplies of food, water and oxygen through narrow pipes during the rescue effort.

The internal climate of the tunnels also impacts how long workers can survive. If the tunnels are hot and humid, dehydration will set in far more quickly, even for people who are conserving energy. For those who are eventually pulled out alive, disaster experts note that comprehensive physical and mental supportive care will be essential, as the stress of prolonged isolation and harsh conditions takes a major toll on survivors.

This report was produced in collaboration with Associated Press journalists Shristi Kafle in Kathmandu and Huizhong Wu in Bangkok. The AP Health and Science Department receives funding support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and retains full editorial independence over all content.

An Israeli veterans’ organization composed of current and former military service members has leveled serious allegations against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), claiming the military routinely carries out lethal strikes on Palestinians in Gaza before retroactively assembling evidence to frame those killed as Hamas affiliates — a practice the group calls “retrospective incrimination.”

Breaking the Silence, a nonprofit founded in 2004 that offers a confidential space for Israeli soldiers to share their on-the-ground experiences in the occupied Palestinian territories, laid out the claims in comments from its executive director Nadav Weiman during an interview with France 24.

Weiman outlined a clear pattern he says emerges from dozens of soldier testimonies collected by his organization: the IDF conducts strikes first, kills targets, and only then launches an effort to dig up links to Hamas or other armed groups to justify the deadly operation. Soldiers executing strikes on the ground, he emphasized, do not possess the affiliation evidence that is later used to defend the attacks to the international community.

“First, we shoot, we kill, and then we think, and then we try to find a reason why it happened,” Weiman stated in the interview. He pointed to multiple high-casualty incidents as examples, including the IDF’s large-scale operations surrounding Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, the killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics in Rafah, and multiple air strikes that have left large numbers of civilian non-combatants dead.

Weiman explained that after strikes are completed, Israeli intelligence pulls the identities of all people killed, then analysts comb through records to find any potential connection — no matter how tangential — to armed groups. Common justifications used after the fact, he noted, include the killed person being located near a building the IDF associates with Hamas, having a family member with alleged links to the group, or having previously been listed on a movement payroll. From there, the IDF constructs a narrative to frame the strike as a targeted operation against legitimate military targets.

To illustrate the disconnect between on-ground action and post-strike justification, Weiman drew a comparison to operations around Nasser Hospital: “I don’t think that the tank that fired the tank shells at the hospital had a booklet with 25,000 Hamas members, and they looked photo after photo and said, ‘Ah, there are Hamas members over there’. This is something that we do after we shoot.”

The group says this practice is not a series of isolated mistakes by individual soldiers, but rather the product of intentionally permissive rules of engagement that have opened the door to widespread human rights violations throughout the ongoing Gaza war. The core motivation for the retrospective labeling, Weiman argued, is the Israeli government and military’s desire to secure international legitimacy for their military campaign in Gaza.

“Suddenly the IDF spokesperson in the state of Israel needs to explain to the international community what we did over there, who are the targets for the attack,” Weiman said. “And that’s why I said legitimisation before, because the IDF in the state of Israel wants international legitimisation to do what we are doing in Gaza.”

Soldier testimonies collected by Breaking the Silence show the pattern of post-killing classification as terrorists extends even to unarmed Palestinians and children under the age of 18, the organization confirmed. The group also highlighted another consequence of the current permissive rules of engagement: the IDF has classified any person carrying a camera in Gaza as a potential threat to Israeli forces, treating camera operators as legitimate military targets.

That policy, Breaking the Silence says, directly explains the extraordinarily high death toll among journalists reporting on the war in Gaza. Just as with other civilian deaths, the group claims the IDF has retroactively justified the killing of journalists by linking them to armed groups after the fact to defend its actions to global audiences.

Original reporting for this story was published by Middle East Eye, a media outlet that provides independent coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and surrounding global regions.

In the wake of catastrophic flash floods that swept across the Nepal-Tibet border, an urgent, multinational rescue operation is underway to reach more than 600 hydropower project workers trapped in a network of mud-choked tunnels along Nepal’s Trishuli River, as anxious families hold out fading hope that their loved ones will be pulled alive from the debris.

As of Monday, Nepalese Army teams leading the search have turned to controlled explosives to blast through rock and debris on the collapsed hillside to clear access routes to the tunnel network, after which rescue crews pump compressed air into the trapped space to sustain any possible survivors. Disaster management officials have confirmed the overall death toll from the flood disaster has climbed to 939 in Nepal, with the official count of missing people revised upward to 3,925 – 592 of whom are foreign nationals. Roughly 14% of all missing people are workers employed at the damaged hydropower projects along the river, where 279 people have already been pulled to safety, according to Nepalese Prime Minister Balendra Shah.

The massive search and recovery effort is being jointly spearheaded by Chinese and Nepalese military teams, with specialized technical experts from India, South Korea and Australia also contributing expertise to the complex underground operation. The Trishuli River basin, located in Nepal’s mountainous northern region, is home to a suite of major hydropower projects that the country, which relies heavily on hydroelectric power for its energy supply, has spent decades developing. Officials confirmed at least 11 operational and under-construction hydropower projects suffered severe damage when the floodwaters hit.

For families waiting at the operation’s perimeter, every passing minute feels like an eternity, and many have criticized the pace of the rescue for being unacceptably slow. “I still have a 50% hope that he is alive because there is an oxygen system inside,” Sita Pandey, whose husband was working in the plant when the floods hit, told Nepalese daily newspaper Kantipur. Anushila Bhandari, wife of 33-year-old missing engineer Aurus Bhandari, shared her desperate plea with BBC Nepali: “I wish we could find him. I wish he would come home.” Jiban Khadka, who has a relative trapped in the tunnel network, echoed the widespread frustration: “The longer it takes, the more our hope dies. This operation must move much faster because every second is meaningful to us. It’s a frustratingly slow operation.”

Rescue teams made limited progress on Monday, when one search team managed to advance into a tunnel leading to one of the hydropower plants, only to withdraw after finding no signs of trapped workers. Air pumping operations into accessible tunnel segments began over the weekend, but family members argue that life-saving efforts should have been launched far earlier.

Australian tunneling expert Arnold Dix, who is advising Nepalese authorities on the search remotely, explained the extraordinary challenges rescuers face in navigating the transformed landscape. “The actual signature of them has gone – everything is just missing. It looks like a lunar landscape,” Dix told BBC Radio 4’s *World at One*. The former head of the International Tunneling Association added that massive boulders, some larger than residential homes, have blocked all original access points, forcing crews to rely on controlled blasts to clear paths: “I’ve never seen that before in my life. It’s just an extraordinary operation.” Even amid the logistical hurdles, Dix remains cautiously optimistic that some survivors may be found, noting that the enclosed tunnel environment could have provided protection from the fast-moving floodwaters.

Downstream in Nepal’s Chitwan District, the tragedy has moved to the grim phase of recovering and identifying victims. Floodwaters carried nearly 300 bodies to the district’s riverbanks, overwhelming local authorities who have been forced to arrange makeshift burials for unidentified remains, as there are not enough refrigeration units to store all the corpses. Local chief district officer Ganesh Aryaal told BBC Nepali: “We don’t have enough freezers here… We had to choose this last alternative of temporary burial system. We are really overwhelmed.” Medical teams and volunteers have begun extracting DNA samples from the remains to enable future identification, so relatives can claim their loved ones once testing is complete.

Across the border in Tibet, Chinese state media reports a death toll of 16, with another 546 people listed as missing. Footage and first-hand accounts of the disaster have been heavily censored on Chinese digital platforms, and authorities have issued administrative penalties – ranging from fines and warnings to short-term detentions – for social media users who speculate that the actual casualty count is far higher than the official figure. Nepalese authorities have also taken steps to curb what they classify as misinformation, ordering the removal of social media content that spreads unconfirmed claims about the flood disaster.

To date, Prime Minister Shah confirmed that a total of 11,379 people have been rescued from flood-affected areas across Nepal, and that rescue operations have been intensified to accelerate progress for the trapped hydropower workers.

In the wake of devastating flash floods that swept through parts of Nepal, leaving a trail of destruction and loss in their path, grieving relatives of those still unaccounted for refuse to abandon the belief that their family members may still be alive. Weeks after floodwaters rushed through communities, destroying homes, sweeping away infrastructure and claiming dozens of confirmed lives, the search operation for missing persons continues, slowed by challenging terrain and lingering hazards in flood-stricken regions. For many families, waiting for official updates has turned into an agonizing limbo, yet even amid widespread despair, many cling to small sparks of optimism. “I haven’t lost my hope,” one relative shared, a sentiment echoed by dozens of other families who continue to comb affected areas, ask local residents for any sightings, and wait by emergency response centers for any news that could bring their loved ones home. Aid organizations and local rescue teams have persisted in search efforts, expanding operations to hard-to-reach river valleys and remote settlements that were cut off immediately after the disaster. While rising death tolls have cast a shadow over the entire region, the unwavering hope of these families has become a quiet testament to the endurance of human connection in the face of natural catastrophe.

On Sunday, Israeli media circulated a video originally posted to far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s X account that documents his incendiary visit to Damon Prison, the facility where dozens of Palestinian female prisoners are currently detained. The footage captures Ben Gvir entering the prisoners’ cells unannounced, publicly boasting about the severe, substandard conditions of their confinement even as detainees confront him with complaints about their treatment. In the exchange captured on camera, one prisoner outlined the harsh realities of her detention, but Ben Gvir dismissed her grievances outright, affirming that the era of tolerable conditions in Israeli prisons for Palestinian detainees had ended. “I am directly responsible for everything, and I am pleased with these conditions,” he told the women. In his accompanying social media post, Ben Gvir added that prisoner “whining” about poor conditions would not change his approach, confirming he would continue to enforce a policy that provides only the “bare minimum of the minimum” for detainees. The release of the video has triggered immediate widespread condemnation from Palestinian rights groups, international activists, and political factions, who frame the incident as open, documented proof of a deliberate state policy of abusing Palestinian prisoners. This is not the first time Ben Gvir has drawn heavy criticism for his treatment of detainees: the minister previously shared other prison videos in which he mocked Palestinian prisoners’ complaints about inadequate access to food, clean water, and humane living conditions. As the footage spread across social media, both international solidarity activists and Israeli anti-war activists gathered for a vigil outside the walls of Damon Prison to stand with the female detainees and protest Ben Gvir’s harsh policies. Sharif Tahaineh, husband of 49-year-old detainee Hanaa Tahaineh from Jenin’s Silat al-Harithiya town, confirmed that both his wife and fellow prisoner Yasmin Shaaban appear in the video, with Shaaban speaking on camera about the harsh conditions. Tahaineh, who was released from Israeli detention in early June after serving 22 months, told Middle East Eye he was shocked to see Hanaa’s drastically altered appearance, marked by severe weight loss, when the video was published. He explained that Hanaa was arrested just one week before his own release, and is currently being held under Israeli administrative detention — a controversial, renewable practice that allows indefinite detention without charge or trial. A mother of six children ranging from 10 to 24 years old, Hanaa lives with chronic rheumatism and migraines, and recently contracted scabies while in detention. With no access to medical treatment for the parasitic infection, she was forced to smear toothpaste on her skin to relieve the itching, her lawyer confirmed during a recent visit. Having experienced the harsh conditions of Israeli imprisonment firsthand, Tahaineh said he deeply understands his wife’s current suffering. He also noted that Ben Gvir explicitly targeted detainees from Jenin during the visit, telling the women “Tell Jenin that the prisons have gone from bad to worse” — a choice Tahaineh says confirms the video’s purpose was to deliberately humiliate and degrade the female prisoners. Critics of Ben Gvir argue that publishing the footage does more than document routine prison operations: it turns the extreme suffering of detainees into political propaganda for the far-right minister, at a time when global and regional concern over the treatment of thousands of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons has reached new heights. The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club (PPC), a leading advocacy group for detainees, described the cell raid as an extension of a systematic Israeli policy that targets all Palestinian detainees, male and female, turning their abuse, rights violations, and what the group calls an ongoing process of genocide into political theater to boost domestic support. The PPC added that Ben Gvir’s actions go far beyond simple incitement, representing a deliberate provocation that abuses and dehumanizes detainees while turning prisons into a stage for far-right political posturing. “The Israeli prison system has become one of the most prominent sites of genocide, which has led to the deaths of more than 100 prisoners, 91 of whom have been identified, while Israel continues to withhold the bodies of some and conceal the fate of others,” the group said in a statement. Hamas, the governing Palestinian faction in Gaza, labeled Ben Gvir’s actions a clear example of “the level of fascism and political and moral depravity” that defines the Israeli occupation. In a Sunday statement, the group said the incident exposes the “vengeful, terrorist mentality that governs the behaviour of the Israeli occupation and its leaders, which cannot be tolerated.” Hamas warned that turning prisons into open spaces for abuse, humiliation, threats, torture, and murder, and exploiting detainee suffering for cheap domestic political gain, carries severe risks. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement held the entire Israeli government fully accountable for the safety and wellbeing of all Palestinian detainees, male and female, and called on international and humanitarian institutions to take urgent action to expose Israeli abuses and bring an end to ongoing violations. The Palestinian Center for the Defense of Prisoners called the raid a blatant act of organized state abuse against female detainees, arguing that Ben Gvir’s public video sends a message to prison staff that repressive and degrading treatment of detainees is encouraged. “What is happening inside the prisons is not an isolated incident, but rather a broader policy for which the occupation government and the prison system bear responsibility,” the group added.