According to the Israel daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth the Iaraeli state had begun digging a moat for crocodiles around high-security wing at Ketziot prison in the Negev desert which incarcerates Hamas members. The Israeli National Security Ministry confirmed the start of work on these channels designated for crocodiles, according to the newspaper. This project is however running into semantic problems on the status of the crocodiles but these are being bulldozed by the Environment Minister Silman reclassifying them as ‘domesticated or tended wild animals’ despite objections within the Ministry and thus removing their protected species status. The Israeli Prison Service prepared a plan to care for, supervise and house the crocodiles, while prison officers received training on how to handle them and the project has been allocated 21 million shekels ($6.3 million), according to the newspaper. Previously published videos from the special wing at Ketziot already show harsh detention conditions, including preventing detainees from leaving the wing, depriving them of blankets and food, and forcing them to sleep on iron sheets Allegations of torture have been documented.
Harsh conditions Israel has arrested hundreds of Palestinians since Oct. 8, 2023, claiming they belong to the Nukhba unit of Hamas’s military wing, and plans to try them before special courts. Ben-Gvir previously published videos from the special wing at Ketziot to show harsh detention conditions, including preventing detainees from leaving the wing, depriving them of blankets and food, and forcing them to sleep on iron sheets. Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority held an emergency meeting Tuesday to discuss the use of crocodiles in prisons, and all participants opposed the proposal, Yedioth Ahronoth said. Silman’s classification of the Nile crocodile contradicted the opinion of her ministry’s legal adviser and the professional position of the Nature and Parks Authority, the newspaper said. Ketziot, located in the Negev desert, is Israel’s largest prison and includes sections for Palestinian “security” detainees. It has long been used to hold detainees from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. the number of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons has risen 83% since the start of system that is already being dug out around Ketziot Prison in northern Israel.
In February members of the Boko Haram organisation operating under the banner of Islamic Fundamentalism and specializing in kidnapping abducted about 176 people from Woro, a Kwara community on the fringe of Kainji Lake National Park, Nigeria. A month before the attack, the group abducted an unspecified number of people from Kasuwan Daji, a village in neighbouring Niger State. In subsequent attacks on other villages — Konkoso, Kabe, Sukumba and Pissa — in Niger, the group kidnapped scores of people and killed many.
Recently 163 residents of Woro and 145 others abducted from communities in neighbouring Niger State have been recently rescued according to a government spokesman He did not specify the communities in Niger from which the 145 victims were rescued. .The spokesman added that Federal Nigwerian President Tinubu also directed security agencies to intensify efforts to prevent future abductions by strengthening early warning systems, improving community-level intelligence gathering and enhancing rapid response capabilities. After a spate of kidnappings by a de range of groups. TheTinubu administration’s has committed to confronting insecurity across the country, he said and assured Nigerians that efforts to dismantle criminal and terrorist networks would continue. This in the face of continued Boko Haram attacks on civilians.
As if the green light given by the Israeli state to the violence of its settler/pioneers were not enough, its Chief Rabbi, David Yoosef, steps in to declare Palestinians have no rights. In the occupied territories three Palestinian families remain trapped as Israeli settlers, protected by occupation forces, continue their siege of homes in the town of Qusra, south of Nablus, for the tenth consecutive day, all with the aim of creating “facts on the ground” Subsequently Palestinian workers were pepper-sprayed in the town by masked Israeli settlers.Settler attacks targeted electricity, water infrastructure, farmland and Palestinian property across several areas of the occupied West Bank.
The terror that must have been felt by those who died in the overwhelming rush of mud and water on the Nepal-Tobert border and those who have survived but lost everything that made their lives is unimageable.