About 250 people were reported missing after a boat carrying Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi nationals capsized in the Andaman Sea, according to the UN’s refugee and migration agencies. The agencies said the trawler carrying more than 250 men, women and children reportedly sank due to harsh weather and overcrowding. It had departed from Teknaf in southern Bangladesh and was headed for Malaysia. With its passengers escaping massively overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh. The Rohingya people of Rakhine province Myanmar have suffered repression and land grab from successive Myanmar governments. In 2017 its armed forces launched an offensive that forced at least 730,000 Rohingya from their homes
Israel’s parliament has approved a law that would make the death penalty the default sentence for Palestinians convicted of deadly terror attacks where the attacks were aimed at denying “the existence of Israel”. `This means it applies to Palestinians only when Israel has the military power in military courts to define what is terrorist. There are many Palestinians in Israeli Prisons to whom this could apply. It is ominous that 66 year old Marwan Barghouti –“Palestine’s Nelson Mandela” has been violently attacked in prison three times in recent weeks. A core principle of the Israeli state is to never negotiate. In recent years it has meant assassinating negotiators.
Jose Guadalupe Ramos-Solano, a Mexican citizen is the 14th migrant to have died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody this year at a detention centre in Adelanto, southern California – the fourth fatality at that particular “facility” facility in the same short period. His death has prompted the Mexican government to make a class-action lawsuit alleging unconstitutional conditions at the centre. The number of immigrants in ICE custody is among the highest ever, with 68,000 held as of last month.
More than 200 people are believed to have been killed when Nigerian military jets struck Yobe village’s marketplace on the 11th of April The village in the north east of the country. It borders Borno state that has seen deaths at the hands of the Boko Haram, an Islamist group with a terror strategy The jets were attacking this group but, as so often the “collateral damage” borne by civilians is immense and for which responsibility is not accepted. This is true of those with governmental control of huge arsenals.
Russian missiles destroyed homes, burned buildings, and killed civilians in Ukraine’s major cities in a mass overnight strike on April 16, with residential neighbourhoods in Kyiv, Dnipro, and Odesa bearing the brunt of the attack.
The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health announced that the total death toll from Israeli attacks on the country the ssince March 2 has risen to 2,020, with 6,436 injured . Among the dead are 165 children, 248 women, and 85 medics . Lebanese Health Ministry additionally accused Israel of adopting “a systematic method that makes health workers a military target.” The accusation comes as Israeli strikes on Kfar Sir targeted the headquarters of Hezbollah-affiliated rescue teams, killing four people including a rescue worker from the Islamic Health Committee . An attack on Zifta killed three people, including a member of the Lebanese Civil Defence, while a strike on Toul wounded a rescue worker .