الكاتب: kafej

In Nir Oz, a kibbutz on the Gaza border, they are still sifting through the ashes to find body parts of people killed in the Hamas attack on 7 October.

We watched Israeli soldiers in their green military fatigues sitting opposite each other on plastic chairs, eyes down, expressionless faces and hands methodically searching for evidence.

They are looking for teeth, bits of bone or flesh.

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Buckets of debris, lined up beside the tables, are poured onto wooden framed sieves.

Larger, irrelevant items are immediately discarded to one side and then the soldiers shake the sieves like speculators searching for gold. Except they are looking for proof of death.

Anything they find that might be proof of a life lost goes into small white bags beside them and then sent off for DNA tests.

It’s slow work, grim work, but important work.

I asked one soldier how much they’d found. “A lot” was the short reply.

We watched the team working outside the wreck of a burned house in which every inhabitant had been killed in the attacks.

Another soldier beckoned me to a broken window and then told me to stand on an upturned bucket. I looked inside and saw a children’s bedroom, a bunk bed and a small cot still made up with pillows and duvets, but painted with blood on the mattresses, frames and walls.

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A new epicentre in this brutal war

About 100m away is the metal border fence and gate that the Hamas fighters broke through that October morning.

Less than a mile away is Gaza, the city of Khan Yunis clearly visible and the clouds of smoke rising from airstrikes on the new epicentre of this brutal war of revenge.

Above, I watch a helicopter gunship circle. Every so often a flash comes from it, followed a few seconds later by the screech of a missile launch and then the crack of it hitting a target inside Gaza.

Drones and fighter jets fly overhead constantly, and the boom of outgoing artillery makes you shudder, no matter how many times I’ve heard and felt it in recent weeks.

Thursday is the two-month anniversary of the terror attacks. Two months since the peace of the kibbutzim was shattered and the future of Gaza was thrown into a living hell.

On both sides of a metal fence that was supposed to keep the two sides apart, they are still living their nightmares. And no one knows when it will end or what happens when it does.

France has ordered a third round of bird flu vaccines for at-risk ducks.

Citing “new scientific evidence”, France’s farm ministry said on Wednesday that the shots are to avoid a surge in outbreaks.

On Tuesday, Paris raised the risk level of bird flu to high after new cases were detected, forcing poultry farms to keep their livestock indoors.

“New scientific evidence has led us to adjust the vaccination protocol to guarantee the best possible protection of animals and avoid any epizootic outbreak,” the ministry said in a statement.

“For this, a three-dose protocol will be applied … until March 15, 2024 in areas identified at risk and targeting mulard ducks.”

Mulard ducks, a hybrid between two different domestic ducks, are used for meat and controversially for foie gras.

Paris began rolling out its duck vaccination programme early in October, with a total of 60 million ducks over a year initially set to receive two doses.

Germany’s Boehringer Ingelheim, selected by France to produce the vaccine, said the decision on a third shot was taken after post-shot monitoring showed a high potential for transmission of bird flu circulating and a reduction in the immunity of ducks at 11 weeks of life.

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Doriane Vadot, head of communications for Boehringer France, said: “Given the unprecedented nature of the current campaign, it is normal for the vaccination strategy to be refined as field monitoring and additional research work are carried out.”

Four outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, have been detected since 27 November.

These included three in Brittany in western France and one in the Somme in northern France, the farm ministry said.

These were all on turkey farms. There has been no outbreak reported among ducks so far.

By 19 November, 6.9 million ducks had received a first shot of bird flu vaccine and 3.6 million had received two.

While bird flu is harmless in food, its spread is a concern over the devastation it can cause to flocks and a risk of human transmission.

It comes as NatureScot, part of the Scottish Government, said guillemots, kittiwakes and terns in Scotland suffered “huge losses” at their breeding colonies this summer due to avian flu.

The nature agency said it had received 9,610 reports of dead and sick wild birds across the nation between 3 April and 1 October this year.