التصنيف: estaql

Iceland is on high alert for a volcanic eruption, with a state of emergency declared and almost 4,000 residents evacuated from their homes.

There is a “considerable” risk of an eruption on or just off the Reykjanes Peninsula, about 30 miles from the capital Reykjavik, according to the Icelandic Meteorological Office.

The region has been shaken by hundreds of small earthquakes every day for more than two weeks.

Scientists have been monitoring a build-up of magma some three miles underground.

Here is what we know about when an eruption might happen.

When could the volcano erupt?

The probability of the volcano erupting at Fagradalsfjall in the coming days is “high”, according to the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO).

“We believe that this intrusion is literally hovering, sitting in equilibrium now just below the earth’s surface,” Matthew James Roberts from the agency said.

But there is still “tremendous uncertainty”, he added. “Will there be an eruption and if so, what sort of damage will occur?”

“At this stage, it is not possible to determine exactly whether and where magma might reach the surface,” the IMO said.

Earthquake activity at Fagradalsfjall decreased over the weekend, which “indicates that a new phase of magma intrusion is occurring”, said Dr Margaret Hartley, lecturer in Earth Sciences at Manchester University.

Previous earthquakes in the areas were “all preceded by decreases in seismic activity, so this isn’t necessarily an indication that the volcanic unrest is dying down”.

On Tuesday, the Icelandic authorities judged the risk has temporarily eased enough to allow Grindavik’s inhabitants to briefly return home – escorted by search and rescue teams – to collect pets and belongings.

Authorities have raised their aviation alert to orange, indicating an increased risk of a volcanic eruption.

Volcanic eruptions pose a serious hazard to aviation because they can spew highly abrasive ash high into the atmosphere, where it can cause jet engines to fail, damage flight control systems and reduce visibility.

Read more:
What is happening under the surface in Iceland?
How big could the Iceland eruption be?

How much damage will it cause?

How much disruption the eruption causes will depend on where the magma breaks the surface, and the size and style of the eruption, Dr Hartley said.

Dr Phil Collins from Brunel University London said an eruption would cause problems for the Icelandic people, but noted they are “very well prepared and have lots of experience in dealing with eruptions”.

“If the eruption does occur, there may be significant lava flows which could destroy peoples’ homes and other infrastructure, as well as block valleys and change surface drainage,” he said.

Any eruption is not expected to cause the kind of ash cloud created by the Eyjafjallajokull eruption back in 2010, which caused chaos to global air travel.

Dr Dave McGarvie, a volcanologist with the University of Lancaster said: “The volcanoes on the Reykjanes Peninsula do not have the ability to produce the disruptive ash clouds that characterised the Eyjafjallajokull 2010 eruption.”

Lessons were learnt from that event, he said, and even an identical eruption would not be so disruptive now.

For over three weeks, Aladdin, Olfat and their 20-year-old daughter were surrounded by an endless barrage of bombs in Gaza.

After being trapped there, they managed to escape and have now returned to Liverpool and have shared their experience of war with Sky News.

The trio, with other family members, were at their home in Gaza City when Israel’s retaliation began following Hamas’s 7 October attack.

They knew after the attack something was coming, they just didn’t know when.

Olfat Alsaqqa, who hadn’t returned to Gaza since she fled the war in 2014, says she’d never seen anything like this before: “At the beginning we felt very scared.

“We didn’t know what the reaction would be like from the Israeli side. At first they were quiet and then suddenly they started bombing everything.

“Towers were falling down very close to us and we didn’t know what we should do, whether our place is safe or not and where we should go.”

The family listened to the orders of the Israeli Defence Forces and fled south, taking Aladdin’s 97-year-old mother with them, and on route they witnessed endless destruction.

But in Khan Younis, where they stayed with other relatives, 27 in total, the rockets continued.

Follow updates: Houthi leader vows to continue attacks

Aladdin Saga, told Sky News: “There was no safe place in all of Gaza Strip. From the north to the south they are using the air, the sea, the land at the same time, bombing everywhere. You’re just sitting and waiting for your destiny.”

His wife added: “Everyday we were feeling that we were going to die and that we are the target. When the rockets stop, we just touch our bodies to check if we’re still alive. But then we don’t know when it is our turn, so it was miserable.”

Back in Liverpool, three of Aladdin and Olfat’s children were left worried, often without any communication with their parents – it’s all Olfat could think about.

“I was feeling very bad. I felt, that I’m not going to stay alive,” she said. “I was just telling my daughters and my son in the UK to take care of yourself, take care of each other.

“If we don’t come back, just try to stay together, don’t separate. And every time I say to Allah, ‘please protect my kids whilst they are by themselves’.”

Read more:
Gaza surgeon tells of child amputation
‘Babies among 12 dead’ at hospital

Whilst in Khan Younis the couple say leaving the house wasn’t an option, supplies were running out and every day they were hearing of a relative or a friend that had been killed.

Aladdin recalls one time he had to visit a hospital with a friend, whose daughter was badly injured. “We went there and what I saw, I couldn’t believe it was true, I thought I was dreaming. I saw bodies on the ground of the hospital.

“There were not enough beds to put the injured people on. People were bleeding, you’re walking on blood in the al Shifa hospital emergency department.

“There were not enough medics, doctors to accept the hundreds and thousands of wounded people. I’m walking through and I’m seeing people just die, and I can’t do anything for them.”

He says it’s a sight he’ll never forget. But this British-Palestinian couple do blame Hamas for what’s happening in their homeland.

Olfat said: “I don’t like Hamas. No one in Gaza likes Hamas. Everyone wants to get rid of Hamas. I blame them for everything.

“I also blame Israel for what they have done to us. I don’t want Israel on my land but I don’t want to get rid of my people because of that.

“We can do something else. This is not the right way to get rid of Israel and this is not the right way to get rid of Hamas.”

After six dangerous and risky attempts of trying to leave Gaza via the Rafah crossing with Egypt, Aladdin and his family’s names were on the list allowing them to leave.

They thank the British Foreign Office for helping them get to safety and return to the UK.

But while here the conflict in the Middle East continues – Aladdin says: “We feel guilty that we are alive and many people are still there.

“All the time, our minds are still in Gaza. If anything happened to my sister and mother who are still there I will never forgive myself.”

On the morning of Sunday, November 12, I received a plea, an SOS, from my dear friend Shireen, a Christian Palestinian in Bethlehem. “Ghada, do you know any institutions in Gaza, other than the Red Cross, that can help evacuate people trapped in the north?” I had to respond: “No…”

Shireen is just one of many friends, loved ones and acquaintances who got in touch with me in recent days desperately looking for a way to find help for those stuck in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza has created three simultaneous crises.  First, there is the crisis experienced by every individual in the besieged Strip who is unable to escape. Then, there is the crisis of conscience that has seemingly taken over the international community, which is ignoring the desperate plight of civilians in Gaza.  Finally, there is the global crisis resulting from the apparent collapse of all the mechanisms supposedly designed to promote and protect human rights.

A crisis of humanity

Every day, I receive dozens of SOS messages, cries for help, from Gaza. As a Palestinian from Gaza who is currently out of the Strip, I am living a nightmare, because there is very little, if anything, that I can do to help those who are under siege and under attack there.

I know there is nothing I can do to stop Israel’s war machine. I know this because I spent most of my life, about 36 years, in the besieged and occupied Gaza – the open-air prison that has since been transformed into a slaughterhouse.

Still, I desperately try to do something, anything. Action is imperative – staying idle, doing nothing, feels like being stuck in another hell.

So despite not knowing how I could help, I messaged Shireen back: “Can you send me more details?”

“Nour al-Nakhala’s family is trapped in their home in Gaza City due to heavy bombardment,” she responded quickly. “Nour is the wife of Dr Hammam Alloh. Their residence is in front of al-Basma kindergarten, on Abu Hasira Street in Gaza. Here is their cell number. Please help.”

Shireen’s plea to rescue al-Nakhala and Alloh families triggered a flood of memories and made me think of all the other families I know in Gaza. I thought of the Luthun family, Bilbaisi family, al-Birwai family… I thought of the Awad family, which lives, or once lived, near the blood bank and the German representative’s office – at the very heart of middle-class Gaza.

I did not know the fate of any of these families. I did not know if they were alive or dead. But I feared the worst. And we still had no news from al-Nakhala and Alloh families.

Then, I received a desperate plea from the al-Bayid family – a household of six members, some with special needs, trapped in their home on al-Halabi street next to the Civil Affairs office. They were stranded without food or water.

Another cry for help came from the al-Saqa family, besieged in their home not far from al-Shifa Hospital. They were also trapped, immobile, together with their children and the elderly with little access to food or water. Tanks had ravaged their surroundings and were firing at anything that moved.

Then, on the same day, Dr Majdy Alkhouly, who lives in Qatar, also took to Facebook to try and find someone to help al-Nakhala and Alloh families. He said they needed immediate evacuation because many of them, including Dr Hammam Alloh, and his father-in-law, Mahmoud, have been critically wounded as a result of the bombardment, and are bleeding.

Simultaneously, the Abu Hashish family, a group of around 15 people who are not far away from al-Shifa Hospital, sent out a heart-wrenching cry for help. The family said some among them have been severely wounded, and their lives are hanging in the balance. But the bombs were raining from the sky, and the presence of tanks around their home rendered them completely immobile.

All these family names echoed in my mind, repeatedly, filling me with a feeling of dread that I know I will never be able to forget or get over for the rest of my life.

All of this, repeated two million times over, every single day, is the first crisis that was born out of Israel’s latest war on Gaza.

A crisis of conscience

The second crisis is one that is caused by the world’s indifference to the pleas of Gaza’s doctors and hospital workers. This is a crisis of conscience.

Israel’s military continues to target doctors, nurses, patients and medical facilities. At least 200 doctors and medics have been killed in the ongoing genocide. In stark numerical terms, the occupying force has claimed the lives of six doctors and medics on average every single day since the beginning of its latest assault on the besieged Strip.

Just a few days ago, my own brother, a doctor at the Nasser hospital, narrowly escaped death. He had stepped out of his office to check on a patient when a nearby mosque was struck. The shelling also damaged the radiology unit of the hospital. The ceiling collapsed, creating a scene of devastation.

Meanwhile, my cousin Nour, a recent graduate of medicine, continues to work at the UN school in Khan Younis camp, which has been turned into a concentration camp with tens of thousands of people crammed into classrooms, using just eight washrooms between them. Despite the dire conditions, Nour is still tirelessly working, seeing at least 500 patients a day and offering advice and prescriptions to the sick, even though obtaining medications is nearly impossible.

Whenever we can speak, she tells me how shortages have become the norm in Gaza, causing tragedies. She explains people are grappling with kidney problems, and diseases like diarrhoea, due to a lack of clean water. She tells me that they are also suffering from hunger-related illnesses and anaemia.  That communicable diseases like chickenpox are spreading rapidly. Newly married girls expecting their first babies live in fear that when the time comes to deliver the baby, no one will be able to assist them. Two children in the school she works in lost their lives in the past week due to a lack of medication. The desperation is overwhelming.

As I pen these words, most Gaza hospitals have run out of essential supplies, and become literal graveyards. The bodies of those murdered, lie both inside and outside of al-Shifa Hospital, which is now occupied by Israeli soldiers.

The world has ignored the calls from Gaza’s doctors for fuel to be delivered to keep hospitals operational. Remarkably, countless locals, who are under a communications blackout and often do not even know exactly what is happening just around the corner from where they have taken refuge, heard these calls and rushed to the hospitals offering what little petrol they have in their cars or homes.  Even though each one fears for their own life, they believed taking the risk, in the hope of helping someone even more desperate than themselves, was the right thing to do. This is the true spirit of Gaza.

A crisis of human rights protection mechanisms

Finally, Israel’s war on Gaza led to a global crisis in the systems and mechanisms designed to protect civilians. All international institutions proved impotent.  The International Criminal Court (ICC), which has supposedly been investigating the situation in Palestine for many years, is still doing nothing in the way of offering any justice and help to long-suffering Palestinians. The United Nations Security Council is powerless to even condemn Israel’s indiscriminate attacks on Gaza despite there being ample evidence for crimes against humanity and genocide being committed in the besieged Strip and on the occupied West Bank. The best of what these institutions offer are hollow words, and in most cases, they cannot even achieve that.

So this is an SOS call.  An SOS call on behalf of every family in Gaza who needs an immediate ceasefire. An SOS call on behalf of the world’s conscience and governance structures.  Unless we act today and immediately, we risk accepting a world order where impunity is rewarded, the powerful is allowed to crush the weak, and no civilian is truly safe.

As I conclude this article, Dr Majdy has posted that Dr Hammam Alloh, and his father, Mahmoud, are no longer with us. They bled to death while the children watched. I am engulfed in darkness.

And we still don’t know what has happened to their relatives, the al-Nakhala family.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip – Between her live presentations on TV, Khawla al-Khalidi takes a sip of water, or coffee if it’s available, and searches her phone for updates.

Her husband, Baher, adjusts her hijab, murmuring words of encouragement, then stands beside the camera as al-Khalidi prepares for another live update.

The 34-year-old journalist, like many of her colleagues, practically lives at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which has become a makeshift bureau because it is one of the few places where the internet works and the journalists can charge their phones, laptops and other electronics.

“I’ve always loved journalism, and I’ve been in this industry for 11 years,” al-Khalidi said. “I used to produce and present the morning show for Palestine TV, and since this war started, I’ve also been given the opportunity to work for [the Saudi-owned] Al Hadath and Al Arabiya channels as well.”

Al-Khalidi has not stopped working since October 8, a day after Israel began its offensive on the Gaza Strip after unprecedented attacks by Hamas on army bases and towns in southern Israel.

In the midst of war and its constant developments, any stability and daily routines are thrown out the window.

Al-Khalidi had barely worked a day in her usual office before all of the Gaza Strip was threatened with air raids. Her Palestine TV colleagues evacuated, and she began working from home, doing live interviews with various channels over the phone.

One night at nearly midnight during the first week of bombing, she was doing her last phone interview of the day when she noticed Baher signalling her.

The Israelis were going to target their neighbourhood, he told her, and they needed to leave right away.

“We got a message saying we had to evacuate in 20 minutes,” she said. “I ended my phono by telling them that, and then I walked around the house in a daze, not knowing what to pack or take with me.”

Dream home destroyed

The couple and their four children – the eldest is 12 and the youngest five – stayed for about a week at al-Khalidi’s parents’ home in Gaza City. On the second day, al-Khalidi got the news that her beloved home, the one that she and Baher had built together over 10 years, had been destroyed.

“My family tried to play it down at first, saying: ‘Oh, it was just the kitchen that caught fire,’ or that it was partially damaged by shrapnel,” she recalled. “But it was all gone.

“I cried, of course, then calmed down. A couple of days later, I cried again, then pulled myself together. I knew that this is the situation in Gaza now and that everyone is going through the same experience.”

Al-Khalidi’s paintings were hung up by Baher on the walls of their home. It was their dream house, and everything inside from the furniture to the interior decor to what filled the nooks and crannies were all chosen and made lovingly by the husband and wife.

“It didn’t hit me at the beginning that my house was gone,” al-Khalidi said. “I feel it more now, every time we get displaced farther and farther away.

“You realise that it’s not about the money or the decor or the paintings, but it’s about having a private and secure space for you and your family to be around each other.”

The family woke up one morning to the sound of violent bombardment on the street. An Israeli air attack had targeted a house metres away, reducing it to rubble. The windows of al-Khalidi’s parents’ home shattered from the blast, and the journalist decided to leave for al-Maghazi refugee camp in the centre of Gaza to stay with her brother’s in-laws.

Al-Khalidi continued to work. She had her car, and the roads were still not as dangerous or damaged as they are now.

One day, as she was driving to the Rafah border crossing to cover the movement of the second group of patients going to Egypt for treatment, she heard on the radio that the Afaneh family home in al-Maghazi was targeted.

“That house is directly next to the house that my husband and children are in,” she said. “I tried calling my husband and brother, but no one was answering their phones, so naturally, I assumed the worst.”

She turned her car around and drove straight to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, her heart in her throat.

Baher was at the entrance, immediately reassuring her that everyone was fine, save for a few stitches on her son Karam’s head. The couple then decided it was best to send their children to Rafah to stay with their other grandparents while they remained in Deir el-Balah.

‘My backbone, my wings’

For the past 12 days, the couple would talk to their children six or seven times a day, at any opportunity when the phone lines weren’t down.

“They would tell me every detail of their lives from the lack of water and the little food they had to playing with their cousins and neighbours and what they did with their uncle that day,” al-Khalidi said. “Their main complaint was that they couldn’t shower.”

Every day, she wakes up at dawn with her husband, prays, and then they set off to the hospital about 1km (0.6 miles) away, walking hand in hand. At the hospital grounds, she greets her colleagues, then connects to the internet to gather the information for her first live at 8am for Al Arabiya. She keeps going until her last live at 4pm.

“I report about 18 times a day in front of the camera,” she said. “I’m exhausted by the end of it and like to leave the hospital before it gets dark. My husband and I walk back, and after changing my clothes and a quick bite, I do phone interviews until 10pm.”

She is full of praise for Baher, who is a prosecutor but hasn’t worked since the war began.

“I wouldn’t be able to do half the things I am doing now if it wasn’t for him,” she said, smiling.

“He’s encouraged me from the first day, saying that I have the ability to keep working and to get my message out there, which not every journalist has.”

It also comforts her to be around him, whether simply feeling his presence among the many journalists, patients and displaced people living in the hospital’s courtyard or when he brings her water or coffee or food between her reports. He watches every one of her lives and gives her feedback.

“He’s my backbone, my wings,” al-Khalidi said. “You know the old adage that behind every great man is a great woman? Well, I also believe that behind every great woman is a greater man. I’m blessed to have him.”

The couple went to Rafah to see their children on Monday and realised that it was not safer than other areas because Israeli warplanes and tanks had targeted the city, so they decided to bring the children back to al-Khalidi’s aunt’s house in Deir el-Balah, where the couple had been staying.

“I was so excited to see them again,” she said. “My daughter Rama said she hasn’t hugged me in so long. I thought, ‘You know what, we either die together or live together.’”

‘Palestinian journalists the best in the world’

The biggest challenges that journalists face in doing their jobs during the war are the lack of transportation, the slow and unreliable internet connectivity, and the lack of electricity. Many of the male reporters at the hospital haven’t seen their families in weeks and sleep on mattresses in the courtyard. With winter around the corner, the absence of proper shelters has become a main concern.

“It seems like every day I hear about a colleague whose family members were killed in an attack or of their own deaths,” al-Khalidi said. “This makes me think, ‘Will I be next? Will my family be next?’”

What motivates her to keep working, she says, is the hope that one day she will look into the camera and say: “And now, Palestine has been liberated.”

“For this time, I want to say: ‘The war is over. Go back to your homes,’” she said. “Who said people in Gaza are used to conflict and strife? We’re definitely not made to live in hospitals or be displaced over and over or run from the bombs in the sky.”

She is convinced that what makes Palestinian journalists continue their work while facing such danger and witnessing unspeakable horrors is their belief in Palestinian freedom and self-determination.

“I consider Palestinian journalists to be the best there is in the world, from their bravery, their presentation, their language skills, their experience, their strength,” al-Khalidi said.

“This war has made me appreciate all of life’s little blessings,” she added. “It also strengthened my resolve, and I will definitely build another house, an even better and more beautiful home than the one before.”

Chants of ‘no ceasefire’ were heard as tens of thousands of people joined a rally in Washington DC in support of Israel as it continues its war in Gaza.