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From Our Own Correspondent
Gaza: Rafah border crossing reopens
00:28:29
The reopening of the 'lifeline to the world' has brought relief to sick Palestinians.
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BBC Announcer
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- [01:07]
BBC Correspondent
Hello. Today we're in Cuba, where power cuts are part of daily life, but the revolutionary spirit is strong. Despite threats from Washington, Bangladesh is heading to the polls for the first time since student protests ousted the former pm. But will the political old guards still be in charge? In Ukraine, we're disco dancing on a frozen river as locals try to keep warm as temperatures plummet. And with the start of the Winter Olympics this weekend, we meet the Slovenian ski jumpers hoping to soar to the top of the podium. But first, the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt reopened this week. It was supposed to happen during the first phase of US President Donald Trump's ceasefire plan between Israel and Hamas, which began by back in October. But Israel blocked it until the return of the body of the last Israeli hostage, which happened last week. The crossing has mainly been kept shut since Israel captured the Gazan side in 2024, and its opening will come as a relief to many Palestinians who see it as a lifeline to the world. However, there's been frustration this week over delays and the small number of people being allowed through each day. Yoland Nell has been following developments.
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BBC Reporter Yoland Nell
Their lives packed up in bulging suitcases, Palestinian boys and men, one with a bandaged head, lined up in wheelchairs in a Red Crescent field hospital in southern Gaza on Monday morning. Some had waited for two years to travel abroad for treatment, and it was still going to take until nighttime before five made it out of the Strip, far fewer than the 50 patients expected, with seven of their relatives. Patience said they'd been called early and told to come, that they had Israeli and Egyptian security clearance to leave as the Rafah border crossing finally reopened. I feel lucky, mahmoud, who has leukemia, told a journalist after making it through to a shiny ambulance in Egypt with his sister. In Gaza, there's no treatment and no life. Rafah has long been seen by Gazans as their gateway to the world. It's their one crossing point that doesn't lead into Israel. Early on in the latest and deadliest war in Gaza, triggered by the deadliest ever attacks which Hamas led on Israel in 2023, Rafah was the only exit for tens of thousands of Palestinians to flee through and a main entry point for humanitarian aid flowing in from Egypt. Half of Gaza's 2 million population initially crammed into the small border city of Rafah following Israeli military orders to leave the north. Then, in May 2024, Israel began to attack Rafah itself, saying it was Hamas's last bastion and a critical route for arms smuggling into Gaza from Egypt. Quickly, Israeli forces captured the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing. Locals were shocked to see footage of an Israeli tank plowing into an I Love Gaza sign. Gaza's gateway has mostly been kept closed ever since. Rafah itself is now a wasteland of rubble. When the US finally brokered a ceasefire deal last October, reopening the Rafah crossing was a key point in President Trump's peace plan. But the slow rate at which deceased Israeli hostages were returned by Hamas prompted Israel to keep the crossing shut. That only changed after the last hostage's body was retrieved last month. We've great hope in God things are closer to improvement, mohammed Abu Nada, a specialist from the Gaza Cancer center, told us this week. But my cancer patients don't have time. That's the problem. Doctors say some 20,000 sick and war wounded people, nearly a quarter of them children, are desperately waiting to leave for medical treatment. Yet in the past week, only a few dozen have passed out through Rafah with delays and disputes about procedures. And of course, it's not just patients who want to travel. Maha Ali recalls her excitement when she won a scholarship in Algeria to study for her master's degree in media studies. But she's never been able to leave Gaza to take up her place. By now, I was supposed to have defended my master's thesis, but I've done nothing, she says. Sadly, two years of my life have been lost. Israel argues it must stay in control of security along Gaza's southern border to make sure money and goods aren't brought across illicitly as they were before the war for funding Hamas and allowing it to build its tunnels. For now, it's not allowing aid to enter directly through Rafah and is limiting the number of returnees. More than 30,000 Palestinians have registered with their embassy in Cairo to go back to Gaza. But the stories of those who made it across could deter some. Two women among the dozen people who returned on Monday told journalists they'd endured a journey of horror amid confusion about what they could carry. They had many belongings confiscated inside the crossing, where Palestinians work with monitors sent by the European Union. Then, they said, members of a local militia took them to an Israeli security point, where they were blindfolded, handcuffed and interrogated. Israel's military denied any inappropriate behavior. Every step in the Gaza ceasefire has proved complicated, and in the past week it's looked under severe strain. More than 20 Palestinians, including two babies, were killed in Israeli strikes on Wednesday, hospitals said. Israel said it targeted three leaders of Palestinian armed groups and was responding to a shooting attack which seriously wounded a soldier. And still, the most difficult points of the peace plan lie ahead. They include deploying an international security force and disarming Hamas, which Israel insists must happen before rebuilding in Gaza can begin. With so many discouraging signs, it would be easy to feel disheartened. But Dr. Mohammed, the cancer specialist, told us he forced himself to stay positive. We used to say the Rafah crossing would never reopen, he says, and now it has.
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BBC Correspondent
Yolandnell Outside Venezuela itself, nowhere was last month's US military action in Caracas felt more keenly than in Cuba. Venezuela has helped prop up the Communist run Ireland for 25 years with subsidized supplies of crude oil. But with President Maduro forced from power, Cuba's now facing its most severe energy and economic crisis this century. The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, himself a Cuban American, has said the Trump administration intends to isolate Cuba in an effort to force regime change. Will Grant has been in Havana.
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BBC Announcer
People often tell me they want to see Cuba before it changes. To many, the island seems trapped in a time warp, a sort of preserved relic of the Cold War in which the real Cuba must be experienced before a branch of McDonald's opens in the Plaza de la Revolucion. It's understandable where the sepia tinted romanticism comes from, Cuba's past is also its present. Beyond the 1950s classic automobiles on the road, the government often evokes past revolutionary glories, particularly when its back is against the wall. And today its back is against the wall like almost never before. With Cuba's closest ally, Nicolas Maduro, out of the picture, Washington now appears in full control of the Venezuelan oil industry and planning not to hit Havana with airstrikes, but to cut off its fuel supply for the Cuban revolution. It couldn't come at a worse moment. The island is already in the dark. Most of the time the lights are more often out than on. Even in Havana, which has traditionally been shielded from the worst of the fuel crisis. Blackouts last for 18 hours at a time, which means food rotting in fridges, no water if supply relies on electric pumps, no communications. Huge mounds of rubbish have piled up in the streets with petrol so scarce the state's garbage trucks are barely making their rounds. The uncollected rubbish has sparked a major public health crisis with nationwide outbreaks of mosquito borne diseases like chukungunya and dengue fever. Tough though it may be for committed revolutionaries to accept the dire economic circumstances of creating new social problems, ones the Cuban Revolution has traditionally prided itself as having avoided. Anecdotally, as the government doesn't release figures on these things, I've witnessed a marked uptick in acute hunger. People begging, children selling candies in the street, people washing windscreens at the traffic lights. The exodus has been staggering. An estimated 25% of the population has left the island in just four years. There's a sense of a revolution running on fumes. It's all a far cry from the optimism of the brief thaw with Washington during Barack Obama's second term. Misplaced optimism as it would turn out. It's into that malaise that 32 small wooden boxes returned from Venezuela, each one covered with a Cuban flag. They were received at Havanas airport with full military honours by Raul Castro and President Miguel Diaz Canelo. Inside they contained the remains of a Cuban soldier or intelligence officer killed in Caracas during the US assault on 3 January. Among them Nicolas Maduro's entire personal security detail, eliminated with a minimum of fuss by US Delta Force troops. A funeral cortege carried the boxes down streets lined with mourners to the Armed Forces Ministry, where first weeping relatives, then the military and finally the public trooped past to pay their respects. Yet despite the pomp, it was a deeply sobering, even humiliating moment for the Cuban Revolution. For years, the authorities denied Cubans operated inside the Venezuelan military or intelligence services. A photograph of each fallen soldier next to their respective ashes and the words glory and honor starkly exposed the truth. This was the biggest loss of Cuban troops at the hands of the Americans since the CIA backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. 88 year old Victor Drekke was a commander that day and led Cuban troops into battle as Fidel Castro repelled John F. Kennedy's ill fated attempt to topple him in his tropical garden. A hummingbird flitting past as we chatted, the Afro Cuban revolutionary remains just as defiant in the face of Washington's latest intervention in Latin America. If the US tries to invade, they'll stir up a hornet's nest, he told me. If they put a single foot on Cuban soil it won't be like the cowardly ambush ambush of our combatants in Venezuela, he warned. Out here things will be very different. But despite Drecky's confidence in Cubans revolutionary fervor, things are changing fast. The day after the combatants were brought home, half a million protesters marched past the US Embassy led by President Diaz Canel. Yet unbeknown to them, as they chanted and waved their Cuban and Venezuelan flags, the interim leader in Venezuela, Del C. Rodriguez, was meeting John Radcliffe, the director of the CIA in Caracas. Not a lowly US functionary or an envoy of the church, the head of the CIA, the very agency her political mentor Hugo Chavez spent a lifetime railing against. Less than two weeks after Washington seized her boss at gunpoint, illegally kidnapped him, as she'd put it, in his pajamas. Few Cubans can imagine life without Venezuela's support but are bracing themselves. Others are pinning their hopes on unconfirmed back channel talks with Washington. Whatever's coming, it's better than this, one disgruntled woman told me of the blackouts. See Cuba before it changes. It's already too late.
- [13:08]
BBC Correspondent
Will Grant Bangladesh goes to the polls next week in its first election since a student uprising forced the previous prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, to flee for India after 15 years of increasingly authoritarian rule. A new party formed by leaders of the student protests is now running in the election, though the newly formed National Citizen Party is already in turmoil with senior leaders resigning over an alliance with one of the country's major Islamist parties. Azadeh Mushiri reports from Dhaka.
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BBC Reporter Azadeh Mushiri
On the very same road we're walking on in Dhaka, Rahad Hussain tells me he was almost killed trying to save his friend. He and Imam Hassan Tayyimbuyan were comrades, as he puts it, in a youth uprising that became one of the bloodiest episodes in Bangladesh's history. Their entire ordeal was caught on camera on 20 July in 2024. The video went viral during a revolution that would force the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, to flee. Rahat recalls that day with the ease of someone who has told a story many times. He says he's haunted by it. He walks me to a tea shop by Dhaka's Jatrabari Highway. He tells me this is where he and his friend Taim were sheltering as police began firing from all directions during a crackdown on student protests. But Rahat says the police found them, dragged them out and beat them. Then they issued a simple order. Run. Tayyim was shot and fell to the ground. Rahat saw his friend sprawled on the road and ran back to save him. I'd watched the video before meeting Rahat. You can see him dragging Tayym's body. It's slow and labored, and the two students are clearly no threat. But the officers keep shooting. Rahat says they hit their target and he felt a bullet strike his leg. I had to leave him behind, he admits. Police took Daem, helpless, into custody. He was later declared dead at a hospital. After years of mounting anger at Hasina's rule, what began as peaceful protests about quotas and civil service jobs turned into a violent moral reckoning. Up to 1400 people died during the protests, the vast majority killed in the crackdown. According to the United Nations, Rahat celebrated the anniversary of Hasina's ousting alongside his other comrades of the July uprising. But on Thursday, when the country votes, will he back a new party, the one founded by leaders of the protests? I ask. He shakes his head. I'm voting for Jamaat, he says. He thinks the student led National Citizen Party, or ncp, is too inexperienced. Rahat is not alone in feeling this way, and that's been a huge blow to the ncp. Eighteen months on from the uprising, the NCP is badly fractured. Young protesters were powerful enough to oust Hasina, but have fallen short against the ruthless reality of national politics and electoral math. With the Awami League banned from contesting, other older established parties like the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the country's largest Islamist party, Jamaat e Islami, are dominating the ballot. The Oami League told us that by excluding them, a free and fair election isn't possible and that charges against them are false and fabricated. But either way, Rahat is giving his vote to Jamaat. Despite its controversial past, people still remember its anti independence stance during the war with Pakistan in 1971, during which time hundreds of thousands of people were killed and more than 10 million fled their homes. Some of Jamaat's politicians were accused of collaborating with the Pakistani military who were fighting Bengali nationalists in East Pakistan. But that history doesn't seem to bother Rahat, who believes Jamaat has modernized. They supported the comrades of the July uprising, he tells me, and helped with medical bills. The first sign of trouble for the student led NCP was in September. Student elections at Bangladesh's top universities are considered a bellwether for the nation's mood, and candidates backed by Jamaat's student wing won by a landslide. So the NCP made a choice. They announced a multi party alliance with Jama'.
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BBC Reporter Yoland Nell
At.
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BBC Reporter Azadeh Mushiri
Dozens of senior members of the student party resigned with one female candidate. Calling it a moral red line, our team decided to visit the election headquarters for the ncp. It's extremely bare, an office space with a few empty rooms and very little furniture. When I sit down with Asif Mahmoud, who at 26 years old is now chairman of the NCP's election committee, he's wearing a black T shirt, jeans and a puffer jacket. He admits they'd hope to be doing a lot better, but he insists the alliance with Jermat isn't an ideological one. But purely strategic change can't come overnight, he tells me. It seems going into the elections, young heroes of the uprising have realized the old guard looks likely to stay. Against hundreds of Jamaat and Bangladesh Nationalist Party candidates, the NCP is fielding only 30. Sitting by the tea stall that once provided Rahad shelter, he told me the new Bangladesh his friend died for isn't here yet, but he thinks once a new permanent government is in place, perhaps there's hope for reform, telling me one cannot expect mangoes from a tamarind tree.
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BBC Correspondent
Azadeh mashiri and azadeh's documentary bangladesh after the uprising is available now on BBC iPlayer.
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- [19:56]
BBC Correspondent
Now to Ukraine, which continues to endure heavy Russian bombardment of the country's energy grid. The attacks intensified after Vladimir Putin had agreed to Donald Trump's request for a reprieve the previous week on the grounds of the fier currently gripping Ukraine. More than a thousand apartment buildings in the capital are currently without power, and city authorities are importing more generators to cope with longer blackout periods as engineers try to fix the damage. Abdu Jalil Abdurasulov finds People in Kiev are finding creative, even fun ways to keep warm amid the ongoing war do.
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BBC Reporter Abdu Jalil Abdurasulov
You know how cold minus 30 degrees Celsius is? As one comedian joked, it is so cold that when you sing, musical notes freeze in the air and fall to the ground. And you know what? This may not be that far fetched. The other day I was waddling like a penguin on an icy pavement in Kyiv, trying not to sleep, the frosty air biting into my skin. As I nearly reached the end of the iceberg. I mean the intersection. A pebble fell on my shoulder from the sky. When I tried to shake it off, I realized it was frozen bird poop. Now imagine what it is like for Ukrainians who must cope with such extreme cold weather while also having no electricity or heating at home. Russia's relentless airstrikes have crippled the country's energy sector. Millions of people face daily power outages for hours at a time. In Kyiv, there are hundreds of homes and offices that have no heating at all. It's warmer inside the fridge than in my flat, one woman said with a sad smile while drinking hot tea in a tent set up inside the park. People can warm up, get food and charge phones in such shelters called invincibility points. They are widespread and powered by diesel generators. Those Russian officials who decided to weaponize the weather probably have never been to the Rusanivka island in Kyiv. There is a popular outdoor gym there full of rusty barbells and horizontal bars. I went there when it was only minus 17 degrees Celsius and to my astonishment I saw a group of men lifting weights and doing pull ups there as if they were on a sunny beach on the other side of the Dnipro River. People were out ice fishing, but my jaw dropped when I saw a middle aged woman getting into the icy cold water for a swim. Her name was Svetlana. She dunked herself in the water several times before pulling herself out of the ice hole. While she was getting dressed, her wet swimsuit became rock hard. I hate cold, svetlana laughed. I didn't believe her. Cold is her daily reality now. Svetlana told me her apartment block lost heating when Russian missiles attacked a thermal power plant in Kyiv early in January. Water in the pipes froze and radiators burst. Now it's zero degrees Celsius in her flat, she says. To keep the air warm, Svetlana heats up bricks on a gas stove. She also pours hot water into plastic drink bottles and takes them to bed at night. At least she's got gas. Those who don't must come up with other ways to stay warm, like setting up a tent in their living room. Svetlana is worried about her elderly mother, who is in hospital with pneumonia. She fears that once she is discharged and returns to her cold apartment, she may immediately get ill again. For Svetlana, diving in icy water helps to endure the hardships she is facing. We just need to look fear in the eye. Then it won't eat up our soul, she said. It's exactly for this reason. Last weekend, some Ukrainians decided to throw a dance party on the frozen Dnipro river in a kyiv neighborhood in -19 degrees Celsius. Partygoers were treated to freshly made pancakes and hot food. Children screamed as they slid down the bank into the frozen river. A huge crowd gathered around the DJ and hopped to the beat. We have neither electricity nor heating at home, so this is how we are trying to warm up. One young woman in a fluffy fur coat sat laughing. The cow cheered, throwing their hands up in pure joy. Sweet dreams are made of this. The 80s classic was blaring from the speakers. It did feel it was a dream. The war, Russian strikes and blackouts, they all suddenly seemed distant and unreal. This was the most uplifting story I have covered in Ukraine since the start of Russia's invasion. And this party was not just about resilience. It was also a sign of determination. The greater destruction Moscow brings, the stronger their resistance becomes.
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BBC Correspondent
Abdul Jalil Abdurasulov and finally, the Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina are officially underway, and one of Europe's smallest countries is hoping to fly higher than the rest. Skiing is Slovenia's national sport, but it's the country ski jumpers who are currently breaking world records. Guy Delaunay has been exploring the Slovenian passion for leaping into the void. And the brother and sister team in search of gold.
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BBC Reporter Guy Delauney
Nyka is diminutive and doesn't bother to use two words when one will do just as well. Domin is considerably taller, smiles easily, and has a nifty way with a metaphor. But while they might not have much in common in terms of physical stature and conversational style, the Preyet siblings are like two peas in a pod, where it counts being competitive. In fact, by every credible measure, they're the best in the world at what they do. And what they do is launch themselves into the air at speeds of up to 100km per hour and accelerate all the way down towards the tens of thousands of people cheering them on. This is what ski jumping boils down to, though, as Slovenians Nika and Domen naturally excel in the even more extreme version of the sport known as ski flying. This variation was invented in their home country in the 1930s, many decades before anyone had thought to deploy the phrase as adrenaline junkie or refer to serious thrill issues. To be fair, this isn't at all how the Pre siblings come across. The words dude and gnarly are never uttered in the course of our conversations. Instead, Domin preaches the virtues of hard work and dedication, while his younger sister projects a steely determination to go two meters further and fulfill her childhood dream of winning an Olympic gold medal. Nika's just 20 years old, but she's already won the overall Women's World cup title twice. Last year she became the first female ski jumper to win both the normal and large hill titles at the world championships. And to top it off, she flew a staggering 236 meters to set a new world record. Even though he's six years older, Domen has some catching up to do. He made a good start by winning two world titles last year. Then he smashed the long standing men's world record by leaping a quite ridiculous 254.5 meters. That's about two and a half football pitchers. And he's taken that form into the current World cup season, claiming victory in 11 out of the last 15 events and picking up gold in the Ski Flying World Championships. Not yet an Olympic sport, but they're working on it. So when it comes to the Winter Olympics, favourites don't come much hotter or ice cool than the Prayet siblings. And it'd be fair to say that Slovenia expects There are billboards all over the capital Ljubljana depicting Domen, Nika and their ski jumping teammates in flight, and the headlines on Slovenia's equivalent of BBC News are as likely to be about ski jumping as they are about politics. Despite the rapidly approaching parliamentary elections, it'd be a lot of pressure for any athlete, and in a country of just 2 million people, it could be overwhelming. But Domin just smiles and tells me that he enjoys being recognized when he's out and about. I have this fire inside, he says. It brings out the best of me in competition because I know lots of people are cheering for me, so it feels great when I do really good jumps and they're all happy. He also acknowledges there's something slightly uncanny about the supreme form, which has earned him the nickname the Dominator because he's taken up residence in that rarefied zone in which victory seems assured even before a competition starts. It's just that amazing fuzzy feeling that you want to keep going, he tells me with a blissful expression. Slovenia has always excelled at ski jumping. They even have a special high school to train the next generation. But the Preyut siblings are clearly made of slightly different stuff to their teammates. Fellow Slovenian Nika Vodan won the overall World cup title five years ago, and she cheerfully admits to me that leaping from a ski flying hill can be a tad intimidating. I was a little bit worried, she says, but then the fog came up and I said yes, that's good because I can't see where I'm going. But when I ask her namesake, Nika Praetz, about the fear factor, she gives me short shrift. It's not scary at all, she insists. I really enjoy every moment in ski jumping, and right now so does the whole of Slovenia. When the remarkable brother and sister act take off at the Winter Olympics, the cheers of 2 million people will follow them into the sky.
- [29:48]
BBC Correspondent
Guy Delauney and that's all for today, but you can hear more dispatches from around the world on BBC Sounds.
- [29:56]
BBC Reporter Azadeh Mushiri
What would you do if your deepest secrets were held to ransom? In 2020, every patient who had used a Finnish psychotherapy service called Vastamo had their therapy notes stolen and held to ransom by a faceless, remorseless hacker.
- [30:15]
BBC Reporter Abdu Jalil Abdurasulov
It could be some extortionist gang from Eastern Europe, or it could be somebody living next door to me.
- [30:21]
BBC Reporter Azadeh Mushiri
I'm Jenny Kleeman. Join me as I discover just how vulnerable our deepest secrets can be.
- [30:27]
BBC Reporter Yoland Nell
I think I'm going to have a heart attack.
- [30:29]
BBC Reporter Azadeh Mushiri
From BBC Radio 4 and Intrigue, this is Ransom Man Listen first on BBC Sounds. If you're an H Vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free.
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