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Israel blames 'technical error' for Gaza children's deaths
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Six children waiting for water were among those killed in an Israeli strike
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Janak Jalil
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Puerto Rico your cost effective reshoring solution. Visit investpr.orgreshore to get started. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janak Jalil and in the early hours of Monday 14th July, these are our main stories. Israel blames a so called technical error for an attack that killed 10 Palestinians, most of them children, who killed who'd been queuing for water at a Gaza refugee camp. The Iranian president is reported to have been wounded when Israel bombed a secret underground headquarters during last month's war. The former Nigerian president and military ruler Muhammadu Buhari has died at the age of 82. Also in this podcast, when I see a book chewed up by a beetle, no matter how many copies are published and how replaceable the book is, a piece of culture has been lost. We hear how hungry beetles in Hungary have wreaked havoc on the country's oldest and most valuable collection of books. Ten people, six of them children, who'd been waiting to fill water containers at a distribution point in Gaza were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday. The Israeli army issued a statement blaming a technical error, saying it works to mitigate harm to civilians as much as possible, with no let up in Israeli attacks on the devastated territory. Dozens more Palestinians have been killed this weekend. The Nasser Hospital says 24 of them were killed near an AID distribution site on Saturday. Israel does not allow international journalists into Gaza and since the war began more than 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed. They are among the 58,000 estimated dead in Gaza, more than 2% of the entire population, with many, many More injured, starving and homeless. Our correspondent Nick Beek is following developments from Jerusalem and reports on the attack on the water distribution point. They'd come to find water in a land starved of resources. But death is the only thing in plentiful supply. In Gaza today, eyewitnesses said an Israeli drone had fired at a crowd of people. The bodies of the young and old now heaped among bricks and wood and abandoned yellow jerry cans. I don't want water. I want my son back. One man screamed as he carried the lifeless body through the street. A BBC colleague in Gaza found Mahmud, another father bereaved. Today his son Abdullah was killed. We here on the ground are powerless. We are a victimized, defenseless people. We are people with families, ordinary people like the rest of the world. We have no weapons. We have nothing. This war must stop. This ongoing massacre on the land of the Gaza Strip must stop. The Israeli military said there had been a technical error, that its weapon was supposed to hit someone it called an Islamic Jihad terrorist, but fell dozens of meters from the target. The IDF expressed regret for any civilians harmed. The killings came a day after 31 people, according to the Red Cross, were killed at a distribution site in southern Gaza. The vast majority had been shot. Eyewitnesses said Israeli soldiers had opened fire, a claim the IDF denied. The Red Cross also revealed its field hospital in rafah had treated 3,400 people for gunshot wounds in the seven weeks since a new U. S. Israeli group, the Gaza health Foundation, or GHF, had taken over aid distribution from the U.N. the figure was more than the entire previous year. The GHF has accused aid agencies of of siding with Hamas and of spreading lice. Nick Beak Iranian state media have said the country's president was targeted by an Israeli attack during the war last month and escaped with a light injury. Four days into the conflict, six bombs or missiles reportedly targeted both access and entry points of a secret underground facility in Tehran where Massoud Peschkian was attending a meeting of the Supreme National Security Council. With more details, here's Kasra Naji. Videos showed repeated strikes against the mountainside in northwest Tehran. It has now emerged that the Israeli attacks had targeted a secret underground facility where Iran's top leaders were holding an emergency meeting. But all those present, including President Pescheshkian, managed to reach safety through an emergency shaft, the report said. Given the secrecy surrounding the facility, the authorities are now following leads of a possible infiltration arbitration of Israel's agents at the highest levels. Khasra Naji we talked earlier about Gaza now let's turn to another conflict where civilians are trapped and under constant bombardment. For more than a year, the Sudanese city of Al Fasha, the army's last stronghold in Darfur, has been cut off from the outside world with no aid getting in. But in recent days, it's seen fierce battles after the rival paramilitary rapid support forces claim to have captured key sites, including the police headquarters. Our Africa correspondent, Aikiza Wandera has more on these latest clashes. Fighting went on for the better part of Friday and Saturday. Residents there reporting heavy street combat between the army and the paramilitary forces, forcing a lot of civilians to even dig makeshift bunkers in their homes just to shelter themselves from daily drone strikes and shelling. Because this is something that has been going on on and off since maybe. And we are getting both the Sudanese army and the RSF claiming gains in this particular attack. Even as the RSF tries to take over this last city, that is still on the hands of the Sudanese army. And it's crucial for the Sudanese army to continue to hold on to El Fha because if they have any hope for a resurgence in the western part of the country, that stuff for Al Fasha is a good starting point for them. But it's equally as important for the RSF because seizing Al Fasha would mean that then they completely dominate Darfur and they will then be controlling key economic resources of that region, including transport routes and a population of over 1 million people. Well, as Akisa mentioned, it's civilians who've suffered the most in this two year civil war. Last week the International Criminal Court said there were reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed. Mathild Vu is a Norwegian refugee council's advocacy manager. In Sudan, with more than 12 million people displaced from their homes in what's been described as the world's biggest displacement crisis, she told us that delivering aid has become nigh impossible. There has been no humanitarian assistance reaching Al Fashr for now. Months, if not a year actually. What it means that people just rely on the solidarities of others. If they have a little bit of food, they will be sharing it among themselves. And they can only eat what is in the market if they can afford it. Fleeing this place is horrib. I have team right now 60km away from Al Fashr, from this death trap. And what they're telling me is that over this past three months they've been talking to all the people that have been escaping, all the time hearing the same story, people fleeing at night by foot. On donkeys trying to escape, armed men who are targeting them, maybe raping them. The Al Fasher was a place where people fled to. The ones who managed to escape this hell trap are currently right now in Tawila, 60 km away from this box. But they're not safe either. All the humanitarian organization right now in Sudan are overwhelmed. We have depleted most of the resources that we had for Al Fashr a while ago as people were coming. There is almost organized neglect on Sudan. And right now what we're seeing is really apathy from the international community when it comes to engaging with the warring parties. Pressure the warring parties and the backers to ensure that humanitarian assistance can reach the people, people in need. And now the funding is completely decreasing and the consequences, you can see it on the ground. The Norwegian Refugee council's advocacy manager in Sudan matild view to Ukraine now where the country's secret service says it's killed Russian agents suspected of assassinating a senior intelligence officer in Kiev last week. Colonel Ivan Voronich was shot several times in broad daylight in a car park. Charlotte Gallagher reports from Kyiv. CCTV shows the moment Colonel Ivan Voronich was shot dead in a car park on Thursday morning. The suspect can be seen walking towards the intelligence officer, firing his weapon and then running away. Today, Ukraine announced it had tracked down the suspects, a man and a woman who officials say were working for Russia's fsb, one of the successors to the kgb. In a video message, the head of Ukraine's security service, the SBU said, said the pair were liquidated in a gunfight while resisting arrest. Officials say the pair had traveled to Kyiv in order to carry out the murder and had been tracking their victims movements before collecting a gun which had been hidden for them. Charlotte Gallagher Meanwhile, Ukraine says the number of its prisoners of war murdered by the occupying Russian forces continues to grow. According to officials in kyiv, it's approaching 300, a figure disputed by the Kremlin. And now investigators of these alleged war crimes in Ukraine say their efforts are being further hampered by President Trump's spending cuts. Vitaly Shevchenko reports. On the evening of 29 June, Russian state TV's flagship weekly news analysis program, Vest in Ideli started as usual. There was plenty of praise for Vladimir Putin and his special military operation against Ukraine and the customary scorn for NATO. But an hour and a half into the show, the narrative moved onto an altogether grimmer executions of prisoners of war. Drones seem to have made chances equal, but they're still trying not to take snipers Prisoner. An interviewed Russian soldier then said this about captured snipers. If they were taken prisoner, two fingers would be cut off on the right and left hands so they couldn't shoot again. The report about Russian troops fighting in Ukraine is vague on who carried out these alleged atrocities, but it reflects the fact that they take place even though executing and mutilating prisoners of war is a war crime. According to Yuri Belousov, the head of the War Department at the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office, A total of 273 captured Ukrainian soldiers have been executed by the Russians since the start of the full scale invasion in February 2020. 2. Of them, 224 were killed on the battlefield, 56 so far this year. Unfortunately, there's been no reduction in numbers. We're receiving reports of executions almost every week. It didn't used to be like this. The UN says it has verified 88 killings of Ukrainian prisoners of war by The Russians and 26 captured Russian soldiers and executed by the Ukrainians. One serious challenge which Mr. Belousov's agency has been facing is the Trump administration's spending cuts, including funding for programs investigating alleged war crimes in Ukraine. The US was a serious partner, which gave us a lot of technical support of various types. Naturally, if they're taking a pause, we're feeling it. A lot of it was spent on technical assistance, too. We're now looking for other partners who can compensate for this. Rachel Denbigh, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch, says the Ukrainian government and other investigators rely heavily on US Government funding. It's undeniable that the cuts have an impact on just how much work can get done. It's existentially important to continue to document these crimes and to. And to push for justice. There's no alternative to that. The question for the Trump administration is what side of history do they want to be on? Do they want to be on the side of history that sees justice for these. For these atrocities? Are they going to help facilitate justice? Are they going to get. Or are they going to get in the way? Regardless of the funding available, investigators say they are determined to keep working towards bringing justice to. To victims of war crimes. In Ukraine, that report by Vitaly Shevchenko. Helicopters, laundry baskets and tunnels. Just some of the ingenious ways that prisoners have been able to break out of jail. But this weekend saw a different kind of escape, and one that, on the face of it, is rather puzzling. France's prison service now finds itself investigating how an inmate managed to free himself by hiding inside the suitcase of another prisoner who was being release. Bernadette Keogh takes up the story. French officials say the 20 year old convict apparently got out of the jail near Lyon by concealing himself inside the luggage of his cellmate who was being released after serving his time. The prison service has launched an investigation with its director admitting to an accumulation of errors that led to the incident, saying it was an extremely rare event. The audacious jailbreak was on Friday, but his absence was reportedly not noticed by staff for another 24. The prison was criticised by inspectors earlier this year for severe overcrowding and it's been suggested this may have contributed to the delay in spotting they were one man down. It was recently documented that there were 1200 inmates detained in the prison, which has a capacity for less than 700. French media have reported that the escaped prisoner was serving several sentences and was also under investigation in a case linked to organised crime. Bernadette Keough still to come on the podcast in Ireland, excavation work is due to start on a mass grave where hundreds of children and babies are believed to be buried. What I want, if I find my brothers that are there I'll decide maybe reinter with my mother closure that I can actually put on our tombstone pre deceased. I can't put that in it because I don't know whether they're dead or not. For over 75 years Puerto Rico has been a trusted manufacturing hub, home to top global pharma companies and over 70 FDA approved medical device plants. Today, with shifting US tariffs and rising mainland costs, it's the perfect time to reshore. Puerto Rico delivers US jurisdiction, made in USA labelling and unmatched business incentives plus a skilled workforce and pro business environment that makes setting up there fast and efficient. Puerto Rico your cost effective reshoring solution. Visit investpr.orgreshore to get started. You're listening to the Global News podcast. The former President of Nigeria, Mohammedu Buhari has died at the age of 82 while receiving medical treatment in London. He first rose to power in the 1980s as a military ruler before returning as a democratically elected president from 2015 to 2020. His time in power saw him struggle to tackle a severe economic crisis and a rise in Islamist violence in Africa's most populous nation. For more on his life and legacy, I spoke to our West Africa correspondent Mahony Jones. President Buhari, as you mentioned, came into power as a democratically elected leader in 2015, but he was known to the Nigerian public prior to that because he'd been a military ruler in the 80s. He was always seen as somebody who was incorruptible, somebody who had high standards when it came to discipline in the country. From the day we are sworn in as a government, anybody who abused trust will be called to account. You're going to go after corruption in the military and corruption in the oil industry. Do you have a list of names? Not only in the oil industry I talked to you about, and there are others. Do you have a list of people that you're going after? No, no, no. But I think that for many Nigerians, they will probably remember more his time as a president and his ability. He did significantly reduce the level of violence in northeastern Nigeria, But I think it's fair to say that he wasn't entirely successful in decimating Boko Haram, which was his main aim when he came into power. The way he convinced the Nigerian electorate was by saying, you know, I'm a military ruler. I'm tough. I assure you that Boko Haram will soon know the strength of our collective will and commitment to reach this nation of terrorism. Fortunately, he wasn't able to do that because they're still carrying out attacks in northeastern Nigeria until this day. And some people say that this strictness perhaps was a bit of a hindrance for him because they accused him of being too slow, too rigid sometimes in tackling big problems like corruption. Certainly that was one of the criticisms of him, that he was inflexible, that he wasn't able to adapt to the new world, that he found himself in a world where militant groups were shifting their tactics away from being purely focused on northeastern Nigeria. During his time in power, the violence did spread across the country to the northwest. We started seeing more attacks there, and many people felt that when it came to the country's economy, he really struggled to get a handle on it. When he came into power, oil prices started falling. That was the main and is still the main source of revenue for Nigeria. And he was unable to diversify the country's economy in such a way to soften some of those shocks. And what do you think his lasting legacy will be? Because he came to power as a military leader, but then later he was a democratically elected president. Yeah, I think his legacy will certainly be one of, you know, a disciplined and a principled ruler, perhaps one who didn't achieve everything he set out to achieve whilst in power, but he was able to make life more livable for many people, particularly in Borno state, the epicenter of the Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast. People didn't have to fear going into the market or going to school anymore. Attacks significantly reduced under his watch. So that is certainly something he was able to achieve whilst in power. This past week, South Africans have been awaiting President Cyril Ramaphosa's response to explosive allegations directed at his police minister. A highly respected police chief has accused the minister, Senso Mkunu, of having links with criminal gangs and deliberately blocking investigations into politically motivational assassinations, claims that he denies. In a televised address, President Ramaphosa announced that Mr. Mkunu has been placed on an immediate leave of absence and that a special judicial commission has been set up to investigate the allegations. As we intensify the fight against crime, it is vital that we safeguard the integrity and credibility of the police and other law enforcement agencies. These allegations therefore call for an urgent and comprehensive investigation. A correspondent in Johannesburg, Nomsa Maseko, says it was a highly anticipated address. Everyone in the country had been waiting since. Who is the Guazulu Natal Police provincial commissioner made those damning allegations against the police minister? That was huge. There was an expectation that President Ramaphosa would act, act immediately, but he was in Brazil dealing with other governance matters and also the BRICS summit that was taking place there. Mr. Denies any wrongdoing. In fact, he released a press statement in which he said that he accepted that the president placed him on leave and that he is open for, you know, for any kind of probe against him. And also said repeatedly that he is innocent. And how much faith do South Africans have in all this, given that Mr. Ramaphosa has himself in the past faced allegations of corruption, allegations that he has denied? A lot of South Africans believe that this is just the tip of the iceberg. People are bored of commissions of inquiry, even on social media. As soon as Mr. Ramaphosa announced that a judicial commission of inquiry would be established, they believe that he doesn't have a backbone because he should have just fired the police minister or that the police minister himself, he would have stepped down himself. But that's not how politicians in this country operate. And also the fact that the police minister has been placed on leave means that he still has his benefits, he still will get his salary, he still will have a blue light convoy, he will still have bodyguards that will be taking care of him pending the outcome of this commission of inquiry. So it's more taxpayers money that, you know, is going into the establishment of this commission of inquiry while the police minister still earns his salary. Nomsa Maseko. Now to a story of institutional Inhumanity towards unmarried mothers that many at first found hard to believe. A story that's haunted Ireland for decades and tarnished the reputation of the Catholic Church. This week investigators are beginning the grim task of unearthing it. They will start excavating a mass grave in the town of Chuam in the west of Ireland, where up to 800 babies and young children are believed to be buried. They died from the 1920s onwards to the 1960s while in the care of so called mother and baby homes run by religious orders at a time when having a child outside wedlock was considered shameful. The search is expected to take two years. This report from our island correspondent Chris Page. I was very lucky I got out of there. PJ Haverty survived an institution which has come to define the most disturbing of secrets. He spent his first six years in what used to be called St. Mary's Mother and Baby Home. PJ faced the stigma of being born outside marriage even when he went to school. We had to go 10 minutes late and leave 10 minutes early because they didn't want us talking to the other kids. Even at the break in the school, we weren't allowed to play with them. With the kids and I that we were cordoned off. You were dirt from the street because you were born out. With luck, I called that place a prison. I don't call it a home. The full extent of the tragedy only became known decades after the building was demolished. The relatives and survivors who've campaigned for the excavation now hope that as many of the children and babies as possible will finally be buried with dignity. This is Williams birth certificate and no death certificate. Anna Corrigan thinks she may have two brothers buried at the site. She was in her late 50s when she found out that she wasn't an only child. She says it's been very difficult to get solid information. All I've come across was obstruction, opsification, prevarication, what I want. If I find my brothers that are there, I'll decide maybe reinter with my mother closure that I can actually put on our tombstone pre deceased. I can't put that in it because I don't know whether they're dead. I'm not sure. Predeceased by her sons John and William, it's thought there's never been an exhumation of children's remains on this scale anywhere in the world. The excavation is expected to take two years. Those most affected by the scandal are longing for healing after generations of stigma and shame. Well, the story only came to Light in 2014 when an amateur historian, Catherine Corliss, found death certificates for 796 children, but no burial records. She spoke to Chris about her search to find out what happened at Tuam and her reaction to news of the excavation. For me, it is just beyond my wildest dreams, really. I would doubt only for the media that none of this would come to fruition because there was so much opposition and so many people didn't want to talk about it and leave it in the past, but they probably thought I would just give up and just get fed up of it. But in my mind, it was so horrific that these vulnerable little children and babies, nobody cared. And they were trying to dismiss everything I was saying. And, I mean, I was giving them a voice. I had to. I'm sure looking back on more than a decade now, you could never have imagined when you started writing for your local history journal that it could have led to all this. I was just numb, I think, when I was told how many died there. And the fact that there was nothing to remember them by, what happened then is I just got angry. Why aren't people doing something? And that's what drove me all those years, because I couldn't understand it, you see, that I was the only one that was pushing this and pushing it along with the survivors that were doing what they could. And it was a long time. It was the anger that drove me, but it was pure fury at the idea of the church and the state and people didn't care. And I kept saying to myself, if four or five babies were lost or were kidnapped and buried there or something, there'd be absolute uproar, because if they had families to say, if they had parents, it was the fact, and it really spelled it out in words. These are illegitimate children. They were let die, quite a lot of them, and there was no care. And then they were discarded, thrown away, forgotten about, not even memorial over them to say that they were buried there. I couldn't get that. And I said, I'm going to be a voice for these children. They're not getting away with this. And that drove me. Catherine Corless, speaking to Chris Page. And you can hear more on that story on the BBC World Service, on the interview broadcast today, Monday at 08:06 GMT, or as a podcast. Now, most libraries have to deal with books that either go missing or are returned damaged. But a library housing Hungary's oldest and most valuable collection of works has a much bigger problem. Caused by much smaller creatures than usual. Beetles have chewed through a quarter of its 400,000 books. Many of them are centuries old. Staff have come up with a plan to destroy the insects in an attempt to save the precious collection. Chantal Hartle reports. Set in the grounds of the Ponnonholmer Abbey, a World Heritage site, this library would usually be packed with visitors at this time of year. Its collection features a complete bible from the 13th century, along with several hundred manuscripts predating the invention of the print printing press in the mid 15th century. But its doors are firmly closed and shelves looking pretty bare after the beetles were discovered during routine cleaning. Library staff say the insects were drawn to the glue and leather in the bindings and spines of the books, where they found both food and a place to breed. Zhofia Erdit Hojdu is tasked with restoring the collection. Usually we have problems with mould in warehouses and in other collections, but we've never encountered such a degree of infestation before. But due to global warming, it is expected that more and more insect infestations will appear to get rid of the unwanted visitors. 100,000 affected books have been placed in crates and covered with large sealed plastic sacks to starve the critters of oxygen. They will remain there for six weeks, at which point it's hoped all the beetles will be destroyed. Then begins the painstaking months long task of inspecting and vacuuming each book and setting them aside for further restoration work if necessary. The oldest and rarest prints and books are stored separately. Those haven't been affected, but library director Iona Achialni says any damage to the collection is a blow to Hungary's heritage as the custodian of the this very valuable collection of books. When I see a book chewed up by a beetle, I feel that no matter how many copies are published and how replaceable the book is, a piece of culture has been lost. Once this immediate crisis is resolved, staff plan to introduce better temperature controls for the library to prevent future infestations. Chantal Hartle and that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcastbc.co.uk you can also find us on X@ BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global Newspod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll. The producers were Alison Davies and Stephanie Zacherson. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janak Jalil. Until next time. Goodbye.