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A demonstration outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington has turned violent

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Russian artist Alexandra Skochilenko has been sentenced to jail for seven years after being found guilty of spreading “false information” about the Russian military by replacing a handful of supermarket price tags with messages criticising the war in Ukraine.

The 33-year-old, known as Sasha, is one of thousands of Russians to be detained, fined or jailed for speaking out against Moscow’s invasion of its neighbour amid an escalating crackdown on free speech and opposition to President Vladimir Putin.

Skochilenko was arrested in her native St Petersburg in April 2022, after an elderly customer at the supermarket found the slogans on the price tags and notified the police.

“The Russian army bombed an arts school in Mariupol. Some 400 people were hiding in it from the shelling,” one read, in reference to Russia’s brutal siege of the southern Ukrainian city. Another said, “Russian conscripts are being sent to Ukraine. Lives of our children are the price of this war.”

Judge Oksana Demiasheva delivered the verdict on Thursday hours after Skochilenko, who has a congenital heart defect and coeliac disease, had made a final statement to the court, asking for compassion and to be set free.

As well as the prison term, the artist was banned from using the internet for three years.

Skochilenko, wearing a colourful T-shirt decorated with a large red heart, reacted with shock to the sentence, covering her face and wiping away tears.

Supporters shouted “shame” and “we’re with you Sasha”, the AFP news agency reported.

Skochilenko’s lawyers left without giving any comment.

Skochilenko’s arrest came about a month after authorities adopted a law effectively criminalising any public expression about the war that deviated from the Kremlin’s official line.

Human rights group Memorial – now banned in Russia – said police spent 10 days interrogating supermarket staff and inspecting security camera footage before arresting the artist.

“They sometimes give less for murder than for five price tags in a supermarket,” Boris Vishnevsky, a politician linked to the opposition Yabloko party, told AFP.

“Hopefully, someday, the pendulum will turn the other way.”

Skochilenko was accused of committing what the state prosecutor described as a serious crime out of “political hatred” towards Russia. He had asked for her to be jailed for eight years.

Skochilenko admitted to swapping the tags but denied that the text written on them was false. She said she was a pacifist who valued human life above all else.

“How weak is our prosecutor’s faith in our state and society if he thinks our statehood and public safety can be ruined by five little pieces of paper?” she said in court.

“Everyone sees and knows that you are not judging a terrorist. You’re not trying an extremist. You’re not even trying a political activist. You’re judging a pacifist,” she said.

Skochilenko’s friends and supporters said the verdict was a disgrace [Olga Maltseva/AFP]

Amnesty International condemned the verdict.

“Her persecution has become synonymous with the absurdly cruel oppression faced by Russians openly opposing their country’s criminal war,” it said in a statement.

Memorial has designated Skochilenko a political prisoner and has launched a campaign calling for her release.

She has already been in detention for nearly 19 months, meaning that her overall term will be reduced by more than two years, since every day served in a pre-trial detention centre counts as 1.5 days of time served in a regular penal colony.

But she has struggled in custody due to pre-existing health conditions, and her need for a gluten-free diet, according to her lawyers and her partner.

According to OVD-Info, a prominent rights group that monitors political arrests and provides legal aid, a total of 19,834 Russians have been arrested between February 24 2022, when Russia began its invasion, and late October 2023 for speaking out or demonstrating against the war.

Also on Thursday, opposition politician Vladimir Milov was convicted in absentia of spreading false information about the army and sentenced to eight years. Milov, who was once Russia’s deputy energy minister and is now an ally of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has left the country.

Alexandra Skochilenko convicted of spreading ‘false information’ after replacing five tags with Ukraine war criticism.

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Paul Kessler died after falling and hitting his head during duelling protests earlier this month.

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Belarus has been collaborating with Moscow in the forcible transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children from Russian-occupied Ukraine in a programme “directly overseen” by the country’s President Alexander Lukashenko, according to research from Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL).

The report (PDF), released on Thursday, said at least 2,442 children aged between six and 17 years old had been taken to 13 facilities across Belarus since Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022 until the end of October this year.

“Russia and Belarus are targeting children for removal from Ukraine, coordinating their transport from occupied Ukraine through Russia to Belarus, and subjecting children to re-education, sometimes including military training, sometimes including military training,” the Yale HRL researchers said.

They said Belarus’s authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had “jointly directed and co-funded” the deportations with Putin under the Union State initiative that was first agreed back in 1996.

“Belarus’s direct involvement in Russia’s forced deportation of children represents a collaboration between Belarus’s authoritarian leader [Alexander] Lukashenka and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, with various pro-Russia and pro-regime organisations facilitating the deportation,” they said.

Putin is already the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over Moscow’s alleged forcible transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied territories, along with the country’s Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova.

Taking children under the age of 18 across a border without the consent of a parent or guardian is illegal under international humanitarian law.

Kyiv, which estimates some 19,000 children have been abducted, has already said it is investigating Belarus’s alleged involvement in the policy.

In September, Belarus’s state media published photos of dozens of Ukrainian children arriving in the country from the Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhia regions for a “three-week holiday”. The children were shown getting off a train carrying backpacks and suitcases, mostly looking solemn.

Alexei Talai, the head of the charity leading the programme, said Lukashenko had described it as an “important humanitarian project” that needed to continue. Talai was also mentioned as a facilitator in Thursday’s report.

The Yale HRL is part of The Conflict Observatory, which receives funding from the United States.

“These revelations of Belarusian involvement are part of a broader campaign directed by Russia,” the US State Department said in a statement.

“Members of Russia’s military and government have deported hundreds of thousands of Ukraine’s civilians to Russia, including children who have been forcibly separated from their families. The United States will continue to pursue accountability for actors involved in abuses connected with Russia’s war against Ukraine.”

Moscow has denied allegations that it is involved in forcible transfers or separating children from their families.

The Yale HRL report said the children had been taken from at least 17 cities in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, parts of which are occupied by Russia.

They were put on trains to Rostov-on-Don in Russia before being transported to Belarus.

It said more than 2,050 of the children had been taken to the “Dubrava children’s camp” in Minsk, the Belarusian capital.

The researchers said it was not clear how many of the children it had documented remained in Belarus.

Yale researchers say more than 2,400 children have been deported from Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.

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Putin has said the Avangard hypersonic system is a response to a new generation of weapons developed by the US.

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In Gaza, a child is killed every 10 minutes. Since October 7, Israel has killed more than 4,000 children. Now, premature babies at Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital are dying because the institution is out of power after over a month of Israel’s siege, and so is unable to operate incubators.

Israel knows it risks losing international support for its ongoing slaughter of children. Western allies like French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who have until now been steadfast in supporting Israel, have in the past week publicly asked the Israeli government to stop killing children, even if Macron has since softened his tone.

As a result, Israel’s propaganda and disinformation machine is finding new ways to justify the killing of children and the bombing of medical facilities.

Usually, Israel’s first response to accusations of atrocities is denial. When that fails, the second strategy is to blame Hamas or other Palestinian armed groups for Palestinian deaths.

It hasn’t given up on those strategies, but is also trying to directly link Palestinian children to Hamas, and thereby seek to portray them – and the places where they are sheltering – as legitimate targets.

Blaming Hamas

On November 11, the official Arabic account run by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted a video of a nurse, apparently agitated, talking about Hamas overrunning the al-Shifa Hospital, and taking all the fuel and morphine. She claimed that because Hamas had stolen morphine, she couldn’t use it on a five-year-old with a fracture.

The video, which was retweeted thousands of times, was a clear fake. No staff in the vicinity appear to recognise the individual featured, casting doubt on her identity and role. Robert Mackey, a journalist with the research agency Forensic Architecture, spoke to three Doctors Without Borders staff members working at the al-Shifa Hospital, none of whom recognised her.

The video was almost comic in its absurdity. The nurse spoke with a non-Palestinian accent, and her dialogue seemed to perfectly echo Israeli military talking points about Hamas stealing all the fuel from hospitals.

Moreover, the strategic placement of a Palestinian Health Ministry logo was a contrived attempt to mislead or create a ‘honeytrap’ for open-source intelligence. Adding to the suspicion were the stock audio-sounding bombing effects, and her immaculately clean white coat and perfect makeup, all of which seemed out of place in a supposedly dire setting.

The purpose of the video was clear, to blame Hamas for the suffering of children and legitimise the Israeli military’s claims that Hamas is using civilians and children as human shields.

Eventually, as the Israeli government was called out over the video, the Foreign Ministry quietly deleted its post – without any explanation.

But spreading disinformation and then deleting it has become routine, raising the question: Why is the Israeli military’s propaganda so sloppy? After all, doesn’t Israel risk losing credibility this way?

No, because the benefits outweigh the costs. The old adage, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes”, tells us most of what we need to know about propaganda. The key is not truthfulness, but rather speed and primacy.

Controlling the narrative means getting information out faster than your enemy, and making that information sensational – regardless of whether it is factual. One study showed that 86 percent of people do not fact-check news they see on social media.

Once something false goes viral, the people who see it are unlikely to see the fact-checked version. The audience for such videos aren’t astute fact-checkers. In Israel’s case, large numbers of the audience are English-speaking, Western viewers who won’t catch fake accents and have no reason to believe such information is false.

It’s important to remember, propaganda does not need to be sophisticated to be effective – just fast and sensationalist. Social media is perfect for this.

Hate-filled, Mein Kampf-reading children

Beyond blaming Hamas, a more sinister stage in the legitimisation of Israel’s killing of children is emerging – the attempt to smear Palestinian children as recipients of evil, anti-Semitic Hamas propaganda. That Palestinian children are only trained to become ‘terrorists’.

On November 5, Israel’s official Arabic account tweeted a cartoon showing that Israel brings its babies up with ‘love’, while Hamas fills babies in Gaza with ‘hate’.

Then, on Monday, the official Foreign Ministry-run Israel account claimed on X  that the Israeli military had found a copy of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ in a child’s room in Gaza. Pristine, with perfect notes and highlights, the ‘finding’ of the book was an attempt to bolster the narrative that Palestinian children are being filled with hate, are beyond redemption and are thus valid targets for killing.

Mein Kampf represents the epitome of anti-Semitism. It is Hitler’s autobiography. The significance of this will not be lost on many in the West, often the intended audiences for Israeli propaganda. The use of Mein Kampf, a copy of which was brandished theatrically by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, demonstrates that Israel is trying to portray older Palestinian children as brainwashed anti-Semites – it’s a simple tool to push that narrative.

Bunker under a children’s hospital

On Monday night, Israel doubled down on its attempts to legitimise its attacks on children. The Israeli military posted a video of its spokesperson Daniel Hagari walking around an alleged Hamas bunker beneath the Rantisi Children’s Hospital in Gaza. In one of the scenes, Hagari is kneeling by guns, grenades and other weapons, in the background, a painting of a tree seemingly created by children.

In another video, also purportedly from the Rantisi hospital basement, Hagari draws attention to a chair and the remnants of a rope that he claims were used to tie hostages. Then, he points to a baby bottle lying above a World Health Organization-marked electrical junction box.

The juxtaposition of childlike innocence in the form of the painting or the bottle with guns serves to legitimise Israel’s narrative of Hamas as inhuman ‘terrorists’ who use children and hospitals as human shields or captives. That in turn is used to justify Israel’s strikes on civilian targets – even if the lives of children are at risk, and even if a UN organisation is involved.

However, the video is clearly a propaganda stunt. Hagari points at a handwritten table written in Arabic pinned to the wall. Hagari then says the list names Hamas fighters. “This is a guardian list where every terrorist writes his name, and every terrorist has his own shift guarding the people that were here”.

The only problem is the list said no such thing. It was a list of the days of the week.

Why is Israel doing this?

Over the weekend, Israel offered al-Shifa Hospital a meagre amount of fuel, after enforcing a total blockade on the Gaza Strip since October 7 that has crippled medical facilities.

The hospital’s director, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, said of the attempt to supply some fuel, that “Israel wants to show the world that it is not killing babies”.

But now that Israel can no longer deny that it is killing Palestinian babies, it is trying to legitimise their murder. In his work on ‘image restoration theory’, William Benoit calls this ‘reducing offensiveness’. Put simply, you blame the victim, or make the victim seem deserving of their suffering.

As the death toll rises, so do the outlandish attempts to shift blame on innocent victims.

But no amount of manufactured videos or planted “evidence” can obscure the truth. Children are dying by the hundreds in Gaza, their blood spilled by Israel’s bombs, bullets and siege.

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

Israel knows it’s losing global support over its slaughter of children. Enter social media disinformation.

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Israeli troops again entered the al-Shifa Hospital en masse on Thursday, for the second time in as many days.

Their searches so far appear to have failed to uncover the alleged Hamas underground command centre that the Israeli side adamantly insists lies below the medical facilities.

Hamas, the hospital staff and several international organisations that had access to the hospital all assert that there are no military installations or soldiers at al-Shifa. They have said it only houses exhausted doctors and overworked nurses tending to the swelling numbers of patients in ever more difficult conditions, exacerbated by hundreds of terrified Palestinians who escaped from the destruction of their homes to the relative safety of the compound.

One of Israel’s main claims, obviously intended to justify the attacks against Gaza hospital compounds, was that Hamas had nullified the protected status of medical facilities, using them for military purposes, thus giving Israel the right to attack and enter hospitals, all while blaming the Palestinian armed group.

The Israeli army went to great lengths to “prove” their allegations but the results so far don’t back those up. Earlier this week reporters from a US TV station embedded with the invading forces were taken to al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital by none other than its chief spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari. The news team was shown a few Kalashnikovs and a motorcycle, of all things. Hagari bent over backwards trying to convince the media and the world that those were proof of his side’s allegations.

His claims were mirrored at al-Shifa by his subordinate, Lt Col Jonathan Conricus, who presented as “evidence of terrorist activities” half a dozen AK assault rifles with magazines removed, a laptop and, in a Monty Pythonesque moment, two cans of WD40 anti-rust spray.

Anyone who spent time in the Middle East or in any war knows that the venerable Kalashnikovs are present virtually everywhere. It is normal, and legal, for hospitals to have armed guards to protect them from criminals, looters and anyone wanting to misuse them.

But apart from the ignorance of these claims and the huge discrepancy between demonstrating a few guns and claiming a main command centre from where Hamas conducted its operations, the location where those guns were allegedly found is curious: the gloating Conricus was adamant that they were hidden in the MRI room.

Anyone who has been examined by an MRI machine knows that they have had to remove every metallic object.

I asked a radiology specialist whether it would be possible to hide guns in that room. The response: “The moment the machine was turned on, it would pull the guns and attach them to itself.” The MRI machine cannot function with rifles on it. Asking someone to believe that any hospital in Gaza would relinquish one of its main diagnostic machines to hide a grab bag with a few guns is simply absurd.

The Israeli army has been successful in taking the ground in Gaza, at least on the fringes of the city proper with a few incursions deeper into the urban areas, like the advance to al-Shifa, with fairly low numbers of casualties and limited material losses.

But it has failed to uncover – and show – any underground command centres or major tunnels. It was seen and filmed going down a few shafts, unopposed, but it did not appear to have gone underground in earnest.

Failing to produce the underground command centre, late on Thursday, the Israeli army showed a hole in the ground claiming it to be the entrance of a Hamas military tunnel. Until the media is allowed to enter and check for itself, it will have to balance that claim against the counter-suggestion that it is an access point for an underground electrical cable.

I have no doubt that there are Hamas underground bunkers, communications nodes, power stations, storage facilities and – command centres.

If you take your cause underground, as Hamas obviously has, dedicating substantial resources and huge efforts to building the network, then you do construct an integrated network. Anything short of building several command facilities deep underground would be amateurish and outright foolish.

Every expert must be certain that such a “beating heart of Hamas”, as the Israeli army called it, is indeed ticking somewhere under Gaza. But apparently, maybe even certainly, not under al-Shifa Hospital.

As the aerial bombardment continues, many observers have failed to notice that apart from the raids on the hospitals, there has been very little movement on the ground for almost a week now. Big Israeli columns are dug in awaiting orders, but nothing indicates when they might advance further, nor in what direction and by what means.

For its part, Hamas has also been very quiet. It had put up some resistance to the initial Israeli advance, but kept it limited to opportunistic attacks that were intended more to probe the enemy and show the flag than to really stop the army before it got to the city. Its Qassam Brigades seem set to remain low-key, knowing that sooner or later the Israeli army will have to move under the ground to find and destroy the tunnels and command centres. They cannot win by remaining on the ground.

So, what happens next?

If the fighting is to continue, Israel will have to move first. Hamas can wait longer than the Israeli army. The Palestinians can let the Israelis simmer in their own stew, knowing that the displeasure at the failure to produce tangible results will further strengthen the voices of protest and opposition to the continuation of war.

There are signs that the army is aware of the need to show some success to the domestic public in Israel and is resorting to classic public relations stunts.

On Wednesday evening the 35th Paratroopers Brigade awarded the maroon berets to new recruits inside Gaza territory. There is hardly any military justification in choosing to hold the ceremony amid destroyed and depopulated buildings.

But someone in the Israeli army obviously hopes that the sentiment aroused by the symbolic raising of Israeli flags on occupied Palestinian territory – and several more flags were raised among the Gaza rubble on Thursday – might buy them some time before the public starts asking the unpopular question: “Are we beating Hamas?”

Israel has yet to offer evidence that Hamas is using a network of tunnels below the hospital as a command centre.

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Demonstrators the world over have rallied in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, condemning the high rate of civilian casualties in Israeli attacks and calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Protests were held on Thursday across Spain and in Mexico City, Rotterdam, New York, Rabat and elsewhere.

People also showed solidarity with the Palestinian people and called for a ceasefire during various 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifiers across Asia.

Students across Spain held a second strike following similar action last month. University and high school students gathered in 38 cities, including Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Malaga, Bilbao, Zaragoza and Madrid.

Calls for a ceasefire to protect civilians in Gaza have grown more than a month into the war, which started after Palestinian group Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7.

Israel responded to Hamas’s attack with air strikes and a ground invasion of northern Gaza, vowing to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities.

At least 11,500 Palestinians have been killed, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed to be buried under rubble.

Internet and telephone services collapsed across the Gaza Strip on Thursday over a lack of fuel, triggering a blackout of communications that could be long term.

Israel has signalled its offensive against Hamas could next target the south, where most of the enclave’s two-million-strong population has taken refuge.

Protesters show solidarity with Palestine and demand an end to the war.

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Medan, Indonesia – Indonesia is facing a renewed refugee crisis after the arrival of three boats in as many days with nearly 600 Rohingya people on board.

Two of the boats, the first with 146 passengers and the second with 194, were able to land on beaches in Pidie on Aceh’s east coast on Tuesday and Wednesday, with refugees including women and children pictured collapsed on the sand after reportedly spending a month at sea.

On Thursday, a third boat carrying some 249 people was met with resistance from locals in Bireuen who refused to allow it to land and pushed the vessel back out to sea.

When the boat tried to land a second time – a little further south at Muara Batu – and refugees staggered onto the beach, they were lined up and escorted back, according to witnesses on the ground. Fishermen at the beach handed some of the refugees packets of food and bottles of water, but the situation continued to escalate late into the evening.

In video footage sent to Al Jazeera by aid workers on the beach, hundreds of refugees then jumped off the boat and swam ashore, staging a sit-in on the sand.

Late in the evening, under the cover of darkness, more footage showed emaciated people, some who could barely walk, being dragged into the sea by residents and forcibly returned to their boat. Refugees on the beach, including children, prayed and cried as they begged to be allowed to remain in Aceh, which lies on the tip of Sumatra island and is Indonesia’s most western province.

The situation appeared more volatile than in previous years, with refugees and residents shouting at each other, and refugees clinging to each other in an effort to avoid being marched into the water.

The people of Aceh have previously welcomed refugees, who are taken to a temporary camp before they are usually moved to other parts of Indonesia, but tensions have been escalating in recent years as more and more Rohingya have arrived.

Azharul Husna, the coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS) in Aceh, said that the area had seen about 30 boat arrivals between 2009 and 2023, but the frequency had increased since the February 2021 military coup in Myanmar.

“Previously, we would see one arrival a year, or two arrivals a year, but now we are seeing four or five boats arriving annually,” she said.

The Rohingya were given some food and water but told they had to get back on their boat [Amanda Jufrian / AFP]

Arrivals typically peak from November to February, Husna said, as many refugees try to flee during the monsoon season when winds pick up and carry boats more quickly across the Andaman Sea from Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands have been living in squalid camps since a 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar.

However, the monsoon season also brings heavy rain and storm swells, making sea crossings perilous, especially for people travelling in barely seaworthy boats.

It is rare to see so many arrivals in such a short space of time at the start of what is known as the sailing season, and refugee experts predict more boats could arrive in the coming months, given the difficult conditions in Bangladesh and the worsening crisis in Myanmar.

In a statement sent to Al Jazeera, KontraS Aceh said that one of the issues was that the government had no comprehensive plan to deal with the refugees, despite a 2016 presidential decree that states that the government will collaborate with institutions such as the United Nations and other international organisations to handle arrivals.

Article 9 of the Indonesian presidential decree explicitly states that refugees who are found in an emergency situation at sea should be given emergency aid and allowed to land on Indonesian soil if they are in danger.

Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention or the ensuing 1967 Protocol.

“When the government is silent and lets this problem drag on, this kind of rejection happens and it is very troubling,” KontraS Aceh’s Husna said.

“When the government just shuts its eyes to what is happening, especially allowing refugees to be returned to the ocean, it clearly demonstrates a lack of empathy and the country’s commitment to upholding human rights is questioned.”

KontraS Aceh said it urged the government to help the refugees and immediately ratify the 1951 Refugee Convention.

While other countries in the region have pushed refugees back out to sea Acehnese have generally been more welcoming [Amanda Jufrian/AFP]

Meanwhile, Lilianne Fan, the co-founder of the humanitarian organisation, Geutanyoe Foundation, told Al Jazeera that it was “sad to see the refusal for disembarkation in Aceh and the harsh treatment of Rohingya refugees by locals who have a tradition of welcoming anyone in need of help”.

According to the principle of non-refoulement, countries are forbidden from returning refugees or asylum seekers to a country where they would be in danger of persecution, although Fan told Al Jazeera that this would not apply in this case, as the refugees were not being forced to return to Myanmar.

She added that the pushback from locals in recent years was perhaps understandable, because some people had been prosecuted and imprisoned after being accused of human trafficking after helping refugees on to dry land.

“It is not very surprising given that there has been very little support for Acehnese communities and local governments for a proper refugee shelter after many years of taking refugees in with open arms,” she said. “There has also been a feeling that they have been punished for helping, as many have been accused of abetting smuggling networks.”

In a statement on Thursday, Indonesia’s foreign ministry said that it had no obligation or capacity to accommodate refugees or provide a permanent solution for their resettlement.

“Temporary shelters that have been provided all this time [by Indonesia] were for humanitarian reasons,” Lalu Muhamad Iqbal, a ministry spokesperson, said. “Ironically, many countries that are signatories to the refugee convention have closed their doors and used a push-back approach to refugees.”

Thailand and Malaysia, a popular destination for the Rohingya, have previously pushed back boats of refugees, but neither country is a signatory to the UN refugee convention.

Arrivals from the first two boats were allowed to land and taken to temporary shelters [Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP]

In Europe, however, where many countries are signatories, governments are trying to prevent people from crossing the Mediterranean or the English Channel in small boats, while Australia has long maintained a policy of refusing those who arrive by boat the chance to settle in the country.

“In Indonesia’s experience in handling refugees, we have found that Indonesia’s kindness in providing temporary shelter has been exploited by human trafficking networks,” the spokesman added.

Aid workers on the ground in Aceh told Al Jazeera that they were still trying to confirm the location and status of the third boat.

Tensions have been rising in the province of Aceh after the arrival of three boats in just three days.

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The head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency has warned of a “deliberate attempt to strangle” its operations in the Gaza Strip and said it risks shutting down all its humanitarian work because of a lack of fuel.

Israel has refused to allow fuel shipments to the enclave it has besieged, arguing they would be used by the Palestinian group Hamas for military purposes.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) supports more than 800,000 displaced people in Gaza. It was at risk of having to suspend its operations entirely, according to its commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini.

“I do believe there is a deliberate attempt to strangle our operation and paralyse the UNRWA operation,” Lazzarini said on Thursday at a news conference in Geneva.

“For weeks on end, we have pleaded, warning about the impact of the lack of fuel,” he said, adding that in the past few weeks, the agency was able to tap into the remaining fuel reserves in the territory.

“But now we are running out,” he said. “We run the risk of having to suspend the entire humanitarian operation.”

Israel cut off fuel shipments into the Gaza Strip as part of a “complete siege” on the area after Hamas fighters from Gaza launched an attack on southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities.

Since the attack, Israel has bombarded the Palestinian territory, launched a ground offensive and severely restricted supplies of water, food and electricity. More than 11,600 people have been killed in the Israeli assault, according to Palestinian authorities, including more than 4,700 children.

The first fuel truck to enter Gaza since Israel imposed the siege arrived on Wednesday.

UNRWA said it had received 23,000 litres (6,075 gallons) of fuel. However, Israeli authorities have restricted its use exclusively for the transport of aid delivered from Egypt.

Lazzarini said 160,000 litres (42,000 gallons) a day are needed just to run basic humanitarian operations.

“I do believe that it is outrageous that humanitarian agencies have been reduced to begging for fuel,” he told reporters.

Lazzarini said humanitarian conditions have now severely deteriorated as 70 percent of the population in southern Gaza has no access to clean water, and raw sewage has started flowing onto the streets.

Fuel is needed to operate water desalination plants, the sewage pumping system and bakeries.

(Al Jazeera)

Earlier on Thursday, Palestinian telecommunications companies Jawwal and Paltel announced their network went out of service in Gaza as “all energy sources sustaining it” were depleted, plunging the enclave into a near-total communications blackout and seriously hampering the work of first responders and emergency services.

“It can provoke or accelerate [the breakdown of the] last remaining civil order we have in the Gaza Strip,” Lazzarini said of the blackout, calling the scale of loss and destruction in Gaza “just staggering”.

UNRWA said the telecommunications outage “makes it impossible to manage or coordinate humanitarian aid convoys”. It said its cross-border aid operation at the Rafah crossing with Egypt – the only one open for aid deliveries – would be suspended on Friday.

Lazzarini said fuel was being used as a “weapon of war”.

“Today what we are saying is if the fuel does not come in, people will start to die because of the lack of fuel,” he said.

UNRWA chief warns agency may have to suspend all of its humanitarian activities due to lack of fuel.

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The post UN Palestinian agency says ‘deliberate attempt to strangle’ Gaza operations appeared first on Energy News Beat.