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Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv and Moscow set to hold more face-to-face talks as US hails ‘big step’ forward

Ukraine and Russia have agreed to hold a second round of US-brokered direct peace talks next weekend after a two-day meeting in Abu Dhabi, despite Ukrainian complaints that negotiations were undermined by a barrage of deadly strikes. The trilateral talks in the UAE would resume on 1 February, a US official said on Saturday, adding: “I think getting everyone together was a big step. I think it’s a confirmation of the fact that, number one, a lot of progress has been made to date in really defining the details needed to get to a conclusion.” The talks were the first known direct contact between Ukrainian and Russian officials on a plan being pushed by Donald Trump to end the nearly four-year war. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “a lot was discussed, and it is important that the conversations were constructive”. Russia was criticised for launching drone and missile attacks on Kyiv and Kharkiv – Ukraine’s two largest cities – during peace talks in Abu Dhabi, reported Peter Beaumont. “Peace efforts? Trilateral meeting in the UAE? Diplomacy? For Ukrainians, this was another night of Russian terror,” the country’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said after the latest Russian assault on critical infrastructure. With Kyiv and other cities in the midst of widespread outages of heat, water and power after Russian attacks on energy infrastructure, officials in the capital said one person had been killed and at least 15 injured in the strikes that continued until morning. US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff spoke to Russian president Vladimir Putin for four hours in Moscow ahead of the trilateral peace talks, a US official said. They “met for just about four hours, and again, [a] very, very productive discussion, speaking about the final issues that are open”, the official told a media call on Saturday. The governor of the Russian border region of Belgorod said Ukrainian forces had launched a “massive” attack on the region’s main town, damaging energy infrastructure but causing no casualties. Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram on Saturday that a building in the town – also called Belgorod – had been set on fire and an emergency crew was tackling the blaze. A downed drone had also damaged homes in a nearby village, he said. The Russian defence ministry said on Saturday its forces had completed the takeover of the village of Starytsya in Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region. The village is near the town of Vovchansk, close to the Ukraine-Russia border, where Russian forces launched an incursion in May 2024, and Moscow’s troops have been trying to extend their gains despite Ukrainian resistance. The Ukrainian military’s general staff said late on Saturday that Russian forces had launched six attacks on an area including Starytsya. It made no acknowledgement that the village had changed hands. Ukraine’s DeepState military blog made no mention of the village in a report on Friday but said Russian forces “are continuing their pressure in the Vovchansk area”. The battlefield reports could not be independently verified. An intercepted oil tanker suspected of belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet headed on Saturday to a port in southern France for police to inspect, French authorities said. The tanker, the Grinch, was intercepted on Thursday morning in international waters between Spain and North Africa, French president Emmanuel Macron said on X. French prosecutors suspect it of belonging to the network of vessels Moscow is accused of using to dodge sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine. The tanker would be anchored at Fos-sur-Mere near Marseille and kept at the disposal of the Marseille public prosecutor as part of a preliminary investigation for failure to fly a flag, the regional maritime prefecture said.

Myanmar election enters final stage amid airstrikes and exclusions

Polling stations open on Sunday for the final stage of Myanmar’s three-phase election, a one-sided vote that has been widely derided as a sham, with politicians jailed, the main opposition party banned and conflict raging across parts of the country. Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing has defended the vote as “free and fair”, presenting it as a return to democracy and stability. The election is happening almost five years after the military seized power in a coup, ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and triggering a fierce conflict. The 80-year-old has been detained since she was ousted, and her party has been banned. The UN, human rights experts and some western governments have rejected the election, saying it lacks legitimacy. Tom Andrews, the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, said the vote had been orchestrated by the military to ensure a landslide by its political proxy, the Union Solidarity and Development party (USDP). “The junta is banking on the world’s fatigue, hoping that the international community will accept military rule dressed up in civilian clothing,” he said. “Governments must not allow that to happen.” Just days ahead of voting, 21 people were killed and 28 injured in a military airstrike on a village where displaced people from the northern township of Bhamo were sheltering in Kachin state, Associated Press reported. Voting is due to take place in Bhamo on Sunday. In total, 57 parties are competing, though only six are doing so nationwide, and analysts say none of the parties on the ballot paper represent anti-military sentiment. The USDP is running by far the largest number of candidates. According to election monitoring group Anfrel, 57% of the parties that ran in the 2020 general election no longer exist, even though they received more than 70% of votes and 90% of seats. Malaysia has said the regional bloc, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), will not endorse the poll or send observers. However, it is unclear if individual member states will increase their engagement with Myanmar’s leadership after the vote. China, a key military ally, is supporting the election, which it considers a path to stability. The election has taken place in three stages, with the first phase held in December and a second phase held earlier in January. Turnout appeared lower than usual during earlier stages of voting in Yangon and the pre-election period lacked the large rallies and excitement of previous votes. Many voters in Yangon did not want to be interviewed by media, saying it was not safe to discuss politics openly. A new election protection law was enacted in July, under which any criticism of the vote can lead to a minimum sentence of three years in prison, and even the death penalty. Voting has been happening in populous cities such as Mandalay and Yangon but analysts estimate about a third of the country’s territory has been excluded from the process because it is under the control of anti-junta groups or gripped by fighting. The military coup in 2021 triggered a fierce conflict that continues to rage across the country, with a diverse patchwork of opposition groups fighting against junta rule. Acled, which tracks conflicts globally, has described it as “the most fragmented conflict in the world”, and places the country second on its conflict index, which measures conflicts based on their deadliness, danger to civilians, geographic diffusion and the number of armed groups involved. Su Mon, Acled’s senior analyst for Asia Pacific, said that while the military has sought to portray elections as a managed exit from political crisis and conflict, its counter-offensives have only increased in the run-up to the vote. “In an effort to regain territory, the military continued its repeated airstrikes on civilian areas throughout 2025, leading to the highest number of airstrikes and associated fatalities in any single year since 2021,” she said. Estimates of the death toll from Myanmar’s post-coup conflict vary, though Acled has recorded 92,000 fatalities since 2021. Su Mon said: “As the final round of elections unfolds, there are several foregone conclusions: the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development party will win the election in a landslide, and conflict will only continue to escalate.”

Russia launches ‘brutal’ attack on Ukraine as peace talks continue

Russia launched a major drone and missile attack targeting Ukraine’s two largest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv, early on Saturday, as US, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met in the United Arab Emirates for a second day of tripartite peace talks. “Peace efforts? Trilateral meeting in the UAE? Diplomacy? For Ukrainians, this was another night of Russian terror,” the country’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said after the latest Russian assault on critical infrastructure. “Cynically, Putin ordered a brutal massive missile strike against Ukraine right while delegations are meeting in Abu Dhabi to advance the America-led peace process. His missiles hit not only our people, but also the negotiation table. “This barbaric attack once again proves that Putin’s place is not at (US President Donald Trump’s) Board of Peace, but in the dock of the special tribunal,” Sybiha wrote on X. Despite the the latest wave of attacks, the talks in Abu Dhabi resumed on Saturday morning. When talks broke up later in the day, both sides suggested they were open to more dialogue, with Zelenskyy describing the talks as constructive, suggesting another round of talks could be held perhaps as early as next week. With Kyiv and other cities in the midst of widespread outages of heat, water and power after Russian attacks on energy infrastructure, officials in the capital said one person had been killed and at least 15 injured in strikes that continued until morning. Engineers in Kyiv face the huge task of reconnecting apartment buildings to heating. They said 6,000 of the city’s apartment blocks were without heat on Saturday morning, 4,000 more than in previous days, including many that had recently been reconnected. Initial estimates suggested that at least 1.2 million consumers were without power across the country, including 800,000 in Kyiv. The Ukrainian air force said Russia had used 396 drones and missiles in the attacks, and officials warned that up to 80% of the country faced emergency power cuts in the immediate aftermath of the attack. The Russian strikes, which took place in the middle of the first tripartite talks of the war, come in tandem with Moscow continuing to insist it must control the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, underlining doubts that it is serious about peace. Speaking in the aftermath of the strikes, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said agreements on air defence made with Trump in Davos this week must be “fully implemented”. Zelenskyy and Trump met at the World Economic Forum on Thursday and discussed air defence support for Ukraine, but neither leader specified afterwards what had been agreed. Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said: “Currently, one person is known to have died and four to have been wounded,” he wrote in a social media post, adding that three of the injured had been admitted to hospital. Fires broke out in several buildings hit by drone debris while heat and water services in parts of the capital were interrupted, he said. The strikes come amid a worsening mid-winter energy crisis focused on the capital, where many have been left without heat and power for a prolonged period. Klitschko said on Friday about 1,940 residential buildings in Kyiv were without heating after renewed attacks, adding “and this may not be the most difficult moment yet”. His office said about 600,000 residents had fled the city temporarily during the January power crisis that has left entire blocks across the city in darkness. The head of Kyiv’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, reported strikes in at least four districts. A medical facility was among the buildings damaged. Kyiv has already endured two mass overnight attacks this year that have knocked out power and heating to hundreds of residential buildings. Emergency workers were still engaged in restoring services to residents, with overnight temperatures dropping to -13C (9F). In Kharkiv, a frequent target 30km (18 miles) from the Russian border, the city’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said 25 drones had hit several districts over two and a half hours, with at least 14 people injured. Writing on Telegram, Terekhov said the drones had struck a dormitory for displaced people, a hospital and a maternity hospital. The first known direct contact between Ukrainian and Russian officials on the US-backed proposal also began on Friday. Ukraine’s chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov, said the discussions had focused “on the parameters for ending Russia’s war and the further logic of the negotiation process”. An initial US draft drew heavy criticism in Kyiv and western Europe for sticking too closely to Moscow’s line, while later iterations prompted pushback from Russia for floating the idea of European peacekeepers. Both sides say the fate of territory in the eastern Donbas region is one of the main sticking points in the search for a settlement to a war that has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions and decimated parts of Ukraine.

‘A lot of fear’: the families bearing brunt of Sweden’s immigration crackdown

“Sweden did this for us,” said Sofiye*, making a supportive scooping up gesture with her hands. “And then, bam.” She dropped them to the ground. Sofiye, who has three children, arrived in Sweden from Uzbekistan as an asylum seeker in 2008, and for much of that time she was able to build a life in the Scandinavian country. The family lived in a flat in a Stockholm suburb and Sofiye worked for the municipality in the home help department. She learned Swedish and her children went through the Swedish school system. Her youngest son was born in Sweden and her 18-year-old son, Hamza, who is studying in college to be a technician, doesn’t know life anywhere else. Three years ago, however, after unsuccessfully seeking refugee status four times, Sofiye lost her right to work and is now living under the threat of a deportation order. For the last two years she and two of her children have been living in limbo in an asylum return centre in an industrial area near Stockholm’s Arlanda airport The situation is causing her so much anxiety that for the last two months she has lost her appetite and been vomiting with stress. As she spoke to the Guardian she held a plastic bag into which she regularly retched. “I cannot sleep. I sleep just one or two hours. I throw up. I am so stressed. I don’t want to speak to the children because here,” she said, pointing to her head, “is occupied. I don’t know physically, mentally what I should do.” The centre, one of a growing number of reception and return facilities aimed at housing an estimated 11,000 asylum seekers in the coming years, is part of Sweden’s increasingly hostile asylum and immigration policy. The centre-right government, which depends on the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats, says it wants to “redirect focus” away from receiving asylum seekers to instead becoming a “country for labour immigration”. The government recently celebrated data showing that Sweden had its lowest level of asylum seekers since 1985, claiming that lower numbers “create better conditions for successful integration”. Thousands of people like Sofiye – who have lived in Sweden for years and are well-established in society and the job market, with children who were born in Sweden – face deportation. Among the recent policy changes include asylum seekers being placed in reception centres instead of being provided with individual accommodation who are then offered “repatriation grants” to leave the country voluntarily. The government has also introduced stricter conditions for gaining citizenship and tightened family reunification rules. Applicants must prove their identity through an in-person visit and provide more documentation than was previously the case. Committing a crime can now result in losing the right to live in Sweden for anyone who is not a Swedish citizen. In 2025 a total of 440 people were subjected to criminal deportations, according to government figures. “If you do not want to become part of this community, you should not come to Sweden,” the government has stated. The hostile environment is a far cry from Sweden’s immigration policies of the past. In 2014, at the start of a period when the number of people arriving to Europe from countries in the Middle East rose sharply, the then prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, made a speech urging Swedes to “open your hearts” to newcomers. The direction of travel is unlikely to change even with a general election next year, say observers, as the main political parties, including the opposition centre-left Social Democrats, have embraced similar hardline policies. “Many people that we meet say to us: ‘We came to Sweden believing this was a country that respected human rights: where are they?’” said Nannie Sköld, a counsellor at Stockholm Stadsmission’s Who Am I Tomorrow? project, which provides legal and psychosocial support to individuals and families with deportation orders. The latest government figures show that 8,312 people returned to their home countries in 2025, the highest number in a decade, while the number of asylum seekers decreased by 30% on the previous year. “We meet people who came to Sweden for work or to study, and people who don’t have grounds for asylum,” said Sköld. “We also meet people who are fleeing from the Taliban or they are LGBTQ from Uganda, and who then see that their request for international protection is denied.” One of the changes that was having a particularly damaging impact is the decision to abolish “track changes”, she said. The new rule, which came into force at short notice last April, prevents people who have had their asylum applications rejected from applying for a residence permit, even if they have worked in Sweden. It also prevents those who had already obtained a work permit from extending it. The decision is estimated to have put 4,700 people who were established in Swedish society at risk of deportation. Sköld added: “People [who] are well integrated and established in Sweden … are asking: ‘What else could I have done? … How could I possibly prove my worth if even doing everything that is supposedly correct isn’t enough and will never be enough?’” Life in the return centres is tough. The facility near Arlanda, which also houses new arrivals, is an “open” centre, meaning people can come and go. But getting around from there is logistically difficult and many people are getting by on a few kronor a day. It was a difficult place to be in for children, said Sköld, who said her team heard from LGBTQ asylum seekers that the shared spaces could feel unsafe. Many there suffer from poor mental health as a result of their precarious circumstances. “There is a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety,” she said. “People who have received a deportation order fear being deported any day.” Thamer and Faten are a married couple who came to Sweden from Iraq on work visas with their two sons, who are now 20 and 16. Their third son was born in Sweden in 2021. But they now face deportation after their asylum applications were denied and work visas expired. Thamer said that a criminal organisation has threatened to harm their children if they return to Iraq. “There are people who have lived in Sweden for 30 years but they don’t talk Swedish like me,” said Thamer, 52. “I write as well, not just speak. What do they want more than that? I am not a criminal.” Thamer said he was offered a job as a car mechanic but was unable to take it because his work visa had expired. “Sweden wants men and I have three. Can they not make use of them?” The Swedish migration agency said it was unable to comment on individual cases. It was “working to ensure that the [reception and return centres] are safe for everyone staying there, with particular consideration given to children and other vulnerable groups, such as LGBTQ persons”, a spokesperson said. *Those interviewed requested their surnames not be published as their cases are in process

‘Massive’ Russian strikes on Ukraine hit negotiation table as well as people, Kyiv says – as it happened

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Syrian and Kurdish forces agree to extend ceasefire as threat of war looms

The Syrian government and Kurdish forces agreed to extend a ceasefire on Saturday, according to Syrian diplomatic sources, temporarily staving off a looming war between the two sides in the north-east of the country. Sources told Agence France-Presse the ceasefire would be extended for “a period of up to one month at most”, citing the need to facilitate the transfer of suspected members of Islamic State from Syria to Iraq. The two sides had announced a temporary ceasefire earlier in the week, halting an offensive by the Syrian government which brought its army to the door of the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The announcement quelled concerns the offensive would restart on Saturday and gave more space for diplomacy, but did not solve the root cause of the conflict between the two sides. Fighting over three contested neighbourhoods in Aleppo in early January led to a sweeping government offensive in which the SDF lost the majority of its territory in the country in a matter of days. The ceasefire was meant to give time for the SDF to implement a 14-point plan with the Syrian government under which the Kurdish militia would disband and its soldiers integrate into the Syrian army. If the SDF did not implement the agreement, Damascus would resume its offensive and push toward the last strongholds of the SDF in Hasakeh, and the Kurdish-majority areas of Qamishli and Kobane. The two sides spent the ceasefire preparing for the eventuality of a full-scale war. SDF forces built up in Kurdish-majority areas while its leaders called for a general mobilisation among residents there, distributing weapons to those willing to take up arms. Syrian government soldiers and tanks streamed towards the frontline, hoping to bring the north-east under the control of Damascus. “Soon we will be in Hasakeh and then Qamishli, God willing,” a soldier said on Thursday while standing guard as logistics convoys moved towards the Hasakeh front. As soldiers waited on the battlefield, Syrian officials and regional powers were engaged in a bout of diplomacy to avoid resuming the war. The SDF leader, Mazloum Abdi, went to Iraqi Kurdistan for the second time, where he met the US envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, who has been mediating talks between the SDF and Damascus. Abdi also spoke on the phone to the Syrian foreign minister, Asaad al-Shaibani, which was followed by an agreement allowing the safe transfer of SDF fighters from a besieged prison in Syrian government-controlled territory. “Ideally, the transfer of Daesh [Islamic State] prisoners from Syria should take place. While this is happening, the existing non-conflict environment needs to be maintained,” the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said on Friday, referring to the US-facilitated transfer of more than 7,000 suspected IS members and fighters from Syria to Iraq. Disputes between the two sides remain even with the ceasefire extension. The 14-point plan would bring an end to the autonomous Syrian Kurdish project, and Kurdish leaders seemed to struggle to come to terms with their losses over the last two weeks, which has left them with little leverage. The SDF went from controlling nearly a third of the country, including its oil fields, breadbasket and key infrastructure, to just a few cities. The deal on the table would turn the Kurdish force, which not so long ago boasted of being 100,000 strong, into essentially a municipality overseeing a local police force running a few Kurdish cities in the north-east of the country. Abdi, long known as a pragmatic figure among the SDF, has signalled he would be willing to implement the deal. He is struggling, however, to gain consensus within the SDF. If he is unable to unify the SDF and implement the agreement with the government, then the alternative would be war. Damascus has made it clear it would no longer tolerate non-state armed groups and is determined to unify the country under its flag, either through negotiations or force. The US, which has backed the Kurdish force for the past decade, has made its support for Damascus clear, with Barrack saying the SDF’s role as the anti-IS force in Syria had now been filled by the Syrian government. The US military has already began transferring IS prisoners from Kurdish territories to prevent any escapes ahead of a renewed war with Damascus. Once IS prisoners are secured, there will be little strategic interests left for a US military presence in north-east Syria. Even if Damascus has the military advantage and regional backing, it is still hoping to prevent a war. Its offensive so far has led to relatively few casualties, as the SDF has opted to withdraw from Arab-majority areas such as Raqqa and Deir el-Zour rather than confront the Syrian government. Fighting in Kurdish-majority areas is likely to be more bloody. There is fear among Kurdish civilians of the Syrian government fighters, after government-backed massacres in Druze-majority Suweida province and in the Alawite-majority Syrian coast last year. Many residents in Kurdish-majority areas have armed themselves. Kurdish forces have dug in, having prepared for this fight for years, creating a vast subterranean tunnel network to facilitate guerrilla fighting against a better armed force. Damascus is aware that even if it wins the war, it could drive away the Kurds, push the SDF underground and create a insurgency similar to that of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey for years to come.

‘I wish I had the power to ease his suffering’: Gaza’s cancer patients trapped by war and blockade

When the Gaza war began, Ismail Abu Naji was just 18 months old, his small body covered in swollen, bleeding lesions. Months earlier, doctors had diagnosed him with a rare blood cancer, one that, if untreated, is often a death sentence. In the weeks before the war, Ismail’s family had arranged for him to be transferred to Al-Makassed hospital in Jerusalem, a charitable institution for Palestinians, for specialised care. But the blockade Israel imposed on Gaza after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack that triggered the conflict meant Ismail could not leave the territory. He is now one of thousands of cancer patients in Gaza who the UN says require medical evacuation for urgent treatment. The Guardian has spoken to dozens of Palestinian cancer patients trapped in Gaza, where doctors say cancer-related deaths have tripled since the war began, as Israel continues to hinder patients from leaving and restricts the entry of chemotherapy drugs. While some patients have left, they are far outnumbered by those deemed in medical need who have not. The Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) says evacuation routes to third countries have become “near impossible” to operate, especially since the closure of the Rafah crossing in May 2024, and that Israel is failing to meet its obligation to provide medical care to populations under its control. The crossing between Gaza and Egypt is due to open for traffic next week, the Palestinian technocratic committee leader, Ali Shaath, said on Thursday, although Israel did not immediately confirm that would be the case. With even basic painkillers having become unattainable under the blockade, there is little else Ismail’s mother, Aya Mohammed Abu Hani, who is living in a tent in a school, can do but try to ease his pain, gently dabbing the wounds with a cloth soaked in salt water. “Ismail’s life before the war was already difficult, and it has become even harsher since. He cannot sleep due to severe pain, high fever and cries constantly,” she told the Guardian. “We were displaced many times from one place to another, which worsened his condition. I could not even provide him with enough clothing. Before the war, hospitals were able to offer antibiotics and painkillers. But now, they can’t even provide a single painkiller.” Israeli airstrikes on hospitals have reduced the Palestinian healthcare system to ruins. In March 2025, Israel destroyed Gaza’s only specialised cancer treatment hospital, the territory’s sole provider of oncology care. Since then, doctors have been pushed into makeshift clinics, operating with almost no resources, including the tools needed for diagnosis. “As for cancer diagnosis, we have reached an extremely critical stage,” said Dr Saleh Sheikh al-Eid, a specialist physician in haematology and oncology at Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis. “Basic diagnostic tools, such as biopsy needles, are unavailable. Patients come to us with obvious cancerous masses, yet we lack the means to take samples and examine them. As a result, we have lost many patients without even being able to properly diagnose or treat them.” Despite recent ceasefire agreements intended to facilitate the entry of aid, essential medical supplies remain restricted. “We receive repeated warnings from the pharmacy that essential chemotherapy drugs are close to running out,” al-Eid says. “The resources available to us do not exceed 5% of those available in hospitals in the West Bank, and in many cases they are almost nonexistent.” Living with a cancer diagnosis and the uncertainty of survival is, in itself, a traumatic experience. Going through such an ordeal while trapped in a war zone, cut off from essential medication and under constant Israeli bombardment, can be unbearable. While airstrikes have slowed since the US-brokered ceasefire in October, they have not stopped. Israeli forces have killed at least 466 Palestinians in the last three months. All the while, friends and family members of cancer patients have died during the bombardments. The pain of losing her granddaughter, killed in an Israeli bombardment, accompanies Fathiya Abu Frieh, 65, every day. Abu Frieh, who has been living in a tent in the city of Deir al-Balah since the start of the war, was diagnosed with uterine cancer last year. “A short while ago, I lost consciousness because I had nothing to eat for breakfast,’’ she says. ‘‘The treatment I am currently receiving is nothing more than an anaesthetic injection – just enough to keep me alive.” Islam Al-Naour, a 40-year-old with testicular cancer, is living displaced in Gaza City. “Due to my weakened immune system, even minor illnesses had a severe impact on my health. “Life became difficult even for a healthy person, so imagine what it is like for a cancer patient like me, forced to carry water, set up tents, and secure them during harsh weather conditions.” Before the war, hundreds of Palestinian cancer patients had been authorised to receive medical care outside Gaza because of the territory’s inadequate facilities. Dozens of patients who had been in Jerusalem for chemotherapy were then left in a state of limbo, as Israeli authorities threatened to send them back to Gaza. In March 2024, the Guardian visited the Augusta Victoria hospital in Jerusalem where at least five children from Gaza were receiving cancer treatment. Today, all those children are dead. The World Health Organization says about 10,700 Palestinians have been evacuated to 30 countries for specialised care since October 2023, nearly a quarter of them cancer patients. But according to UN figures, there are more than 11,000 cancer patients in Gaza requiring treatment outside the territory. Aid agencies say Israel continues to obstruct their evacuation, in breach of obligations that Israel’s high court has previously recognised. According to health officials in Gaza, there are about 4,000 people with official referrals for treatment to third countries who are unable to cross the border. The WHO says 900 people, including children and cancer patients, have already died while waiting for evacuation. PHRI and partner organisations filed a petition in November to the Israeli high court of justice, demanding the immediate reinstatement of medical evacuations for critically ill patients from Gaza to hospitals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. “Since the closure of Rafah crossing in May 2024, evacuation routes to third countries have become nearly impossible to operate,” the NGO said. “Under the Israeli and international law, and according to the high court of justice, Israel is legally obligated to ensure access to medical care for populations under its effective control. Current restrictions on patient movement violate this duty to protect the health and prevent avoidable death, given its full control over the movement of patients out of Gaza. “This is not a political or security decision – it is a basic obligation to save human life.” Cogat, the Israeli agency charged with the administration of Gaza, denies restricting medical evacuations from Gaza. “Whenever a country submits a request to evacuate a patient, regardless of the patient’s underlying medical condition, the request is examined and approved subject to security screening,” it said, adding that “dozens and even hundreds of residents have been evacuated each week”. On 12 January, for the first time since the outbreak of the war, and thanks to a prolonged legal battle by the Israeli human rights organisation Gisha, Dr Nour El-Din Abu Ajwa, 48, a Palestinian cancer patient, was allowed to leave Gaza to receive critical medical treatment at a hospital in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank. The Guardian reached Abu Ajwa over the phone, who said he learned in the second month of the war that he had colon cancer, as well as liver and lung cancer. ‘‘Two years ago, I lost my son, who suffered from a spinal cord cancer,” he said. ‘‘I left my wife and children in Gaza. I don’t know if I am going to go back or not. I fought very hard through the Israeli court to get permission to receive treatment in Jerusalem or the West Bank. I was denied the permit five times, but at the end, the Israeli judge was fair to me and he insisted that I should be allowed to travel and to receive treatment in the West Bank. “I hope I will be the first of thousands of cancer patients in Gaza who will be allowed to travel and receive proper treatment. I hope I am the one who opened the door for many to be treated as a human being.” Until the last moment, the Israeli state sought to prevent Abu Ajwa’s evacuation, submitting a last-minute request to delay the implementation of the judge’s decision while he was already en route to the West Bank; a request the court rejected. “The attempt to delay implementation of the court’s judgment illustrates the state’s insistence on maintaining a sweeping and unlawful policy at the expense of the most vulnerable,’’ Gisha states. ‘‘This case,” Gisha adds, “constitutes, in practice, an initial and important crack in this cruel policy, which must be abolished immediately.” Inside one of the hundreds of tents at al-Shati Martyrs school, as cold weather and a storm rage outside, Ismail’s mother prepares another saline compress to treat Ismail’s lesions, while trying to distract him from the pain by handing him a notebook and coloured pencils. “As a mother, it is unbearable to see my young child suffer without being able to help,” she says. “I wish I had the power to ease his suffering,” she adds, “to give him the right to live without pain.”