Category: 2. World

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Israeli airstrikes killed at least 28 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including four children, hospital officials said Saturday.

The children and two women were among at least 13 people who were killed in Deir Al-Balah, in central Gaza, after Israeli airstrikes pounded the area starting late Friday, officials in Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Hospital said. Another four people were killed in strikes near a fuel station, and 15 others died in Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, according to Nasser Hospital.

The Israeli military said in a statement that over the past 48 hours, troops struck approximately 250 targets in the Gaza Strip, including militants, booby-trapped structures, weapons storage facilities, anti-tank missile launch posts, sniper posts, tunnels and additional Hamas infrastructure sites. The military did not immediately respond to The Associated Press’ request for comment on the civilian deaths.

Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people in their Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and abducted 251. They still hold 50 hostages, less than half of them believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.

Israel’s offensive has killed over 57,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry, which is under Gaza’s Hamas-run government, doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count. The UN and other international organizations see its figures as the most reliable statistics on war casualties.

US President Donald Trump has said that he is closing in on another ceasefire agreement that would see more hostages released and potentially wind down the war. But after two days of talks this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu there were no signs of a breakthrough.

A preliminary report depicted confusion in the cockpit shortly before an Air India jetliner crashed and killed 260 people last month, after the plane’s engine fuel cutoff switches flipped almost simultaneously and starved the engines of fuel.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner bound for London from the Indian city of Ahmedabad began to lose thrust and sink shortly after takeoff, according to the report on the world’s deadliest aviation accident in a decade released on Saturday by Indian accident investigators.

The report by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) about the June 12 crash raises fresh questions over the position of the critical engine fuel cutoff switches.

Almost immediately after the plane lifted off the ground, closed-circuit TV footage showed a backup energy source called a ram air turbine had deployed, indicating a loss of power from the engines.

In the flight’s final moments, one pilot was heard on the cockpit voice recorder asking the other why he cut off the fuel. “The other pilot responded that he did not do so,” the report said.

It did not identify which remarks were made by the flight’s captain and which by the first officer, nor which pilot transmitted “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” just before the crash.

The commanding pilot of the Air India plane was Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, who had a total flying experience of 15,638 hours and, according to the Indian government, was also an Air India instructor. His co-pilot was Clive Kunder, 32, who had 3,403 hours of total experience.

The fuel switches had almost simultaneously flipped from run to cutoff just after takeoff. The preliminary report did not say how the switches could have flipped to the cutoff position during the flight.

The crash is a challenge for Tata Group’s ambitious campaign to restore Air India’s reputation and revamp its fleet, after taking the carrier over from the government in 2022.

Air India acknowledged the report in a statement. The carrier said it was cooperating with Indian authorities but declined further comment.

Fuel switches

Experts have said a pilot would not be able to accidentally move the fuel switches.

“If they were moved because of a pilot, why?” asked US aviation safety expert Anthony Brickhouse.

The switches flipped a second apart, the report said, roughly the time it would take to shift one and then the other, according to US aviation expert John Nance. He added that a pilot would normally never turn the switches off in flight, especially as the plane is starting to climb.

Flipping to the cutoff almost immediately cuts the engines. It is most often used to turn engines off once a plane has arrived at its airport gate and in certain emergency situations, such as an engine fire. The report does not indicate there was any emergency requiring an engine cutoff.

At the crash site, both fuel switches were found in the run position and there had been indications of both engines relighting before the low-altitude crash, said the report, which was released around 1:30am IST today (1:00am PKT).

Asked about the report, the father of first officer Kunder told reporters, “I am not from the airline”, declining to comment further during a prayer meeting held in the memory of the airline’s crew on Saturday in Mumbai, where emotional scenes played out among grieving relatives.

The US National Transportation Safety Board thanked Indian officials for their cooperation in a statement and noted that there were no recommended actions in the report aimed at operators of Boeing 787 jets or the GE engines.

The US Federal Aviation Administration said its priority was to follow the facts where they lead, and it was committed to promptly addressing any risks identified throughout the process.

Boeing said it continued to support the investigation and its customer, Air India. GE Aerospace did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Crash probe

The AAIB, an office under India’s civil aviation ministry, is leading the probe into the crash, which killed all but one of the 242 people on board and 19 others on the ground.

Most air crashes are caused by multiple factors, with a preliminary report due 30 days after the accident, according to international rules, and a final report expected within a year.

The plane’s black boxes, combined cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorders, were recovered in the days following the crash and later downloaded in India.

The report said “all applicable airworthiness directives and alert service bulletins were complied [with] on the aircraft as well as engines.”

The airport closed-circuit TV recording from Ahmedabad had earlier shown the Air India plane rose to a height of 650 feet after it took off, but then suddenly lost altitude, crashing in a fireball into a nearby building.

The investigation report said as the Dreamliner lost altitude, it initially made contact with several trees and an incineration chimney, before hitting the building.

Air India has faced additional scrutiny on other fronts after the crash.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency said last week it plans to investigate its budget airline, Air India Express, after Reuters reported the carrier did not follow a directive to change engine parts of an Airbus A320 in a timely manner and falsified records to show compliance.

India is banking on a boom in aviation to support wider development goals, with New Delhi saying it wants India to be a job-creating global aviation hub along the lines of Dubai.

At least 60 Palestinians have been killed and 180 wounded in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since dawn, including 27 people reportedly seeking humanitarian aid, according to health officials.

In Gaza City, four people were killed and 10 injured when an Israeli air strike hit a residence on Jaffa Street in the Tuffah area, in the city’s east.

Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza said the death toll from an Israeli strike on tents sheltering displaced civilians in the al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Younis, has risen to 11. Al-Mawasi is designated by Israeli forces as a “humanitarian zone”.

In central Gaza, two people were killed and several wounded in an Israeli drone attack on a tent for displaced families south of Deir el-Balah, according to medical staff at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

Separately, Wafa news agency reported that a mother and her three children were killed in a strike on Jamal Abdel Nasser Street, near the Islamic University in western Gaza City.

UNRWA renews call for Israel to lift Gaza siege

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has renewed its call on Israel to lift its months-long siege on Gaza and allow full humanitarian access, warning of severe health risks for civilians.

In a statement posted on X, the agency said the ongoing blockade has left Gaza’s two million residents without basic necessities.

“No soap, no clean water. Children in Gaza can’t be bathed properly because of the ongoing siege,” UNRWA said. “This, coupled with overcrowded shelters and summer heat, can lead to dire health consequences. The siege must be lifted.”

Israel halted most humanitarian aid to Gaza in April after the collapse of a previous ceasefire agreement. Since then, it has restricted deliveries to a single route managed by the GHF (Gaza Humanitarian Foundation), which has been widely criticised by aid agencies.

Humanitarian experts have described the system as “inhumane” and said the aid mechanism has resulted in the deaths of at least 800 Palestinians, many of whom were attempting to reach aid convoys.

Power cuts hit Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital as fuel runs out

Power has been cut in parts of Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, the territory’s largest medical facility, due to a fuel shortage.

Parts of Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital have lost power due to depleted fuel supplies, the facility’s director, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, told Al Jazeera.

Read: Nearly 800 Gazans killed awaiting aid distribution: UN

“We’ve been warning for days and weeks about fuel shortages,” he said, adding that the hospital is in a state of emergency and has only hours of fuel left.

Critical units including blood banks, neonatal wards, and oxygen stations have ceased functioning. “Patients will face certain death if fuel is not supplied,” Salmiya warned.

He also noted a rise in meningitis cases, linking it to the lack of clean drinking water in the enclave.

Hamas says Gaza ‘will not surrender’

Hamas has dismissed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to free captives and force Hamas to surrender, calling his statements a sign of “psychological defeat,” according to Al Jazeera.

In a brief statement, the group said Israel’s military efforts have failed to recover captives and reiterated that only a negotiated deal with the resistance could lead to their release. “Gaza will not surrender,” Hamas said.

US citizen reportedly killed by Israeli settlers in West Bank

The United States is aware of reports that a Palestinian American man was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, a State Department spokesperson said, according to Reuters.

Local media identified the victim as Saif al-Din Kamel Abdul Karim Musallat, a man in his 20s from Tampa, Florida. Palestinian news agency Wafa, citing the health ministry, said he died after settlers attacked a town north of Ramallah, injuring several others.

Relatives told The Washington Post that Musallat was fatally beaten. The State Department said it had no further comment, citing privacy concerns.

The Israeli military said it is investigating the incident in the town of Sinjil, claiming that rocks were thrown at Israelis and that a “violent confrontation developed in the area.”

Israel says it has killed six senior Hamas

Israel says it has killed six senior Hamas naval operatives in a series of operations carried out over recent months, according to a statement reported by Al Jazeera.

Read more: Netanyahu demands Hamas disarm before Gaza peace deal

The Israeli military alleges the individuals were involved in planning maritime attacks targeting Israeli civilians and security forces, and claims some played a role in the October 7 assault. No evidence was provided to support the claims.

Israel’s war on Gaza

The Israeli army has launched a brutal offensive against Gaza since October 2023, killing at least 57,481 Palestinians, including 134,592 children. More than 111,588 people have been injured, and over 14,222 are missing and presumed dead.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave. The proposed deal includes a pause in hostilities, increased humanitarian aid, and negotiations on the release of captives.

Who were the plane’s two pilots?published at 04:44 British Summer Time

04:44 BST

Soutik Biswas
India Correspondent

The preliminary report has brought fresh attention to the two pilots in control of the ill-fated Air India flight.

Just seconds after take-off, cockpit audio captured one pilot asking the other, “Why did you do the cut-off?”- referring to the fuel switch that starved the engines. The other replied, “I didn’t.” It’s still unclear who asked the question – and who answered.

Here’s what we know about the crew.

Capt Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, was a veteran with 30 years of experience at Air India. He had logged 15,638 flying hours, including 8,596 on the Boeing 787. Based in Mumbai, he lived with his elderly father and was looking forward to retirement.

First Officer Clive Kunder, 32, had 3,403 total flying hours, with 1,128 on the Dreamliner. He joined Air India in 2017 and had dreamed of flying since school.

Both were based in Mumbai and had arrived in Ahmedabad the day before the flight, with adequate rest, the report says. Kunder was the pilot flying, while Sabharwal was the pilot monitoring, it says.

The crew had passed pre-flight breathalyser tests and were seen at the gate on CCTV before they took off, the report adds.

Before the war scattered his family, Nedzad Avdic loved geography.

He had just entered his teens. Growing up in the village of Sebiocina in Srebrenica municipality, close to the border with Serbia, Avdic could explain the difference between clustered and dispersed settlements. He learned how one could tell north from south by noticing which side of a tree the moss grew on, and discovered how to find constellations and navigate by the North Star.

“I didn’t study it for survival,” Avdic, now 47, would later write in his memoir. “I studied it because I loved it.”

But in the spring of 1995, three years into a conflict that still scars the Balkans, he would come to live in the geography of eastern Bosnia, trudging through forests alongside 8,000 other Bosniak men and boys, trying to survive.

Avdic was 17 by then and living in a United Nations-run refugee camp in the valley of Slapovici, just south of Srebrenica, a small town in eastern Bosnia nestled in a deep valley near the Drina River, which has historically served as a natural border with Serbia. At the time, Srebrenica had a population of just 6,000 and was locally known for its ancient silver deposits, from which it took its name – the Bosnian word for silver is srebro.

The UN camp, built on previously uninhabited land, was home to more than 3,000 displaced Bosniaks, South Slavic Muslims native to Bosnia and Herzegovina, who lived in rows of Swedish-donated wooden cabins. There was no electricity, no plumbing and never enough food.

Bosnia was a young country then, newly independent after the collapse of Yugoslavia, having declared independence on March 1, 1992, after a public referendum. At the time, Bosnia’s population was ethnically diverse – roughly 44 percent Bosniak, 31 percent Serb and 17 percent Croat – making it one of the most multiethnic republics of the former Yugoslavia.

By then, Bosnian Serbs had proclaimed what they would call Republika Srpska, a notional quasi-state that the community’s political leaders wanted to carve out from Bosnia, ostensibly to defend its interests.

Only a month later, on April 6, Bosnian Serb forces, backed by Serbia, launched a war to seize territory and expel non-Serbs towards that goal. Towns close to the border were shelled, civilians forced out, and families like Avdic’s had to flee.

His family – father Alija, mother Tima, and three younger sisters – would be uprooted several times throughout the war: first from their home in Sebiocina, then from makeshift shelters in Srebrenica town, before they reached the refugee camp in Slapovici.

In 1993, after a Serb attack on a schoolyard that killed 56, many of them children, and wounded more than 70, Srebrenica and its surrounding villages were declared a UN “safe area,” by the UN Security Council along with five other towns and cities in Bosnia. The declaration demanded an “immediate cessation of armed attacks by Bosnian Serb paramilitary units against Srebrenica” and that Serbia and Montenegro, then called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, “immediately cease the supply of military arms” to the Bosnian Serb paramilitary forces. But the Serb bombardment of the town and its neighbouring villages never stopped.

At the time, Avdic told Al Jazeera, “We believed the war would eventually end – that it had to.”

“The United Nations was there, the Blue Helmets, and we told ourselves the darkness couldn’t last forever. Of course, we all feared for our lives – we knew that on any given day we could be killed,” he said.

“But the scale of what would happen next was beyond anything we could have imagined.”

The offensive begins (July 6–10, 1995)

At dawn on July 6, 1995, the hills around Srebrenica thundered with artillery fire. It was the start of Operation Krivaja ‘95, an offensive ordered by Radovan Karadzic, then president of the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska, aimed at capturing the enclave.

In the Slapovici refugee camp, Avdic woke to the sound of shelling.

“It just wouldn’t stop,” Avdic said. “It was clear it had become too dangerous to stay.”

As Karadzic’s troops approached, Avdic and his family left on foot – he says on July 8 or July 9 – fleeing into the hilly forests towards villages near Srebrenica.

“Reaching those villages was our last refuge,” he said.

Inside the town of Srebrenica, Hajrudin Mesic, 21, heard the same explosions from his family’s apartment. He had already lost two of his four brothers to the war – Idriz, 36, on March 3 from a sniper, and Senahid, 23, from shelling in the 1993 schoolyard attack on Srebrenica. Now, in July 1995, it felt like the town itself was about to fall.

“That morning [July 6], everything shook,” he said.

The army of Republika Bosnia and Herzegovina in Srebrenica – part of the country’s main military force, formed in April 1992 to defend against Serb aggression and made up largely of local defenders – had been disarmed by the United Nations two years earlier in exchange for peacekeeping, and had few resources with which to fight back. Dutch peacekeepers were present, but by then, their positions had already been pushed back several times by the 25,000-soldier strong Army of Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb military force, leaving the town’s outskirts exposed.

On July 10, Serb forces started entering the town. Mesic was in the bathroom when his mother began pounding on the door.

“‘Hajrudin, son, get out, the bullets and shrapnel are falling in our living room,’ I remember my mother screaming. They [the Bosnian Serb Army] were already in the town.”

He grabbed a makeshift bag and slipped out with his elderly parents, mother Zaha and father Selim, and his two remaining brothers, Hasan and Safet, darting through side streets, using buildings for cover.

Srebrenica falls

Across town, 16-year-old Emir Bektic and his family realised it was time to run on the morning of July 11.

That day, Bektic’s father, Redzep, returned to their home in Srebrenica covered in blood. A child had died in his arms after a shell hit a nearby village which was under bombardment and where Redzep had volunteered to help carry the dead and wounded. “Srebrenica is no more,” he said. “We have to leave.”

After years of surviving shelling, starvation and isolation, the enclave had collapsed. At about 4pm on July 11, General Ratko Mladic, leader of the Bosnian Serb forces, entered the UN-declared safe area. They started separating Bosniak women, young children and the elderly from men and boys, promising that the first group would be allowed UN shelter.

Word spread among the 60,000 people in the enclave at the time – Srebrenica municipality’s pre-war population of 35,000, and the rest people who had been pushed out of neighbouring areas by the Bosnian Serb forces.

Bosniaks fled in two directions: women and children moved towards the UN base in the village of Potocari, while between 12,000 and 15,000 unarmed men and boys set off into the hills, bound for Tuzla, the closest city beyond Bosnian Serb reach, nearly 100 kilometres to the north. It was a “free zone” that would guarantee their safety.

Bektic and his father joined the forest-bound column. His mother and sister went to the UN base. “One question hung in the air,” he said. “Will we ever see each other again?”

Meanwhile, Mesic and his family also chose to split – his elderly parents went to the UN base in Potocari, while he and his two brothers went to the woods.

It was the same with Avdic, his father and uncle. Avdic’s mother and his sisters headed to the UN base in Potocari, while they marched towards Tuzla.

On July 11, at about 6 -7pm local time, after two days of travelling on foot from the refugee camp in Slapovici, they reached the villages of Jaglici and Susnjari, approximately 15 kilometres (9 miles) away, where they joined thousands of other men and boys. But the villages were under bombardment. The horses and cattle that people were using to ferry the dead and wounded panicked, running helter-skelter. “In that chaos, I lost my father,” Avdic said.

He suddenly found himself engulfed in a crowd of strangers. “I didn’t recognise a single face around me,” he said. In a panic, he began shouting for his father, pushing through the mass of people, calling his name over and over.

“But I never saw him again,” he recalled. “Surrounded by thousands of people, I still felt utterly alone.”

He joined them on the long walk through the dark forests of eastern Bosnia, hoping to reach Tuzla.

The death march

The route to Tuzla, which remained under Bosnian government control throughout the war, was thick with oak, beech and pine, but also scattered with a dry, brittle fern native to Bosnia’s forests in summer. Temperatures were punishing, climbing as high as 34 to 36 degrees Celsius (93–97 degrees Fahrenheit) in the July heat. Every step through the dry undergrowth risked exposure. The crack of a branch or the rustle of dried ferns could give away their position to nearby Serb forces.

“We walked in silence,” recalled Bektic. “Not out of discipline, because of fear. No one wanted to attract death.”

“I was exhausted, hungry, and thirsty. We’d only managed to grab whatever food we could find in the house before marching through the woods. There was no time to prepare. That journey … all of it … was almost unbearable for me at 16.”

On the night of July 12, at Kamenicko Brdo, 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Tuzla, the group that Bektic and his father were part of reached a stream.

Overwhelmed by thirst, Bektic bent down to drink, but the water was thick with mud. “It wasn’t really water. It was more like muddy sludge. I felt sand in my mouth,” he said.

Still, that single mouthful was all he had. Moments later, chaos erupted. Serb soldiers cut through the column, pulling out 15 to 20 people who had crossed the stream. They were ordered to climb a small hill and sit. Then came the words that changed everything: “You are prisoners.”

“At that moment, they [the Bosnian Serb soldiers] were only debating one thing – how to kill us,” he said. “Some of them said, ‘Let’s kill them right here,’ while others suggested, ‘No, let’s take them down to the stream and slaughter them there.’”

Exhausted and terrified, Bektic laid his head in his father’s lap.

“No matter what happens, we’ll stay together. Just stay with me. Don’t fall asleep,” his father said.

But Bektic did fall asleep and woke up only the next afternoon to find that he was leaning against a beech tree, alone.

“My first instinct was to search for my father,” Bektic said.

He called out. Waited. Searched. “Maybe he had gone to get water. Maybe he would come back.”

He didn’t, leaving Bektic with a lifetime of questions: What had happened to his father? Had he been marched to his death by the soldiers? Had his father propped him against the tree in the dark to hide him from the Bosnian Serb Army? How had he slept through it all?

“The last thing I remember from that night is his embrace.”

After days on his own in the forest, Bektic found another group of Bosniaks, among them his uncle and his two cousins. But Serb soldiers soon surrounded them again, demanding surrender. Some tried to escape and were shot. As they were marching down the road, Bektic passed “hundreds of murdered people” in the heat, and he had to be careful not to “step on a body”.

They were taken to a hill and ordered to sit in rows. A Serb commander announced that some boys would be released, and that any boy who wanted to go should stand up. Several boys about Bektic’s age stood up.

“At that moment, none of us really understood what was happening”, Bektic said.

“My uncle insisted that I get up and go, and we quietly argued,” he said. “I just wanted to stay with my uncle. I had started to feel safe again, and no matter what happened, I wanted to remain by his side.

“My mother and sister had gone to Potocari, and I had no news of them. My father was somewhere in the forest – killed or taken, I didn’t know. I was completely alone, and just being with my uncle and among other people I knew made me feel a little more safe.”

But eventually, he caved to his uncle’s pleas.

“Go,” the commander said. As he stood up, he saw buses lined up in the valley below and ran towards them. He caught the last one just as its doors were closing. The bus was packed with women and children coming from the UN base in Potocari, going towards Tuzla. “Don’t ask anything,” one woman told him as they covered him with a blanket.

‘Clapping for our executioners’

Further west in the forest, on July 13, near the village of Kamenice in Bratunac municipality – a former Bosniak village that had been burned and destroyed by Serb forces in 1993 – Avdic’s group was also cut off by soldiers. “They [the Bosnian Serb military] threatened us over megaphones, saying they’d bomb us if we didn’t surrender,” he said. “Then they promised to treat us under the Geneva Conventions.”

“At first, they acted civilly. Then it started. The beatings. The insults. The humiliation.”

Avdic was somewhere near the front. The soldiers told them to leave their belongings, that everything would be returned. He left his bag, with family photos inside, next to a tank. Standing there on the road, he still remembers that tank in front of him, and the vehicles nearby. On one of them, written in Cyrillic, were the words: The Queen of Death.

Other vehicles began to arrive – civilian Volkswagen Golfs, packed with soldiers sitting on the hoods, roofs, and inside. More soldiers followed. Then came blue and white police cars, still the pre-war Yugoslav models.

The police remained behind as Bosnian Serb soldiers ordered men and boys to start jogging towards a meadow about a kilometre from Kamenice. As they crossed the asphalt road, buses filled with refugees from Potocari pulled up and were forced to stop. The captured men were now blocking the road.

“Among them, I recognise a girl I went to school with,” said Avdic. “And it’s obvious that some of the refugees in the buses recognise some of the people in our column, too. Women are crying as they probably recognised their family members among us – sons, brothers, fathers.”

Eventually, the men and boys were ordered to continue running towards Kamenice, while the buses moved in the opposite direction towards Tuzla.

They reached a meadow in the destroyed Bosniak village of Sandici. “The grass was already trampled, as if someone had played football there,” Avdic recalled. “Others had been there before us. And they had already been taken away.”

Only later, while testifying before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, would Avdic learn what had happened on that same meadow just hours earlier: Ramo Salkic, a captured Bosniak refugee, had been filmed calling out to his teenage son Nermin to join him where the Serb soldiers stood. That footage, used as key evidence in the prosecution of the Srebrenica genocide, showed the chilling moment of surrender. Both father and son were later executed.

That night, a Serb soldier told Avdic and others, “You’ll be returned to your families. Everything will be fine.” But the voice dripped with sarcasm, Avdic recalled.

“They placed us all in rows and laid the wounded ahead of us.” Then came the order: lie down, hands behind heads – and applaud. “All of us, together, as hard as we could,” Avdic said. “We spent two to three hours doing that.” By the time the clapping stopped, the wounded were gone. “They had been taken into nearby houses and killed,” he said. “Gunfire echoed all around us.”

Then came the shouting: “Long live the king! Long live Serbia!” The soldiers forced them to chant with them in unison, like a choir.

Packed into trucks, Avdic and others were then driven through Bratunac town near Srebrenica and beyond. “Serbs cursed us from the sidewalks, threw stones,” he said.

The July heat, he recalls, was “unbearable” inside the truck. “I remember peering through a hole in the tarpaulin [on the side of the truck]. In fact, that hole is what helped me breathe, so I wouldn’t suffocate. People around me were losing consciousness. They couldn’t breathe,” he said. “A true hell.”

With no water and unable to bear the thirst, people started drinking their own urine, he said.

“They were screaming, shouting, asking for water, saying: ‘Open the tailgates, or kill us already. We can’t take it any longer.’”

Avdic tried to keep track of time, but after hours without food or water, he could no longer focus. Bosniak men on the truck who had earlier seen a UN vehicle pass by – and had hoped it was coming to rescue them and take them to Tuzla – began to lose hope. Rumours spread that they weren’t heading to Tuzla after all, but to Bijeljina, a city northeast of Tuzla near the border with Serbia, where Serbian nationalist paramilitary groups were maintaining a concentration camp.

 

They drove like that for about 50km, until they arrived at a school in Petkovici, about 70km from Srebrenica. By that time, it was already the morning of the next day, July 14.

As the men were offloaded from the trucks and forced into the school, soldiers began beating those in the front with rifles and pipes.

“It was chaos,” Avdic said. “They couldn’t strike everyone fast enough.”

Inside the school, more Serb soldiers were waiting. One shouted, “Whose land is this?” Another answered, “This is Serb land – always has been, always will be.” The men were forced to repeat the phrase in unison.

The ground-floor classrooms were already packed. Screams echoed from behind closed doors. Avdic and the others were taken upstairs to the second-last classroom on the first floor. Inside, he recognised his uncle. He learned that they had been together earlier in the meadow, but Avdic had not noticed him then.

At one point, people started whispering about escape. “We should try jumping out the windows … or making a run for the doors,” someone said. “Maybe someone would survive that way, otherwise, we are all going to be killed.”

Hearing the commotion, Serb soldiers stepped in and tried to calm the crowd. “The Red Cross is coming, prepare to be exchanged.”

“And we all believed it. In a situation like that, you’d believe anything for a chance to survive,” Avdic said.

His shirt was still soaked with urine from the journey, so he turned to the person next to him and asked if they had a spare T-shirt. A man sitting next to him pulled out one and handed it over. “The Red Cross was coming, and I felt embarrassed to be seen like that, all soaked. I was shy,” he said.

The soldiers started taking men out of the classroom, five or six at a time. When it was his turn to go outside, Avdic asked his uncle to come with him. “But he refused. He stayed behind.”

Once out in the hallway, soldiers ordered him and others to undress, tied their hands and marched them downstairs. He followed with others, leaving the clean shirt behind.

There was blood in the hallway, bodies in front of the school, and more at the main entrance. He expected to be shot right there. But the soldiers loaded them back onto a truck.

Once the truck was full, the soldiers fired a few bullets through the tarp to scare those inside. Screams filled the air as some people were hit and wounded. Bodies crushed against each other, but Avdic, who was not hit, managed to stay on his knees.

Amid cries around him, Avdic recognised a voice behind him: “It was my geography teacher.”

The truck started moving. When it finally stopped, it was about midnight. The men and boys were again ordered to get out.

Soldiers began pulling people out again. By now, Avdic was sure that they were to be executed. “It all happened so fast,” Avdic said. “I tried to hide behind others, pressing myself into the crowd – but so was everyone else, each person trying to shield themselves behind someone else.”

But Avdic had also accepted that he was going to die.

“The only thing I wanted at that moment was to drink some water. I felt devastated that I’d die thirsty.”

As he looked ahead, he saw what felt like an endless crowd — thousands of men. Then, the gunfire began, sudden and fierce. He couldn’t recall the exact moment he was hit. There was chaos, shouting, bodies dropping all around him. Then – blackness.

When he regained consciousness, pain surged through his body. His right arm and side were burning; his whole body trembled. The stench of gunpowder clung to the air. Bullets had been fired at point-blank range – they had torn through the group without mercy. Bodies lay all around him.

In the haze, he heard voices, soldiers nearby. One said, “Check if anyone’s still alive.” Another replied coldly, “They’re all dead.”

Then came silence, followed by the sound of vehicles pulling away. Somewhere nearby, he noticed a man still moving. He called out softly, “Are you all right?” The man responded, “I am. Come. Untie me.”

“I can’t … I can’t …” Avdic whispered. His voice faded in and out.

Somehow, after what seemed like eternity, he managed to gather his strength and crawl over to the man, who had survived, almost unharmed, because he had been crushed under the weight of the bodies falling on him, and so, was saved from the bullets.

With nothing else to use, Avdic began chewing through the ropes that bound the man, slowly and painfully. Thread by thread.

The soldiers were gone, so the man stood up and began to walk. Avdic, still tied and injured, crawled beside him, over the bodies of executed men and boys, some still warm. They stumbled into a concrete drainage canal hidden in the brush, where the man untied Avdic’s wrists and began to carry him. When the man grew too tired, Avdic would drag himself forward on his stomach, inch by inch.

They survived on wild apples plucked from trees. Weakened and bleeding, Avdic would beg the man, “Please, leave me behind. Save yourself.” But the man refused, every time.

For days, they crept through dense forests, dodging Serb patrols, slipping past scorched Bosniak homes, and sleeping in the ruins of villages burned years earlier. Each time Avdic could go no farther, the man pointed to the next hill and whispered, “Just that one more … then we’ll stop.”

Eventually, they crossed into Bosnian-held territory in Zvornik near Tuzla, barely alive.

“Someone poured water on me,” Avdic later recalled. “And I cried. That’s when I knew. I had survived.”

A shoelace

After surviving the shelling of his apartment in Srebrenica, Mesic joined the column fleeing through the forest with his two brothers, Hasan, 36, and Safet, 34, on July 11, while their parents had already taken refuge at the UN base in Srebrenica.

After a day or two of moving, the column stalled – likely near Kamenica, a village in the Zvornik municipality near the border with Serbia – and was attacked by soldiers. Kamenica was one of the deadliest points along the escape route from Srebrenica, where Bosnian Serbs killed hundreds of men through a series of ambushes as they tried to flee through the forest.

A fierce barrage of gunfire rained down on them. Mesic’s brother Hasan was shot in both arms.

Amid the chaos, Mesic and his brothers tried to keep moving, but he lost sight of both Safet and Hasan.

“I couldn’t see them any more,” he said.

He pressed on with a small group of survivors, carrying the wounded through the woods.

At one point, rain began to fall, and the survivors welcomed it. “It masked our steps,” he recalled. “Soaking wet, exhausted, we lay down and slept side by side, in the mud, under the rain.”

Along the route, he reunited with a close friend, who shared his brother’s name, Hasan. “Only then did I feel a little safer again,” Mesic recalled. “I wasn’t alone any more.”

But Mesic, Hasan and their group would have to face more gunfire. In the forests above Kamenica, the narrow trails had turned into visible roads, beaten down by thousands of desperate feet.

Locals called it the trla, a tragic corridor etched into the landscape by death marches. Serb forces were already there, lying in wait.

“They let us pass, and then opened fire,” Mesic said. “Many were killed.”

He hit the ground along with Hasan. “I remember the sound of them changing rifle magazines,” he said. Hasan was shot. “Please don’t leave me,” he begged.

“I didn’t, I couldn’t,” Mesic said.

Once again, Mesic survived, with Hasan.

By the time the two reached Brezik village, 50 kilometres (about 30 miles) from Tuzla, Mesic’s shoes had long fallen apart. He was walking in thin socks that had torn, and his feet were blistered. In one hand, he clutched several small, bruised wild pears which he had picked up in the forest – “the kind even livestock wouldn’t eat,” he said.

“But we were starving. I couldn’t let them go.”

They were close to what they believed was free territory when bullets hit the dirt around them again. “We have made it so far,” Mesic told his friend. “But I don’t know if we’ll make it this time.”

Serb soldiers were positioned on nearby houses, so the two crawled through high, uncut grass to avoid being noticed until they fell into an abandoned Serb army trench. Inside, they found two wounded Bosniak men and a boy, who had been shot by the soldiers. The men died in front of them. The boy, 16-year-old Musa, was bleeding heavily from his leg.

“He looked at me and said, ‘Do you have a shoelace? Anything I can tie my leg with?’” Mesic recalled. “You think I had shoelaces? I didn’t even have shoes.”

In pain and panic, Musa began to cry out: “Serbs! I’m wounded! Come help me!” From somewhere beyond the trench, a voice called back: “Drop your weapon first!” Musa answered, “I don’t have a weapon! I’m a kid!”

“He still believed someone might help,” Mesic said.

But no help came. Musa was shot and killed where he lay.

Realising they may be next, Mesic and Hasan ran for their lives under fire, slowing down only once the soldiers were out of range. “I still had the pears in one hand.”

It was night, and they decided to wait for dawn before moving again.

But suddenly, Mesic heard someone calling out to them.

About 30 metres away, there was a soldier waving, motioning for them to come over. Mesic said to Hasan, “He’s calling us. Maybe he’s one of ours?” Hasan replied, “Are you kidding? That’s a Chetnik [a Serb nationalist fighter or paramilitary].”

“If it was a Chetnik, he wouldn’t be smiling like that – he’d shoot us from here,” Mesic said. Hasan still didn’t want to go.

Mesic was torn. He said again, “He’s smiling, that’s something only a friend would do.”

Then, next to the soldier calling out to them,  Hasan recognised his friend Sakib. “It’s our army! It’s Bosniaks!” he told Mesic. The terrain of Brezik is rugged and broken up, and the two had crossed into Bosniak-controlled territory without realising it.

They ran towards the Bosnian soldiers, who gave them bread. They had survived.

The ones who lived

Days later in Tuzla, Mesic was reunited with his parents, who had given him up for dead.

Meanwhile, the bus Bektic had boarded in Potocari took him to Tisca, from where he walked as part of a civilian column to Kladanj, near Tuzla. “Even though I was part of a long column, I still felt completely alone,” he said. “But I survived. And that means I have to speak.”

In 2004, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) ruled that the Srebrenica killings were genocide. Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic were both convicted of genocide – Karadzic in 2016, Mladic in 2017.

In 2007, the International Court of Justice recognised Srebrenica as an act of genocide and found that Serbia failed in its obligation to prevent it.

In just a few days in July 1995, more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were murdered. Their remains were scattered across mass graves, many of them later disturbed in efforts to hide the crime. At least 25,000 women and children were expelled from the town. According to the State Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina, approximately 25,000 women were raped during the war. The actual number is believed to be significantly higher, as many survivors likely have never come forward because of the stigma associated with rape. In 2006, Bosnia and Herzegovina became one of the first countries to legally recognise survivors of wartime sexual violence, but children born of wartime rape weren’t recognised until 2022.

To this day, more than 1,000 families are still waiting to find and bury their loved ones killed in the Srebrenica genocide. Those found are being buried in Potocari.

In the early 2000s, Avdic testified at The Hague in the trials of those accused of committing genocide in Srebrenica. He later co-wrote a book with his sister, The Hague Witness, now translated into English and being translated into Arabic. He lost his father, three uncles – including the one who was with him in the school in Petkovici, an aunt, three cousins, and many others in the genocide. From his immediate family, his mother Tima and his three sisters had survived. He never got back the family photographs he had left in his bag. Today, he lives in Srebrenica.

Mesic lost four brothers, including Hasan and Safet –  the brothers he was fleeing Srebrenica with – and 24 relatives on his mother’s side. Hasan, who was shot in both his arms, was eventually killed by stepping on a mine placed by Bosnian Serb forces. His remains were found and laid to rest at the Potocari cemetery, while Safet is still missing to this day. Mesic lives in Sarajevo, where he teaches history and geography. Each year, he takes his students to Srebrenica and the memorial in Potocari.

Bektic lost about 10 of his family members and relatives, among them his father Redzep, who was found in a mass grave in Kamenica. His uncle and two cousins, who were with him, were also executed. Today, Bektic lives in Sarajevo and is the author of A Dawn Alone, a personal account of his survival during the Srebrenica genocide, translated into English and Turkish.

CAIRO/DOHA: Hamas and Israel on Saturday accused the other of blocking attempts to strike a Gaza ceasefire agreement, nearly a week into indirect talks between the two sides to halt 21 months of bitter fighting in the Palestinian territory.

A Palestinian source with knowledge of the discussions in Qatar told AFP that Israel’s proposals to keep its troops in the war-torn territory were holding up a deal for a 60-day pause.

But on the Israeli side, a senior political official, also speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivities of the talks, accused the militant group of being inflexible and deliberately trying to scuttle efforts for an accord.

On the ground, Gaza’s civil defense agency said more than 20 people were killed across the territory on Saturday, including in an overnight air strike on an area sheltering the displaced.

“While we were sleeping, there was an explosion… where two boys, a girl and their mother were staying,” Bassam Hamdan told AFP after the attack in an area of Gaza City.

“We found them torn to pieces, their remains scattered,” he added.

In southern Gaza, bodies covered in white plastic sheets were brought to the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis while wounded in Rafah were taken for treatment by donkey cart, on stretchers or carried.

Both Hamas and Israel have said that 10 hostages held since the militants’ October 7, 2023 attack that sparked the war would be released — if an agreement is reached.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was prepared then to enter talks for a more permanent end to hostilities.

But one Palestinian source said Israel’s refusal to accept Hamas’s demand for a complete withdrawal of troops from Gaza was holding back progress in the talks.

A second source said mediators had asked both sides to postpone discussions until US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, arrives in the Qatari capital.

“The negotiations in Doha are facing a setback and complex difficulties due to Israel’s insistence, as of Friday, on presenting a map of withdrawal, which is actually a map of redeployment and repositioning of the Israeli army rather than a genuine withdrawal,” the first source said.

They added that Israel was proposing to maintain military forces in more than 40 percent of the Palestinian territory, forcing hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians into a small area near the city of Rafah, on the border with Egypt.

“Hamas’s delegation will not accept the Israeli maps… as they essentially legitimize the reoccupation of approximately half of the Gaza Strip and turn Gaza into isolated zones with no crossings or freedom of movement,” they said.

A senior Israeli political official countered later that it was Hamas that rejected what was on the table, accusing the group of “creating obstacles” and “refusing to compromise” with the aim of “sabotaging the negotiations.”

“Israel has demonstrated a willingness to show flexibility in the negotiations, while Hamas remains intransigent, clinging to positions that prevent the mediators from advancing an agreement,” the official added in a statement sent to AFP.

The Hamas attacks on Israel in 2023 resulted in the deaths of at least 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Of the 251 hostages seized, 49 are still being held, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

At least 57,882 Palestinians, also mostly civilians, have been killed since the start of the war, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

The Israeli military said on Saturday it had attacked “approximately 250 terrorist targets throughout the Gaza Strip” in the previous 48 hours.

Targets included “terrorists, booby-trapped structures, weapons storage facilities, anti-tank missile launch posts, sniper posts, tunnels and additional terrorist infrastructure sites,” it added.

Two previous ceasefires — a week-long truce beginning in late November 2023 and a two-month one from mid-January this year — led to the release of 105 hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

The second Palestinian source said “some progress” had been made in the latest talks on plans for releasing Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and getting more aid to Gaza.

Netanyahu, who is under domestic and international pressure to end the war, said this week that neutralising Hamas as a security threat was a prerequisite for any long-term ceasefire talks.

That included disarmament, he said, warning that failure to do so would mean Israel would have to do so by force.

Fuel to the engines of the Air India plane involved in a deadly crash was cut off moments after takeoff, a preliminary report has found.

In recovered cockpit voice recordings, the report said one of the pilots can be heard asking “why did you cut off?” – to which the other pilot replied he “did not do so”.

The London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed less than a minute after taking off on 12 June from Ahmedabad airport in western India, killing 260 people, most of them passengers. One British national miraculously survived the crash.

An investigation led by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) is ongoing, with a final, more detailed report expected in 12 months.

According to data from the flight recorder, both of the plane’s fuel control switches moved from the run to the cutoff position in the space of a second, shortly after takeoff.

The switches are usually only cut off to turn off the engines after landing, or during emergency situations such as an engine fire – rather than during takeoff.

The cutoff caused both engines to lose thrust, the AAIB report said.

There is then confusion heard in the cockpit, with one pilot asking the other why they had switched off the fuel. The Gatwick-bound plane was being piloted by Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and co-pilot Clive Kundar. The report does not specify which voice is which.

The fuel switches then moved back into their normal inflight position, automatically starting the process of relighting the engines. One engine, the report said, was able to regain thrust – but could not reverse the plane’s deceleration.

One of the pilots submitted a mayday call just before the plane plummeted and crashed into a building used as doctors’ accommodation, causing an explosion.

Both pilots had an “adequate rest period prior” to the flight, the report said.

Experts had previously speculated that birds could have caused the crash, but the report said that “no significant bird activity” was observed in the vicinity of the plane’s flight path.

The report said: “At this stage of investigation, there are no recommended actions to B787-8 and/or GE GEnx-1B engine operators and manufacturers”.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had issued a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin in 2019 highlighting that some Boeing 737 fuel control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged, the report said.

The issue was not deemed an unsafe condition requiring an Airworthiness Directive – a legally enforceable regulation.

The same switch design is used in Air India’s VT-ANB aircraft which crashed. As the bulletin was advisory, Air India did not perform inspections.

There had been no defect reported pertaining to the fuel control switch since 2023 on VT-ANB, the report said.

Experts who spoke to the BBC offered differing opinions on whether this could have played a factor.

An Air India spokesperson said the airline acknowledged receipt of the preliminary report.

“We continue to fully cooperate with the AAIB and other authorities as their investigation progresses. Given the active nature of the investigation, we are unable to comment on specific details and refer all such enquiries to the AAIB,” the Air India spokesperson added.

In a statement, Boeing said it would defer to AAIB to provide information about the crashed plane, in adherence with protocol under the UN International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). It also said it continued to support the investigation and its customer, Air India.

The US National Transportation Safety Board in a statement thanked Indian officials for their cooperation and noted that there were no recommended actions in the report aimed at operators of Boeing-787 jets or the GE engines.

While no conclusions are drawn and the report notes that investigations are ongoing, the focus appears to be on the actions of the pilots.

The preliminary investigation into the crash – one of the worst in recent aviation history – was led by the AAIB, with inputs from Boeing, engine-maker GE, Air India, and aviation regulators from India, the UK and the US.

Under ICAO rules, preliminary reports should be filed within 30 days of a crash, although it isn’t mandatory to make them public.

The accident marked the first time a 787-8 Dreamliner suffered a fatal crash since entering service in 2011.

In the days following the crash, the aircraft’s Enhanced Airborne Flight Recorders (EAFRs) – or “black boxes” – were recovered from the debris, a crucial breakthrough for investigators looking to reconstruct the flight’s final moments.

These devices capture extensive flight data and cockpit audio – from pilot radio calls to ambient cockpit sounds.

The crash is a major setback for Air India, which is in the middle of a business turnaround following its privatisation. It was bought out by the Tata Group from the Indian government in 2022.

The airline has announced a cut in international operations on its wide-body aircraft as it grapples with several disruptions in the aftermath of the crash.

The tragedy has also put the spotlight on aviation safety in India.

Earlier this month, India’s civil aviation regulator completed enhanced safety checks on 26 out of Air India’s 33 Dreamliners without finding major concerns.

Speaking to the BBC this week, the chief of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) – India’s aviation safety regulator – defended the country’s record, saying that between 2010 and 2024 it consistently performed better than the world average when it came to the number of accidents annually, except for in two years in which major accidents happened.

However, there have been a number of disquieting reports in recent weeks, highlighting maintenance oversights and training shortfalls.