The Venezuelan Armed Forces and army tanks drive along a highway during a military exercise in Caracas, Venezuela on September 20, 2025. (Photo by Ivan McGregor/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(VENEZUELA) — Venezuelan officials say that they have bolstered their armed forces after the United States conducted another strike on vessel that originated from the country, which he claimed carried drugs.
Venezuelan leaders said roughly 284 battle fronts are operational, poised for either land or sea conflict, two officials with knowledge of the Venezuelan government’s plans told ABC News Friday.
Militias, which are heavily armed, have also been assigned to protect the coastal region at high alert, according to the officials. The officials claimed some 4.5 million militia members were deployed.
Qatar, a key U.S. ally that assisted with negotiations in the Israel-Gaza conflict, is helping with the conversations between the American and Venezuelan governments, the sources said. In the meantime, Venezuelan embassies in Norway and Australia were closed by the government.
On Thursday, the Trump administration announced that it had issued an airstrike against a vessel that originated from Venezuela, claiming it was a drug-smuggling craft operated by narcoterrorists, the sixth such strike since the summer.
At least two survivors from the strike are now in custody aboard an American vessel after being rescued by helicopter, according to a person familiar with details of the incident.
Earlier this week, Trump threatened to attack Venezuela by land, confirmed ongoing covert operations inside the country and ordered bombers to fly in circles off its coast in what appears to be an unprecedented show of force intended to pressure the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, to step down.
“President Trump believes that Nicholas Maduro is an illegitimate president, leading an illegitimate regime that has been trapped in drugs,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday.
When asked on Friday about the alleged CIA operations in Venezuela, Trump told reporters, “I wouldn’t say that.”
“But some interesting things are happening around the world, I will say that,” he said.
Sources with the Venezuelan government said that Trump’s threat of covert operations is “purely staged,” and refuted the president’s drug trafficking allegations.
When a reporter asked Trump about Maduro offering “everything” including natural resources for mediation, the president shot back:
“He has offered everything. You know why? He doesn’t want to f— around with the United States,” Trump said and ended the news conference.
-ABC News’ Anne Flaherty and Luis Martinez contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — Prince Andrew, the brother of King Charles III, will no longer use his royal titles.
In a statement Friday, Andrew said, “In discussion with The King, and my immediate and wider family, we have concluded the continued accusations about me distract from the work of His Majesty and the Royal Family. I have decided, as I always have, to put my duty to my family and country first.”
“I stand by my decision five years ago to stand back from public life,” he continued. “With His Majesty’s agreement, we feel I must now go a step further. I will therefore no longer use my title or the honours which have been conferred upon me. As I have said previously, I vigorously deny the accusations against me.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Israeli forces take security measures after organizing a raid in Hebron, West Bank on October 9, 2025. Amer Shallodi/Anadolu via Getty Images
(LONDON) — The Israel Defense Forces are investigating reports Israeli troops who were occupying a key sewage treatment plant in Gaza set it ablaze amid a drawdown of their forces from much of the enclave’s territory last week as a part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal.
The Sheikh Aljin sewage treatment plant, located to the southeast of Gaza City, was badly damaged in the reported fire, according to Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility.
The CMWU told ABC News that an in-person investigation of the site on Tuesday, Oct. 14, confirmed that four of the plant’s six biological treatment towers had suffered massive fire damage.
According to the CMWU, the plastic cells and hydraulic systems inside the treatment towers had been destroyed and their concrete walls cracked by the fire.
Photos taken by the CMWU’s staff after the fire and provided to ABC News reveal the damage to the plant. The photos show multiple treatment towers with charred walls, their interiors burnt out and strewn with garbage. The treatment towers are scattered with Hebrew-language graffiti, including one reading, “I’ll be back soon.”
Before the devastating fire, the plant had the capacity to serve some 700,000 of Gaza’s approximately 2 million residents, the utility said.
The fire was first reported by Drop Site News, who uncovered two photos appearing to show IDF troops posing in front of burning structures at the Sheikh Aljin sewage plant to the southeast of Gaza City.
The date and authenticity of the photos could not be immediately verified but the structures seen in the images match those seen in the images provided by the CMWU.
The IDF told ABC News it was aware of the incident, and it is being reviewed.
It was not immediately clear when the fire was first set. NASA’s FIRMS system first detected a fire at the plant at 1:34 p.m. local time on Saturday, Oct. 11. And a satellite photo from Planet Labs taken on the same day shows smoke rising from one of the facility’s six biological treatment towers.
The IDF appears to have withdrawn from the site before Oct. 11 as Israeli troops vacated much of the Gaza Strip after a ceasefire came into effect on Oct. 10.
But earlier satellite images points to an IDF presence at the site in the days before the fire, experts say.
Tony Reeves, founder of the private intelligence firm MAIAR, said that it was difficult to make a definitive assessment, this image from Sept. 28 appeared to show objects consistent in their size and shape with military armored vehicles, as well as plowed earth like the kind often used by militaries for fortification.
Reeves said images from Oct. 7 and 11 appeared to point to a drawdown at the site with fewer vehicles present.
Jeremy Binnie, a defense analyst with the intelligence firm Janes, also told ABC News that while specific vehicles could not be identified the Sept. 28 and Oct. 7 images point to an IDF presence at the site.
The scene, Binnie said, “is consistent with an IDF temporary defensive position in the Gaza Strip as they routinely build protective berms and we would not expect civilian vehicles to be at a disused military position at this time.”
The CMWU said that owing to the destruction of another treatment plant at Bureij near Gaza’s border with Israel, before the fire the Sheikj Aljin plant had become the last remaining sewage treatment facility set up to serve much of central Gaza and Gaza City.
Viktor Kovalchuk/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
(LONDON) — President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin spoke on Thursday, the White House said, ahead of Trump’s in-person meeting on Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Trump, in a social media post, called it a “productive” conversation and said he and Putin would eventually meet again — in Budapest, Hungary, at an unspecified time. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the call lasted more than two hours.
“At the conclusion of the call, we agreed that there will be a meeting of our High Level Advisors, next week,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “The United States’ initial meetings will be led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, together with various other people, to be designated. A meeting location is to be determined. President Putin and I will then meet in an agreed upon location, Budapest, Hungary, to see if we can bring this ‘inglorious’ War, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end.”
ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce asked Leavitt if Trump still believed he could get Putin and Zelenskyy in a room together, after he couldn’t reach that step after hosting Putin for a summit in Alaska in August.
“I think he thinks it’s possible, and he would of course love to see that happen,” Leavitt said. “But right now, there were discussions and plans are now being made for the Russian side and our folks, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to meet and then for President Putin and President Trump to perhaps meet again. But I don’t think the president has closed the door on that at all.”
Russia overnight fired more than 300 drones and about three dozen missiles at targets throughout Ukraine, including civilian energy infrastructure, Zelenskyy said on Thursday.
The strike also targeted the State Emergency Service department in the Kharkiv region, he said.
“There are wounded,” Zelenskyy said on social media. “Recovery efforts are underway everywhere. Emergency services are working.”
Zelenskyy, who is scheduled on Friday to meet Trump at the White House, said on Thursday that the ongoing strikes only showed that the West needed to continue applying “pressure” on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
That pressure included continuing to update sanctions, but, he said, it could also include longer-range capabilities for the Ukrainian military to strike targets farther into Russia.
“Strong decisions are possible, decisions that can help. And this depends on the United States, on Europe, on all partners whose strength directly determines whether the war will be ended,” Zelenskyy said.
He added, “Now there is an important momentum toward peace in the Middle East. In Europe, this is also possible. That is exactly what I will be discussing today and tomorrow in Washington.”
The Kremlin on Wednesday also addressed the potential for the West to supply weapons for or to greenlight longer-range Ukrainian strikes within Russia.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quoted in Tass, a Russian state-affiliated media outlet, saying that deliveries of U.S.-made Tomahawks would amount to a “dangerous escalation of tensions” between Russia and the United States.
The Russian strike on Ukraine overnight targeted several Ukrainian regions — with a focus on the Poltava and Kharkiv regions — with a total of about 320 drones, about 200 of which were Shahed attack drones, the Ukrainian air force said. About 37 missiles were also fired, the military said.
Most of those aerial attacks were thwarted by Ukraine or otherwise failed, the air force said. Thirty-seven drones and 14 missiles made it through Ukraine’s air defenses, the military said.
The Russian Ministry of Defense also reported downing at least 51 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory. Local authorities said the electricity supplies to several settlements in the Volgograd, Voronezh and Belgorod regions were disrupted by the Ukrainian attacks.
Trump on Wednesday said during an Oval Office press conference that he thought Russia and Ukraine were close to a ceasefire deal about two months ago, blaming the impasse on animosity between Zelenskyy and Putin.
“You know, it’s an obstacle. It’s an obstacle,” Trump said. “There’s no question about it.”
ABC News’s Lalee Ibssa, Joe Simonetti and Will Gretsky contributed to this report.
Trucks carrying food aid and fuel, accompanied by a United Nations team, passed through the Kerem Shalom border crossing and arrive in the Gaza Strip on October 16, 2025. (Photo by Hani Alshaer/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A U.S.-led coordination center based in Israel that will oversee implementation of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza is expected to become operational in coming days, two U.S. officials tell ABC News.
The command center, which is tasked with coordinating security, aid and rebuilding efforts inside Gaza, will be led by a U.S. three-star general, at least initially, who has not been identified publicly. The commander will have a foreign deputy, who would be the equivalent of a two-star officer, the officials said.
The center is located inside Israel, just northeast of Gaza at a location not being disclosed to the public for security reasons. Officials said the center will not be located on an Israeli military base to ensure it can remain open to officials from other countries involved in the rebuilding of Gaza.
The center is seen as key to being to execute the extraordinary logistics involved in trying to rebuild and secure Gaza after two years of war. The U.S. and other countries are still discussing what an international security force might look like and how it would operate inside the strip, as well as how food and other aid will be distributed.
Trump has already sent 200 U.S. troops to coordinate the heavy lift; those military units specialize in transportation, planning, logistics and security. They will be working alongside representatives from other partner nations, the private sector and non-governmental organizations.
Sources say the command center is starting off slow, reaching what the military calls “initial operational capability” in coming days.
Senior White House advisers told reporters Wednesday that creation of the International Stabilization Force is under way. They said that Indonesia, Egypt, the UAE, Qatar, Azerbaijan and other Arab and Muslim countries have offered to play a role.
“The International Stabilization Force is starting to be, starting to be constructed and and once that occurs, there’ll be more efforts, but there’s a lot of planning and a lot of very positive conversations between the sides,” one senior U.S. official said.
ABC News’ Isabella Murray contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — ABC News Live’s original docuseries “Last Lands,” the Emmy-nominated and Webby-winning show, is returning for season 2, kicking off in Guatemala’s Petén region. “Last Lands” covers the two-day journey by ATV through the jungle of Guatemala in search of the ancient Mayan city, El Mirador.
Produced in partnership with ABC News Live and Global Conservation, the only international group focused solely on protecting endangered national parks and Indigenous territories in developing countries. The series takes viewers around the world, highlighting the urgent mission to protect our planet’s most threatened places.
Hosted by award-winning correspondent Bob Woodruff, “Last Lands” dives into the hidden stories of Guatemala’ s jungle. This is where the story of the Americas began in the remote area of El Mirador National Park, where the Mayan civilization thrived 2,000 years ago. Their existence ended with a mysterious collapse, leaving behind ruins of their cities in Guatemala’s northernmost corner.
The once-vibrant city stands tall within the forest today, having endured since before the time of Christ. The Mayans built a sprawling city with monuments and buildings up to 200 feet high, featuring ornate facades. They studied science and built roads to last 1,000 years, just as the Romans did.
It was sustained by a rich agricultural economy and connected by a network of causeways, all within 820 square miles located in the Mirador Basin. These cities were interconnected by the world’s first super-highway system, with these ruins being among the 51 pre-Hispanic Mayan cities created around 3,000 years ago.
There are three ways of getting there, either by chartering a helicopter, going on a three-day hike or taking a two-day trip by ATV, which is most preferred by the park rangers linked to the Foundation for Ecodevelopment and Conservation.
Some of these rangers are part of the FUNDAECO Genesis Program — a team of six tasked with stopping poaching and illegal logging. Given cartel activity surrounding the park, these rangers are unarmed but wear bullet proof vests. Some choose to protect their identities.
“All of them are threatened,” program director Francisco Asturias told ABC News. “They are the ones who take people to jail.”
The threats are often from those who were stopped by the Genesis team for destroying the park, which can be anyone from hunters to cartel members. Pulga Garcia told ABC News he has received 500 death threats during his time as a ranger.
“But we always want to continue with the heart of a conservationist, because we were born here,” Garcia said. “To pass it on to my children and from my children, to their children. Because if we lose this jungle, we’re dead.”
(KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip) — While there was joy on the faces of some Palestinians returning to the Gaza Strip this week after two years of war, many said they found their old neighborhoods unrecognizable from the relentless fighting that reduced many of the buildings to rubble.
Following the historic ceasefire agreement enacted on Monday, tens of thousands of displaced residents and nearly 2,000 Palestinians released from Israeli prisons made it back to Gaza, only to find themselves homeless.
“Of course, I was happy about being released, but not happy of being displaced with no safety in place, no life necessities,” said 23-year-old Abdullah Wa’el Mohammed Farhan, one of the former Palestinian prisoners freed on Monday as part of a ceasefire deal that President Donald Trump helped broker.
Standing outside a tent in Khan Younis, where he and his family are living, Farhan told ABC News that he was imprisoned for 20 months as the war with Israel raged on. He said that while detained, he and the other Palestinian prisoners were “completely isolated from the world.”
“When I was told about my release, I didn’t believe it because more than once [Israeli authorities] told us about our release and moved us from one prison to another while being tortured and beaten,” Farhan said.
ABC News has contacted the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Prison Service about the allegations from Farhan and other released prisoners about being tortured and subjected to starvation while incarcerated, but have not received a response.
Fahan’s sister, 21-year-old Samaher Farhan, told ABC News that while she is thankful they have been reunited, she conceded that she was saddened her brother had to return to a community wrecked by the war.
“When I saw Abdullah yesterday, it was mixed feelings of happiness and sadness because of how he looked before he went to prison and how he looked now,” Samaher Farhan said.
She said she hopes to resume living in their home, which is still intact but in an area that is not habitable. For the time being, she said her family is living in a tent.
“We felt bad that this is not a worthy welcoming of a prisoner,” Samaher Farhan said. “How can he come out to a worn tent? So, it was a sad feeling. I even tried not to meet him or sit with him for a long time because the situation is dire in this worn tent.”
She said that when her brother was taken prisoner, their neighborhood was still in good shape, adding, “It was barely 1% of the destruction we have now.”
The United Nations and other organizations have reported that there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip, which is about 25 miles long by 7.5 miles wide. The IDF has designated most of the war-torn territory a “no-go zone,” issuing evacuation orders for civilians there, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
According to a damage assessment by the U.N. Satellite Centre, 83% of all structures in Gaza City, the capital of the Palestinian territory, are damaged. The assessment identified at least 17,734 structures that have been destroyed, about 43% of the total number of structures damaged.
In a report issued on Tuesday, the U.N. estimated that it will cost around $70 billion to reconstruct Gaza.
In its latest report on Wednesday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said that nearly 68,000 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip during the war, which started when Hamas terrorists launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking about 250 others as hostages.
The final 20 living Israeli hostages were released by Hamas on Monday as part of the ceasefire deal.
Shadi Abu Sido, a Palestinian photojournalist who was among those released from an Israeli prison on Monday, said he was shocked by the widespread devastation that has occurred in Gaza since he was detained in March 2024.
“I entered Gaza and found it to be like a scene of Judgment Day,” Sido said in a video testimony. “This is not Gaza. Where is the world?”
He said that while he was in prison, he was told by an Israeli prison officer that his wife and two children had been killed during the war. But once he returned to his home in Khan Younis, he said he learned that was not the case.
“I heard her voice, I heard my children, I was astonished. It cannot be explained, they were alive,” Sido said in an interview with Reuters.
But for another Palestinian prisoner, the euphoria of being freed was quickly replaced by agony when he learned his three children — ages 2, 5 and 8 — had died in the war.
In a video testimony, the man, whose name was not released, is seen falling to his knees and sobbing.
In the video, the man held a bracelet in the palm of his hand and said he had made it in prison and planned to give it to his youngest daughter.
“I made this for my daughter, whose birthday was supposed to be in five days,” he said in the video.
Viktor Kovalchuk/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
(LONDON) — Russia overnight fired more than 300 drones and about three dozen missiles at targets throughout Ukraine, including civilian energy infrastructure and emergency services, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday.
The strike included an attack on the State Emergency Service department in the Kharkiv region, he said.
“There are wounded,” Zelenskyy said on social media. “Recovery efforts are underway everywhere. Emergency services are working.”
Zelenskyy, who is scheduled on Friday to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House, said on Thursday that the ongoing strikes only showed that the West needed to continue applying “pressure” on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
That pressure included continuing to update sanctions, but, he said, it could also include longer-range capabilities for the Ukrainian military to strike targets farther into Russia.
“Strong decisions are possible, decisions that can help. And this depends on the United States, on Europe, on all partners whose strength directly determines whether the war will be ended,” Zelenskyy said.
He added, “Now there is an important momentum toward peace in the Middle East. In Europe, this is also possible. That is exactly what I will be discussing today and tomorrow in Washington.”
The Kremlin on Wednesday also addressed the potential for the West to supply weapons for or to greenlight longer-range Ukrainian strikes within Russia.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quoted in Tass, a Russian state-affiliated media outlet, saying that deliveries of U.S.-made Tomahawks would amount to a “dangerous escalation of tensions” between Russia and the United States.
The Russian strike on Ukraine overnight targeted several Ukrainian regions — with a focus on the Poltava and Kharkiv regions — with a total of about 320 drones, about 200 of which were Shahed attack drones, the Ukrainian air force said. About 37 missiles were also fired, the military said.
Most of those aerial attacks were thwarted by Ukraine or otherwise failed, the air force said. At least 37 drones and 14 missiles made it through Ukraine’s air defenses, the military said.
The Russian Ministry of Defense also reported downing at least 51 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory. Local authorities said the electricity supplies to several settlements in the Volgograd, Voronezh and Belgorod regions were disrupted by the Ukrainian attacks.
Trump on Wednesday said during an Oval Office press conference that he thought Russia and Ukraine were close to a ceasefire deal about two months ago, blaming the impasse on animosity between Zelenskyy and Putin.
“You know, it’s an obstacle. It’s an obstacle,” Trump said. “There’s no question about it.”
(NEW YORK) — Dozens of humanitarian organizations have begun rapidly scaling up operations in the hopes of delivering aid to Gaza again amid the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
Items in Gaza — including food, clean water, medicine and hygiene products — are running low, the organizations say. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of families have been displaced, many living in tents in extremely crowded areas.
Humanitarian aid workers told ABC News that they will face several challenges in delivering aid to Gaza. Israeli authorities have limited the amount of aid that can enter the strip, and destroyed roads and neighborhoods make it difficult to reach areas of the enclave.
Additionally, winter is fast-approaching, and aid workers say they have a limited amount of time to deliver provisions to help Palestinians in Gaza get through the cold weather months.
“We’re not asking for anything unreasonable. We’re asking for the volume of aid that entered Gaza Strip before the escalation in October 2023,” Tess Ingram, communications manager for UNICEF, told ABC News. “I think that’s something to watch for in the coming days. Does the aid flow? Are the crossings open? Is the U.N. enabled to do its job, to serve the children of Gaza?. … But the other part is, does the ceasefire hold? The stakes are really high right now, so that ceasefire has to hold.”
Lifting restrictions on aid
The U.N. said that Sunday, Oct. 12, was the first day progress was seen in the scale-up of humanitarian aid deliveries into Gaza.
Hundreds of thousands of hot meals and bread bundles were distributed in the north and south, according to the U.N. Additionally, cooking gas entered the strip for the first time since March as well as tents, frozen meat, fresh fruit, flour and medicine, the U.N. said.
However, on Monday, no trucks entered Gaza because of the transfer of Israeli hostages, and border crossings were also closed on Tuesday due to the Jewish religious holiday of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah.
Israeli officials announced on Tuesday it would not reopen the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt and would limit aid entering Gaza after Hamas failed to return all the bodies of the deceased hostages, as called for under the ceasefire agreement.
“Starting tomorrow, only half of the agreed number of trucks — 300 trucks — will be allowed to enter, and all of them will belong to the U.N. and humanitarian NGOs, with no private sector involvement,” COGAT, the Israeli defense body in charge of coordinating aid to Gaza, said in a statement. “No fuel or gas will be allowed into the Strip, except for specific needs related to humanitarian infrastructure.”
Hamas said the rubble makes it logistically challenging to locate the bodies of the deceased hostages, but Israel said it believes Hamas knows where the hostages’ bodies are and is purposefully delaying their return.
Jolien Veldwijk, CARE Palestine Country Director, said the number of trucks entering Gaza is just “a trickle” of what is needed to meet the needs of the population.
“The destruction is significantly worse than compared to seven, eight months ago,” she told ABC News, compared to the first ceasefire when she was also in Gaza.
Multiple organizations, including CARE, said they have not been able to get aid into Gaza since March 2, when Israel imposed a total blockade — in an effort to pressure Hamas to release the remaining hostages — that lasted for 11 weeks.
The organization said their repeated requests to deliver aid have been denied by Israeli authorities. Veldwijk said supplies are currently stuck in warehouses in Egypt and in Jordan.
Similarly, James Hoobler, a humanitarian policy adviser with Oxfam America, told ABC News the group has had 4,000 food parcels and a large volume of essential water sanitation and hygiene equipment stuck in its warehouse in Amman, Jordan, since March.
Some organizations say they are also running into red tape while trying to access the strip.
“We’re running out of supplies now,” Veldwijk said of the CARE team on the ground in Gaza. “We still can’t bring anything in. … We’re desperate to get our supplies in, but we’re also sort of desperate for all the border crossings to open.”
Ingram, from UNICEF, who is currently in Gaza, said limiting the volume of aid entering the strip is the opposite of what is needed but that UNICEF has seen some success in its operations on the ground since the ceasefire went into effect.
“We are able to move far more freely, get access to areas that we haven’t been able to get to for a while,” she told ABC News. “We don’t have to coordinate our movements with the Israeli authorities anymore, which means that we’re not facing delays or denials.”
She went on, “So for example, the last three days, I was in and around Gaza City, and that was kind of the first time in a while that we were able to get into parts of Gaza City that were the focus of that intense bombardment in August and September, and really get a sense of how that has affected the area and how people are planning to resume living there, and what they need.”
Aid workers added that rebuilding sanitation networks is also necessary but will be a challenge until the supplies entering Gaza necessary increase.
“I went to a big wastewater dam in Gaza City, which is surrounded by residential area, and it’s at risk of flooding because the pumps aren’t working,” Ingram said. “Sanitation presents a massive disease risk if we don’t get on top of it. So, we need to really improve the systems that remove solid waste, that deal with sewage and wastewater.”
Clearing rubble and rebuilding roads
Destruction across Gaza also presents a logistical challenge in delivering aid to the civilian population. Many roads have been destroyed, and rubble may be hiding unexploded ordinances.
Zaheer Kham, global director of fundraising for the humanitarian charity Human Appeal, told ABC News that he received a message from teams on the ground in Gaza on Tuesday that rubble in the roads is starting to be removed.
“Is it enough? Of course not, we need heavy machinery to remove the rubble in the roads that has accumulated over two years,” he told ABC News.
Humanitarian workers told ABC News that rebuilding water networks will be critical in the rebuilding effort in Gaza, but it comes with many logistical challenges.
Aid workers said water that comes from the ground in Gaza is very salty from years of degradation. Drinking water needs to be desalinated, which is accomplished by desalination plants across Gaza, aid workers say.
“There needs to be quite a bit of work to make sure that they’re all functioning properly.” Ingram said. “There’s some that are out of service. So, there’s work that needs to go into making sure that drinking water production increases.”
The network of pipes that brought water into homes has mostly been destroyed so most people in Gaza receive their water from water trucks, which collect drinking water from desalination plants and distribute it throughout the strip.
Ingram said the trucks have gone through wear and tear, which may limit their ability to distribute water as water networks and wells are rehabilitated.
“The water trucks themselves are a limited fleet that have done two years in a war zone over rubble,” she said. “They need maintenance and repairs.”
Aid workers say there are many groundwater wells, which pump domestic water that people use for cooking, cleaning and showering, many of which need repairs.
Veldwijk said CARE has rehabilitated water networks in the past to bring drinking water and domestic water to people’s homes to complement the water supplied by trucks, but some of have been destroyed and need to be rebuilt.
She said the group is also working to rehabilitate wells as well as desalination units.
Aid workers added that rebuilding sanitation networks is also necessary but will be a challenge until the supplies entering Gaza necessary increase.
“I went to a big wastewater dam in Gaza City, which is surrounded by residential area, and it’s at risk of flooding because the pumps aren’t working,” Ingram said. “Sanitation presents a massive disease risk if we don’t get on top of it. So, we need to really improve the systems that remove solid waste, that deal with sewage and wastewater.”
Clearing rubble and rebuilding roads
Destruction across Gaza also presents a logistical challenge in delivering aid to the civilian population. Many roads have been destroyed, and rubble may be hiding unexploded ordinances.
Zaheer Kham, global director of fundraising for the humanitarian charity Human Appeal, told ABC News that he received a message from teams on the ground in Gaza on Tuesday that rubble in the roads is starting to be removed.
“Is it enough? Of course not, we need heavy machinery to remove the rubble in the roads that has accumulated over two years,” he told ABC News.
Veldwijk said the roads being destroyed make it difficult to travel from southern Gaza to central Gaza to northern Gaza and if all the border crossings are opened, supplies can more easily be funneled throughout Gaza.
Aid workers say entire sections in Gaza have been destroyed, making it difficult to find people who may be in need of aid.
“It’s like being inside the skeleton of a city,” Ingram said of visiting neighborhoods in Gaza City and Jabalia, just north of Gaza City. “Everything is gray. Things that would normally tell you where you are, are gone, and it’s very disorienting.”
On Tuesday, the U.N. Development Programme announced that the cost of rebuilding Gaza is estimated at around $70 billion, with $20 billion needed in the next three years alone.
Fast-approaching winter season
With the cold weather months approaching, humanitarian organizations say there is an urgent need to get warm clothes and blankets into Gaza.
Winters in Gaza are usually not very severe with low temperatures typically in the 40s F, but heavy rains and its seaside location can make it feel colder.
“It really is a race against time,” Hoobler, with Oxfam America, said. “Winterization is a major issue, especially with the amount of destruction to housing that we’ve seen. So, we know people are in very overcrowded conditions there. They don’t have adequate shelter. Many of the makeshift shelters that people were in were destroyed in bombings.”
Nine out of 10 homes have been damaged or destroyed in Gaza, meaning some people are sleeping in homes with missing walls or roofs while others are sleeping in tents, according to Ingram, increasing the need for mattresses, blankets and other provisions.
Ingram said that last winter, some children — including babies — died of hypothermia, which she said is preventable with the proper supplies.
She added that she is concerned that many children in Gaza have only one or two sets of clothes, many of which are not warm enough for winter months.
“Our aim is to provide every child in the Gaza Strip under the age of 10 with a new set of winter clothes during the ceasefire and a new pair of shoes,” Ingram said. “That goal is heavily dependent on the volume of aid that gets into the Gaza Strip, so we remain hopeful, but we do call on both parties to the conflict to adhere to the terms of the ceasefire.”
(PASS LAKE, British Columbia) — Two hikers were attacked by a grizzly bear after they encountered the mother and her two cubs on a trail in Canada, authorities said.
The incident occurred on Sunday when the unnamed hikers encountered a grizzly sow with her two cubs on Farm Cabin Trail near Pass Lake in British Columbia, Canada, according to a statement from the British Columbia Conservation Officer Service (COS).
“They were transported and treated at University Hospital of Northern BC,” officials said. “Both hikers are in stable conditions and recovering in hospital.”
Following an investigation, the COS Predator Attack Team determined the bear’s actions were defensive and that due to the location and nature of the incident, no action will be taken against the bears.
The trail has remained closed since the attack and signage has been posted warning about the potential of bears in the area as authorities are asking people to respect the closure and avoid the area.
COS officials also took the opportunity to remind people about bear safety when hiking in the wilderness and said that if you encounter a bear, you should stay alert and make noise by talking, singing or clapping regularly to avoid surprising a bear, especially when near streams, dense brush or when visibility is low.
Officials said that people should always travel in groups since bears are less likely to approach and to always carry bear spray and, if you see a bear, stay calm and don’t run, speak in a calm voice and slowly back away.
“We’re wishing them a full and speedy recovery,” COS said about the hikers recovering from the attack.
