People walk through a flooded street following Hurricane Melissa in Petit-Goave, southwest of Port-au-Prince, on Oct. 30, 2025.
CLARENS SIFFROY
AFP via Getty Images
The death toll from Hurricane Melissa in Haiti continued to climb Thursday, with authorities saying that at least 30 people are now dead and 20 others are missing.
The biggest toll occurred in the country’s gang-ridden West region, when a swollen Digue River overflowed its banks and caused widespread flooding in the coastal town of Petit-Goâve, southwest of the capital. At least 23 people died, including 10 children, Haiti’s Office of Civil Protection said in the disaster.
“The search for victims is still under way,” the disaster office said in its latest report. “The Grise River is also swollen and has swept away a house in Tabarre.”
The hurricane, which made landfall on Tuesday in Jamaica as a Category 5 storm, didn’t make a direct hit on Haiti. But as it battered the southwestern coast of Jamaica, Melissa winds and rains lashed the southern coast of Haiti, causing deadly floods that washed out roads, submerged cars, wiped out crops and buried homes under landslides.
The head of the United Nations Office for Migration, speaking to reporters in New York on Thursday, said aid agencies still do not yet have a full view of the storm’s devastation after Haitians were forced to endure more than a week of rainfall.
“We need to do the assessments to really understand the extent of the damage and the human toll,” Gregoire Goodstein, the head of mission for office, said.
Those assessments require traveling on a World Food Program helicopter to the affected regions due to gangs’ control of key roads. “Because of the weather we’ve had to interrupt a lot of the flights,” Goodstein said.
But the report from Haiti’s disaster office is starting to give some idea of not just the damages, but also how the deaths and the devastation occurred.
In the town of Dame-Marie in the Grand’Anse, a man was injured when a tree fell as he rode his motorcycle. “His passenger is missing,” the report said.
A woman walks past her house that was destroyed by Hurricane Melissa in Petit-Goave, southwest of Port-au-Prince, on October 30, 2025. CLARENS SIFFROY AFP via Getty Images
In the Artibonite region one person died, and 250 people were displaced in the town of Saint-Marc, where residents have been fighting against a take-over by armed gangs.
Several cities were under water, particularly the town of Corail, where the downtown area was flooded. There was also coastal flooding in Anse-d’Hainault and the offshore Cayemites Islands.
The roofs of schools were blown off and at least 659 homes in the region of the Nippes were flooded.
Melissa caused significant damage to roads, particularly in the southeast region of the country. The Gosseline River washed away part of a major road that links the town of Jacmel with the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Blockages were also eeported by local authorities in the towns of Belle-Anse and Marigot in the southeast. Rivers flooded in the regions of the Grand’Anse.
The impact in Haiti is complicated by its ongoing humanitarian crisis, which Goodstein said is creating “immense suffering.”
“We have 1.4 million people that are displaced because of gang violence,” he said. “So all of this is coming on top of the very critical situation that we’re facing now.”
Cars are submerged in mud following Hurricane Melissa in Petit-Goave, southwest of Port-au-Prince, on October 30, 2025. CLARENS SIFFROY AFP via Getty Images
In addition to the roads, farms in the south have also sustained damage due to flooding.
That will likely worsen the country’s already dire food crisis. There are currently 5.7 million people, about half the country’s population, who are going hungry every day, Goodstein said. There have also been cases of cholera
“So we’re also having a public health emergency on top of all the existing vulnerabilities,” he added, stressing that the U.N.’s ongoing humanitarian response plan remains “grossly underfunded.”
“This is really putting at risk.. our ability to continue with life-saving operations, whether it’s linked to hurricanes or to the existing crisis linked to gang violence,” Goodstein said.
“What we need right now is the funding,” he said. “We have the teams on the ground, we have the coordination structures with the government, but we don’t have the resources.”
Jacqueline Charles has reported on Haiti and the English-speaking Caribbean for the Miami Herald for over a decade. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for her coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, she was awarded a 2018 Maria Moors Cabot Prize — the most prestigious award for coverage of the Americas.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United Nations Security Council on Thursday condemned an assault by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces on al-Fashir in Sudan’s North Darfur, expressing grave concern in a statement “at the heightened risk of large-scale atrocities, including ethnically motivated atrocities.”
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Caitlin Webber)
HANOI (Reuters) -A landmark U.N. cybercrime treaty, aimed at tackling offences that cost the global economy trillions of dollars annually, is set to be signed in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi by around 60 countries over the weekend.
The convention, which will take effect after it is ratified by 40 nations, is expected to streamline international cooperation against cybercrime, but has been criticised by activists and tech companies over concerns of possible human rights abuses.
“Cyberspace has become fertile ground for criminals…every day, sophisticated scams defraud families, steal livelihoods, and drain billions of dollars from our economies,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the opening ceremony.
“The U.N. Cybercrime Convention is a powerful, legally binding instrument to strengthen our collective defences against cybercrime.”
The convention targets a broad spectrum of offences from phishing and ransomware to online trafficking and hate speech, the U.N. has said, citing estimates that cybercrime costs the global economy trillions of dollars each year.
Vietnam President Luong Cuong said the signing of the convention “not only marks the birth of a global legal instrument, but also affirms the enduring vitality of multilateralism, where countries overcome differences and are willing to shoulder responsibilities together for the common interests of peace, security, stability and development.”
Critics have warned its vague definition of crime could enable abuse.
The Cybersecurity Tech Accord, which includes Meta and Microsoft, has dubbed the pact a “surveillance treaty,” saying it may facilitate data sharing among governments and criminalise ethical hackers who test systems for vulnerabilities.
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which led the treaty negotiations, said the agreement includes provisions to protect human rights and promotes legitimate research activities.
The European Union, the United States and Canada sent diplomats and officials to sign the treaty in Hanoi.
Vietnam’s role as host has also stirred controversy. The U.S. State Department recently flagged “significant human rights issues” in the country, including online censorship. Human Rights Watch says at least 40 people have been arrested this year, including for expressing dissent online.
Vietnam views the treaty as an opportunity to enhance its global standing and cyber defences amid rising attacks on critical infrastructure.
(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio and Khanh Vu; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
Carlos Ruiz Massieu, special representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Haiti and head of the U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti, briefs the Security Council on Wednesday, October 22, 2025 on the question concerning Haiti and the U.N. political office.
Eskinder Debebe
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
With three months remaining in Haiti’s rocky political transition, United Nations Security Council members are calling on the country’s leaders and politicians to quickly set aside their differences and avoid a political vacuum.
The urgent call comes amid the pending end of the current governance arrangement that expires on Feb. 7, 2026— a date by which a newly elected president and Parliament were originally expected to take office but mostly likely will not. In addition to being hampered by a complex and deadly security landscape, Haiti’s ruling transition has also been dogged by corruption allegations, which have undermined its efforts to return the country to constitutional order. Haiti’s last general election was in 2016, and since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, the Caribbean nation has not had one elected leader in office.
“Critical decisions will be required by national authorities and stakeholders in the weeks to come,” Christina Markus Lassen, the Permanent Representative of Denmark, said. “Sustained inter-Haitian dialogue remains crucial.”
In his latest report to the Security Council, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres noted that many Haitian political actors have expressed concern about the risk of a political vacuum if elections are not held on time.
United Nations Secretary General António Guterres. Evan Schneider UN Photo/Evan Schneider
The key people in Haiti hold diverging views on whether to maintain or modify the current transitional governance arrangement, Guterres said. Among the suggestions being discussed in Port-au-Prince: replacing the current nine-member Transitional Presidential Council with a judge from the country’s highest court as transitional president and a prime minister chosen through consultations; amending the arrangement to only three individuals and an oversight body to monitor government action, or extending the current group.
Several political figures, including a group of former prime ministers, proposed a one-year extension, starting on Feb. 7, 2026, under a new political accord, leading to elections by October 2026, the report said.
Guterres’s report is part of the regular update he is required to give the Security Council, which after supporting the extension of global sanctions for Haiti and issuing a new 12-month mandate for a Gang Suppression Force is also deciding on the renewal of the mandate of the U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti. The renewal of the political office received wide support from the council.
The United Kingdom’s deputy representative, highlighting the recent support for the U.S.-backed suppression force and continued sanctions, said it’s time for Haiti’s transitional presidential council “to step up and match the international community’s efforts.
“The Haitian authorities must work at pace to lay the necessary legislation to enable free and fair elections,” Ambassador Archibald Young said. “We call on all Haitian political actors to put their differences aside and work together in good faith to improve governance in Haiti, particularly ahead of the seventh of February.”
Carlos Ruiz Massieu, Guterres’ new special representative in Haiti, told Security Council members that “the transition clock is ticking” and Haiti could not afford a political vacuum, especially amid its ongoing gang-driven violence.
“I am concerned that a steady path towards the restoration of democratic governance is yet to emerge,” he said. “However, I welcome the steps taken by national authorities to consult with political stakeholders to reach agreements on the necessary conditions under which elections should be held and to avoid a political vacuum beyond 7 February 2026.”
Since arriving in Port-au-Prince on Aug. 2, Ruiz Massieu said he has visited national authorities, civil society leaders, human rights advocates, political parties and Haiti’s international supporters.
“I have been able to witness firsthand the brutal reality of everyday life in the country, especially in Port-au-Prince,” he said. “There is no doubt that the circumstances are dire, but the Haitian people have not given up.”
Still, the scale and impact of the crisis is disturbing: More than 1.4 million people have been forced to leave their homes, while human rights abuses by gangs continue, Ruiz Massieu said as he highlighted the grim reality the secretary-general provided in his report.
Between July and August, gangs increasingly targeted farming communities on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince and in other areas of the country, and staged multiple attacks against the national police. In the West region, a gang assault on the village of Labodrie in Cabaret resulted in more than more than 40 deaths, including six children. In the Artibonite, attacks during the same period left 42 residents dead and 29 injured, with two police stations set on fire.
Though gang violence has slowed down in the capital, farmers in Kenscoff, located in the hills, continue to be targeted, while killings have risen dramatically in the Artibonite and Center regions, the report said. The U.N. recorded 1,303 victims of homicides between January and August, compared with 419 during the same period in 2024.
Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said while the United States will do its part to support Haiti, the countrys political class and private sector “must do their parts as well in support of a democratically elected government.”
Waltz said Washington will remain relentless in pursuing individuals who undermine Haitian security and arm and finance terrorist gangs. This includes expanding its use “of all available tools, using all means necessary, including indictments, arrests, financial sanctions, arms seizures, visa and other immigration restrictions, to counter the impunity that robs Haitian children of their futures.”
A number of U.N. diplomats, including the representatives of Panama and Russia, expressed concerns about civilian casualties resulting from security operations in Haiti. The issue was raised by Guterres and tied it to the Haitian government’s use of armed drones through a contract with the firm Vectus Global to fight gangs. Vectus Global is owned by former Blackwater founder Erik Prince.
In August, two police officers were killed and six others injured when a government drone accidentally exploded. In September at least 21 people were killed, including a pregnant woman, a boy and three girls, Guterres’ report said. Another 41 others, including 7 children, were injured.
“We are extremely concerned about the recent increase in activity in Haiti of foreign mercenaries operating outside the legal framework,” Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya, who presided over the meeting, said. He added that the uncontrolled use of drones, “which has already resulted in several confirmed civilian casualties, is completely unacceptable, and we hope that this problem is not going to migrate into the new mission.”
Ruiz Massieu told the Security Council that despite the hostile environment the U.N. finds itself working in in Haiti, he is “leading efforts to swiftly complete the return of all its international personnel to Port-au-Prince, with the goal of achieving 100% staff presence in the capital as a matter of urgency at this critical stage of the political transition.”
Haiti’s ambassador to the U.N., Ericq Pierre, said that building peace requires the implementation of a national disarmament, demobilization and reintegration policy that is focused both on the removal of illegal arms and on the reintegration of young people.
“In this regard, the government invites [the U.N. Integrated Office] to strengthen its technical and institutional support for this policy, which is essential in order to bring about lasting security that is rooted in reconciliation, social cohesion and respect for human rights,” he said.
Pierre took note of the Secretary General’s report and said “the restoration of security” is the government’s top priority.
“The report does, however, indicate that the government is making great efforts to overcome these many challenges,” he said. “Despite a worrying security context and difficult socio-economic circumstances, the Haitian authorities are stepping up their actions to re-establish the state, to consolidate the Republic’s institutions and to create the conditions for a return to constitutional order.”
Jacqueline Charles has reported on Haiti and the English-speaking Caribbean for the Miami Herald for over a decade. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for her coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, she was awarded a 2018 Maria Moors Cabot Prize — the most prestigious award for coverage of the Americas.
DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) -International food aid must double to meet the needs of about 2 billion people worldwide who struggle to get enough to eat, winners of an annual prize recognizing contributions to reducing global hunger said on Wednesday.
The World Food Prize was started in 1986 by Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, a U.S. agronomist whose work with high-yield crops in the 1960s has been credited with saving 1 billion lives.
A group of 28 prize winners, including Brazilian microbiologist Mariangela Hungria who received the award this year, issued the call on Wednesday during the Norman Borlaug Dialogue, an annual conference in Des Moines, Iowa.
The U.N. World Food Program recently reported global food aid was cut by 40% in 2025. The United States, previously a top donor, slashed aid under President Donald Trump, and other governments such as the United Kingdom and France also reduced assistance.
WFP cut aid in Democratic Republic of Congo by 75% and halved a hot meal program in Haiti due to lack of funds, WFP Assistant Executive Director Valerie Guarnieri said during the conference.
“Donors are slashing their donations, for a variety of reasons,” she said. “There will be lives that will be lost, and global instability will increase.”
David Beckmann, the 2010 prize winner and former president of nongovernmental organization Bread for the World, said famine was a problem in Sudan, Yemen, Gaza and Haiti, among other places.
“When the need for help increased, the money was not there,” he said.
Chef Jose Andres, founder of the nonprofit World Central Kitchen, has not won the World Food Prize, but he joined the appeal.
“Immigration is increasing and will keep increasing. The main reason people leave their countries is hunger,” he told reporters.
The World Food Prize honors work in fields like nutrition, environmental conservation, policy advocacy, rural development and plant and soil science.
(Reporting by Marcelo Teixeira; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
CAIRO (Reuters) -Gaza mediators — the United States, Egypt and Qatar — stepped up their efforts this week to stabilise the early stages of the truce between Israel and Hamas and to push forward U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan.
WHAT IS THE STATUS OF TALKS?
A Hamas delegation led by the group’s exiled Gaza chief, Khalil Al-Hayya, has been in Cairo for talks with Egypt since Saturday.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance is in Israel on Tuesday after envoys Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. Egyptian officials have also met Netanyahu.
The first phase of the ceasefire involved stopping fighting, returning hostages, increasing aid flows and a partial pull-back of Israeli forces to a “yellow line”.
WHAT HAS EACH SIDE DONE UNDER THE TRUCE?
Israel’s forces have pulled back from some parts of Gaza, but around half of the strip remains under Israeli control. On Monday, the military said it began marking the withdrawal line, warning Hamas and residents to stay away.
Hamas has released all 20 living hostages it was holding and 13 bodies, leaving 15 deceased hostages still in Gaza. Hamas says rubble and other factors may complicate the retrieval of a number of bodies. Israel believes Hamas can quickly return around five more bodies and is stalling. An international task force is meant to locate the rest.
Israel has released around 2,000 Palestinians, including 250 long-serving inmates, but vetoed the release of some prominent militant leaders. It has returned 165 bodies of Palestinians to Gaza.
Israel has also facilitated the entry of more aid trucks through two crossings into Gaza, but UN and Palestinian officials said it remains far from sufficient.
WHAT PROBLEMS HAVE HIT THE TRUCE ALREADY?
There have been continued flashes of violence, particularly around the “yellow line” demarcating Israel’s partial pullback inside Gaza.
Israel began marking out the line on Monday with yellow concrete blocks after repeated incidents of shootings. Israel says it has fired at suspected militants crossing the line. Gaza residents say it has not been clear where the line runs.
On Sunday, Palestinian militants killed two Israeli soldiers in Rafah. Israel responded with airstrikes that Gaza health authorities said killed 28 people. Hamas and Israel later recommitted to the truce.
Inside Gaza, Hamas has reimposed control, killing members of rival groups and those it accuses of collaborating with Israel. Trump signalled his endorsement of that but the U.S. military has said it must stop.
Hamas has said aid is flowing in too slowly. Israel says it is sticking to agreements.
The Rafah border crossing from Egypt to Gaza is also meant to reopen but has not yet done so.
WHAT’S BEING DISCUSSED FOR THE COMING PHASES?
A U.S.-backed stabilisation force is meant to ensure security in Gaza. Its composition, role, chain of command, legal status and other issues are yet to be agreed.
The United States has agreed to provide up to 200 troops to support the force without being deployed in Gaza itself. U.S. officials have said they are also speaking to Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and Azerbaijan to contribute.
Trump wants Hamas and other factions to disarm and Gaza to be demilitarised. The group has never accepted this and says mediators have not yet officially started discussing the issue with it.
Gaza is to be governed by a transitional committee of apolitical Palestinian technocrats. The composition of this body has not been agreed. Hamas has accepted the formation of this body, but says it would have a role in approving it.
The panel would be supervised by a new international transitional body called the “Board of Peace” headed by Trump. Its formation, and the possible inclusion of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is still to be agreed.
Hamas wants employees of the existing Gaza government it has run since 2007 to stay in their jobs. Israel says Hamas can have no role.
The phasing of further Israeli pull-backs is yet to be agreed, and will depend partly on Israel’s own assessment of how much of a threat Hamas still poses. Hamas says the war will only end when Israel has fully withdrawn.
The Trump plan calls for the Palestinian Authority to be reformed. It is not clear what this would involve or what role it would take in future.
The plan says the truce could ultimately create the conditions for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination. Netanyahu has so far refused to accept the possibility of a Palestinian state.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
TAIPEI (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he expects to reach a fair trade deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping and downplayed risks of a clash over the issue of Taiwan.
Asked by a reporter whether the U.S. might adjust its position on Taiwan independence in order to reach a trade deal with China, Trump said: “We’re going to be talking about a lot of things. I assume that will be one of them, but I’m not going to talk about it now.”
Below are some questions and answers about what is meant by the term “Taiwan independence”.
WHAT IS TAIWAN’S HISTORY AND FORMAL NAME TODAY?
Previously known as Formosa, the island has been home to indigenous people for thousands of years, before the Dutch and Spanish briefly ruled parts of it in the 1600s.
The Qing dynasty incorporated Taiwan as part of Fujian province in 1684 and only declared it a separate Chinese province in 1885.
Following the Qing’s defeat in a war with Japan, it became a Japanese colony in 1895. In 1945, it was handed over to the Republic of China government at the end of World War Two.
In 1949 after being defeated by Mao Zedong’s communist forces, the Republic of China government fled and moved its capital to Taiwan, and Republic of China remains the island’s formal name. Mao set up the People’s Republic of China, and claimed it was the only legitimate Chinese government for the whole of China, including Taiwan, as the Republic of China’s successor state.
WHAT IS TAIWAN’S INTERNATIONAL STATUS?
For decades, the Republic of China in Taipei also claimed to be the legitimate Chinese government, but in 1971 Beijing took over the China seat at the United Nations from Taipei.
Currently only 12 countries maintain formal ties with Taipei, mostly small and poorer developing nations such as Belize and Tuvalu.
Most major Western countries and U.S. allies maintain close unofficial ties with Taiwan by recognising the Republic of China passport and having de facto embassies in each other’s capitals. Taiwanese citizens can freely travel to most countries using its passport.
The U.S. severed official ties with Taipei in 1979 but is bound by law to provide the island with the means to defend itself. The U.S. officially takes no position on Taiwan’s sovereignty under Washington’s “One China” policy.
China says it will not renounce the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control. Beijing has offered Taiwan a “one country, two systems” model similar to Hong Kong, which promised the city a high degree of autonomy, though no major political party in Taiwan supports that.
Opinion polls in Taiwan have repeatedly shown most Taiwanese wish to maintain the current status quo in relations with China.
China also says that United Nations resolution 2758, passed in 1971 which stated that the People’s Republic of China is the only legitimate government of China and which resulted in Taipei losing China’s U.N. seat to Beijing, means that legally the world recognises Taiwan belongs to China.
The government in Taipei says that is nonsense given the resolution made no mention of Taiwan or its status.
IS TAIWAN ALREADY AN INDEPENDENT COUNTRY?
Taiwan, whose people elect their own leaders and whose government controls a defined area of territory with its own military, passport and currency, enjoys de facto independence even if that is not formally recognised by most countries.
Taiwan’s government says the Republic of China is a sovereign state and that Beijing has no right to speak for or represent it given the People’s Republic of China has no say in how it chooses its leaders and has never ruled Taiwan.
COULD TAIPEI DECLARE A “REPUBLIC OF TAIWAN”?
It would be very difficult and require parliamentary approval of a constitutional amendment and then a referendum, rather than a simple declaration by President Lai Ching-te.
At least 75% of lawmakers would need to pass that amendment, and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and main opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT) currently have an equal number of seats.
The DPP, which has been in power since 2016, has not made an attempt to change the constitution. The KMT strongly opposes any attempts to change the name of Republic of China.
WHAT DOES TAIWAN’S PRESIDENT SAY ABOUT INDEPENDENCE?
China detests Lai and calls him a “separatist”. Before Lai was elected president he made comments about being a “practical worker for Taiwan independence”. Lai maintains he simply meant Taiwan is already an independent country.
Since taking office in 2024, Lai has said on several occasions that the Republic of China and People’s Republic of China are “not subordinate to each other”, which Beijing says means he believes the two are separate countries and so he is therefore pushing an independence narrative.
DOES CHINA HAVE A LEGAL FRAMEWORK TO PREVENT FORMAL INDEPENDENCE?
In 2005, China’s largely rubber-stamp parliament passed the Anti-Secession Law that gives the country the legal basis for military action against Taiwan if it secedes or if the “possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted”, but the law is vague and does not give details.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
Work has begun to repair the damaged power supply to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said Saturday. The repairs are hoped to end a precarious four-week outage that saw it dependent on backup generators.
Russian and Ukrainian forces established special ceasefire zones for repairs to be safely carried out, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a social media statement attributed to head Rafael Grossi. The agency hailed the restoration of off-site power as “crucial for nuclear safety and security.”
“Both sides engaged constructively with the IAEA to enable the complex repair plan to proceed,” the statement said.
Ukrainian Energy Minister Svitlana Grynchuk confirmed that Ukrainian specialists were involved in restoring power lines to the plant and said that its stable operation and connection with the Ukrainian power grid were essential to prevent a nuclear incident. She also said that it was the 42nd time since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 that power lines to the plant had to be restored. Ukraine has previously accused Russia of targeting the nation’s power grid.
The Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station, has been operating on diesel back-up generators since Sept. 23, when its last remaining external power line was severed in attacks that Russia and Ukraine each blamed on the other, officials said.
Firefighters on duty following the Russian drone attack in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine on September 16, 2025.
Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Adm./Anadolu via Getty Images
The plant is in an area under Russian control since early in Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is not in service, but it needs reliable power to cool its six shutdown reactors and spent fuel, to avoid any catastrophic nuclear incidents.
Elsewhere, Russia continued its aerial bombardment of Ukraine, launching three missiles and 164 drones overnight, Ukraine’s Air Force said Saturday. It said that Ukrainian forces shot down 136 of the drones.
Two people were injured after Russian drones targeted a gas station in the Zarichny district of Sumy in northeast Ukraine, local officials said Saturday. They were two women, ages 51 and 53, according to regional Gov. Oleh Hryhorov.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said Saturday that its air defenses had shot down 41 Ukrainian drones overnight.
The work began one day after President Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House and two days after he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone. Mr. Trump called the meeting with Zelenskyy “very interesting, and cordial” in a post on Truth Social and urged the two leaders to end the war.
President Trump, left, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, shake hands outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, Oct. 17, 2025.
Aaron Schwartz / Sipa / Bloomberg via Getty Images / Sipa USA
Their discussions concerned the U.S. giving Ukraine Tomahawk missiles, possibly in exchange for Ukrainian drones, CBS News previously reported. Details of the discussions were not shared, though Mr. Trump indicated that he believed sending the missiles could escalate the war.
Mr. Trump announced earlier this week that he would meet with Putin in Budapest soon. As Zelenskyy arrived at the White House on Friday, Mr. Trump told a reporter that he believed he could persuade Putin to end the war. Mr. Trump later said in the Oval Office that he believes he and Zelenskyy are making “great progress” in ending the war.
Russia has not indicated that it wants to end the war, and Mr. Trump has expressed frustration with Putin in recent months. First Lady Melania Trump said last week she had worked with the Russian leader to return Ukrainian children to their families, an initiative that Mr. Trump said she took on on her own.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The head of the World Trade Organization said she is urging the U.S. and China to de-escalate trade tensions, warning that a decoupling by the world’s two largest economies could reduce global economic output by 7% over the longer term.
WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told Reuters in an interview the global trade body was extremely concerned about the latest spike in U.S.-China trade tensions and had spoken with officials from both countries to encourage more dialogue.
“We’re obviously worried at any escalation of U.S.-China tensions,” she said, noting the two sides had backed away from their first tariff escalation earlier this year, averting more serious consequences and she hoped that would happen again.
“Similarly, we are really hoping that the two sides will come together and they will de-escalate, because any U.S.-China tensions and U.S.-China decoupling (would) have implications not just for the two biggest economies in the world, but also for the rest of the world,” she said.
Both sides, Okonjo-Iweala said, understand the importance of good relations, given the implications for the global economy and other countries.
Any kind of decoupling that divides the world into two trading blocs would result in “significant global GDP losses in the longer term – up to 7% global GDP losses and double-digit welfare losses for developing countries,” she said.
ESCALATING TENSIONS REMAIN ‘SERIOUS RISK’
The WTO last week sharply lowered its 2026 forecast for global merchandise trade volume growth to 0.5% from its previous estimate of 1.8% growth in August, citing expected delayed impacts from U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs. It raised its forecast for global goods trade growth to 2.4% for 2025.
Those forecasts were issued before the relative calm of recent months was shattered last week when China imposed new export controls on rare earth metals needed for the technology sector, and Trump responded by imposing new 100% duties on Chinese imports starting next month.
Okonjo-Iweala said she told officials from the Group of 20 major economies on Wednesday evening that there could be no global financial stability without global trade stability.
“Pressures on the system have not eased and may intensify,” she told the group. “The full effects of recent tariffs are still to be felt. Trade diversion is fueling protectionist sentiment elsewhere. And escalating tensions between the United States and China remain a serious risk.”
Okonjo-Iweala said most WTO members had refrained from joining in the tariff war, and 72% of global trade was still following WTO rules despite a series of bilateral trade deals signed by the U.S. with other countries.
The rules-based multilateral system was proving resilient despite the most severe policy shock in eight decades, she said.
But Okonjo-Iweala said organizations like the WTO should use the current multilateralism crisis to undertake long-sought reforms and make the global trade body more flexible and efficient, and able to take advantage of new trade opportunities in digital trade, services and green trade.
“There’s absolutely no doubt that there are global problems that cannot be solved by any one country alone, and you will need global cooperation to do it, and that’s where multilateralism will still be very, very relevant,” she said. “But to make sure that the organizations are really appreciated, we have to reform, and at the WTO, we are ready to work on this.”
Okonjo-Iweala said she had a good meeting on Wednesday with Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Joseph Barloon, who was confirmed last week as the U.S. ambassador to the WTO.
She said she was very appreciative that the U.S. had removed the WTO from its list of planned spending cuts to international organizations, and efforts were underway to settle U.S. arrears to the trade body.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Paul Simao)
KHAN YOUNIS, GAZA (Reuters) -The father of 18-year-old Hassan who says his son was shot in the head over two months ago in Gaza while out seeking food hopes that the reopening of the Rafah border point will save him.
“The Rafah crossing is our lifeline, for patients and for the Gaza Strip,” Ibrahim Qlob told Reuters in Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis where Hassan lies motionless in bed, his eyes covered with bandages.
“I’m waiting. One day passing for me feels like a year.”
The injury caused a brain haemorrhage, necessitating the removal of part of his skull. A later infection caused him to lose sight in his right eye, his father said.
Now that a fragile ceasefire is taking hold between Israel and Hamas after two years of war, Hassan is just one of 15,600 Gazan patients waiting evacuation, including 3,800 children, according to the World Health Organization.
Many like him suffer from injuries sustained during the conflict. Others have chronic conditions like cancer and heart disease which the decimated health system cannot cope with.
Israeli officials have said the Rafah crossing previously used for patients to exit via Egypt would reopen for transfers.
Two sources told Reuters people could start crossing on Thursday. COGAT, the arm of the Israeli military that oversees aid flows into Gaza, said on Wednesday the date for reopening for people will be announced later.
During the conflict more than 7,000 patients have been evacuated from Gaza, with Egypt taking over half of them.
The rate of transfers slowed, however, when Rafah shut in May 2024 and Israel seized control. Since a previous ceasefire collapsed in March, fewer than four patients have exited daily, meaning it would take over 10 years to finish the list, WHO data shows.
“What we need is more countries to accept patients from Gaza, and we need the restoration of all the medical evacuation routes,” the WHO’s Tarik Jasarevic told reporters this week.
Mohammed Abu Nasser, 32, who survived a strike on his home in Zeitoun, Gaza City with severe injuries to both legs, said he has been on the waiting list over a year.
“My condition is getting worse every day,” he said from Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City.
Hundreds have already died waiting, medical groups and Palestinian health authorities say. The WHO, which took over management of the process last year, said 740 people including 137 children on the list have died since July 2024.
One of them was a girl called Jana Ayad who died from severe acute malnutrition in September, the WHO told Reuters, saying no country accepted her.
Médecins Sans Frontières project coordinator Hani Isleem said that 19 of its patients on the transfer list had died during the war, including 12 children.
“Seeing those patients’ files, being in direct touch with these children, and then you know that you lost them because of all these challenges and difficulties, that is really painful,” he said.
Israeli rejections have sometimes prevented transfers, Isleem added. COGAT did not respond to a request for comment. It has previously said that approvals are subject to security checks.
“The mortality rate is tragically rising, as would be expected given the decimation of health systems and infrastructure on the ground,” said Kate Takes, a solicitor with Children Not Numbers, a UK-based charity working in Gaza and overseeing cases of children needing evacuation.
For Hassan, there are worrying signs. His malnutrition is worsening and he now weighs just 40 kilograms (88 lbs), or nearly half his former body weight, his father said.
“If things stay like this, it will be too late for him.”
(Reporting by Ebrahim Hajjaj and Ramadan Abed in Gaza and Emma Farge in Geneva; Additional reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva and Nidal Al Mughrabi in Cairo; editing by Diane Craft)
(Reuters) -U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday that he told Japanese Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato that the Trump administration expects Japan to stop importing Russian energy.
“Minister Kato and I also discussed important issues pertaining to the U.S.-Japan economic relationship and the Administration’s expectation that Japan stop importing Russian energy,” Bessent said on X, after the two met on Wednesday.
Bessent and Kato met on the sidelines of the annual International Monetary Fund meeting, and the G7 and G20 finance leaders’ gatherings held this week in Washington.
“Japan will do what it can based on the basic principle of coordinating with G7 countries to achieve peace in Ukraine in a fair manner,” Kato told reporters, when asked whether Japan was urged to stop importing Russian energy from Bessent.
The Group of Seven (G7) nations – the U.S., Japan, Canada, Britain, France, Germany and Italy – agreed earlier this month to coordinate and intensify sanctions against Moscow over its war in Ukraine by targeting countries that buy Russian oil and thereby enable sanctions circumvention.
(Reporting by Ismail Shakil, additional reporting by Leika Kinara in Washington; Editing by Costas Pitas and Sonali Paul)
ROME (Reuters) -Almost 14 million people in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan risk severe hunger due to cuts in global humanitarian aid, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Wednesday.
The WFP’s biggest donor, the United States, has slashed its foreign aid under President Donald Trump, and other major nations have also made or announced cuts in development and humanitarian assistance.
“WFP’s funding has never been more challenged. The agency expects to receive 40% less funding for 2025, resulting in a projected budget of $6.4 billion, down from $10 billion in 2024,” the Rome-based agency said.
A WFP report, titled “A Lifeline at Risk”, warned that cuts to its food assistance could push 13.7 million people from “crisis” to “emergency” levels of hunger, one step away from famine in a five-level international hunger scale.
“The gap between what WFP needs to do and what we can afford to do has never been larger. We are at risk of losing decades of progress in the fight against hunger,” WFP executive director Cindy McCain said.
“It’s not just the countries engulfed in major emergencies. Even hard-won gains in the Sahel region, where 500,000 people have been lifted out of aid dependence, could experience severe setbacks without help, and we want to prevent that,” she added.
(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, editing by Gavin Jones)
KYIV (Reuters) -A United Nations humanitarian convoy was hit by Russian drones while delivering aid to a front-line area in southern Ukraine, The U.N.’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Ukraine said on social media.
OCHA’s humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine, Matthias Schmale, condemned the attack, saying that two World Food Programme trucks were hit and damaged by drones, but that nobody was injured.
Schmale said such strikes were a severe breach of international humanitarian law and could be a war crime.
(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa and Max Hunder; editing by Mark Heinrich)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Countries around the world lack the regulatory and ethical foundation to deal with the rapid advent of artificial intelligence, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said on Monday, urging civil society groups to “ring the alarm bells.”
Georgieva said the rapidly advancing technological revolution unleashed by AI was dominated by advanced economies, with the U.S. having the lion’s share. Some emerging markets also had capability in the sector, including China, but developing countries were lagging far behind and less able to tap into the potential of the technological revolution.
Speaking with civil society groups on the first day of the annual IMF and World Bank meetings, Georgieva said the IMF was “quite worried” that the gap between advanced economies and low-income countries on readiness for AI was growing and making it harder and harder for developing countries to catch up.
Georgieva’s comments came days after she warned that financial market valuations were heading toward levels last seen during the internet-related bullishness 25 years ago, based on AI hopes, but an abrupt shift in sentiment could drag down world growth, making life especially tough for developing countries.
She said the IMF was urging developing countries and emerging markets to focus on the first prerequisite for success, which was expanding digital infrastructure and skills.
She said the IMF had developed an AI preparedness index that assessed countries’ readiness for the new technology in four areas – infrastructure, labor and skills, innovation, and regulation and ethics.
“Where the world is falling shortest is on regulation and ethics,” she said. “The regulatory ethical foundation for AI for our future is still to come into place.”
She urged civil society groups to “ring the alarm bells in your countries that staying still is falling behind.”
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Mark Porter and Andrea Ricci)
Coral reefs around the globe have for years suffered publicly in warming oceans, periodically making headlines when iconic underwater landscapes lose their colors and wither during repeated mass bleaching events caused by climate change. Now, reefs are the first environmental system on Earth to pass a climate “tipping point,” according to a new report by climate scientists who call the situation an “unprecedented crisis.”
Researchers at the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute in England have released their second Global Tipping Points report, which examines some of the fundamental processes that support life on this planet in terms of their proximity to benchmarks that may signal permanent damage.
“Tipping points represent critical thresholds in Earth’s climate system where small changes can lead to significant, often irreversible consequences,” the authors said in their report. Steve Smith, a research fellow at the Global Systems Institute and one of the report’s co-authors, told CBS News that tipping points are “all about that point at which change becomes self-propelling, kind of a self-accelerating change.”
Bleached coral is seen at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico on Sept. 17, 2023.
LM Otero / AP
The report, published Sunday, comes three years after the institute released its first iteration in 2022 and about a month before the United Nations hosts COP30, an annual climate change conference, in Belém, Brazil, a city in the Amazon rainforest that is itself an example of a major global ecosystem on the brink of a climate emergency. Tim Lenton, the director of the Global Systems Institute and lead author of the report, said in a statement that he hopes his team’s findings make it onto the agenda.
“We are rapidly approaching multiple Earth system tipping points that could transform our world, with devastating consequences for people and nature,” his statement said. “This demands immediate, unprecedented action from leaders at COP30 and policymakers worldwide.”
The 2015 Paris Agreement set upper limits for global warming at 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius — between 2.7 and 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit — above average levels in preindustrial times. But leaders have repeatedly warned in the years since that countries are falling short of the emissions targets necessary to meet those temperature goals, with the U.N. declaring greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere reached all-time highs in 2023. By 2024, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported temperatures had risen to about 1.4 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial average.
“A new reality”
Higher ocean temperatures have already degraded coral reefs, which are crucial for marine life and provide habitats for roughly one-fourth of all underwater species. The new report points out that reefs also support the livelihoods of about a billion people, so their deterioration is as much an economic threat as an environmental one.
Scientists have determined that the “tipping point” for coral reefs begins when global warming reaches about 1.2 degrees Celsius, with somewhere between 70 and 90% of coral dying when that number climbs to 1.5 degrees.
“We’re very confident that, unfortunately, we’re in the middle of the coral reef dieback,” Smith said, which, he explained, essentially means “the collapse of coral reefs worldwide.”
Reef death is often catalyzed by bleaching, when heat stress causes coral to purge the colorful algae that sustains it and, in turn, become pale and weak. If the stress persists and bleaching is severe or prolonged, the coral can completely break down.
In this image provide by NOAA, a fish swims near coral showing signs of bleaching off the coast of Islamorada, Florida, on July 23, 2023.
Andrew Ibarra / National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via AP
The International Coral Reef Initiative announced in April that an estimated 84% of the world’s coral reefs were under heat stress. As the new report notes, this is “the most extensive and intense” mass bleaching event ever recorded.
Small pockets of coral are expected to survive, Smith said, and preserving them while minimizing the progression of warming temperatures should be everyone’s top priority.
“We’re in a new reality whereby we can now say that we’ve passed the first major climate tipping point, which is the coral reefs,” he said. “And obviously we’ll have to, as we say, try to reduce the damage. The quicker that we can decarbonize and take greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, the better.”
Ice sheets, ocean currents and the Amazon rainforest
Other environmental systems are on the verge of passing their tipping points, too, according to the report. In addition to coral reefs, it cited the potentially catastrophic effects of a warming world on the Amazon rainforest, ocean currents that influence weather patterns, and glaciers like the Greenland ice sheet, which is currently melting and shedding the equivalent of three Niagara Falls’ worth of freshwater into the North Atlantic every hour.
“It’s a race against time, really,” said Smith. “We have to transform the whole energetic basis of society within a generation, away from fossil fuels and toward this cleaner, safer future to avoid these further tipping points beyond coral reefs and the devastating consequences that they would bring.”
The report acknowledged meaningful headway has been made in the shift toward renewable energy, highlighting “positive tipping points” that have been crossed as the use of electric vehicles, solar power and wind power becomes more widespread. The rise of solar power, in particular, is one positive transition that Smith singled out as especially “remarkable” — although he emphasized that more still needs to be done, urgently, to bring the Earth back on track.
“Getting that into the heads of our senior decision-makers is going to be important,” said Smith, “because what is traditionally thought of as high impact, low likelihood events, they’re actually becoming high impact, high likelihood, if we don’t do something now.”
LONDON (Reuters) -Britain will provide a 20 million pound ($27 million) aid package to deliver water, sanitation and hygiene services in Gaza, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Sunday, as he arrived in Egypt for a world leaders’ summit on ending the conflict.
Britain said the funding would be delivered through UNICEF, the World Food Programme and the Norwegian Refugee Council and was designed to reach those facing famine, malnutrition and disease.
A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas held in Gaza for a third day on Sunday – part of the first phase of an agreement to end the war after two years.
Britain said it would also host a three-day summit on the reconstruction of Gaza that would include international government representatives, private sector and development finance representatives, including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank.
Britain said this financial year it had given 74 million pounds in humanitarian support to Palestine, which it formally recognised as a state last month.
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) — Costa Rica put forward Wednesday long-time diplomat and former Vice President Rebeca Grynspan as a candidate to be the next secretary-general of the United Nations.
The economist is currently the secretary-general of U.N. Trade and Development in Geneva.
She was a major player in the U.N. effort to ship Ukrainian and Russian grains to global markets at the start of the war in Ukraine and outgoing Secretary-General Antonio Guterres designated her as the senior U.N. official to deal with the Russians.
“This candidacy will be formally registered at the United Nations in the coming weeks,” Costa Rica President Rodrigo Chaves said in a video message Wednesday. “We trust that the career and commitment of Rebeca Grynspan, who has very broad experience in issues of development, international cooperation and regional leadership, will significantly contribute to strengthening multilateralism.”
Speaking at a news conference in San Jose on Wednesday, Grynspan said she would campaign for the position, capitalizing on being well known in diplomatic circles. She also acknowledged that there would be competition for the position, including from within Latin America.
“I know the United Nations well, I know it well enough to reform it and well enough to defend it,” Grynspan said. “The United Nations requires both things. Right now, being a multilateralist means being a reformer.”
Grynspan served as Costa Rica’s vice president in the administration of ex-President José María Figueres (1994-1998) and later worked in various multilateral organizations.
Jerusalem — Indirect peace talks between Israel and Hamas aimed at ending the war in Gaza and freeing the remaining Israeli hostages resumed Wednesday in Egypt. President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner were expected to arrive in Egypt on Wednesday to join the conversations, a source familiar with the matter told CBS News.
The war was sparked by the Hamas-led, Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 others taken as hostages. Israeli officials believe 48 of those people remain captive, though only 20 are believed to still be alive.
Since that day, the Gaza Strip’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health says Israel’s retaliatory war has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians. Israel disputes that figure but provides no estimate of its own, and the United Nations considers the health ministry’s count the most reliable information available, as Israel has barred foreign journalists from operating independently in Gaza.
Ricardo Pires, a spokesman for the United Nations children’s charity UNICEF, said this week that what he calls Israel’s “disproportionate response” in Gaza has killed or maimed at least 61,000 children since the war started.
UNICEF and the global charity Save the Children, which cited data compiled by the Hamas-run Gaza Government Media Office, say that on average, a child dies every hour in Gaza — or “a classroom of children” per day, as UNICEF put it.
The body of a Palestinian killed in an Israeli army attack on the Yafa School, where displaced people had taken shelter, is brought to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, in an April 23, 2025 file photo.
Hamza Z. H. Qraiqea/Anadolu/Getty
Since the war started, Save the Children says at least 20,000 kids have been killed in total – amounting to nearly a third of all Palestinians believed to have died in the war.
UNICEF spokesman James Elder, told CBS News that when he visited one of Gaza’s beleaguered hospitals this week, “the first thing I saw was four children who had all been shot by quadcopters [military drones], then I went into a hallway and it was wall-to-wall children across all the corridors.”
“There was a boy bleeding out on the floor who had apparently been there for five hours, then he was put on a stretcher only for another child to be put in his place,” Elder told CBS News. “Then I watched a little girl die. That’s half an hour here in Gaza.”
The staggering death toll does not reflect the thousands more children who have been maimed and injured, or those who have lost one or both parents during the war.
At a makeshift camp for Palestinian orphans in the southern city of Khan Younis, CBS News’ team in Gaza saw some of the young faces behind the grim statistics.
Deena Al-Za’arab holds her younger sister at a makeshift camp for Palestinians orphaned by the Israel-Hamas war, in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, Oct. 7, 2025.
CBS News
“I wish the war were just a dream I’d wake up from and see my parents next to me,” said 14-year-old Deena Al-Za’arab, who lost both of her parents.
“I have to keep it together for the sake of my siblings,” she added, “because now I must raise them.”
Many of the children at the camp now spend their days doing the work of adults.
Arat Awqal, who is just 10, promised her father she’d be a doctor before he died, but she now focuses on taking care of her younger sister.
“I just want to go back to how it used to be,” she told CBS News. “Whenever we heard the sound of missiles my father would hold us, but now he’s gone, and we are always scared.”
Arat Awqal, 10, is seen caring for her younger sister at a makeshift camp for Palestinians orphaned by the Israel-Hamas war, in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, Oct. 7, 2025.
CBS News
UNICEF says one in five children in Gaza is acutely malnourished, and Elder stressed that the trauma being inflicted on the youngest is not just physical.
“The kids not only lost loved ones — it’s not just about just having your mother killed, it’s about watching your mother die, then add that level of trauma to being displaced — and we talk of displacement, it sounds like a neutral or abstract term. It’s not. It’s violent. It’s repetitious, and it also increases trauma.”
The U.N. estimates that about 90% of Gaza’s population, some 1.9 million people, have been forcibly displaced during the war, many of them multiple times as the focus of Israel’s military operations has shifted. Most recently, the Israel Defense Forces ordered everyone to leave Gaza City, the enclave’s biggest population center, and to move further south, to areas such as Khan Younis.
It’s led to another mass exodus, which aid workers say has increased the suffering in the region and made it harder to help those showing up, often with nothing.
“There have been several hundred thousands of people who have moved from the north recently, in the last few weeks,” Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told CBS News’ Haley Ott on Wednesday.
“The situation was already very crowded,” she said, speaking on the phone from central Gaza. “They are now even more so. You can see a lot of people living on the side of the road, pitching tents on the sides of the roads … There are many people who fled on foot and, of course, were not able to bring anything with them, and this creates extremely difficult conditions in terms of hygiene, sanitation and these kinds of things.”
Gazal Basam, 12, holds a photo of her father in a makeshift camp for Palestinians orphaned by the Israel-Hamas war, in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, Oct. 7, 2025.
CBS News
At the camp for the orphans — all of them among the displaced — 12-year-old Gazal Basam told CBS News she felt “such pain in my heart after losing my dad.”
“I want to live like I did before the war,” she said. “But I know life will never be the same again.”.
“I feel such pain in my heart after losing my dad,” said 12-year-old Gazal Basam at the camp for orphans. “I want to live like I did before the war, but I know life will never be the same again.”
Debora Patta is a CBS News senior foreign correspondent based in Johannesburg. Since joining CBS News in 2013, she has reported on major stories across Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Edward R. Murrow and Scripps Howard awards are among the many accolades Patta has received for her work.
CAIRO/GENEVA (Reuters) -Palestinian health authorities say Israel’s two-year-old ground and air campaign against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 67,000 people, with nearly a third of the dead under the age of 18.
The war, triggered by the deadly October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, has focused on Gaza City since last month and the offensive has continued despite talks on U.S. President Donald Trump’s new, 20-point plan for ending the conflict.
HOW DO GAZA HEALTH AUTHORITIES CALCULATE THE DEATH TOLL?
The latest detailed breakdown released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health on October 7 showed 67,173 killed, including 20,179 children, accounting for 30% of the total.
The official ministry death toll dwarfs those killed in all previous bouts of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza since 2005, according to data from Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem.
In the first months of the war, death tolls were calculated simply by counting bodies that arrived in hospitals, and data included names and identity numbers for most of those killed.
In May 2024, the health ministry included unidentified bodies, which accounted for nearly a third of the overall toll. However, since October 2024, it has only encompassed identified bodies.
A Reuters examination in March of an earlier Gaza Health Ministry list of those killed showed that more than 1,200 families were completely wiped out, including one family of 14 people.
IS THE GAZA DEATH TOLL COMPREHENSIVE?
The numbers do not necessarily reflect all victims, as the Palestinian Health Ministry estimates several thousand bodies are under rubble and it does not count the 460 malnutrition-related deaths it has recorded amid a famine in North Gaza.
Official Palestinian tallies of direct deaths likely undercounted the number of casualties by around 40% in the first nine months of the war as Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure disintegrated, according to a peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet journal in January.
The U.N. human rights office also says the Palestinian authorities’ figure is probably an undercount.
The conflict deaths it has verified using its own methodology up to July 20 show that 40% were children and 22% were women.
A U.N. inquiry assessed last month that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza – citing the scale of the killings as one of the acts backing up its finding. Israel called the finding biased and “scandalous.”
HOW CREDIBLE IS THE GAZA DEATH TOLL?
Pre-war Gaza had robust population statistics and better health information systems than in most Middle East countries, public health experts told Reuters.
The U.N. often cites the health ministry’s death figures and says they are credible.
DOES HAMAS CONTROL THE FIGURES?
While Hamas has run Gaza since 2007, the enclave’s Health Ministry also answers to the overall Palestinian Authority ministry in Ramallah in the West Bank.
Gaza’s Hamas-run government has paid the salaries of all those hired in public departments since 2007, including in the Health Ministry. The Palestinian Authority pays the salaries of those hired before then.
Israeli officials have said previously that the death toll figures are suspect because of Hamas’ control over government in Gaza, and that they are manipulated.
The Israeli military says 466 of its soldiers were killed in combat, and 2,951 others wounded since its Gaza ground operation began on October 27, 2023.
It also says it goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. It says Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields by operating within densely populated areas, humanitarian zones, schools and hospitals, a repeated accusation that Hamas denies.
The conflict began on October 7, 2023 when Hamas militants stormed across the border into Israeli communities. Israel says the militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 people into captivity in Gaza, of whom some 20 are thought to be still alive there.
HOW MANY OF THE DEAD ARE FIGHTERS?
The Palestinian Health Ministry figures do not differentiate between civilians and Hamas combatants, who do not wear formal uniform or carry separate identification.
The Israeli military said in January 2025 it had killed nearly 20,000 Hamas fighters. It has not provided an update since. Such estimates are reached through a combination of counting bodies on the battlefield, intercepts of Hamas communications and intelligence assessments of personnel in targets that were destroyed.
Hamas has said Israeli estimates of its losses are exaggerated, without saying how many of its fighters have been killed.
(Compiled by Emma Farge, Nidal al-Mughrabi, Ali Sawafta, James MacKenzie and Angus McDowall; editing by William Maclean, Peter Graff, Alexandra Hudson, Mark Heinrich and Deepa Babington)
.jpg "Carlos Ruiz Massieu, special representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Haiti and head of the U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti, briefs the Security Council on Wednesday, October 22, 2025 on the question concerning Haiti and the U.N. political office.")
