Central Bangladesh was struck by a magnitude 5.7 earthquake, which claimed the lives of at least nine people and injured more than 300 others. In a number of places, including Dhaka, the capital, buildings were damaged.
Published On 21 Nov 2025
At least 67 Palestinian children have been killed in the Gaza Strip since a United States-brokered ceasefire agreement came into effect last month, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says.
Speaking during a news conference in Geneva on Friday, UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires said the death toll includes a baby girl who was killed in an Israeli air strike on a home in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis on Thursday.
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It also includes seven other children killed a day earlier, as Israel carried out a wave of attacks , across the enclave.
“This is during an agreed ceasefire. The pattern is staggering”, Pires told reporters of the death toll since October 11, the first full day of the truce between Israel and Hamas.
“As we have repeated many times, these are not statistics: Each was a child with a family, a dream, a life – suddenly cut short by continued violence”.
Palestinian children have borne the brunt of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, with UNICEF estimating last month that 64, 000 children have been killed and injured in Israeli attacks since the war began in October 2023.
Save the Children reported this week that, in 2024, an average of 475 Palestinian children “suffered lifelong disabilities” each month as a result of the war, including traumatic brain injuries and burns.
Gaza has also become “home to the largest cohort of child amputees in modern history”, the humanitarian group said.
Meanwhile, Israel has been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war, plunging the territory into a humanitarian crisis that led to several hunger-related deaths among children, who are especially vulnerable when food supplies run out.
This week, the Israeli military carried out a series of air strikes across Gaza in response to what it said was an incident that saw its troops fired upon in Khan Younis in the south of the Strip.
Hamas rejected Israel’s claim, saying the latest strikes – which killed at least 32 Palestinians – were “a dangerous escalation” that demonstrates that the Israeli government wants “to resume the genocide” in Gaza.
Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said on Friday that its teams in Gaza had treated several Palestinian women and children “with open fractures and gunshot wounds to their limbs and head” amid the wave of Israeli attacks.
Zaher, an MSF nurse working at a mobile clinic in Gaza City, said they treated a woman with a leg injury and a nine-year-old girl with a facial wound caused by Israeli quadcopter gunfire.
Mohammed Malaka, a patient at al-Shifa Hospital, also in Gaza City, said he heard the sounds of two incoming missiles before he lost consciousness.
“I opened my eyes and saw my father on the ground, and I saw my three brothers on the ground, covered in blood and dust was everywhere”, he told MSF.
“I could hear people screaming everywhere … the tents had become ashes, and people were lying on the ground everywhere”.
Palestinians in Gaza continue to struggle as a result of Israel’s continued restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian aid, including tents, to displaced families during the harsh winter months.
Many children are “sleeping in the open” and “trembling in fear while living in flooded, makeshift shelters,” according to UNICEF’s Pires.
He urged more assistance to be allowed into the area, noting that “the reality imposed on Gaza’s children remains brutally simple: There is no safe place for them and the world cannot continue to normalize their suffering.”
How “voluntary” was the Palestinians’ escape from Gaza when a charter flight made landfall in South Africa?
Published On 21 Nov 2025
The pilot of an Indian-made HAL Tejas fighter jet was killed when it crashed during a demonstration at the Dubai Airshow in the United Arab Emirates.
Published On 21 Nov 2025
Published On 21 Nov 2025
Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani has visited the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), days after the government and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group signed a framework agreement for a peace deal aimed at ending fighting in the country’s east.
On his first trip to the African country, the Qatari leader was welcomed in the capital Kinshasa on Friday by DRC President Felix Tshisekedi and other officials.
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The frameworkd agreement was the latest in a series of documents signed in recent months as part of efforts, backed by the United States and Qatar, to end decades of fighting in eastern DRC that has been an enduring threat to regional stability.
The framework was described by the US and Qatari officials as an important step towards peace, but one of many that lie ahead.
Sheikh Tamim arrived in the DRC a day after visiting Rwanda, where he met President Paul Kagame.
Rwanda has long denied allegations that it has helped M23, which has seized more territory in the DRC than it has ever previously held.
Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, reporting from Kinshasa, said the emir wrapped his brief state visit to the country after meeting the Congolese president at the airport and then at the presidential palace.
Vall said that Qatar signed a number of protocols on economic and political cooperation with the DRC.
He also said, “The emir of Qatar has made his first stop in Kigali overnight, before he arrived here this morning, and the understanding is that that’s a symbolic move to link the two capitals and show that there is no alternative to rapprochement between the two countries”.
Qatar’s acting charge d’affaires in the capital Kinshasa, Shafi bin Newaimi al-Hajri, said Sheikh Tamim’s visit to the DRC was of special importance for bilateral relations.
Al-Hajri said diplomatic ties between the sides expanded in recent years, noting that a DRC embassy was opened in Doha in 2022 and Qatar opened its mission in Kinshasa in May 2025.
Al-Hajri also stressed that Qatar’s mediation efforts aimed at stabilising eastern DRC played a key role in strengthening dialogue between the two governments.
In eastern DRC, violence has continued despite the various diplomatic processes in Washington and Doha, with Congolese authorities and M23 trading blame for violating the principles of earlier agreements and deliberately delaying talks.
And the prolonged negotiations do not address the threat from a multitude of other armed groups operating in the volatile east.
M23 seized Goma, eastern DRC’s largest city, in January and went on to make gains across North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, triggering a spiralling humanitarian crisis.
Although Qatar has hosted numerous direct negotiations between the DRC government and M23 since April, the majority of them have been focused on preconditions and confidence-building measures.
In July, the two parties came to a statement of principles that left a number of pressing problems unresolved, and in October, they reached a resolution requiring the monitoring of an eventual ceasefire.