Category World News

Rescue teams and volunteers have been struggling to assist millions of people affected by floods and landslides in parts of Asia, as the official death toll from the ongoing climate-fuelled disaster has climbed to more than 1,750 people in the worst-affected countries of Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

In Indonesia, at least 867 people were confirmed dead and 521 were still missing, according to the latest data on Saturday from the island of Sumatra in Aceh province, where more than 800,000 people have also been displaced.

In Sri Lanka, the government has confirmed 607 deaths, with another 214 people missing and feared dead, in what President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has called the country’s most challenging natural disaster.

The floods also caused at least 276 deaths in Thailand, while two people were killed in Malaysia and two people died in Vietnam after heavy rains triggered more than a dozen landslides, according to state media.

On Indonesia’s Sumatra, many survivors were still struggling to recover from the flash floods and landslides that hit last week as Indonesia’s meteorological agency warned Aceh could see “very heavy rain” through Saturday, with North and West Sumatra also at risk.

Aceh Governor Muzakir Manaf said response teams were still searching for bodies in “waist-deep” mud.

However, starvation was one of the gravest threats now hanging over remote and inaccessible villages, he said.

“Many people need basic necessities. Many areas remain untouched in the remote areas of Aceh,” he told reporters.

“People are not dying from the flood, but from starvation. That’s how it is.”

Entire villages had been washed away in the rainforest-cloaked Aceh Tamiang region, Muzakir said.

“The Aceh Tamiang region is completely destroyed from the top to the bottom, down to the roads and down to the sea.

“Many villages and sub-districts are now just names,” he said.

In Sri Lanka, where more than two million people – nearly 10 percent of the population- have been affected, officials warned on Friday of continuing heavy rains causing new landslide risks.

Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said more than 71,000 homes were damaged, including nearly 5,000 that were destroyed by last week’s floods and landslides.

The DMC said on Friday that more rain was expected in many parts of the country, including the worst-affected central region, triggering fears of more landslides, hampering cleanup operations.

Climate change, logging contribute to disasters

Last week’s flood came as two typhoons and a cyclone swept through the region at the same time, causing heavy rains, which experts told Al Jazeera are becoming more likely due to climate change.

Illegal logging, often linked to the global demand for palm oil, also contributed to the severity of the disaster in Sumatra, where photographs of the aftermath showed many tree logs washed downstream.

Indonesia is among the countries with the largest annual forest loss due to mining, plantations and fires, and has seen the clearance of large tracts of its lush rainforest in recent decades.

Indonesia’s Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni said on Friday that his office was revoking the logging licences of 20 companies, covering an area of ​​750,000 hectares (1.8m acres), including in flood-affected areas in Sumatra, Indonesia’s Antara news agency reported.

Environment Minister Hanif Faisol Nurofiq also “immediately” halted the activities of palm oil, mining, and power plant companies operating upstream of the disaster-hit areas in northern Sumatra on Saturday, according to Antara.

The Batang Toru and Garoga watersheds are strategic areas with ecological and social functions that must not be compromised,” Hanif said.

Febi Dwirahmadi, Indonesian programme coordinator for the Centre for Environment and Population Health at Griffith University in Australia, told Al Jazeera that rainforest cover “acts like a sponge” absorbing water during heavy rainfall.

Following deforestation, which is also contributing to making climate change worse, there is nothing to slow down the heavy rainfall as it enters waterways, Dwirahmadi said.

Palestinian groups have expressed “grave concerns” about the safety of jailed political figure Marwan Barghouti after his son reported receiving a call about Israeli guards allegedly torturing the popular leader in an Israeli prison.

Qassam Barghouti made the statement on Facebook on Friday, but later deleted the post, saying he was trying to obtain information about his father’s health from relevant agencies.

In the deleted post, Qassam said he had received a call from a person identifying themselves as a Palestinian prisoner and who said Israeli prison guards had beaten his father severely, leaving him “physically shattered”.

The person, who called from an Israeli number, said that the guards had broken Barghouti’s ribs, teeth and cut off a part of his father’s ear for “entertainment”, according to Qassam.

He added in a later post that he was trying to contact the caller but had not been able to do so.

A spokesperson for the Israel Prison Service said in a statement to The Times of Israel that the allegations were “another total lie” and “propaganda” against its prison staff.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, meanwhile, condemned the “new act of intimidation targeting” Barghouti’s family, saying it had only further escalated their already “grave concerns” for the prisoner’s safety.

“This act is a direct continuation of the organised terrorism policy implemented by the occupation regime against the families of prisoners, in an attempt to break their will and psychologically blackmail them,” the society, which represents Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, said in a statement shared on Telegram on Friday.

‘Retaliatory measures’

Barghouti, who has been jailed since 2002, is a senior leader of President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah group and is viewed by many as Palestine’s Nelson Mandela.

Barghouti is serving five life sentences in Israeli prisons on alleged charges related to attacks during the second Intifada, which lasted from 2000 to 2005.

He has denied the charges.

Earlier this week, Barghouti’s family launched the global “Free Marwan” campaign calling for his release, saying that they feared he may die while in Israeli prison. Hundreds of people, including writer Margaret Atwood and actor Javier Bardem, have signed on to the campaign to free the 66-year-old leader.

Following Qassam Barghouti’s post, the Palestinian presidency also condemned what it called the “continuous attacks and retaliatory measures” against his father.

In a statement carried by the Wafa news agency, the presidency said on Friday that it held the Israeli government fully responsible for the Fatah leader’s safety and the safety of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.

Meanwhile, Ofer Cassif, a member of Israel’s parliament from the left-wing, Arab-majority Hadash-Ta’al party, said he spoke to Barghouti’s family about the call and the reports that “Marwan’s teeth, ribs and fingers being broken and his ear being cut off”.

“The family very much hopes that this is just intimidation and that the information is not true. They are waiting to hear from his lawyer about his condition,” Cassif said in a social media post on Friday.

“I sincerely hope that this is indeed intimidation, diabolical to say the least, and nothing more. In any case: Free Marwan!” Cassif added.

‘Systematic killings’

Since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023, Barghouti has been denied visits from his family and subjected to brutal assaults, according to his lawyer.

In August, he was also taunted in his cell at Ganot Prison in central Israel by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. A video broadcast by Israel’s Channel 12 at the time showed Ben-Gvir telling the captive, “You won’t win.”

It marked the first sighting of Barghouti in years, with relatives noting his “shocking” appearance caused by “exhaustion and hunger”.

Palestinians have called for Barghouti to be released as part of the recent ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, but the Israeli government has rejected the call.

Barghouti is regarded as a likely key player in the creation of any Palestinian state because of his ability to unite various political factions.

As part of the truce deal, Israel released 250 Palestinians serving life sentences, several of whom were sent into exile abroad. About 1,700 Palestinians who were detained from Gaza and transferred to Israeli detention facilities during the war were also freed.

One of the released prisoners, Mohammad al-Ardah, told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces would carry out “barbaric” raids in the prisons each week, severely beating Palestinian detainees. “The latest reports we heard about the great leader Marwan Barghouti is that they broke three of his ribs,” al-Ardah said.

As of November 2025, more than 9,300 Palestinian prisoners are being held in Israeli prisons, including 3,368 held under administrative detention without charge or trial, according to Palestinian prisoners’ rights organisations.

According to Israeli and Palestinian rights groups, at least 94 Palestinian prisoners and detainees have died in Israeli prisons since October 2023.

Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), in a report in November, accused Israeli authorities of “systematic killings and coverups” and said fewer than 30 Palestinians had died in Israeli custody in the preceding years.

On Thursday, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said that it had confirmed that three more prisoners from Gaza had died in Israeli detention.

The Palestinian prisoner rights organisations issued a joint statement identifying the men as Taysir Saeed al-Abd Sababa, 60, Khamis Shukri Mar’i Ashour, 44, and Khalil Ahmad Khalil Haniyeh, 35.

The organisations said Palestinian prisoners continue to die in detention due to torture, starvation, medical neglect, sexual assault and systematic violations of human rights.