Month: May 2023

Cyclone Mocha did not make landfall at the world’s largest refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, as earlier feared, but still destroyed hundreds of makeshift shelters in the camp.

At least five people have been reported dead in Myanmar.

No casualties have been reported in Bangladesh so far.

By late Sunday, the storm had largely passed. Bangladesh’s disaster official Kamrul Hasan said the cyclone caused “no major damage” in his country, but landslides and floods are still hitting the area.

Myanmar appears to have borne more direct impact, with the storm crashing through houses and cutting power lines in the western Rakhine state. Camps for displaced Rohingya in Rakhine state were also ripped apart.

Local media reported that a 14-year-old boy was killed by a falling tree in the state, while there were reports of damaged and collapsed buildings across the country.

Electricity and wireless connections were disrupted across much of the state capital Sittwe, and footage online shows a telecom tower brought down by strong winds as the cyclone approached.

Videos shared on social media also showed roofs being blown off houses and billboards flying off buildings in Yangon amid teeming rain.

Images from the city of Mrauk U showed palm trees bending in the wind, metal roofing sheets being swept into the street and a few people still hurrying to take cover in storm shelters.

The Myanmar Red Cross Society said it was “preparing for a major emergency response”.Myanmar appears to have borne more direct impact from the cyclone

Authorities in Bangladesh had evacuated 750,000 people ahead of the storm.

The streets of Cox’s Bazar emptied as the cyclone intensified – the skies darkened, the winds picked up pace and the rains pounded down.

Hundreds of people crammed into a school which had been turned into a temporary cyclone shelter.

Mothers with babies, young children, the elderly and the frail packed into any available space in the classrooms, sleeping on desks and sitting under them.

As many arrived at the shelter in rickshaws and on foot, they brought their livestock – cattle, chickens, goats – as well as mats to sleep on.

They had come from fishing and coastal villages up to two hours away, making a difficult choice.

“I didn’t want to leave my house,” said Sumi Akter, who lives on a riverbank.

Sumi and others we met here say they have lived through other cyclones in recent years and are resigned to the regular pattern of leaving their homes to the mercy of nature.

Storm surges of up to four metres could swamp villages in low-lying areas. Sumi and others here are fearful their homes may be submerged.

“I wish the homes we lived in were built more strongly,” she said.

Jannat, aged 17, whom we had met the day before in the same shelter, said she too was terrified of what might happen to her home on the riverbank.

Last year, another cyclone, Sitrang, destroyed her house, forcing her to spend what little money she had on repairing it.

“How can I live if this keeps happening? I can’t afford to rebuild it – we are very poor,” she said.

Nature was also punishing the poor in the world’s largest refugee camp nearby.

Bangladesh’s government does not allow Rohingya refugees to leave the camps, nor to build permanent structures.

As the cyclone hit, they hunkered down in flimsy bamboo shelters with tarpaulin roofs. Some were moved to community shelters within the camps, which offered little more protection.

Authorities told the BBC that more than 1,300 shelters were damaged by the wind, as were 16 mosques and learning centres. Trees had fallen in the camps, while two landslides also caused some damage.

The tarpaulin that covered Mohammed Ayub’s shelter was torn off by the winds. Now he and his family of eight are living in the open, in wet and miserable weather.

Having spent the days before terrified of what Cyclone Mocha could bring, Mohammed was relieved the camps didn’t take a direct hit from the storm.

Mizanur Rahman, from the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, said that as far as he was aware, there were no casualties in the camps as a result of the cyclone.

Forecasters warned Cyclone Mocha could be the most powerful storm seen in Bangladesh in nearly two decades.

The Bangladeshi meteorological department office said the maximum sustained wind speed within 75km (45 miles) of the centre of the cyclone was about 195km/h (120mph), with gusts and squalls of 215km/h.

In preparation for the storm’s arrival, nearby airports had been shut, fishermen were ordered to suspend their work and 1,500 shelters set up as people from vulnerable areas were moved to safer spots.

In 2008, Cyclone Nargis tore through the southern coastal regions of Myanmar, killing almost 140,000 people and severely affecting millions. Most of those who died were killed by a 3.5 metre wall of water that hit the low-lying Irrawaddy Delta.

After 20 years in power, Recep Tayyip Erdogan stood on the balcony of his party HQ saying he was convinced he would win another five.

Everything appeared to have fallen into place for his opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu to win.

But incomplete results put him behind the president in the first round.

And Mr Erdogan’s alliance could also be heading for a majority in parliament.

For months, Turkey’s disparate opposition parties had pooled their resources in a bid to bring an end to a president who has extended his power dramatically since a failed coup against him in 2016.

The election is being watched very closely in the West, because Mr Kilicdaroglu has promised to revive Turkish democracy as well as relations with its Nato allies. On the other hand, President Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted government has accused the West of plotting to bring him down.

In the early hours of Monday, Mr Kilicdaroglu stood on a stage at his party headquarters in Ankara, flanked by his allies but appearing less confident than before.

“If our nation says second round, we will absolutely win in the second round,” he said.

Supporters outside party headquarters chanted one of his slogans, “everything will be all right”, but it was not clear for them that it would.

He had earlier angrily accused the government of seeking to “block the will of the people”, by launching repeated challenges in opposition strongholds. Two rising stars in the party, the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara, reminded voters that this was a strategy that Mr Erdogan’s AK Party had used before.

They praised an enormous team of opposition volunteers guarding ballot papers to ensure nothing untoward happened to the votes.

Mr Kilicdaroglu, 74, has lost several elections as leader of his Republican People’s Party, but this time his message of scrapping the the president’s excessive powers struck a chord.

Turks have also been reeling from a cost-of-living crisis with 44% inflation, made only worse by Mr Erdogan’s unorthodox economic policies.

And then the Erdogan government was blamed for a slow rescue response to the double earthquakes in February which killed more than 50,000 people in 11 provinces.

And yet, despite a very difficult few months, Turkey’s dominant president appears to have the upper hand.

Addressing supporters from the balcony he had used for previous victories he announced that “even though the final results are not in, we are far ahead”.

Whether or not he does take a lead into an expected run-off two weeks ahead, the president appears to have defied many pollsters who said his rival had the edge and could even win outright without a run-off.

He could also be heading for a majority in parliament, along with his nationalist MHP ally, according to unconfirmed results quoted by state news agency Anadolu.

His supporters ridiculed the opposition allies first for declaring that Mr Kilicdaroglu would become the 13th Turkish president, and then for gradually lowering their expectations as the night progressed.

What this result does confirm is the extent to which Turkish society has become polarised, 100 years since Kemal Ataturk’s foundation of the modern Turkish republic.

In the final hours before voting began, Mr Kilicdaroglu rounded his campaign off with a trip to Ataturk’s mausoleum in Ankara.

President Erdogan instead chose to make a very symbolic statement to his conservative and nationalist support base, by making a campaign speech at Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Ataturk had turned the former Orthodox Cathedral into a museum, but in 2020 Mr Erdogan made it a mosque.

It is unclear how close the expected run-off will be, and there is already considerable speculation over what will happen to the 5% of votes that went to the third candidate in the election, ultranationalist Sinan Ogan.

He knows both leaders will be trying to court him and is bound to set some tough conditions.

It is far from certain that even if he does endorse either candidate the first-round voters he attracted will do the same.9

The party is working on a package of proposals, including votes for some EU nationals and 16 and 17-year-olds in general elections.

In 2020, Labour’s leader Sir Keir Starmer called for all EU nationals to be given full voting rights in the UK.

But Labour said no final policy decisions had been made.

Labour’s shadow business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said the party’s policy on the issue had been the subject of speculation and discussions about this were “part of our manifesto process”.

“We do want to strengthen our democracy,” Mr Reynolds told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme. “We believe if people make a contribution to this country, if they live here, there’s an argument for having them involved in [the democratic] process.”

The Conservative Party said Labour’s plan to give foreign nationals the vote at parliamentary elections “is laying the groundwork to drag the UK back into the EU by stealth”.

“The right to vote in parliamentary elections and choose the next UK government is rightly restricted to British citizens and those with the closest historical links to our country,” Conservative Party Chairman Greg Hands said.

Currently, EU nationals who are legally resident in the UK can vote in local and devolved elections but not general elections.

A Labour source said the party was thinking about proposals “that will enable people who live and contribute long-term to our society to be able to have their say in how the country is governed”.

The source said Sir Keir believes it is “fair and right” to give those people a voice in elections.

But the source said the details of the proposals have not yet been decided, despite suggestions made in newspaper reports by the Financial Times and the Sunday Telegraph.

There are an estimated 3.4 million EU nationals with settled status in the UK, and a further 2.7m with pre-settled status.

Settled status allows EU citizen to continue to live, work and study in the UK on an indefinite basis, while pre-settled status is a grant of temporary residence for five years.

The idea of extending the franchise to more EU nationals in the UK is controversial, with the Conservatives branding such a move “an attempt to rig the electorate to re-join the EU”.

When Sir Keir was running to be Labour leader in 2020, he said the “government should give all three million EU nationals living in the UK full voting rights in future elections”.

“We were never just ‘tolerating’ EU citizens living in this country – they are our neighbours, friends and families,” Sir Keir wrote in an op-ed for the Guardian. “To see their status in doubt devastates our sense not just of justice but also of fellowship.”

Labour’s 2019 manifesto included a commitment to “oversee the largest extension of the franchise in generations” by lowering the voting age to 16 and giving “full voting rights to all UK residents”.

As the party looks ahead to the next general election, it is deciding what reforms on voting rights to propose in its manifesto.

The BBC has been told Labour’s package of proposals will include the introduction of votes for 16- and 17-year-olds, in line with Scotland and Wales.

At the moment, 16 and 17-year-olds are allowed to vote in elections for the Scottish and Welsh devolved parliaments, but cannot vote in general elections.

A commitment to lower the voting age to 16 was included in both Labour’s 2015 and 2017 manifestos.

The Greens and the Liberal Democrats also support lowering the voting age.

It said Iyad al-Hassani had directed the militant group’s operations since his predecessor was killed on Tuesday.

Friday’s strike, which medics said also killed another person, followed a barrage of rockets fired from Gaza, some of which reached near Jerusalem.

The chances of an imminent ceasefire appeared slim after the exchange.

However, a Palestinian official familiar with the talks taking place in Egypt told the BBC that Egyptian officials “presented this evening a new proposal for a ceasefire, which is being studied now”. Egypt was also waiting for Israel’s response, they added.

At least 33 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed – about half of them civilians – since Israel carried out a series of air strikes early on Tuesday that killed three top PIJ commanders, the Palestinian health ministry there says. Another 147 people have been wounded.

One Israeli civilian has been killed and five wounded by Palestinian rocket fire in the same period, Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service says.

The fighting which resumed on Friday came after 12 hours of relative calm, during which there were several Israeli air strikes but no Palestinian rocket attacks.

Around midday PIJ militants launched dozens of rockets. Some were aimed towards the Jerusalem area, about 65km (40 miles) from Gaza.

The Israeli military said two rockets heading to Jerusalem were intercepted, but another rocket reportedly landed in an open field near the Jewish settlement of Bat Ayin in the occupied West Bank, about 16km south of the city.

PIJ said “the firing of rockets at Jerusalem is a message, and everyone should understand its aim”.

Targeting Jerusalem, which Israel considers its capital, is meant to signal to Israel that the group is prepared to connect events in the city to those in Gaza.

It is the first time rockets have landed near there since a 10-day conflict between Israel and militants in Gaza in May 2021.

Israel responded to Friday’s rocket fire with intensive air strikes.

Warplanes hit a multi-storey residential building in the northern Nasser area of Gaza City, killing two people. Five others were wounded, including a child, according to rescuers.

A PIJ spokesman confirmed the death of Iyad al-Hassani, according to AFP news agency.

Sources said Hassani was deputy head of Islamic Jihad’s armed wing and the most senior figure in the group to be targeted by Israel so far in the fighting.

Israel’s air force said Hassani had replaced Khalil al-Bahtini, who was killed on Tuesday, as PIJ’s “commanding officer of the operation in the Gaza Strip” and described him as a “significant figure”.

The identity of the second person was not immediately clear, but the air force described them as a PIJ “operative”.

An Israeli official told the BBC hitting the senior chain of command was also meant as a warning to Hamas, the dominant armed group in Gaza, which so far is thought to have stayed on the sidelines of the current escalation.

More rockets were fired at southern Israeli communities following the strike and Israel said there was likely to be more long-range fire in response to what it called the “targeted killing” of Hassani.

On Thursday, another two top PIJ commanders – the head of its rocket launching force and his deputy – were killed in Israeli strikes in southern Gaza.

This week’s fighting is the heaviest since three days of hostilities between Israel and PIJ last August, in which 49 Palestinians were killed in Gaza.

At least 973 rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza over the past four days, with 761 crossing into Israeli territory, according to the military. Most have been intercepted or have landed in open areas.

The military says 181 of the rockets fell short inside Gaza and that they have killed four people there, including three children. Islamic Jihad denies the allegation.

The military also says its strikes have hit 254 PIJ targets in Gaza. According to Gaza’s housing ministry, 28 homes have been destroyed, 37 damaged so badly that they are uninhabitable, and 495 partly damaged.

Meanwhile, a British surgeon stranded in Gaza has told the BBC that more than 140 “desperately sick” patients there, most of whom have cancer, are being denied urgently-needed treatment while the crossing to Israel remains shut for a fourth day.

“The doctors I work with here have got multiple examples of people who are in desperate need of cancer treatment,” Professor Nick Maynard said.

“These treatments are undoubtedly being delayed and potentially leading to deaths because of the delays now,” he added.

His main rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu appeared before a throng of supporters on Friday, flanked by allies from across the political spectrum who have come together as never before.

As the rain beat down in Ankara, he vowed to restore “peace and democracy”.

The man he wants voters to oust after 20 years – Recep Tayyip Erdogan – said he had kept Turkey standing tall despite many challenges, including the economy with its rampant inflation and February’s catastrophic double earthquakes.

Both issues have dominated this febrile campaign for both the presidency and parliament.

At 74, the opposition leader is often described as soft-spoken, but he gave a powerful speech to an audience that believes this is their best hope so far of reclaiming power from a president who has taken it away from parliament and increased his own dramatically.

Mr Kilicdaroglu is slightly ahead in the opinion polls and his supporters have dared to dream he might win outright on Sunday, with more than 50% of the vote, rather than face a run-off two weeks later.

Firat, one of five million first-time voters, said he was delighted at conservatives and nationalists appearing on the same platform as the head of the centre-left Republican People’s Party (CHP).

Here was nationalist Meral Aksener, the only female leader in the six-strong alliance, and there was Temel Karamollaoglu, who fronts the pro-Islamist Felicity party.

Mr Kilicdaroglu’s party is secular to the core, but he has worked hard to reach out to women who wear the headscarf. The six parties have rallied under the slogan Haydi (Come on!) and a campaign song of the same name.

Tensions are running so high ahead of the vote that he wore a bullet-proof vest on stage in Ankara for his final rally and at another event earlier on.

The race has become as tense as it is pivotal. One of the four candidates for the presidency, Muharrem Ince, pulled out on Thursday, complaining that he had been targeted on social media with deepfake sex videos that had “manipulated the electorate”.

When the main opposition challenger blamed Russia, the Kremlin denied having anything to do with the videos or seeking to interfere in the vote.

Mr Erdogan, who has maintained ties with Vladimir Putin, warned his rival: “If you attack Putin, I will not be ok with that.”

The president was addressing party loyalists in Istanbul, but the night before he was just outside the capital in a city of half a million people that seemed in full support of his AK Party.

Orange, blue and white party AKP flags fluttered throughout the centre of Sincan, as locals filled the streets in the hope of catching a glimpse of Mr Erdogan.

Supporters chanted party songs as they waited for the president to show on stage in a green jacket. One chorus rang out repeatedly Re-cep Tay-yip Er-do-gaaaan.

“We built schools, universities and hospitals… we changed the face of our cities. We extracted our own natural gas and oil,” Erdogan told thousands of cheering supporters.

His strategy, first as prime minister but then as president, has been to build growth, often through big-ticket construction projects that are visible in many of the big cities, but not so obvious in Sincan.

Although his party still commands strong support, he relies on the backing of the nationalist MHP and other smaller groups in his People’s Alliance.

His greatest support comes mainly from conservative or nationalist Turks, and he has aimed his rhetoric not just at the West, which he accuses of going against him, but at the LGBT community too.

“The AK Party does not allow LGBT people into its neighbourhood, and the MHP does not allow them into the People’s Alliance, because we believe in the sanctity of a family.”

These political alliances have become essential under Turkey’s political system as a party needs 7% of the national vote to get into parliament, or be part of an alliance that does.

Whoever wins the presidency will need to have sufficient support in parliament to back their plans.

On the campaign trail in Ankara, centre-left candidate Aysun Palali Koktas said that while the economy and the aftermath of the earthquake were the top two issues of the election, the future of Turkey’s democracy and people’s rights were just as important.

“When we tweet, we don’t want to be frightened, and that’s the case especially for young people,” she said.

But, AK Party candidate Zehranur Aydemir, 25, believes young voters are very well treated by the government. “You can see young people at every level in our party.”

More than 64 million people are expected vote at home and abroad on Sunday.

To win outright a candidate will have to secure more than half the vote.

If no candidate gets at least 50% plus one vote in the first round, the presidential election will go to a second round on 28 May between the two who received the most votes.