Six months after Yulia Bar-Dan and her family fled their home on a kibbutz in northern Israel fearing a possible Hezbollah assault following the horrendous Hamas attack of Oct. 7, she returned to gather what she could from a lifetime of memories she’d left behind.

One hour was all she had. “We were given a chance, under the cover of darkness, to return home for the first time,” she told Fox News Digital. “I cried the whole time.”

When she arrived, Kibbutz Manara, once home to close to 300 people, looked like a war zone. “We heard explosions above us and hurried to our house – the one closest to the Lebanese border. There was no electricity, and we couldn’t open the windows,” she said.

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With a flashlight in hand, she went room to room, gathering as much as she could in a large trash bag. The family of five is now living in a single room and there’s not much space for extras. “My daughter wanted her dollhouse, but I couldn’t bring it. The happiest moment was finding our cat alive. Seeing him brought real joy to the kids,” she says. 

Not long after she collected her belongings and left the kibbutz, a Hezbollah missile hit her house. The strike added her home to the staggering 75% of kibbutz structures in the north that have been damaged by Hezbollah’s relentless bombardments. 

Since Hezbollah joined the war as a “support front” for Hamas on Oct. 8, over 7,500 rockets have been fired from Lebanon into Israel, and more than 200 drones have crossed the border. The toll: 44 people have been killed, 271 wounded and 62,000 evacuated from dozens of communities in northern Israel. Those who have left have no idea when – or even if – they will ever return. The damage to agriculture and tourism has reached billions of dollars, and there is widespread fear that this conflict will escalate further.

With Lebanon in the background, Yulia Bar-Dan and her husband Nadav during quieter times at Kibbutz Manara. (Yulia Bar-Dan)

The decision to evacuate most northern communities immediately after Oct. 7 didn’t come from the government, which was slow to respond. It came from the residents themselves. “It’s sheer luck that Hezbollah’s Radwan forces didn’t join Hamas in the massacre; if they had, nothing would have stopped them,” says Yochai Wolfin, the community director of Kibbutz Manara. “We are right on the border and at high risk. We’ve known for at least 10 years that Hezbollah’s Radwan forces have a plan they’ve been training to invade the Galilee, seize multiple communities and do here exactly what we saw happen in the south.”

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A picture taken from Kibbutz Manara on Dec. 20, 2020, shows a Lebanese man holding a Hezbollah flag in the southern Lebanese village of Hula. (Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images)

Naor Shamia, who has lived with his wife and three children on Kibbutz Manara since 2011, doesn’t sugarcoat the response of people living near the northern border following Oct. 7. “We ran away. We were terrified they would slaughter us, just like they did in the Gaza envelope,” he recalled. 

Since Oct. 7, Shamia, who typically would spend his days teaching math and physics, has been focused on leading the kibbutz’s rapid response unit – a band of community members with combat experience – which has been tasked with defending against terrorist infiltrations, rocket fire and even wildfires ignited by hot shrapnel or missile impacts. “Much of Kibbutz Manara is visible from Lebanon, which makes our situation even more challenging,” Shamia says. “You can walk through parts of the kibbutz and be fully exposed to Hezbollah.”

A house in the kibbutz damaged by Hezbollah rockets. (Kibbutz Manara Rapid Response unit)

In December, when members of the rapid response unit rushed to a blaze that had been sparked by an anti-tank missile, Hezbollah fired three more missiles, injuring two members of the unit. “Manara sits on a high ridge, making us an easy target for anti-tank missiles,” Shamia says. “We’re exposed.” 

Established in 1943, the kibbutz economy has been primarily based on agriculture, including a famous vineyard, cherry and apple orchards, and poultry farming. Today, much of that has been destroyed by Hezbollah’s rockets. The vineyard was burned and the orchards, located in frequently targeted areas, were abandoned.

An aluminum business, which Yulia’s husband, Nadav, ran, was also destroyed by a missile strike. Since then, he has been serving with the rapid response unit, while Bar-Dan and their three children live in a single room on a kibbutz in the north but away from the border. 

This photo taken from a position in northern Israel shows a Hezbollah UAV intercepted by Israeli air forces over northern Israel on Aug. 25, 2024. (Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images)

“There’s no official declaration of war here, but we’re living as if there is a war, constantly bombarded by drones and missiles,” she says. “The children go to school, but they spent two hours in a shelter today because of missile fire. People might ask, ‘Why don’t you move somewhere else?’ But this is our home. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

She continued, “What would happen if she and others pulled up roots and abandoned the northernmost regions of Israel? Manara is on the border. If we’re not there, who will be? We have to come back.”

Terrorists from Hezbollah carry out a training exercise in southern Lebanon in May 2023. (AP/Hassan Ammar)

She says she hopes for the day when the government comes to understand what’s at stake “and does what’s necessary to change the situation in the north. While the world’s attention is focused elsewhere,” adding, “the war between Israel and Hezbollah has left northern Israel in a state of devastation.”

The wooden boat was carrying mostly farmers across a river near Gummi town when the incident occurred.

At least 40 people have drowned and are presumed to have died after their boat capsized on a river in northwest Nigeria, officials say.

The wooden boat was ferrying more than 50 farmers to their fields across the river near Gummi town in Zamfara state on Saturday when it capsized, a local official said on Sunday.

“Only 12 were rescued yesterday shortly after the accident,” said Na’Allah Musa, a political administrator of the flood-hit Gummi district where the accident happened, adding that authorities were searching for the bodies of the rest of the passengers.

Musa added that the vessel was “crammed with passengers far beyond its capacity, which caused it to overturn and sink”.

“This is the second time such an incident has occurred in the Gummi local government area,” Aminu Nuhu Falale, a local administrator who led the rescue efforts, told Reuters news agency.

More than 900 farmers rely on crossing the river in the region daily to access their farmlands. But only two boats are available, often leading to overcrowding, Falale added.

In a statement on Sunday, Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu “expressed the government and the people of Nigeria’s commiseration” for the “twin tragedies” of the farmers’ deaths and the nearby floods.

In recent days, rising waters in the Gummi area have forced more than 10,000 people to flee, with Tinubu promising support for the victims.

Zamfara state is also rampant with armed groups who kidnap for ransom, steal cattle and engage in illegal mining.

Boat accidents are common on Nigeria’s poorly regulated waterways, particularly during the rainy season when rivers and lakes swell. Locals say most boats don’t carry life jackets or have proper safety measures in place.

Last month, nearly 30 farmers on their way to their rice fields drowned after their overloaded boat sank in the Dundaye River in neighbouring Sokoto state, emergency officials said.

Three days earlier, 15 farmers died when their canoe overturned on the Gamoda River in Jigawa state, according to the police.

Jane’s Addiction apologized to fans for the onstage altercation in Boston that saw singer Perry Farrell throwing a punch at guitarist Dave Navarro and abruptly ending their set. The band offered a “heartfelt apology” and said it is canceling its next concert, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, but gave no further details about the remainder of the tour, which is scheduled to continue through October 16.

“We want to extend a heartfelt apology for the events that unfolded last night,” the band wrote in its Instagram story. “As a result we will be cancelling tomorrow night’s show in Bridgeport,” followed by refund details.

Friday’s show came to a sudden end when a clearly enraged Farrell threw a punch at Navarro — and was restrained by crew members, still appearing physically agitated as he was hustled offstage.

Footage shared on the web shows the band deep into playing “Ocean Size,” the 11th number in a set that usually stretches out to 14 or 15 songs, when trouble erupts between the two most famous members of the veteran band. Some fans reported on social media that tension looked to have been brewing for several songs before it got to the point of fisticuffs.

On Saturday morning, Etty Lou Farrell, the singer’s spouse, posted her own account of Friday night’s events, writing on her Instagram account that her husband was upset about the band’s sound levels drowning out his vocals, and that led to his assault on seemingly unsuspecting guitarist Dave Navarro. Etty Lou has complimentary words for how coolly Navarro handled the situation; he can be seen trying to keep Farrell at a distance and looking baffled, saying “What the fuck?” but otherwise keeping calm. On the other hand, she lays into bassist Eric Avery for “cheap shots” in allegedly putting the singer into a headlock and punching him three times — something that wasn’t clear from widely disseminated fan video of the onstage altercation.

She wrote that Farrell was “a crazed beast” for a half-hour after being led offstage, adding that he broke down and “cried and cried.”

Jane’s Addiction have always been a fractious band — they split at the height of their popularity in 1991, after organizing and headlining the first-ever Lollapalooza tour — and divided into camps that apparently continue to this day: Farrell and drummer Stephen Perkins formed the band Porno for Pyros while Navarro and Avery worked briefly in a group called Deconstruction. The band has reformed several times over the years, usually without Avery, but clearly the tensions have continued.

The band’s tour with Love and Rockets is scheduled to conclude in Los Angeles on October 16. Variety will have more on the situation as it develops.