These college graduates in Gaza finished training just one week before the war began.
We reached out to everyone in the class WhatsApp group to see how they were doing.
It’s difficult to reach anybody in Gaza. Blackouts are common, and internet access is sporadic. But 34 responded.
They were among Gaza’s most ambitious students.
The dentistry program at Al-Azhar University was very selective, and very demanding, and they had big plans. “We dream a lot — more than a brain can imagine,” one said.
But instead of starting new jobs, they found themselves plunged into endless days of burying the dead and fearing for the living.
The students had hired a videographer to capture their celebrations on the final day of exams, about a year before they finished their internships, in 2022. “The most wonderful day in our lives,” one said. That was before the Israeli assault in the Gaza Strip began.
We reached members of the class of 117 students through Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. They wrote or talked to us from tents and balconies. Some even climbed on water tanks or walked long distances to grab a phone signal.
All told us they had lost loved ones. Two of their classmates were dead. And many feared they would be next.
Most of their homes lay in ruins. Many described being hungry, and losing drastic amounts of weight.
The survivors described how their loved ones were killed. The New York Times was not able to verify every attack or the circumstances of every death.
This is not the first time war has come to Gaza. Israel and the Hamas militants who made the territory their stronghold have fought repeatedly over the years, but Gaza has never seen this degree of destruction and death. Israel says that it is doing what is needed to defeat Hamas, and that it takes great efforts to protect civilians, but even its allies have begun to characterize the bombing as indiscriminate.
The graduates spoke with anger, desperation and bewilderment about how much Israel’s bombardment, now in its seventh month, has taken from them.
“We had a lot of wars before, but this one is just different,” one said. “Usually it would affect people, but not people that you know. This war took everyone.”
Loss came early for Madeha Alshayyah. She had fled her home in Gaza City, but her grandmother, uncles and cousins stayed behind, despite the bombs.
“They all died and are still under the rubble,” Madeha said.
Now, her sister is missing. She went to the market one day and never came back, she said.
Salem Shurrab had known his best friend, Mouayad Alrayyes, since they were children. They used to meet every night at a cafe at the same table.
Mouayad’s home was bombed while he was out, and his family was killed. He wrote to Salem that he wished he had died, too, “so I don’t feel the pain.”
“Your pain is mine,” Salem replied.
Hours later, Salem said, Mouayad was killed by a rocket when he went to retrieve the bodies.
Mirna Ismail’s home was destroyed, but that did not even come up in her WhatsApp groups.
Now, they discuss “only the urgent things, only who has been killed,” she said. “If someone lost his house, it is not an urgent thing now.”
Mirna lost two friends and a cousin. “We all know someone who has been killed,” she said. “And we can’t understand why they are killing them.”
The class WhatsApp group was how most of the graduates learned that two of their classmates were dead.
On Dec. 2, Aseel Taya was at home with her family, including her father, Sofyan Taya, a prominent researcher in physics and applied mathematics, when Israeli warplanes struck, the Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education said. They were all killed.
Officially dentists 👩⚕️
Messages have been translated.
“Why Aseel? What did she do to deserve that?” Mirna recalled feeling. “At that time it’s not easy to cry,” she said. “You only think that this is a lie and I will see her again.”
Aseel Taya (via Rasha H. Zendah)
In February came word of another classmate’s death.
Officially dentists 👩⚕️
Messages have been translated.
Noor Yaghi was sheltering with her family in central Gaza when Israeli airstrikes hit their home. She was “like a flower,” said Asmaa Dwaima, who described her “laughing and making fun of herself and us in the labs.” The Feb. 22 strikes killed at least 40 people, according to local media.
Noor’s remains were never found, said her cousin Asil Yaghi. “Her body seems to have become small pieces,” she said. “My heart is squeezing and my tears don’t stop.”
Noor Yaghi (left) and her twin sister, Aya (via Asil Yaghi)
For many of the students, the talk is of bodies and body parts.
Muhammad Abdel Jawad was visiting an injured cousin at the hospital when he heard that the residential tower where he lived with his family had been hit. He returned home to find his sisters with “burns all over their bodies,” he said.
His father was missing.
Two days later, Muhammad went back to the remains of his home. “I found my father’s body in front of me,” he said. “I tried everything I could to get him out.” His 16-year-old sister was also killed, he said.
Ola Salama said her uncle’s body was found with no head and no feet after his house was bombed.
“The scenes I saw were more horrific than horror movies,” she said. “But they are all real.”
“The missile cut her body into pieces,” Alaa Jihad Hussain said of her 22-year-old cousin, who was killed alongside her husband and daughter. With communications often down, some of the graduates feared their loved ones might be dead without their knowing.
Only by chance did some learn about a relative’s death. When Mahmoud Naser ran into an acquaintance at a shelter in Rafah, he learned his uncle had been shot, apparently by an Israeli sniper.
“I am afraid of dying these days, and that my friends won’t find my name among the names of martyrs because there are too many,” said Asmaa Dwaima, who, already, can count three friends and four cousins among the dead.
“I’m also afraid they won’t find an internet connection to log in and publish a silly story to commemorate me.”
Mohammed Al-Baradei (right) grew up with Ahmad Al-Hourani, attending university and spending afternoons in the gym together.
But when the house next door was bombed, a wall fell on Ahmad as he slept, Mohammed said.
“All my life was with him,” he said. “All of it ended in a moment.”
Alaa AlAbadla (right) last saw his friend Basel Farwana in the seaside area where they were sheltering. Basel was killed when he went home to get a nylon sheet and some blankets for his family’s tent, Alaa said.
But Alaa has little time to mourn. He is busy looking for clean water to survive. “We don’t have time to be sad,” he said. When Israeli forces invaded Gaza from the north, most of the graduates fled south. Mazen Alwahidi was one of the few exceptions.
Food shortages are most severe in the north, and Mazen said he had lost 46 pounds and has resorted to eating donkey feed. “It was like garbage,” he said. “But we have no other choices.”
He said his aunt, a cancer patient, died without access to treatment. They buried her on a street, near a destroyed graveyard.
Noor Shehada also remains in the north. Her family was relying on wild herbs to survive, she said.
“We are starving. We are living in the 18th century.”
Before the war, her uncle traveled to Israel for chemotherapy. Without access to treatment, he died, she said.
Najat Shurrab said her cousin’s 2-year-old twins, Muhammad and Hamada, had been killed. “They were defenseless civilians,” she said.
Ms. Shurrab has a 7-month-old daughter, Masa, and they have been living in a tent in Rafah.
Every day is a struggle to find diapers and food for her baby, she said, and she fears what the future holds for the child.
Areej al-Astal was pregnant when she evacuated first to a tent in Rafah and then to an overcrowded house with her husband’s family. She slept on the floor for two months.
With food scarce, she said, she gained no weight during her whole pregnancy. Eventually, she escaped to Egypt and gave birth to a son. “The word ‘dreams’ has ended,” she said. “It no longer exists in our imagination at all.”
More than 100 members of Areej’s extended family have been killed in the Israeli assault, according to a Gazan health ministry spokesman. “I can’t count them,” Areej said.
After being displaced five times, Rabeha Nabeel and her family decided to return home, though it was missing walls.
“Even if it’s destroyed, it’s our house,” she said.
Rabeha said 27 members of her extended family were killed in the first week of the war. “I lost five of my close friends, my house, my job, my university, my happy memories and my city,” said Mohammed Zebdah.
Mohammed was supposed to pick up his certificate on Oct. 8, but then the bombs started falling.
Many of the graduates told The Times they had just gotten jobs at clinics that are now in ruins. One said he had recently begun working as a volunteer in Khan Younis, treating as many as 60 refugees a day. A few others managed to leave the country.
Months after the joyous celebrations of the graduates, the buildings of Al-Azhar University where they had their dentistry classes bear the scars of war.
“On Oct. 7, all hopes and dreams went with the wind,” Mohammed said.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. on Wednesday imposed new sanctions on hundreds of firms and people tied to Russia’s weapons development program, more than a dozen Chinese firms accused of helping Russia find workarounds to sanctions and individuals tied to the death of Russian dissident Alexey Navalny.
The sanctions imposed by the Treasury and State departments target Russia’s military-industrial base, chemical weapons programs and people and firms in third countries that help Russia acquire weapons components as its invasion of Ukraine has entered its third year.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the action “will further disrupt and degrade Russia’s war efforts by going after its military industrial base and the evasion networks that help supply it.”
The sanctions come as the Senate gave final approval to legislation barring imports of Russian uranium, boosting U.S. efforts to disrupt Russia’s war in Ukraine. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the bill into law.
About 12% of the uranium used to produce electricity at U.S. nuclear power plants is imported from Russia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
A spokesperson for the National Security Council said Wednesday that Biden, a Democrat, shares lawmakers’ concerns about U.S. reliance on Russia for low-enriched uranium to support its domestic nuclear fleet.
Included in Wednesday’s sanctions announcement are importers of cotton cellulose and nitrocellulose — used to produce gunpowder, rocket propellants and other explosives. Also included are Russian government entities and people tied to Russia’s chemical and biological weapons programs and firms related to Russia’s natural gas construction projects.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly railed against several rounds of U.S. and Western sanctions, claiming last year that they are “illegitimate sanctions” on his country.
A group of 16 targets in China and Hong Kong, most of which are related to Russian procurement workarounds, are also included in the latest sanctions announcement.
Firms in countries including China, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Slovakia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are accused of helping Russia acquire technology and equipment from abroad. The penalties aim to block them from using the U.S. financial system and bar American citizens from dealing with them.
The sanctions come after Biden last week said he would immediately rush badly needed weaponry to Ukraine as he signed into law a $95 billion war aid measure that also included assistance for Israel, Taiwan and other global hot spots.
Yellen said with the sanctions and supplemental funding combined, “our support for Ukraine and our relentless targeting of Russia’s military capacity is giving Ukraine a critical leg-up on the battlefield.”
Indonesia’s Mount Ruang volcano spewed more hot clouds on Wednesday after an eruption the previous day forced the closure of schools and airports, pelted villages with volcanic debris and prompted hundreds of people to flee.
Seven airports, including Sam Ratulangi international airport in Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi province, remained closed after Tuesday’s eruption, the second in two weeks. Schools were shut to protect children from volcanic ash.
The volcano is on tiny Ruang Island, part of the Sitaro islands chain.
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The Indonesian geological agency urged people to stay at least 4 miles from the volcano’s crater. It warned people on nearby Tagulandang Island, the closest to the volcano, of possible super-heated volcanic clouds from a further eruption and a tsunami if the mountain’s volcanic dome collapses into the sea.
Mount Ruang releases volcanic materials during its eruption on April 30, 2024, on Sulawesi Island, Indonesia. The volcano erupted on April 30 for a second time in two weeks, spewing ash more than a mile into the sky, forcing an airport to close and peppering nearby villages with debris. (Vulcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation Center via AP Photo)
Video released by the National Search and Rescue Agency showed about a hundred villagers from Tagulandang Island being evacuated on a navy ship. Hundreds of others were waiting at a local port to be evacuated.
Agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari said 11,000 to 12,000 people living within a 4-mile danger zone would be taken to government shelters.
Tuesday’s eruption darkened the sky and peppered several villages with ash, grit and rocks. No casualties were reported.
After Mount Ruang’s April 17 eruption, authorities warned that a subsequent eruption might collapse part of the volcano into the sea.
Ruang is among about 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia. The archipelagic nation is prone to volcanic eruptions and earthquakes because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a series of fault lines stretching from the western coast of the Americas through Japan and Southeast Asia.
Authorities deployed more than 40,000 police officers across the city after banning protests in Taksim Square.
Police in Istanbul have used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters who tried to break through a barricade to reach the city’s Taksim Square in defiance of a ban on May Day rallies.
Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said 210 people were arrested on Wednesday.
More than 40,000 police were deployed across the city, blocking even small side streets with metal barriers after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on the eve of May Day that the annual protests would not be allowed to take place in the square.
Tall metal barriers were put up around the square – a traditional focal point of protests in Istanbul, where authorities have banned rallies since 2013, when it was the focus of demonstrations against Erdogan’s government.
On X, Yerlik said that “210 people were detained in Istanbul after failure to heed our warnings and attempting to walk to the Taksim Square and attack our police officers on May 1 Labour and Solidarity Day.”
Police clashed with demonstrators near city hall in the Sarachane district, firing tear gas and rubber bullets to stop protesters from breaching barricades, the AFP news agency reported.
“We have demonstrated our will to celebrate May Day at Taksim Square. We have legal grounds,” Arzu Cerkezoglu, secretary general of the Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions of Turkey (DISK), told AFP.
“Taksim is an important symbol for us. Taksim means May Day, Taksim means labour,” she said.
In 2023, Turkey’s top constitutional court ruled that the closure of Taksim Square for protests was a violation of citizens’ rights. The square was a rallying ground for May Day celebrations until 1977, when at least 34 people were killed during demonstrations. Authorities opened it up again in 2010, but it was shut again after the 2013 protests.
Main roads across Istanbul were closed to traffic while public transport including ferries and subway trains was halted because of the security clampdown. Landmarks such as the Topkapi Palace were cordoned off.
On Monday, Yerlikaya said Taksim would be out of bounds for rallies to stop “terrorist organisations” from using it for “propaganda”.
Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and unions had pressed the government to open the square for labour rallies, but Erdogan warned on Tuesday against any provocation.
CHP leader Ozgur Ozel, accompanied by Istanbul’s Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu and labour unions, gathered in the Sarachane neighbourhood.
“We will keep on fighting until Taksim is free,” Ozel said. “Taksim belongs to the workers.”
Addressing the police, Ozel declared: “These workers are not your enemies. Our only desire is for the day to be celebrated as a festival. We do not want conflict.”
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