World roundup: October 9 2024

Stories from Lebanon, Japan, Haiti, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

October 9, 1740: Dutch colonial authorities and native sympathizers brutally suppress an uprising among ethnic Chinese citizens of the Indonesian city of Batavia (modern Jakarta). By the end of the massacre, on October 22, more than 10,000 people were dead—nearly all of them Chinese—and the city’s remaining Chinese residents were moved into a “Chinatown” outside the city that functioned more as a detention camp than a residential neighborhood.

October 9, 1967: Ernesto “Che” Guevara is executed by Bolivian authorities one day after being captured while attempting to organize a revolution.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The Israeli military’s (IDF) latest operation in northern Gaza, which at the moment is focusing on the Jabaliya refugee camp, has trapped some 400,000 people according to United Nations Relief and Works Agency director Philippe Lazzarini. Many are likely unable to evacuate for one reason or another, though even those who do evacuate are liable to be shot by the IDF while fleeing. Some may be refusing to evacuate, perhaps under the correct assumption that there’s no safety to be found anywhere else in Gaza. All will likely be deemed de facto enemy combatants by the IDF at some point and even a fleeting concern for their lives and/or humanitarian needs will evaporate.

Some residents of Jabalia attempting to flee on Wednesday (Mahmoud Issa/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Among those refusing to leave, as Drop Site reported on Wednesday, are medical personnel at three northern Gazan facilities that have all received evacuation orders from the IDF: al-Awda Hospital, the Indonesian Hospital, and Kamal Adwan Hospital. Staff at those facilities were told on Tuesday to vacate within 24 hours or face the same fate as Gaza city’s al-Shifa Hospital, whose destruction the IDF previously tried to justify but now highlights as a cautionary tale. Kamal Adwan is reportedly the last facility in northern Gaza that is still able to treat newborns and dialysis patients. UNRWA has also been forced to shut down its humanitarian operations in the area.

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