They Were Told They Were in a Safe Area. Then Came the Missiles.
When the explosions began on Saturday, many Gazans were sitting down to meager breakfasts, or drinking tea. They were waking up their children, or walking down the road.
Suddenly, the sound of destruction was booming through Al-Mawasi, the once sparsely populated part of southern Gaza where tens of thousands of Palestinians had fled to after the Israeli military declared it safe for civilians.
Despite that designation, Israel struck the area with a barrage of airstrikes on Saturday morning, saying that it had targeted Hamas’s top military commander and another military leader. While it remained unclear on Sunday whether the main target had been killed, Gaza health officials said more than 90 people were killed in the attack, about half of them women and children, and more than 300 wounded.
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Gambia Votes to Keep Ban on Female Genital Cutting, in Dramatic Reversal
Lawmakers who had been moving toward repealing Gambia’s landmark ban on female genital cutting overwhelmingly changed course on Monday, voting instead to keep the legislation in place after women staged an intense three-month campaign.
Gambia, a sliver of a country on the west coast of Africa, had grabbed international attention earlier this year as it appeared headed to becoming the world’s first nation to roll back protections against cutting.
“It would have faced pariah status,” said Satang Nabaneh, a Gambian legal scholar focused on sexual and reproductive rights and women’s rights.
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With Rivals Restricted, Kagame Looks Set for Another Term in Rwanda
The winding roads to this town in northern Rwanda were lined with election posters for the man who has been president for decades: Paul Kagame.
Businesses were ordered shut and women swept the streets before the president’s convoy swooshed by, heading for a huge rally in a stadium bedecked with the governing party’s red, white and sky-blue colors. Tens of thousands of cheering people, largely mobilized by party operatives, greeted his arrival.
A day later, Mr. Kagame’s main challenger, Frank Habineza, arrived in the same town without a fanfare. His party’s colors — green, yellow and white — were absent from the now-busy streets. A few dozen people, many of them his own election workers, gathered under a tent by the street to listen to him. Security forces hovered nearby.
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