The death toll from the devastating floods caused by the torrential rains that hit Kenya since mid-March amounted to 210, while about 165,500 people have been displaced, the Kenyan Ministry of the Interior reported on Friday.

The total death toll increased after 22 more deaths were confirmed in the last 24 hours, the Ministry said in a statement collected by local media.

Likewise, the injured and missing remain at 125 and 90, respectively, and a total of 196,000 have been affected by the floods throughout the country, immersed in the long rainy season, which has especially hit the center, south and west of its territory.

To respond to this crisis, the Ministry said, the Kenyan authorities have created at least 115 camps distributed in 19 of the 47 counties of Kenya, where more than 27,500 people have taken refuge.

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The Government published these data after the Kenyan Minister of the Interior, Kithure Kindiki, urged on Thursday to move all Kenyans who reside in areas vulnerable to landslides or near dams and rivers.

In a message published on social network X late on Thursday, Kindiki pointed out that all neighbors in those areas are “ordered” to “leave these areas immediately” in the next 24 hours, before a “mandatory evacuation” is launched.

“The Government has adopted adequate measures to provide temporary accommodation, as well as essential food and non-food supplies to all those who will be affected by the eviction,” the minister said.

The truth is, however, that, according to the Human Rights Watch (HRW) organization, the Government of Kenya did not act in time or respond adequately to the serious floods, despite the weather predictions it had.

In a statement released on Thursday, the NGO warned that the destruction caused by the rains “has exacerbated socioeconomic vulnerabilities” by more severely hitting the poor population, rural residents, the elderly and people with disabilities.

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In the same vein, a report by the National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) published on Tuesday pointed out that the storms have aggravated the lack of food in Kenya to the point that about two million Kenyans need food aid.

Severe storms will last at least until next week, and the rains will continue to be intense during this month, according to the prediction of the Department of Meteorology of Kenya.

In recent years, the long rainy season, which runs from March to May and also affects other countries in East Africa, has been intensified by the El Niño weather phenomenon, a change in atmospheric dynamics caused by the increase in the temperature of the Pacific Ocean.

The west, center and south of the country – including the capital, Nairobi – have so far taken the worst part, and the overflow of a river on Monday especially hit Nakuru County, where at least 71 people died as a result of the tragedy.

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The number of deaths in the Gaza Strip due to the Israeli offensive has increased to 34,622, after hospitals in the area reported the death of 26 people in recent hours, the Ministry of Health, controlled by the Government of Hamas, reported on Friday.

“The Israeli occupation committed 3 massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, including 25 deaths and 51 people injured, during the last 24 hours,” the Ministry said in a brief statement, in which it recalled that there are numerous corpses under the rubble and in areas inaccessible to emergency services, due to attacks by the Israeli Army.

In addition, the Ministry detailed that in the 210 days of the Israeli military offensive, 77,867 people have been injured.

The Palestinian agency Wafa had reported the death of at least six Palestinians during the night of Thursday to Friday, including four children, in an Israeli airstrike against a residential building in the city of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, turned into the last refuge for the displaced from the north.

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Local sources told Wafa that Israeli fighter planes bombed a residential building in Rafah, resulting in the death of six civilians, four children and two adults. In addition, an indeterminate number of people were injured.

Another residential building east of this border city with Egypt, which awaits a land offensive and where more than 1.4 million Palestinians live overcrowded, was also bombed causing civilians to be injured, the Palestinian agency details.

Another nine civilians were injured in the center of the enclave, after an Israeli attack on the Bureij refugee camp, according to Palestinian sources, who did not determine their number.

No conflict has caused a level of destruction similar to that of Gaza since World War II, the United Nations reported, which estimated that post-war reconstruction could cost up to $50 billion.

“We have not seen anything like this since 1945,” Abdallah al Dardari, director of the Regional Office for the Arab States of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), said on Thursday. “That intensity, in such a short time and the massive scale of destruction,” he added.

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More than 70% of all the homes in the enclave have been destroyed, lamented this UN official, and assured that it will be necessary to remove about 37 million tons of debris.

In comparison, during Israel’s war in Gaza in 2014, which lasted 51 days of summer, about 2.4 million tons of ruins were removed.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared itself “extremely concerned” about Israeli plans to intervene on a large scale military in Rafah, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, where 1.2 million Palestinians are overcrowded, many after fleeing months of hostilities further north.

Such an operation “would make the humanitarian catastrophe even more worse,” said the representative of the WHO in the Palestinian Territories, Rik Peeperkorn, at a press conference.

He also stressed that the WHO and its partners are making contingency plans to ensure that the health system is prepared for a military operation, although he recalled that in many cases, as has happened in areas further north of Gaza, many hospitals are no longer accessible or are even direct targets of armed attacks.

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As part of its preparations for a possible large-scale operation, WHO has established a new field hospital in Rafah, and a storage area for medical supplies.

“Despite the measures we take, the health system, already weakened, will not be able to withstand the enormous devastation that the incursion would possibly cause,” he said.

Peeperkorn expressed his fear that the three hospitals in Rafah will lose the ability to care for patients in the event of a large-scale operation.

He concluded by noting that Gaza’s health system “barely survives,” with only 12 of the 36 hospitals in the strip and 22 of the 88 health facilities partially functioning.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, reiterated on Thursday that the invasion of Rafah, a city bordering Egypt and turned into the last refuge of the Palestinians, is still standing, despite the parallel negotiations with Hamas on a possible ceasefire.

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The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenski, has received in Kiev the British Foreign Minister, David Cameron, whom he has informed about the situation on the front and has requested that the new military aid package to Kiev announced by London last week arrive “as soon as possible” in Ukraine.

“I have informed the Foreign Minister about the situation on the front. It is important that the weapons contained in the United Kingdom support package announced last week arrive as soon as possible,” Zelenski wrote on his social networks.

“Before anything else, armored vehicles, ammunition and missiles of various types,” the Ukrainian head of state added about the material included in the package that Kiev needs more urgently.

Zelenski also visited the Jmelnitsky region (western Ukraine) on Friday and discussed with the civil and military authorities the security situation in this oblast, with special attention to air defenses and the means of electronic warfare and the protection of the nuclear power plant in the area.

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London approved last month the largest military aid package in the United Kingdom so far for Ukraine. This aid item worth 580 million euros includes Storm Shadow long-range guided missile systems, more than 400 military vehicles, 1,600 defensive and attack missiles and four million units of ammunition.

This new British aid arrives at a particularly difficult time on the battlefield for Ukraine, which in recent weeks has had to give way in the eastern region of Donetsk due to enemy superiority in personnel and ammunition for artillery.

The United Kingdom will contribute with gas turbines, cogeneration technologies and mobile generators so that Kiev can face the consequences of Russian attacks on its energy infrastructures and decentralize the Ukrainian electricity generation system to make it less vulnerable.

In a statement published last night, Cameron announced his visit to Kiev and confirmed the sending of an energy support package to Ukraine worth 36 million pounds (41 million euros) and the supply of precision guided bombs and air defense equipment.

In just one week, Russia has destroyed or damaged much of the Ukrainian electricity generation infrastructure in a campaign of air strikes that Ukraine has not been able to repel due to its shortcomings in air defense.

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In his meeting with Cameron in Kiev, Zelenski also spoke with the head of British diplomacy about the Global Peace Summit that Kiev organizes on June 15 and 16 in Switzerland to obtain the support of as many countries as possible for the so-called Ukrainian Peace Formula.

This document requires, among other things, the withdrawal of Russian troops from the invaded country and the restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

On the other hand, at least 546 children have died in Ukraine and 1,319 have been injured of various considerations as a result of the Russian military aggression against this country that began on February 24, 2022, according to data published today by the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office.

The most recent victims occurred this Thursday, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.

On the other hand, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, described the “verbal escalation” of Paris and London about the conflict in Ukraine as dangerous and warned that it could pose a threat to the entire architecture of European security.

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Peskov specifically alluded to the statements of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, about the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine and those of the head of the United Kingdom’s diplomacy, David Cameron, about the Ukrainian troops has the right to use British weapons to attack the territory of Russia.