Dec 27(Jowhar)-Madaxweynaha Jamhuuriyadda Federaalka Soomaaliya Mudane Xasan Sheekh Maxamuud oo ku guda jira wada-tashiyo qaran oo lagu xoojinayo difaaca midnimada, madax-bannaanida iyo wadajirka dalka, ayaa kulan ballaaran la yeeshay Madax hore oo heer qaran ah iyo siyaasiyiin Soomaaliyeed.
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Madaxweyne Xasan oo amray in la joojiyo shirka Heritage ee Dhuusa-mareeb
Dec 27(Jowhar)-Shirkii Madasha Atagti Wadaaga ee Heritage ayaa dib loo dhigay sababo la xiriira xaaladda soo korortay ee ka dhalatay Aqoonsiga Israel ay sheegtay iney siisay Somaliland.
Madaxweyne Xasan oo bilaabay latashiyo ka dhan ah tallaabada Israel ee Somaliland
Dec 27(Jowhar)-Madaxweynaha Jamhuuriyadda Federaalka Soomaaliya Mudane Xasan Sheekh Maxamuud ayaa wada-hadallo diblumaasiyadeed oo degdeg ah kula yeeshay khadka taleefoonka.
Madaxweyne Xasan oo Wada-hadal Degdeg ah la yeeshay Madasha Samatabixinta & Farmaajo
Dec 27(Jowhar)-Madaxweynaha Jamhuuriyadda Federaalka Soomaaliya, Xasan Sheekh Maxamuud, ayaa xalay khadka taleefanka kula hadlay inta badan xubnaha Madasha Samatabixinta Qaranka iyo Madaxweynihii hore Maxamed Cabdullaahi Farmaajo, isaga oo kala hadlay arrin xasaasi ah ee la xiriirta go’aanka ay Israel ku aqoonsatay Somaliland.
Gaza hospital reports fuel supplies sufficient for only two days
A Breath Between Bombs: One Gaza Hospital, One Small Delivery, Two Days of Life
Inside the low-slung compound of Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, the air carries the taste of diesel and disinfectant, a metallic tang that has become part of daily life here. Corridors once bright with posters about vaccinations now double as sleeping spaces for relatives. A sputtering generator keeps the emergency lights alive; outside, the city’s broken skyline slices the horizon like an unsent letter.
“Most services have been temporarily stopped due to a shortage of the fuel needed for the generators,” Ahmed Mehanna, a senior manager involved with the hospital, told reporters earlier in the day. Those words landed like a verdict: what remains of organized healthcare is shrinking.
Al-Awda, which normally cares for about 60 in-patients and sees nearly 1,000 people seeking treatment each day, had been forced to pare back to essentials. The emergency unit, the maternity ward and paediatrics continued to function; everything else went quiet. Staff had rented a small generator to keep these lifelines open, but the hospital’s own supplies were failing.
In the late afternoon, the distant hope arrived — 2,500 litres of diesel dispatched by the World Health Organization. “This evening, 2,500 litres of fuel arrived from the World Health Organisation, and we immediately resumed operations,” Mehanna said. For a beat, the ICU monitors sounded in unison. For a longer beat, the fuel will last only about two and a half days. Under ordinary conditions, Al-Awda burns between 1,000 and 1,200 litres a day; stores on hand before the WHO delivery numbered just 800 litres.
Faces and Voices in a Clinic on the Edge
“We are knocking on every door to continue providing services,” Mohammed Salha, the hospital’s acting director, told me when I walked the wards. He paused at a small cot where a young mother cradled a newborn in a blanket patterned with tiny blue camels. “But while the occupation allows fuel for international institutions, it restricts it for local health facilities such as Al-Awda,” Salha said, his voice thin with exhaustion and frustration.
Nearby, a nurse named Laila smoothed down a child’s bandage with hands that seemed too tired to steady. “We’ve learned how to stretch everything — oxygen, antibiotics, even time,” she said. “We make shifts on 40 minutes of sleep. We talk quietly at night so the children can rest. But when the lights go, it is different. You cannot perform a cesarean with prayers alone.”
A WHO field coordinator, who asked not to be named, told me: “Fuel is as critical as medicine in these conditions. Without it you cannot run dialysis machines, ventilators, or sterilize equipment. Every minute of delay becomes a risk to life.”
The hospital’s predicament is a small, sharp lens into a broader humanitarian collapse. Despite a fragile truce observed since October 10, the strip remains in crisis — hospitals stretched thin, supply chains fractured, and civilians living in permanent emergency mode.
Ripples Across Borders: A Deadly Strike in Lebanon
While Al-Awda scrambled for diesel, another headline landed on the region’s fractured table: the Israeli military announced it had killed a member of Iran’s Quds Force in Lebanon. The operative was identified as Hussein Mahmoud Marshad al-Jawhari, said to be part of unit 840 and implicated, according to the Israeli statement, in planning attacks from Syria and Lebanon.
The military’s announcement was terse: al-Jawhari “operated under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and was involved in terrorist activities, directed by Iran, against the State of Israel and its security forces.” The strike reportedly occurred in the area of Ansariyeh. There has been no public response from Iran or Lebanese authorities at the time of reporting.
Security analysts cautioned that such killings are part of a long-running pattern of tit-for-tat operations that ripple beyond any single action. “This isn’t an isolated incident,” said Rana al-Khatib, a Lebanon-based analyst who studies cross-border militancy. “It’s part of a broader geography of conflict stretching from Tehran’s proxies to local militias, and every strike risks escalation.”
Back to the West Bank: Violence That Keeps Climbing
On the same day, northern Israel was rocked by what authorities described as a “rolling terror attack”: a combination of a car-ramming and stabbings that left two people dead — a 68-year-old man and a younger woman — and saw the attacker shot and apprehended. The incident began in Beit Shean, moved along Road 71, and ended near Maonot Junction in Afula.
Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency service, said a 16-year-old was slightly injured after being hit by a vehicle. Police reported the attacker “infiltrated into Israeli territory several days ago.” The perpetrator was taken to hospital with gunshot wounds.
The attack followed another disturbing episode a day earlier in the West Bank: video emerged of an Israeli reservist, in civilian clothes, ramming his vehicle into a Palestinian man and firing shots in the area. Israeli military officials said the reservist had “severed violations of his authority” and that his service had been terminated.
These incidents are not statistically isolated blips. United Nations figures cited in recent reports show this year was among the bloodiest for Israeli civilian attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, with more than 750 injuries. Between October 7, 2023, and October 17, 2025, more than a thousand Palestinians were killed in the West Bank — most during security operations and some in settler violence — while 57 Israelis were killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period.
The Human Cost Behind the Numbers
Numbers tell one kind of story. Walking the wards at Al-Awda, the human story is different in its texture. There’s a father who slept next to his son’s bed on a thin mattress and a grandmother who braided her granddaughter’s hair while she waited for a follow-up wound dressing. There’s the smell of strong tea, the hushed recitation of prayers between shifts, the small rivalries about who makes the best flatbread for the staff room.
“You begin to measure time in ‘how many nights can we last’ instead of clock hours,” a surgeon at Al-Awda told me, laughing weakly. “We are used to improvising. But improvisation with lives on the line is a heavy burden.”
Why Fuel Is More Than Fuel
It may seem bureaucratic to talk about litres and generators when human life is at stake, but the arithmetic is brutal: without consistent fuel supplies, vacuum cleaners used in surgeries fail, refrigerators that preserve blood supplies warm, and ventilators go silent. Humanitarian aid can sometimes flow in grand totals — “hundreds of tonnes,” “shipments” — but for a hospital, the crucial unit is the litre.
So what would change if pipelines and borders were kept open for hospitals? Apart from immediate survival, reliable fuel stabilizes staffing (no overnight evacuation), ensures continuity of surgical programs, and keeps vaccination and chronic-disease treatments from collapsing into disaster. That ripple effect means fewer long-term disabilities, fewer preventable deaths, and communities that can begin to plan for recovery.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Reading this, you might ask: what can a single reader do? Share these stories, support reputable humanitarian organizations, pressure policymakers to protect medical neutrality, and demand transparency around aid corridors. Ask your representatives how they are ensuring fuel and medical supplies reach hospitals — not just international agencies — and how they are supporting durable ceasefires and accountability.
This is not just a Gaza story, or a Lebanon story, or a West Bank story. It’s a human story about how conflict fractures essential systems, how a hospital’s heartbeat can be measured in litres, and how political decisions translate into the quiet agony of families waiting in dim wards. The people in those rooms — the newborn taking its first breath under the hum of a borrowed generator, the surgeon tucking a patient’s blanket — are not statistics. They are neighbors, and their survival asks us to imagine a different kind of politics: one where a hospital’s need for fuel is treated as a line that must never be crossed.
Man Detained After Knife Attack Injures Three Women on Paris Metro
The afternoon the city held its breath
Paris in late afternoon is a study in ordinary motion: hurried footsteps on damp cobblestones, the clatter of café spoons against porcelain, the tired grin of commuters trading small talk beneath the glow of station signs. On Line 3 of the Métro — the short, busy ribbon that stitches the Marais with the Opéra and beyond — that familiar rhythm was broken. In the span of half an hour three women were wounded in separate stabbings at République, Arts et Métiers and Opéra stations. By evening, a suspect had been located and arrested in Val d’Oise, north of the capital.
It is easy to reduce incidents like this to a string of facts. But the city remembers in colours and textures: a child clutching a cold crêpe on the square at République, the violinist pausing mid-phrase on the platform at Arts et Métiers, a shopkeeper brushing flour from his hands when he heard the sirens. For many commuters, Tuesday’s afternoon felt like a crack in the usual surface — a reminder that public space, even the most mundane, can suddenly feel precarious.
What we know — and what remains uncertain
According to the RATP, the metropolitan authority that operates Paris transit, the attacks took place between roughly 16:15 and 16:45 local time. Emergency services treated the victims promptly; none of the initial updates suggested fatalities. Prosecutors said investigators used surveillance-camera footage and mobile-phone geolocation to trace the suspect, who was arrested later in Val d’Oise. Authorities have not yet publicly announced a motive and say the inquiry remains underway.
“We are still piecing together the sequence and the motive,” said a prosecutor in an evening briefing. “What matters now is the care of the victims and ensuring the safety of the public.”
Quick facts
- Three women were injured at three different stations on Line 3 (Republique, Arts et Métiers, Opéra).
- Attacks took place within a 30-minute window in mid-afternoon.
- Police used CCTV and mobile geolocation to locate and arrest a suspect in Val d’Oise.
- RATP deployed additional security teams on the line following the incidents.
On the platforms: voices from the city
At République, where multiple metro and bus lines converge beneath a broad square, coffee shops and bakeries were busy with afterwork crowds. “I was waiting for a friend and we heard screams,” said Amélie, a nurse who lives nearby. “Someone ran past, glass from a café table shattered. It felt like the city’s breath stopped for a moment.”
Miguel, a 42-year-old delivery driver, described the scene at Arts et Métiers. “There was blood on the tile,” he said. “A woman was sitting on the bench, people gave her their coats. Nobody screamed beyond that first shock — there was this quiet urgency to help.” He added, “We are used to petty theft, crowds and delays. This was different.”
A station agent who asked not to be named said the RATP command centre escalated security immediately. “We put extra teams on the platforms and increased patrols,” she said. “People were frightened. Some passengers left the stations; others stayed put and called loved ones.”
Technology, law enforcement and privacy
The rapid arrest underlines a modern truth: public surveillance and mobile tracking are now standard tools in policing. French authorities said they activated geolocation on the suspect’s phone to track him to Val d’Oise. That tactic has been used before to disruptive effect — sometimes bringing swift resolution, sometimes raising difficult questions.
“There is an undeniable public safety benefit when investigators can act quickly to prevent further harm,” said Professor Hélène Durand, a criminologist at Sciences Po. “But we must balance that with transparency around how and when emergency location powers are used.”
In recent years, France has tightened security measures amid persisting terror threats and worries about public disorder. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez, who had urged local authorities to maintain “maximum vigilance” earlier this week, said visible police presence is necessary to reassure citizens. Yet critics warn about the cost of omnipresent surveillance — especially for activists, minority communities and everyday citizens who prize privacy.
Line 3, the Marais, and the sense of place
Line 3 threads through neighborhoods beloved by locals and tourists alike. It skirts the Marais — a district of narrow lanes, independent boutiques and centuries-old hôtels particuliers — and ends near the glittering façades of Opéra and the grand boulevards. That familiarity intensifies the emotional shock. A knife attack here hits not only individuals but the shared geography of daily life.
“You come to the metro for the simple act of getting home,” said Isabelle, a teacher waiting at a nearby bus stop. “If that feels unsafe, everything feels a little less like Paris.”
Parisian life is performed in public — cafés, markets, parks — and the fear of losing those unscripted moments lingers after incidents like this one. Yet the city has always had a way of returning to its rhythms. Vendors roll out their awnings. Lovers argue softly on park benches. Underground, escalators hum and trains keep coming.
The wider picture: trends, tensions, and the politics of safety
Across Europe and beyond, quick, low-tech attacks — often described in media as “knife attacks” or “stabbings” — have become a recurring security challenge. They are difficult to pre-empt, hard to defend against in open, crowded spaces, and fraught with political implications. Debates about policing, social services, mental-health support and immigration policy flare up in the wake of every incident.
“We shouldn’t rush to fit a single incident into a political narrative,” cautioned Dr. Marc Lebrun, a sociologist who studies urban violence. “But we also can’t ignore underlying factors: social isolation, radicalization pathways online, the availability of weapons, gaps in mental-health care.”
For now, investigators are pursuing the immediate leads. For the public, the lingering questions are both intimate and systemic: How safe do we feel using our public transit? What trade-offs are we willing to accept between security and privacy? And perhaps most importantly, how do we care for victims and their communities after the headlines fade?
What comes next
Paris will likely see increased patrols on the Métro and renewed calls for vigilance. Riders will check their bags a little more carefully, parents might adjust routes, and the vendors near République will watch station announcements more closely. But Paris will also return, in its particular way, to motion: the baker with a fresh tray of croissants, the student hunched over notes in a café, the tired commuter collapsing into a Metro car at the end of the day.
When the city moves again, will we have learned anything else? Will policy follow public concern, or will the next crisis demand a different set of answers? These are not questions with easy solutions, but they are the ones public debate must keep alive.
As you read this, think of the last time you stood on a platform, one hand on a strap, the other wrapped around a coffee. What would you want your city to do to keep that small, ordinary moment safe? And what would you be willing to accept in return?
Gaza hospital warns fuel deliveries cover only two days of operations
When the Generators Whisper: A Night at Al-Awda Hospital
There is a particular, metallic hush that descends on hospitals running on borrowed power—a hollow, urgent kind of quiet that speaks louder than any alarm. In Nuseirat, a dense, battered district in central Gaza, Al-Awda Hospital lives by that sound. For days the generators had been faltering, and with them the fragile rhythms of birth, trauma care and children’s wards.
“When the lights dim, everyone holds their breath,” Ahmed Mehanna, one of the senior managers who has spent the last several months negotiating water, medicine and fuel, told me over the crackle of a radio. “Most services had to be temporarily stopped because the generators could not run.”
Those words felt like the opening scene of a long tragedy. Al-Awda tends to roughly 60 in-patients at any given time and sees nearly 1,000 people seeking treatment every day—mothers, the elderly, children with fevers or wounds. Under calmer circumstances the hospital needs between 1,000 and 1,200 litres of diesel each day to keep lights on, ventilators humming and sterilisation units working. When I visited, staff said the stock had dipped to some 800 litres.
Then, as twilight folded into the blue of evening, the hospital received 2,500 litres from the World Health Organisation. “We resumed operations immediately,” Mehanna said, relief tempered with caution. “This will last only two and a half days.” The WHO has reportedly promised another delivery the following Sunday.
Life on Two and a Half Days
Two and a half days. That figure has become a shorthand for how precarious life is here. It is not just a technical detail; it determines whether a mother in labour will have lighting for a safe delivery, whether an infant with pneumonia will have oxygen overnight, whether surgeons can finish an operation without counting the seconds between each beep.
“We rented a small generator to keep the emergency, maternity and paediatrics units alive,” Mehanna explained, but even the rental is a stopgap. “If fuel is cut for longer periods, it becomes a direct threat to our ability to deliver basic services.”
In the maternity ward, a midwife named Fatima—her face tired but steady—showed me where they had resorted to battery-powered lamps for deliveries on some nights. “We do what we must,” she said. “But there is fear. Not a dramatic fear, but a quiet one. The kind that sits with you through the shift.”
Mohammed Salha, the hospital’s acting director, made a starker claim. “We are knocking on every door to continue providing services,” he said, “but while the occupation allows fuel for international institutions, it restricts it for local health facilities such as Al-Awda.” His accusation—that restrictions are deliberate—was voiced in a tone that mixed anger and exhaustion. International agencies deny many of the accusations historically leveled at authorities in contexts like this, while local health workers say the cumulative effect is the same: lives delayed, and often lost.
Inside a City of Rubble and Routine
Walk the avenues around Nuseirat and you meet a city of quotidian survival: a grocer carefully measuring rice into paper bags; teenagers in a damaged courtyard kicking a deflated soccer ball; the scent of roasted coffee and za’atar wafting from a stall where people try to barter for fresh fruit. Over all, the intermittent call to prayer rises from minarets that still stand amid fractured buildings.
Yet everything here moves under the calculus of scarcity. Fuel is a currency, electricity a luxury. People plan around the hours when generators can run: when to charge a phone, when to cook, when to run a fan for a child with a fever. Hospitals are the fulcrum of this daily negotiation—small sanctuaries where the humanitarian crisis is most sharply visible.
Ripple Effects Beyond Gaza
The pressure at Al-Awda is part of a larger regional turbulence. In Lebanon, the Israeli military announced that it had killed a member of Iran’s Quds Force, identified as Hussein Mahmoud Marshad al-Jawhari, accusing him of plotting attacks from the Syria-Lebanon corridor. The strike reportedly took place in the Ansariyeh area. Israel has been conducting near-daily strikes in Lebanon in recent months—part of what it calls an effort to stem the influence of Iran-backed groups, notably Hezbollah.
“We are constantly on alert,” said a Lebanese medic who asked not to be named, speaking from the shadow of a checkpoint outside the south. “The war’s breath reaches us even if we are not in the headlines.”
The wider diplomatic backdrop includes a US-backed ceasefire last November that sought to halt open conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and required the disarmament of armed groups in certain border areas. Whether such agreements will hold under renewed tit-for-tat strikes is unclear.
Violence and Its Human Toll in the West Bank
Closer to home for many Palestinians, the West Bank remains volatile. In a tragic incident this week, a man from the occupied West Bank carried out a stabbing and car-ramming attack in northern Israel that killed two people and left the attacker wounded. Israeli police and emergency services reported that a 68-year-old man and a young woman died in separate episodes. Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency service, confirmed the fatalities.
The violence there is part of a grim pattern. United Nations figures show that this year has been one of the most violent on record for attacks by civilians against Palestinians in the West Bank, with more than 750 injuries attributed to settler violence. Between 7 October 2023 and 17 October 2025, UN data records more than 1,000 Palestinians killed in the West Bank—most in operations by security forces, and some in clashes or settler attacks. In the same period, 57 Israelis were killed in Palestinian attacks. Numbers like these are not just statistics; they are communities rearranged and families redefined.
What Do We Do With This News?
As a global reader, what are you meant to feel when you learn that a hospital’s fate can hinge on two and a half days of diesel? Outrage, yes. But also a pressing sense of the fragility of systems we take for granted: the electricity that powers neonatal incubators, the supply chains that deliver vaccines, the diplomacy that keeps borders open for humanitarian aid.
Ask yourself: how do we prioritize the sanctity of hospitals in conflict zones? How do international institutions move from episodic-deliveries to reliable lifelines? And how do stories from places like Nuseirat become more than a momentary headline? These are policy questions, but they are also moral ones.
“Aid is a bandage when what’s needed is steady, surgical care,” said one international health expert, Dr. Lina Haddad, who has worked in Gaza for a decade. “Short deliveries of fuel help, but what we need is predictable access—so hospitals can plan, staff can rest, and families can hope.”
Back at Al-Awda, a young father named Omar cradled his newborn in the dim after the WHO delivery. “We are grateful for this fuel,” he said, rubbing the baby’s tiny fingers, “but gratefulness is not the same as certainty.” His words lingered as the generator hummed its thin, essential song into the night.
Closing Thoughts
Numbers and dispatches will continue to arrive: promises of more fuel, accusations from officials, strikes across borders, and the steady count of casualties. But in the rooms between those headlines are people—midwives, patients, managers like Mehanna and Salha—who measure hope by the hours a generator can run. They teach us that resilience is not merely endurance; it is the stubborn insistence on dignity in a world that often forgets what that word truly costs.
Dowladda Soomaaliya oo si adag uga hadashay Aqoonsiga Israel ee Somaliland
Dec 26(Jowhar)-Dowladda Soomaaliya oo goordhow war-saxaafadeed kasoo saartay Aqoonsiga Isra1l ee Somaliland ayaa si adag u diidday tallaabadan aoo ay ku sheegtay mid sharci-darro ah oo lagu waxyeelleynayo madax-bannaanida Soomaaliya, iyadoo caddeysay in Somaliland ay tahay qayb aan ka go’i karin Jamhuuriyadda Federaalka Soomaaliya.
Three Killed After Heavy Rains, Flash Floods Strike California
When the Sky Opened: California’s Holiday Storms and the Quiet Aftermath
It began as a low, steady roar — the sound of rain threading down gutters, pooling on tarps and racing along asphalt. Then it became a full-throated thing, a daylong percussion that turned streets into rivers and hillsides into sluices of mud and broken brush. For millions of Californians, the holidays were rearranged by water: canceled gatherings, desperate rescues, and highways that looked more like streams than roads.
AccuWeather’s senior meteorologist, Tom Kines, summed it up plainly: “Think of this as one last round from the Pacific — heavy, persistent, and focused on Southern California. We expect another 1 to 3 inches of rain today in spots, then a real easing.” That’s roughly 2.5cm to 7.6cm, and while the numbers feel clinical, the scenes on the ground did not. In some places, residents had already seen more than 10 inches (about 25.4cm) from the initial surge of storms earlier in the week.
The conveyor belt from Hawaii — the infamous Pineapple Express
Meteorologists call it an atmospheric river; surfers and fishermen call it the Pineapple Express. Either way, this narrow, moisture-laden plume folded warm ocean air into California’s winter and delivered an intense dose of rain. The National Weather Service warned of a “broad plume of moisture” with the potential for numerous flash floods and debris flows, particularly in landscapes still raw from recent wildfires.
“When vegetation is stripped away by fire, the soil loses its sponge,” explained Dr. Ana Velasquez, a hydrologist at UC Davis. “That means the same storm that might normally soak into a slope runs off — fast and furious — and becomes wildfire-to-flood fallout.”
Where the Crisis Folded into Daily Life
Wrightwood, a mountain town that usually rings with the quiet clack of snow on pine boughs, became a scene of urgent rescues. Muddy water raced along streets, cutting off homes and trapping cars. Christopher Prater, a spokesperson for San Bernardino County Fire, described crews bumping flashlights in the dark, guiding residents from porches and doorways to safety. “People were clinging to railings and mailboxes, shaking — and our teams were just flat-out working to get them somewhere dry,” he said.
Across Los Angeles County, officials issued the kind of blunt advisory that makes people sit up and reassess holiday plans: “We’re not clear yet. Roads, waterways and flood channels remain dangerous. Check conditions before venturing out.” The county also declared a state of emergency, a step that unlocks resources but also underscores how quickly seasonal weather turns into a civic test.
In coastal neighborhoods like Pacific Palisades and Malibu — places still carrying the scars of January’s wildfires — authorities were especially concerned. Burn scars are hydrologic red flags; where brush once anchored soil, nothing remains but exposed earth. That domino sequence — flame, loss of vegetation, then flood and debris flow — has become a familiar pattern across the West.
A statewide picture: snow, wind, and alerts
It wasn’t just the coast. Northern California grappled with its own volatile mix. The San Francisco Bay Area woke to emergency alerts about flash flooding, and the National Weather Service even flagged a severe thunderstorm near Santa Cruz as potentially capable of producing a tornado — a reminder that this storm system carried more than rain. At higher elevations, the Sierra Nevada braces for heavy snowfall, a seasonal boon for reservoirs but a logistical headache for travel and emergency services.
The Human Toll and the Holiday Travel Crunch
This is where statistics and lived experience collide. AAA had estimated that more than 14.5 million Californians would be on the road over the Christmas period — mostly by car. For many, the coming lull in rain offers a practical relief: drier roads and fewer sudden closures. But for others, the damage is ongoing: at least three people were reported to have died in storm-related incidents, including a person struck by a falling tree.
“We lost power for two nights, and for a few hours it felt like the whole world had shrunk to the wet glow of the streetlight,” said Maya Hernandez, who lives in a hillside apartment above Studio City. “When the water rose at the base of the hill, you realize how fragile our little networks really are.”
First responders and neighbors: the story beneath the headlines
Police, firefighters and volunteers moved through darkened streets and muddy yards, often with the same unglamorous tools: chainsaw, rope, a flashlight dug from a drawer. Volunteers brought hot coffee and sandwiches to crews who had been working nonstop. “We’ll do what we can,” said a firefighter who refused to give his name because he was still on a shift. “It’s what we train for, but you never get used to the fear in someone’s eyes when their home’s at risk.”
What this storm says about climate and resilience
Scientists caution against attributing a single weather event to climate change, but they also emphasize that warming oceans and a warmer atmosphere alter the behavior of atmospheric rivers — making them wetter and sometimes more erratic. California’s winters have always been mercurial; what’s different now is the compounding of extremes. Hinterlands denuded by fire are less forgiving. Urban drainage systems built for a different era struggle with concentrated downpours.
Dr. Velasquez noted, “We’re seeing the same ingredients in different combinations: more moisture in the air, hotter ocean temperatures, and landscapes changed by fire. The result is a higher potential for both epic drought and sudden inundation.”
Practical next steps and how you can help
For residents and travelers, common-sense precautions matter. Check local alerts, avoid driving through flooded roads (just a foot of water can sweep a car away), and keep an emergency kit handy. For those further afield who want to help, community organizations and local food banks often coordinate immediate relief for displaced families.
- Monitor official channels: NWS, county emergency pages, and local news.
- Don’t drive through standing water — turn around, don’t drown.
- Check on neighbors, especially the elderly or those with mobility challenges.
Looking forward: questions to carry with us
As the rain eases and crews begin to map damage, Californians will confront the old work of repair and the harder work of planning. How do we rebuild in places that burn and then flood? How do we align holiday travel habits with weather risk? And, at a broader level, how do coastal and mountain communities invest in resilience when extremes feel like the new normal?
“We have to stop treating one crisis as a separate event and start seeing them as linked,” Dr. Velasquez urged. “Wildfire, flood, snowpack — they’re chapters in the same book now.”
So when you next glance at a local forecast, consider the broader narrative hidden in those little icons of cloud and sun. The sky’s weather is also a weather of policy and planning — and in the end, our collective choices will determine whether the next storm finds us ready, or surprises us again.
Six killed in deadly mosque explosion in Syria
A mosque turned to rubble: a Friday in Homs that will not be easily forgotten
On an ordinary Friday afternoon, when the call to prayer threads through the narrow lanes of Wadi al-Dahab, something ruptured in a way that will echo for a long time. A blast tore through the Ali Bin Abi Talib Mosque on Al-Khadri Street, killing six worshippers and wounding at least 21 others, Syrian authorities said. For residents here — a patchwork quarter in a city scarred by conflict — life tilted again toward fear and uncertainty.
“We were praying. Then everything went quiet, then there was a sound like thunder,” an elderly woman who lives two streets away told me, her voice trembling. “People were on the floor. I can still smell smoke.” She asked to remain anonymous, afraid of reprisals. Her words are the kind that persist: small, intimate, and unbearably human.
The immediate scene: smoke, chaos, and unanswered questions
Syria’s Interior Ministry described the incident as a “terrorist explosion” during the mid-day prayers. State media SANA published stark images: a gaping hole in a wall, blackened beams, prayer carpets strewn with books. Ambulances wailed through the streets. Neighbours peered from doorways, some with tears on their faces, others with phones held high, capturing what they could for the world to see.
Investigators are still trying to determine the exact cause. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was not immediately clear whether the blast was a suicide attack or an explosive device. A Homs-based security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested the device may have been placed inside the mosque. For now, the truth sits behind barricades and forensic gloves.
Why this place matters: Homs, memory, and fault lines
Homs has long been a city of converging histories: pre-war, it was a commercial hub of central Syria, its markets and neighborhoods thick with memory. Today, the city bears the ghost of Syria’s civil war — checkpoints, empty houses, and the scars of sectarian violence that erupted as the country fractured. While the city as a whole has a Sunni majority, several neighbourhoods are predominantly Alawite, the religious minority from which President Bashar al-Assad draws his roots.
That demographic mosaic is not academic; it has been weaponized before. The synagogue of sectarian reprisals and tit-for-tat violence reopened repeatedly during the conflict. In March of this year, coastal regions — home to many Alawite communities — witnessed mass killings. A national commission of inquiry reported at least 1,426 Alawite civilians killed during that wave of violence; the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the figure higher, at more than 1,700.
Voices from Wadi al-Dahab: fear, anger, and fragile resilience
“We are a neighborhood of prayer and tea and children running in the courtyard,” said Sheikh Omar al-Bassam, the imam at a small nearby mosque who came to offer condolences. “This attack is not just on a building. It is on the little things that hold us together.”
A local shopkeeper, Ahmed, described the scene outside the mosque in blunt, simple terms. “People opened their shops to help carry the injured. Then the sirens came. We are tired. Tired of always fearing what will happen next,” he said, hands still stained with ash.
A volunteer doctor who rushed in with a private ambulance had a different kind of weariness. “There were six bodies and more than twenty wounded,” she said. “Most of the injured were men in their 30s and 40s. We have seen these wounds before but every time it feels new.” She too asked not to be named, fearing for her safety.
Quick facts about the attack and its context
- Casualties reported: 6 dead, 21 wounded.
- Location: Ali Bin Abi Talib Mosque, Al-Khadri Street, Wadi al-Dahab, Homs.
- Investigation status: Cause — whether suicide attack or planted device — remains under investigation by security services and monitoring groups.
- Broader context: Homs has witnessed intense sectarian and armed conflict during Syria’s decade-long war; recent years have seen renewed attacks on minority communities.
What this attack reveals about a fragile peace
Attacks on places of worship are not only acts of immediate violence; they are symbolic strikes aimed at eroding trust between communities. Whether the goal is to provoke retaliation, to intimidate a minority, or to destabilize a tenuous post-war equilibrium, the psychological impact is massive. People do not just mourn the dead; they grieve the loss of normalcy.
Think about that for a moment: how does a society rebuild when the sanctuaries of daily life — mosques, schools, markets — become targets? How do neighbors resume their small kindnesses if walking to the bakery feels dangerous?
Local response, international attention, and the limits of protection
Authorities have pledged to pursue the perpetrators. “We will find those responsible and bring them to justice,” a regional official declared, speaking in a televised statement. Yet, statements rarely replace the immediate needs of survivors: medical care, trauma counseling, and the sense that their daily routines are safe again.
Humanitarian groups working in Syria warn that attacks like this complicate relief efforts and deepen mistrust. “When places of worship become battlegrounds, humanitarian access becomes more fragile,” said Leila Haddad, an analyst with a regional NGO. “Aid flows are already constrained; security incidents make vulnerable communities even harder to reach.”
Broader implications: sectarianism, displacement, and cycles of violence
Syria’s war has not been purely military; it has also been social and demographic. Attacks that single out a religious or ethnic community accelerate patterns of displacement, segregation, and the hardening of identities. Over time, neighborhoods that were once mixed become homogeneous, and memories of coexistence fade.
Those changes matter beyond Syria’s borders. They echo in the geopolitics of the region, in the policies of neighboring states, and in the stories refugees take with them into exile. They also raise questions about accountability and reconciliation: who will investigate? Who will remember?
Can healing begin here?
After the sirens have faded and investigators have gone through the ash, the work of rebuilding trust begins in small ways: a neighbor bringing tea, a volunteer helping a family rebuild broken windows, an imam offering a prayer for peace. These gestures do not erase loss, but they are the first, fragile stitches.
So I ask you, the reader: when news like this arrives as a headline, how do you respond? With a click, a scroll, a passing sympathy? Or with sustained curiosity — learning the names of neighborhoods, the histories of people, the ripple effects that reach far beyond a single street?
Incidents like the attack on the Ali Bin Abi Talib Mosque are more than moments in a news cycle. They are tests of a community’s resilience and the international community’s willingness to engage beyond slogans. If there is a lesson in Wadi al-Dahab’s rubble, it is this: peace requires more than declarations; it needs protection, investigation, and the patience to rebuild the ordinary rituals of life.
For now, Homs waits. It counts its dead, tends its wounded, and holds its breath — while the rest of the world watches and wonders what comes next.
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