Global News Podcast - Gaza officials say Israeli strikes kill more than 100 people

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

Palestinians in Gaza say they are facing another Nakba on the anniversary of their "catastrophe". Also: President Zelensky calls Russian peace talks delegates "stand-in props" and the lost Magna Carta found at Harvard.

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritzen and at 13h GMT on Thursday 15th May these are our main stories. The number of Palestinians killed in the latest Israeli air strikes on Gaza soars as the population teeters on starvation. President Putin isn't there, neither is President Trump, so what hopes are there for the first direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in three years? Also in this podcast... The extreme weather that was experienced, the way that interacted with the mast and the rigging on board, that created a force that the vessel was unable to recover from.

Answers as to why the superyacht described as almost unsinkable capsized. May 15th is for the Palestinians Nakba, or the catastrophe. It's the day they commemorate the period when around 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes during the violence which led to the creation of the State of Israel and the war between Arabs and Jews in 1948. Seventy-seven years later, their descendants in Gaza are facing another catastrophe as Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sticks to his promise to destroy Hamas 19

months after the October 7 massacre. Ahmad Hamad said that civilians in Gaza were helpless. What we are experiencing now is even worse than the Nakba of 1948. We have suffered massacres, hunger, killing and repeated displacement. Now the Israeli military urges us to move to the western part of Gaza claiming it's a safe zone. But the reality is that we're attacked no matter where we go. We fled south to Rafa only for it to be bombed. We escaped to Harn Younis and Deir al-Bala only to see them bombed as well. Finally we returned to northern Gaza and it also came under

attack. Death surrounds us everywhere. On Thursday, officials from the Hamas-run Health Ministry said that more than 100 people were killed in Gaza by Israeli airstrikes. They also said that most died when homes and tents sheltering displaced families around Charnunis were hit. Middle East correspondent Yoland Nel in Jerusalem gave me the latest. The casualties have simply overwhelmed the Nasser Hospital, which is the main hospital there in the south. And we've heard from local journalists that the casualties are now spilling out, filling up corridors and that the morgue too there is full.

And I'm told panic in western Gaza City as Israel orders residents to evacuate. Yes, this was an order that came out late at night, quite a specific one, for a big neighbourhood in the west of Gaza City which is at the moment really crowded with people, particularly who fled there from Israel's military offensive to the east. Lots of people who have been camping out on the streets, but also inside some schools that have been turned into shelters in the Islamic University. These have been identified as sites by the Israeli military, along with Sheffa Hospital, as being what it calls terrorist strongholds.

So there is an expectation that there will be Israeli military attacks imminently in those locations. And we have seen through this week that Israel has really been stepping up its attacks in Gaza, even as President Trump has been continuing his visit to the region. And even as those negotiations continue on a possible ceasefire and hostage release deal, we've got Israeli negotiators who are still in Qatar. The Israeli prime minister said that any talks that would take place would now happen under fire. And also there's been this expectation set up that once President Trump does leave the region, Israel will push ahead with its plan to intensify its military

offensive in Gaza. That's what it has said. And that plan that's been approved by the Security Cabinet involves forcibly displacing most of the population to the south of the Strip. Jolande, I know it's impossible. You're not allowed to go into Gaza along with other international journalists. The information that you get is through the trusted contacts that the BBC has in the territory. But all the pictures I see of Gaza are just a rubble, essentially. I'm amazed there are any buildings left to bomb. Certainly in the southern part of the Gaza Strip you can see that large areas have just been now completely flattened.

This is where Israel says in Rafah that it wants to set up what it's calling a sterile zone for this new aid distribution plan, bypassing the UN and other agencies with private security contractors, giving some security as well. That's where that will take place. But yes, there is also widespread devastation across the whole of the Gaza Strip with most of the population now displaced. And that is just compounding the humanitarian crisis that is developing because of course now it is more than 10 weeks that Israel has closed all the crossings that go into Gaza. You have got no food going in, no water, no medical supplies, no fuel and

we've had this global hunger monitor this week warning that currently half a million people are facing starvation and just every day more and more stark warnings coming through from different aid agencies. I saw one head of an aid agency calling this a moment of moral reckoning. Médecins Sans Frontières saying that Israel is creating what it called conditions for the eradication of Palestinian lives in Gaza. This is even by the standards of this war that's been going on for 19 months, extremely strong language. Yoland Nel. Israel said there was no famine in Gaza and that although there was hunger, this had been caused by Hamas stealing food aid in the Palestinian territory.

A claim that the United Nations and other agencies reject. A US-backed humanitarian organisation has said that it will start work in Gaza within two weeks as part of a new heavily criticized aid distribution plan. It says it's asked Israel to let the UN and others resume deliveries until it's set up. More from our international editor Jeremy Bowen. The Americans and the Israelis have come up with this plan for something called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation which is something where initially the idea was that they would set up some hubs in the south of Gaza,

very badly damaged, an awful lot of rubble there, which would be protected partly close up by American, probably, private security, and then more widely by the Israeli army, the IDF. They put out a statement, this GHF organization saying that they actually wanted to expand the operations elsewhere in the Gaza Strip. They also tried to send some reassurances that they would be acting more like a mainstream humanitarian organization. It's going to be run by, I think, professionals in the field who probably want to protect their reputations. But so far, the UN does not seem to be budging

on its position that this isn't going to work, they're not going to cooperate with it. They've also said this GHF, the Gaza humanitarian foundation, that before they get going, that aid should come in via existing channels, which would be the UN, which the Israelis say is totally compromised by the fact that Hamas takes the aid, something that the UN absolutely denies. And let's not forget that only the night before last, the senior UN humanitarian official, Tom Fletcher, told the Security Council that they need to act to stop genocide in Gaza by Israel. Jeremy Bowen, as we heard, new Israeli displacement orders have caused panic in Western Gaza city.

Yusra Abu-Sharek lives there with her children and works for International Network for Aid, Relief and Assistance, which provides medical treatment for youngsters. My colleague James Copnell spoke to her. I live with my family, with my kids, very close to these locations. It was very, very hard for us to answer the question where to go again and again, because Gaza City is very small, crowded, rubble and damages everywhere. Tents are everywhere in the streets, so there is no place to go to. I also live very close and near the Balmira crossing that was hit last week and

my kids were alone by themselves while I was at my work. And I ran like crazy to check on them. And it was so traumatic, so dramatic for them to see and witness the dead bodies, the children on the streets, the blood. And now we are facing an evacuation order and we were convincing ourselves it's going to be like airstrikes and targeting. It's not a grand operation, so it's going to be okay. We will sleep together in a safer spot in the house and that's it because we don't have a place to go.

So now I'm struggling as well to feed them. So imagine like it's not only about the war, the fear, the killing, but also the hunger. And yesterday, for example, we at Inara organization distributed vegetable parcels. You could not imagine the happiness among children like they were dancing while they are eating cucumbers. The young men say that this is the first time we eat cucumbers for at least 30 days. You mentioned the toll on your children and how they've come to accept that maybe things won't get better.

I wonder, have you seen them change over the last few months? Yes, of course. The younger one, seven years old son, he's malnourished, he's very skinny and thin, and he's not eating well because he used to eat protein and the only food that he grows up on because he has a problem in his blood, protein. And now for almost 70 days, there's no protein. And he can't eat rice alone. He can't eat bread alone as well.

So I do my best, but to be honest, I'm failing and I failed already. You say you're failing, but I'm sure everyone listening would be thinking, no, you're doing your best in incredibly difficult circumstances. There are so many things beyond your control, beyond the control of anyone in Gaza right now. Yeah, yeah, it's hard. It's hard, especially I leave them for at least eight hours during the day, just to help people who are in more need or who are in the tents

in the streets, the children that experience the trauma and loss. And today my son asked me not to go to the work, but we will continue teaching our kids how to be resilient and to accept any situation that they will be in in any moment, whether it's the loss of their beloved one, whether it's the loss of their mother, their dad. So you will be someone special one day, even after this horror that we are going through. Yusra Abu Shire, speaking from Gaza City. Now to possible peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. The hoped-for direct talks, the first in more than three years, are not on track.

There are currently delegations from both countries in Turkey. But President Putin is not there. Neither is President Trump, who said that nothing would happen on ending the war until he met the Russian leader. The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, also in Turkey at a NATO Foreign Minister's meeting, said there had to be peace. There is no military solution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. This war is going to end not through a military solution but through a diplomatic one. And the sooner an agreement can be reached on ending this war,

the less people will die and the less destruction there will be. With such uncertainty, how was the American delegation in Turkey feeling? Our US State Department correspondent, Tom Bateman, is travelling with Mr Rubio. President Trump had basically suggested that there was some possibility or hope that Vladimir Putin himself would be in Turkey today or tomorrow for these talks. Now clearly that hasn't happened and my sense is that the Americans seem a bit deflated basically about that. And you heard Marco Rubio talking in sort of very general terms about we hope that you know

there can be a mechanism that comes out of these talks and progress made. Well, what a contrast to now nearly three weeks ago where the Secretary of State issued a warning, perhaps an ultimatum to the Russians saying that if both sides in the conflict didn't make progress on concrete that if both sides in the conflict didn't make progress on concrete proposals that the US would withdraw as mediators. And yet here we are now with the US still saying this process is going on, but in what feels like the Russian president really calling the shots I think now. And so I think the sort of American attempt to lead this process feels like it's really fraying at the seams at the moment. So what can we expect from the talks? Vitaly Shevchenko, Russia editor for BBC Monitoring, is also in Turkey. Upon landing in Ankara, Vladimir Zelenskyi said that Russia had sent stand-in props to Turkey instead of Vladimir Putin.

And the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded by calling Vladimir Zelensky a clown and a loser. So that just gives you an idea of the mood music here in Istanbul. I'm just stood outside the presidential palace. There's a crowd of reporters and yet we have no idea who, if anyone will be meeting here later today, first there were reports of some sort of talks between Ukrainians and Russians at 10 in the morning, then one o'clock in the afternoon, then they were pushed back more. in the afternoon, then they were pushed back more and amid all the mudslinging and the tensions, it's still not clear what's going on and who will be meeting if anyone.

So from what you're saying, not much chance these talks are going to lead to any real tangible results? Not really. The delegation that Russia sent to Turkey led by a former culture minister, now presidential adviser Vladimir Medinsky. It's insultingly junior, at least that's how it's seen by Ukrainians after Vladimir Zelensky repeatedly called on Vladimir Putin to come to Turkey in person. And the people who are here in Istanbul, they don't really have the mandate to make really, really important decisions.

And the Russian foreign ministry earlier today also said that Russia wants to address the rude causes of the conflict, as they call them, and lasting peace in Ukraine rather than a 30-day ceasefire. Why didn't Vladimir Putin come in person? Well, I think one key reason is that he absolutely detests Vladimir Zelensky. Would he have come if Mr Zelensky hadn't gone? If Donald Trump was here, I'm sure Vladimir would have been prepared to come. But at the moment, it doesn't seem as though either

Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin would be here. In fact, the Kremlin is saying that Vladimir Putin is not coming. So that means we've only got Zelenskyy and several low-key Russian officials in town at the moment. But tomorrow, Friday, Marko Rubio, the US Secretary of State, will be coming to Istanbul as well. Vitaly Shevchenko. As of Wednesday, the world's two biggest economies, the US and China, paused their sky-high tariffs, which in effect blocked trade. The 90-day truce means American firms are now rushing to get shipments from China in

case the levy is reimposed. In fact, according to one report, bookings for container transport from China to the US have risen nearly 300%. Laura Bicker reports. I'm in southern China in Guangdong province and the sound that you hear behind me is a sofa being compressed, boxed up and ready to be shipped to the United States. Production here has restarted after several months of a pause since Donald Trump's liberation day when the boss had to tell his employees to go home. Our factory stopped production. We put workers on leave because our main market is the United

States. In fact, once the tariffs exceeded 50%, we had already come to a standstill. At 145%, it was not possible to do business. He Ke, or HK to his American clients, has now called his workers back to restart his sofa business. The factory is springing to life, and sewing machines hum as workers stitch fabric into the right shape to cover memory foam cushions. We will now ship out all our stranded orders, and then we hope U.S. clients will place a large number of new orders in case Trump increases tariffs again after 90 days. Mr. He has some high-profile clients. He says Elon Musk has one of his sofas. But this trade

war has made him realize he can't rely on trade with the US. We have learnt not to put all our eggs in one basket. We must develop other markets like Africa, South America and the Middle East. The surprise deal between Washington and Beijing reached over the weekend, his factories all over China pushing to get their shipments to the US. Beijing has framed the deal as a win. It believes its defiance brought the Americans to the table, but it's come at a cost for both sides.

So this side is busy, but this area empty? Yeah. Actually, we've left this line to our American customers. Derek Wang tells me he'd left space in his factory to make air fryers for US clients. He spent years developing the product for the American market and had just secured his first buyers. Then along came Donald Trump's tariffs. 145% tariffs mean decoupling. Bye bye. I have classmates and friends in the US. I don't want to say bye bye to my friends. I hope Trump will think carefully, because it will

affect not only trade but also people-to-people exchanges. Has this shaken your confidence in selling to America? Hearing the news of these tariffs was like hearing that your parents are getting a divorce, but then you realise that this is a relationship that is never going to end. There is a saying in Chinese, good fortune comes out of bad. The US client had made a concession on the price, and this trade war has also helped us realize we need to develop more of our business outside the US. Factory manager Derek Wang ending that report from Laura Bicker.

Still to come on this podcast. Manager Derek Wang ending that report from Laura Bicker. Still to come on this podcast. I clicked to have a look at the image and good great heavens it wasn't a statute book at all. It looked to me for all the world as an original of the 1300 Magna Carta, the last official edition. Locked away in a library for 80 years, researchers uncover a lost Magna Carta. Last year, a yacht made for the rich and famous, which was described as almost unsinkable, sank in Italian waters, killing seven people.

Among them, the British tech billionaire Mike Lynch. The Bayesian had the second tallest sailing mast ever built, 72 metres. According to an interim report that's been published today, the superyacht was vulnerable to violent winds and probably capsized in gusts of nearly 120 kilometres an hour. Our World News correspondent, Joe Inwood, reports. Floating off the rugged Sicilian coast, two huge cranes. They're part of the effort to recover the wreck of the Bayesian, the luxury yacht that sank last August. It may still be on the seabed, but now we have a clearer picture of how

and why it went down. A sudden extreme weather front hit the boat with its huge mast, as Simon Graves, Principal Inspector of the UK's Marine Accident Investigation Branch, explains. These circumstances involved the extreme weather that was experienced, the way that interacted with the mast and the rigging on board, that created a force that the vessel was unable to recover from. Once the vessel had been tipped over to around about 70 degrees in the condition it was in, it was irrecoverable.

It took just minutes for the winds to turn from quite strong to extreme. We showed the report and its weather data to Dr Simon Boxall, an oceanographer from the University of Southampton. The winds went from around about force two or three to force 11 in a very short period of time. That's going from five, ten miles an hour up to 70, 80, 90, 100 miles an hour. The accident claimed seven lives. British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his daughter Hannah, Jonathan and Judy Blumer, Chris and Neddermore Villeau and the yacht chef, Ricaldo Thomas. Promotional videos of the Bayesian from before the disaster show a sleek, luxurious ship.

There were questions about how it sank so fast with some people suggesting the crew must have failed to close hatches. Dr. Boxall says the initial report suggests the crew did all they could. The priority would have been to shut the hatches and the doors which they did. The priority probably wasn't to drop the keel. The keel is usually there for when the sails are up. And they wouldn't have been aware of the extreme force that was coming. And it was an extreme force. This was the wrong place at the wrong time. But there is one apparent failing. All ships have something called a stability book. Think

of it as a user manual. The Baysians did not contain sufficient details about the danger of high winds of this unique vessel. Simon Graves, who wrote the report again. The specific condition that the vessel was in was not included in the book. So the crew on board were unaware of the vulnerability the vessel had to being knocked over by extreme winds. And according to Dr. knocked over by extreme winds. And according to Dr. Boxall, extreme winds are a problem that we're going to have to get used to.

This is the sound of a water spout. Many of them were spotted in the area just before the sinking. From the Bayesian disaster, there will be some changes taking place. These changes are needed because we are going to see more extreme weather events. We're seeing it already. Efforts to raise the Bayesian are due to resume later today after being paused after the death of a recovery diver. Another life lost in what seems to have been a tragic accident. Joe Inwood. In Thailand, a prominent Buddhist monk has surrendered himself to the police after they began investigating the disappearance of about $9 million in temple donations. The

69-year-old is accused of emptying the temple's accounts and using the vast sums of money for online gambling. I heard more from our Asia Pacific editor Celia Hatton. CELIA HATTON Well, it's just come out in the Thai media today, but now we've realized that police have said that they've actually been tracking this particular monk for eight months. They sent plainclothes police to the temple where he worked. He was a senior monk. He was also a regional government official. He had kind of risen to that level, quite senior. So they spent eight months watching the temple finances. And what they say is

that this monk, Pradharma Vashiruit, he had been ordering the board of the temple, so a group of monks that run the temple, to transfer the temple's donations, basically to empty the temple's bank account and to send all that money to him. That money was then going on to the bank account of a woman who represented several online gambling sites. And they say that over five years, he took $9 million worth of temple money, which is money that comes from donations from tourists and people who use the temple. So he was gambling on what? Well, that's what they say. I mean, these are the accusations. And they were just about to arrest him when apparently the monk caught wind that they

were going to do this and so he went in and surrendered himself. So he's facing some quite serious accusations now. It does seem extraordinary that he thought he could get away with it if it's true. I mean this is amazing. When we think about monks, Buddhist monks in Thailand, you know, they occupy these quite central roles in Thai communities. Many Thai people are quite ardent Buddhists. There's around 280,000 monks serving in the country. They're supposed to be living lives of – as model citizens, model human

beings and there's all sorts of rules that they're supposed to follow. So they're not supposed to steal, have sex, they're not supposed to drink alcohol or use drugs. But over the past, I'd say 10, 20 years or so, we've been getting almost monthly reports of monks, corrupt monks that have been breaking these rules. One of the most significant ones took place in 2022 when a temple was raided in southern Thailand. All the monks in it were given drugs tests and they were all found to have been taking

methamphetamine. Now this is deeply upsetting for people. Any news of monks breaking the rules or misusing temple donations is very, very upsetting for the people who use these temples because these temples are used by generations of families. People store the ashes of their loved ones in their community temples. So this is a story that really will get a lot of attention inside Thailand. Giles Hatton. A man and a woman have been arrested in South Korea for allegedly trying to blackmail the footballer Son Heung-min, who is captain of

the national team and the English Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur. The pair were accused of pretending the woman was pregnant with his child. Our sole correspondent, Jean Mackenzie, has the details. The woman is alleged to have approached Son last year, claiming she was carrying his child. She reportedly demanded hundreds of thousands of dollars to stay silent. The man then allegedly followed up with him in March, trying again to get the money. The footballer's representatives filed a complaint to the police last week accusing the pair of blackmail. Son Heung-min is not only South Korea's most famous footballer,

he's somewhat of a national hero. And he's managed to keep his image clean and his public life relatively private. In a statement, his agency said he was unequivocally the victim in this case. Gene McKenzie in Seoul. The Magna Carta is considered the foundation document of so many constitutions around the world. More than 800 years old, it established the principle that nobody, not even the King of England, was above the law. Two British academics have uncovered a lost version bought at auction for $27 nearly 80

years ago by Harvard Law School in Massachusetts and tucked away in their archives ever since. My colleague Justin Webb has been speaking to one of them, Professor David Carpenter, about what made this such a rare and significant find. I was researching a book on unofficial copies of Magna Carta. That may sound as dry as dust, but it actually reveals how well known the charter was and how it was sinking deep roots into the political community. And a major source for these unofficial copies are statute books, which are collections of legislation made for lawyers. And Harvard Law School in America has got a magnificent collection of statute books acquired in the last century, and it's

digitized them all, mercifully. So I was working through these digitized copies online until I got to Harvard Law School number 172, and I clicked to have a look at the image and good great heavens it wasn't a statute book at all. It looked to me for all the world as an original of the 1300 Magna Carta, the last official edition of Magna Carta. So then I thought, well, what does Harvard Law School think it has? And so I then looked and it had no awareness of what it was. It just said they'd acquired it in 1946 as a much later copy of Magna Carta to the date 1327. Had they paid a lot for it?

I mean, this is where I teamed up with my friend and Magna Carta pundit, Professor Nicholas Vincent, University of East Anglia, and he researched the provenance, and it's the most extraordinary story because Harvard Law School had acquired it in 1946 from a first World War fighting ace, Air Vice Marshal Maynard, and he'd sold it to them via Sotheby's and a London dealer for peanuts, and they had no awareness of what it was. I mean it must be worth, I suppose now millions of dollars and yet no one realized what it was. They all thought it was just some later copy. I mean it's an extraordinary story. Harvard were at first I think baffled and then possibly skeptical but when we put the

evidence to them they then became very excited. They sent us vital for actually testing the text, ultraviolet images and so on and that we are going out to the evidence to them, they then became very excited, they sent us vital for actually testing the text, ultraviolet images and so on, and that we are going out to America in June to celebrate it and Harvard are going to put it on display, which I know is absolutely appropriate because there's only one other original of Magna Carta in America and now there are two and what better place than the Harvard Law School. Professor David Carpenter. And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast later.

If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag at global news pod. This edition was mixed by Holly Smith and the producers were Daniel Mann and Muzaffar Shaqir. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritzen. Until next time, goodbye.