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Gaza civil defense agency has warned of a looming health disaster in the besieged Strip as the decomposition of dead bodies under the rubble of buildings destroyed by the relentless Israeli bombings accelerates.

The agency pointed on Tuesday to the risk of diseases and epidemics associated with the public decomposition of thousands of bodies due to rising temperature.

“The continued accumulation of thousands of bodies under the rubble has begun to cause the spread of disease and epidemics, especially with the onset of summer and the rise in temperatures, which accelerates the process of decomposition,” it said in a statement.

Seven months into the war, the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor warned earlier that the decomposition of dead bodies for long periods leads to the transmission of serious diseases, including blood-borne viruses and tuberculosis.

"Gastrointestinal infections like cholera can also be easily spread through direct contact with dead bodies leaking excrement, soiled clothing, or contaminated tools or vehicles," it added.

In another report last week, Euro-Med Monitor also warned that thousands of corpses left in the streets or beneath house debris are rotting and being consumed by cats and dogs, which is an additional factor contributing to the spread of infectious diseases.

"The spread threatens the environment and public health in the Strip, and health authorities in the Strip have detected about one million cases of infectious diseases," the report added.

The Global Nutrition Group also estimates that at least 90 percent of the Gaza Strip’s children under the age of five are affected by one or more infectious diseases and that 70 percent have had diarrhea in the past two weeks—a 23-fold increase compared with the 2022 baseline.

Unexpected blistering temperatures across Gaza have also added to the daily misery faced by the enclave’s people and sparked new fears of disease outbreaks amid a lack of sufficient clean water and waste disposal, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, also known as UNRWA said on Thursday.

This comes as the death toll from Israel's genocidal campaign against Gaza rose to 34,535. Among the dead are more than 14,500 children and 9,500 women.

Since the war began on October 7, nearly 85 percent of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced.

Vast swathes of the besieged territory are in ruins as Israel continues its onslaught, dropping at least 75,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, according to the Gaza Media Office.

Earlier this month, UNRWA, said 62 percent of all houses in the besieged territory have been damaged or destroyed.

Gaza Media Office recently reported that nearly 90,000 housing units have been destroyed while nearly 300,000 units have been damaged by the Israeli air and ground offensive.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Monday that nearly 37.5 million tons of conflict-generated debris are estimated to be present throughout Gaza, based on assessments by UN bodies.

The world’s hunger watchdog, known as the Integrated Food-Security Phase Classification (IPC), said in a report published on March 18 that about 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza are living through catastrophic food insecurity, warning that famine is likely to strike by May in northern Gaza and can spread across the territory by July.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, said in a report published in late March that there were clear indications that Israel has violated three of the five acts listed under the UN Genocide Convention.

These acts Albanese said were “killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to the group’s members; and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Bengaluru: In a fresh development in the alleged Hassan sex abuse case, JD(S) MLA H D Revanna, who was accused of sexually harassing his house help, has been booked for kidnapping a victim allegedly sexually assaulted by his son, Hassan MP Prajwal Revanna. The case was filed late Thursday evening at the KR Nagar police station in Mysuru.

The 20-year-old complainant from KR Nagara accused one Sathish Babanna of taking his mother away forcibly and keeping her in an unknown location at the behest of Revanna.

As per the FIR, Revanna has been named as accused 1 while Babanna was accused 2. The duo were booked under IPC Sections 364A (kidnapping for ransom), 365 (kidnapping or abducting with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine a person) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention).

The complainant claimed that his mother, whose name and age were not revealed, had worked as a help in Revanna’s house and farm in Holenarasipura for six years, quit the job three years ago and returned to KR Nagara. She then worked for daily wages.

“Nearly three to four days before the Lok Sabha election, Sathish Babanna, who is known to us and hailed from our native place, took my mother to Holenarasipura after saying that Bhavani Revanna, the wife of MLA Revanna, had asked for her,” the complainant alleged, adding that Babanna dropped her back on the day of the polls.

Babanna allegedly told the victim’s mother and father to remain silent and evade the police if they came looking for them and to inform him of the developments.

On April 29, at around 9 pm, when the complainant was home, the suspect Babanna arrived, told the complainant’s mother that Revanna had asked for her and took her away on his motorcycle. The complainant claimed that he wasn’t aware of where Babanna took his mother and he had told him that if the police found her, a case would be registered and they would all go to jail.

On May 1, two of the complainant’s relatives called him on the phone and told him that there was a video of his mother being sexually assaulted by Prajwal and that it was a huge case, the FIR noted. He was also informed by his two friends of his "mother's videos being circulated".

When he asked Babanna later that night, he was allegedly told that there was a photo of his mother standing with a stick when Prajwal had quarrelled with someone earlier and an FIR had been registered. Babanna told the complainant that his mother would have to be released on bail, the FIR noted.

“Babanna told me not to speak on the matter on my phone and asked me to talk from a different phone,” he said, seeking action from the police.

The case has been transferred to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) set up to probe the Hassan sex scandal as per the government order.

Students in Paris blocked access to a campus building at a French university on Friday, as pro-Palestine demonstrations reach Europe.

The students occupied the central campus building of the Paris Institute of Political Studies, known as Sciences Po, and dozens of others blocked its entrance, echoing protest action at American universities.

Students inspired by Gaza solidarity encampments at campuses in the United States blocked access to a campus building at the prestigious French university on Friday.

They blocked the entrance with trash cans, wooden platforms and other items.

The occupation of the Paris university campus came after police broke up a separate protest at the university’s amphitheater outside one of its Paris campuses.

Scores of student protesters gathered at the building’s windows, chanting slogans and holding placards reading “We are all Palestinians,” in defiance of administrators who students say called the police on their peers two days earlier.

Pro-Palestinian student protesters had occupied the amphitheater outside one of the university’s Paris campuses on Wednesday evening.

The US-style student protests, which began over the months-long Israeli regime’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, kicked off in the United States and have now spread to European capitals as well as Australia.

In the German capital Berlin, several people were arrested as police violently cleared a camp of Gaza war protesters at the German parliament.

Pro-Palestinian activists are demanding a permanent ceasefire, an end to the Israeli atrocities, and an arms embargo of the Tel Aviv regime.

The Israeli regime launched the war on Gaza on October 7 last year. The genocidal war has killed more than 34,356 Palestinians, most of them women and children.