Israel-Palestine, DR Congo, Iran.
Today's three stories you should know.
Israel-Palestine
I’m sharing this story as a microcosm of the situation people in Gaza find themselves in. Today, the Gaza correspondent for Al Jazeera English, Youmna ElSayed, said that her husband had received a phone call from the Israeli army telling him their family must evacuate their home in Gaza City or they could be killed. The problem? They have no safe route out, as Youmna explained live on air while the sound of heavy explosions could be heard in the background. “I don’t know how safe it would be to actually take our car and leave and drive under this heavy bombardment. It’s very risky, it doesn’t seem safe at all,” she said. “I don’t think that if I risk my life and the life of my kids to take this journey that this could be a right decision.”
More from Al Jazeera here.
DR Congo
A record 6.9 million people, a startling number, have been forced from their homes in the Democratic Republic of Congo due to ongoing violence, the UN said today. The UN's International Organization for Migration said the majority of the displaced were from the east, where a patchwork of armed groups have been fighting the government, and each other, for years. It said more than one million have fled this year alone due to fighting between government forces and the resurgent M23 group.
More from BBC here.
Iran
A prominent Iranian human rights lawyer has been arrested after she attended the funeral of a young woman whose mysterious death on Tehran’s metro has sparked suspicion among women’s rights activists. The State-run Fars news agency said Nasrin Sotoudeh was arrested for not wearing a hijab. The young woman, Armita Geravanad, was also not wearing a headscarf when she died and rights groups believe she may have been killed in a confrontation with so-called morality police agents. The death of another young woman in their custody sparked massive protests last year.
More from AP here.